We pray for the repose of the souls of the victims.

We pray for the survivors.

Years ago, Italian journalist Vittorio Messori interviewed Blessed John Paul II for what would eventually become Crossing the Threshold of Hope. 

Vittorio, enfant terrible that he was, asked the pain filled question about where God was to be found in the midst of all human tragedy. In my paraphrase: Is God mocking us, playing Hide and Go Seek with us? Is God merely some abstract figment of our imagination out in outer space somewhere? Did He just kick-start the universe and then take off? Where is God? Doesn’t God care? Isn’t this a scandal?

Blessed John Paul answered. In my paraphrase: Oh yes! What a scandal! The Lord does in fact hide from us in this most hidden place, not hidden because it is hidden, but because we ourselves don’t look in the most obvious of places. He is in view of all, for everyone to see, stripped down, nailed to the cross, arms wide open, in such plain sight that we, not expecting to see the Divine Son of the Living God tortured and in total agony and put to death, just cannot see how this could be God. We would sometimes like for God to remain abstract and out in the outer-space of our own cowardly imaginations.

But there He is, nonetheless.

Yes, God does know what it means to suffer.

And He does have the power to prevent such tragedies.

And we can see Him in the help that others provide in the aftermath.

But why doesn’t He prevent this from the get-go?

Our Lord didn’t come to save us in this world from the effects of original sin freely chosen with that sin, effects of weakness of mind, of will, of emotions, of sickness and death. He respects the consequences of what was chosen with sin, effects that all of us suffer even though it is Adam alone who sinned so terribly that the rest of us suffer with him, the unity of humanity being just that close.

Rather, in taking on the worst of that sin, death, He had the right in justice to have mercy on us.

That mercy is seen in the opportunity we have to live His love despite the consequences of original sin raging away within us. And that grace, His life and friendship within us, turns to glory in heaven, where all the consequences of sin will fall away. No more suffering. No more death. Life for ever. Our time on this earth being so very short, it hardly making a difference if we die young or old in the face of all eternity. Our home is in heaven, not here.

Without original sin, mankind would have so worked together, not seeking profit, but the common good with full respect for each individual. We would have dominated the earth, easily being able to escape such things until we should also be able to dominate such forces in nature. But we sinned. We don’t work together.

This mayhem is what our Lord stepped into on purpose, knowing what would happen. When we are faced with such goodness and such kindness, we can’t but, in our weakness, hold that to be an incrimination of us, and we have to put that goodness and kindness to death. We, in our sin, had to kill our Lord to get Him out of the way. He knew that. That’s why He came. In taking on the worst we had to give out, what we ourselves deserve, He had, again, the right in all justice to have mercy on us.

And now it is our turn to do the same. With His love, we go out with full love of God and love of neighbor, whatever the cost. For instance, should the Westboro “Baptist” Marxist front group show up to say that all the kids should have been killed by the tornado instead of just a few, it would be an act of goodness and kindness to shut such loudmouths up, even vigilante style, inasmuch as they interfering with rescue operations, endangering the lives of others in this way, using even a bit of force, whatever force is necessary. Sure, you might risk prison for forcibly keeping such people away, but — hey — it’s worth it, right? Yep. And I don’t think a judge would convict anyone for helping to keep law and order.

Just to say: Those who would say that someone deserves to die rather than us because we’re better than them are risking going straight to hell for their arrogant pride. Anyway…

We can see God, we can see Jesus in all of this. We can see with a bit more reality the mayhem Jesus stepped into. We can see why we need to be saved from this world to be brought to our home in heaven. We can see His love in the heroic actions and exhaustion of those who survived and helped others. We can see His love in the growth of perspective, in the revising of priorities, in the recognition of shortness of this life, in the love that we bear toward one another.

Yes, also and especially in the midst of such tragedy we can exclaim that Jesus is just so very good, just so very kind.

Now then, a prayer for the repose of the souls of the departed:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.

Our Father… Hail Mary… Glory be…

Today, let’s take a look at Piety, truly a gift of the Holy Spirit that we ourselves simply cannot obtain on our own.

Piety goes beyond the Fear of the Lord, as it has us honor God not only as a loving Creator but also quite specifically as our dearest Heavenly Father, as the smallest child with the most tender Father.

Piety builds on the Fear of the Lord. That Fear acts as a springboard, launching one into a different perspective. Whereas with the Fear of the Lord we come to know of the love of our Heavenly Father for us through His creation and provision of love, with Piety we come to know the greatness of His creation and provision of love from the perspective of being carried lovingly in the arms of our Heavenly Father.

Fear and Piety are not mutually exclusive, not contradictory. With these two together, we begin to delve a bit more into the mystery of living in body and soul together. Stop for a moment or two and take that in: our bodies, so limited, but so taken by discovery of all that God provides, our spirits, able to carry, almost unknown to us consciously, the weight of the glory of God by way of sanctifying grace, the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity, the seed of eternal life already within us…

In regard to our Lord, take that another step, using that as an awkward introduction to a moment’s reflection on the wondrous hypostatic union of our Lord Jesus, that is, His human nature and His divine nature coming together as but one Divine Person.

Now, recall that the Holy Spirit, in the life of the Most Holy Trinity, is spirated, as it is said, by both the Father and the Son (Filioque!). Yet, in regard to the human nature of our Lord, the Holy Spirit brings Jesus into the most tender love of Son for Father possible to the human nature of our Lord as hypostatically united to the divine nature of our Lord.

The Holy Spirit would have us weak nothings, who have crucified the Son of the Living God with our sins, we, who are so prone to sin… this Holy Spirit would have us know something of this piety of our Lord Jesus before our dear Heavenly Father by having us formed more and more as members of the Body of Christ, in the multitude of which members our Heavenly Father positively delights.

No matter what day Fathers’ Day for our earthly fathers lands on in earthly calendars, we can daily wish our dear Heavenly Father a Heavenly Father’s Fathers’ Day.

It makes a difference to say it. Just stop for a second and say it:

Happy Heavenly Father’s Day, Heavenly Father!

And He thus fills us with the joy of the Holy Spirit!

I’m beaming right now. I bet you are too.

Canon Law and False Abuse Allegations, Part I

Canon Law and False Abuse Allegations, Part II

Cathy Caridi has written an overview about canon law and allegations (Part I) with some examples (Part II), the latter also mentioning Father Gordon MacRae. Good on Cathy. More and more canon lawyers are signing on to Father Gordon’s defense. Get that? Times are changing, and those who continue to self-congratulate themselves over their injustices to innocent priests, thinking that this makes them look good, are about to have a rude awakening. But it’s surely good to wake up and die right.

It strikes me that the longer the injustice against Father Gordon MacRae is perpetuated because people like Monsignor Edward Arsenault, Bishop Francis Christian, Bishop John McCormack do not come forward and tell the whole story about, for instance, stacking the jury, or, for instance, going out of their way by fraud to try to ensure that he would not have a good chance at any appeal, well, the worse it will be for the likes of Arsenault, Christian and McCormack. It seems to me that Bishop Peter Libasci could bring these and other matters to light. And he does want to do things in the light of day, doesn’t he?

No flower is too insignificant to present to the Immaculate Conception. There are no “ordinary” or, to be consistent, “extraordinary” flowers. We can exclaim Ooohh! and AAAAaaahh! before this or that flower, but the closer we look, the more agile our souls are, the more, I think, we can appreciate the greatness of all that which we would otherwise consider merely ordinary. Each has its place. Each has its glory.

Having said that, we note that this is a rather confusing week in the Latin Rite of the Church, what with both Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Liturgy going on at the same parishes in increasingly many places. There is an Octave of Pentecost in the Extraordinary Form but not in the Ordinary Form.

I think it would be great if the Ordinary Form of the Liturgy would include an Octave of the Pentecost.

Until that happens, perhaps we might inscape the concept into the Ordinary Form calendar that all of ordinary time is to be considered an extended octave of Pentecost. Does not the Extraordinary Form calendar count the Sundays after Pentecost instead of Sundays of Ordinary Time? Yes, it does.

We are, in fact, ever since Pentecost, living in the time of Pentecost, the end times, the times in which the Holy Spirit forms us as members of the Body of Christ.

We are to look to the Holy Spirit, asking that He put us to death, death to ourselves, that we might be enlivened with His fiery love, manifesting the very love of Christ in these lowly bodies of ours, our weakness, then, pointing to very strength of His glory.

[By the way, I use the word liturgy, which some think is, you know, suspect of being somehow a liberal word. Such people fail to realize that the liturgy is made up of more than the Mass. There is the Breviary (LotH) etc. ]

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the most exalted of which is wisdom, come from Isaiah 11,2-3, with number six coming from the LXX (translated with the Vulgate):

A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a seed thrusts from his roots: on him the Spirit of the Lord rests:

[1] a Spirit of WISDOM and

[2] understanding

[3] a Spirit of counsel and

[4] fortitude,

[5] a Spirit of knowledge and

[6] piety;

[7] He will be inspired with the FEAR of the Lord.

CCC § 1830 The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. /// § 1831 [...] They belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David. They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations.

Proverbs 1,1-7 — The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel: That men may appreciate wisdom and discipline, may understand words of intelligence; May receive training in wise conduct, in what is right, just and honest; That resourcefulness may be imparted to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man by hearing them will advance in learning, an intelligent man will gain sound guidance, That he may comprehend proverb and parable, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction fools despise.

* * *

So, let’s examine these over the next seven days in reverse order. Let’s begin with the beginning of wisdom, which is the fear of the Lord.

Note that the passage in Isaiah is speaking about these gifts as received by the anointed of the Lord, the Messiah.

Also note that these are not things which we acquire under our own power, but are instead received as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s my extremely pedantic translation from Hebrew of number seven:

“And He will be caused to be inspired by the fear of the Lord.”

In other words, the Holy Spirit will come upon Him, and will be working upon Him, so that His perspective will be that of the fear of the Lord, our Heavenly Father.

The word, by the way, is fear, timor, φοβος, יראח, which has more of an edge than does the more politically correct awe.  To be in awe is great, mind you, but we can say “That’s just awesome!” when what we really mean to say is that we have simply been distracted by something that’s really pretty cool.

Fear, instead, takes in all that which being awestruck could ever mean, but adds a further dimension of humility before the majesty of Almighty God.

The constant mantra one hears in Confirmation classes is that fear does not mean servile fear, but filial fear, not a fear so much of being punished for wrongdoing therefore to be avoided, but a fear which thrusts one in one’s proper and humble place before God.

Well, O.K., in reference to our Lord Himself, such fear of punishment for wrongdoing would have no place, and He would always have been in His rightful place before our Heavenly Father.

We, on the other hand, can sin, and, lacking in a proper fear of the Lord, without wisdom, do sin. It is good for us to fear the loss of heaven and to fear the pains of hell. Without that kind of fear, would any of us ever go to Confession? Would any of us ever be on our way to heaven? Would any of us care about anything? The fear that a slave might have before his master (servile fear) is also good for us to have.

Filial fear is something that, for us, builds on servile fear, though it has a quality about it that is altogether different. Filial fear not only looks with respect to the justice and mercy of our Heavenly Father in regard to ourselves, but, in going beyond this, has us look to our Heavenly Father with a the bond of love that is provided by the Holy Spirit.

Filial fear wants to do what is right before our Heavenly Father as a matter of love.

The foundation for this, however, is fear, which I would here describe, again, as that sense of knowing our proper, humble place before almighty God. The Holy Spirit inspires this within us, indeed, as within the human nature of our Lord (without prejudice to the hypostatic union of His human and divine natures), by drawing us before the breadth and height and depth, the entire expanse of the creative power of our Heavenly Father unable to be entirely fathomed (as also Aquinas says) by the human nature of our Lord.

This goes hand in hand with confession of sin on our part, and with increasing agility of spirit that is a consequence of the sanctifying grace we then enjoy. We being to see God’s grandeur upon the examination of the tiniest dust mite, or taking in images of the universe from the revamped Hubble telescope.

And while our Lord always knew His humble place in His human nature before our dear Heavenly Father, we are, instead, brought quite suddenly into this humility. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift. It cannot be imagined or practiced. It is to be received and lived.

Indeed, it is the love of the Lord which becomes evident to us, that is, to us who have so been without love that we have crucified the Son of the Living God with our sins. We stand, we kneel, before Him and His wounds, He grabbing our fingers so as to shove them through the nail marks of His hands, grabbing our hands so as to shove them into His side, into His still open Sacred Heart, open, yet beating for us.

Eye-opening, jaw-dropping, overwhelming awe… well… fear of the Lord, in all love.

The Holy Spirit, just that good, just that kind.

Stay tuned for subsequent rants on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Church teaching doesn’t change, but church laws can.

Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service | May. 18, 2013 Vatican City

[...] The current code was drafted in the 1970s, [Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, Secretary for the Pontifical Council for the Authentic Interpretation of Legislative Texts] said, “a period that was a bit naive” in regard to the need for a detailed description of offenses, procedures for investigating them and penalties to impose on the guilty. It reflected a feeling that “we are all good,” he said, and that “penalties should be applied rarely.” [Yes. It's what I call the heresy of over-optimism, which is actually pessimism about the redemption offered to us by Christ Jesus' sacrifice for us. Did you ever hear even once in the 1970s any talk of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?]

“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when Pope Benedict was prefect, was obliged to act as a consequence of the fact that the (church’s) penal law was not working,” he said.

The naiveté of the law became clear with the sexual abuse crisis, Arrieta said. In addition, the sanctions section of the 1983 code was written with such an emphasis on the role of the individual bishop in his local diocese that each bishop bore the full weight of deciding when and how to intervene and what sort of sanction or punishment to impose on the guilty.

The law ended up being too vague and church sanctions were being applied so haphazardly that the church appeared to be divided, he said. [And I would put the blame for this directly on the "spirit of Vatican II" crowd, who rejected the Council in favor of the tyranny of ramming their own relativism down the throats of others. This is the result, every time.]

The project to revise the section began in 2008. [Just to say, it was very soon after that then Father Edward Arsenault went on sabbatical, not that the two are related. ] The draft was completed in 2011 and sent to bishops’ conferences and pontifical faculties of canon law, which had a year to respond. The suggestions were organized and synthesized, and now council officials and consultants — mostly professors of canon law — meet for an afternoon every two weeks to go through them, line by line. [Unfortunately, none of that synthesis includes observations about The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG), a mirror of what is done in most every Catholic Diocese in the United States, that is, zero due process for priests. However, now I know where to send a summary along with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the CDF. You can bet that no matter how much the Canon Law crowd works on this, it will, in the end, receive a thorough review by the CDF, and rightly so. Their own procedures will have to be appropriately tweaked. Indeed, in the meantime, their procedures should reflect this admission on the part of the Holy See that not all bishops' preparation of cases for the CDF are of the same standard of quality, which is a travesty of justice.]

Arrieta said it will be at least two years before a new draft is ready to present to Pope Francis. As the church’s chief legislator, it is the pope who decides whether or not to promulgate it and order that it replace the current law.

The proposed draft incorporates the Vatican’s 2010 updated definition of “delicta graviora” — Latin for “graver offenses,” including clerical sexual abuse of minors, the “attempted ordination of women” and acts committed by priests against the sanctity of the Eucharist and against the sacrament of penance.

The two chief concerns in the new section, as in all church law, he said, are “to safeguard the truth and protect the dignity of persons.” [In other words, both due process for those who are accused, instead of their being treated as guilty with no chance of defending themselves, and respect for the accusers, that is, instead of violently shoving money down their throats without, in some cases, giving a damn, quite literally, if the accusations are true, or how serious they are -- precluding pastoral care -- which was the practice of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, the epicenter of the abuse of canon law, all these years and surely the root cause for this major overhaul of the penal code of Canon Law. What irony.]

At the same time, the rules are more stringent — “if someone does this, he must be punished,” the bishop said. [Great! And I would hope that that "this" also refers to the horrific injustices of chancellors and bishops and risk management teams and companies such as TNCRRG. If not, this entire revision is farcical.] While it withdraws the discretionary power of the bishop in certain cases, he said, “it is for the good of the bishop.” [...] [I can surely believe that.]

I made this video — edited into ultra-slow-motion, frame by frame — when I lived on Mount Carmel, over the Cave of Saint Elijah, for a month, upon the invitation of the Discalced Carmelites, even while I was a chaplain at Lourdes, France. The dove showed up on the patio-roof where I was, and stayed with me for the longest time just as I was trying to figure out the most difficult of conundrums. At the time I was working on dialogue with both our Jewish brothers and various Muslims. Pope Francis has a great interest in both. The gorgeous singing that you hear in the video I recorded when, in the cave itself, a pilgrimage group started to sing. There’s a pretty constant flow of pilgrims who sing away at Mount Carmel as they move about Israel and Palestine. [Note that I shut down the blog advertised at the end of the video some four years ago.]

I think that the sorrow our Holy Father, as Cardinal Bergoglio (just a few months before his election as the Bishop of Rome), shared with our Jewish brothers for the events of Kristallnacht in the Catholic Cathedral of Buenos Aires was most appropriate. He was bitterly, horrifically condemned for this by some few. HSH defended the Holy Father.

In fact, I had occasion after that to record the memories of a wonderful Jewish lady some 93 years young about her recollections of surviving the Holocaust era in Europe. I intend to put up that interview, but wanted to wait until after this evening, when she will give a presentation in Western North Carolina. I was told that I absolutely must meet another wonderful Jewish lady who will also be there this evening. Perhaps we will be able to set up an appointment for another interview. Much of her family was put to death in the camps.

One of the first things Pope Francis did in his Pontificate was to re-iterate the main point of Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address on dialogue with Islam, which is that one is to use reason, the very thing that Islamicists absolutely refuse to do. But it has to be insisted upon. He did. In the next days, I’d like to post an analysis I did some years ago on Muslims and Nostra aetate of the Second Vatican Council. Some are afraid of this because, although they know Latin, they won’t do the work on the Latin of Nostra aetate, and rely on translations which are justifiably to be rejected.

Some reject the idea of dialogue altogether, as if they were somehow better than any others in the world just because they call themselves Catholic. But one is not saved because one calls oneself Catholic. One is saved because of sanctifying grace and gift of final perseverance, neither of which we can give ourselves. We’ve all crucified the Son of the Living God, the greatest Jewish Man ever to walk this earth, with our sins. If one does not want to share with others the greatest love of one’s life, one doesn’t know anything about the Son of the Living God, who, not seeing the Holy Spirit within such a one, will say: “I never knew you.” Wanting others to come to know the greatest love of our lives is not an insult to them.

Long time readers will remember these pictures from last Summer, all on Holy Souls Mountain.

Please God, more Scriptural and Patristic sources will be added to the present “rant style” meditations when circumstances at Holy Souls Hermitage aren’t quite so utterly barbaric.

The purpose of this first run through these mysteries is to note especially the goodness and kindness of Jesus amidst the violence and chaos back in the day… and today. Hang on, it might be a bit of a rough ride, as rough and tumble as we focus on, in this post, the Descent of the Holy Spirit:

Acts 2,1-41 1 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. 2 And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. 3 Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. 6 At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language? 9 We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, 11 both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” 12 They were all astounded and bewildered, and said to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others said, scoffing, “They have had too much new wine.” 14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed to them, “You who are Jews, indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you, and listen to my words. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘It will come to pass in the last days,’ God says, ‘that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Indeed, upon my servants and my handmaids I will pour out a portion of my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will work wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below: blood, fire, and a cloud of smoke. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and splendid day of the Lord, 21 and it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord.’ 22 You who are Israelites, hear these words. Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. 23 This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. 24 But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it. 25 For David says of him: ‘I saw the Lord ever before me, with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. 26 Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted; my flesh, too, will dwell in hope, 27 because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’ 29 My brothers, one can confidently say to you about the patriarch David that he died and was buried, and his tomb is in our midst to this day. 30 But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld nor did his flesh see corruption. 32 God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses. 33 Exalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the holy Spirit from the Father and poured it forth, as you (both) see and hear. 34 For David did not go up into heaven, but he himself said: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand 35 until I make your enemies your footstool.”‘ 36 Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other apostles, “What are we to do, my brothers?” 38 Peter (said) to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call.” 40 He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand persons were added that day. (nab)

[[ It was my great joy to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form in the "upper basilica" of the Immaculate Conception in Lourdes on Pentecost Sunday in the spring of 2009, getting very close to the time when I would round out my two years in Lourdes as a chaplain for the Italian, English, French and Latin chaplaincies. It was my great joy to sing the Veni Sancte Spiritus. I remember that clear as a bell.]]

There is just one comment in Saint Peter’s preaching that I’d like to emphasize:

“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

This is the Pentecost preaching of our Holy Father, Saint Peter, who was filled with the Holy Spirit in uttering these words. No, he hasn’t forgotten that he is an Israelite, indeed, one who scrupulously kept the Law of Moses. No, he hasn’t forgotten that he himself denied the Lord three times. No, he doesn’t fall under the condemnation of our Holy Father, the Successor of Saint Peter, Benedict XVI, in that Peter himself does not say that only the Jews put Jesus to death, and not us also be way of our sins.

The fact is that the Holy Spirit — all charismatics take note — came also upon Peter at Pentecost, and to this precise end of making converts to the fiery truth and charity of God, revealing hypocrisy, promoting repentance and humble thanksgiving.

Did Peter’s speech promote unity? Yes. Peter is the sign of unity. Do politically correct tyranny of relativism “consensus builders” despise Peter? Well, they wouldn’t say so. But, yes, they do. So where’s the unity in that? Everyone, without exception, is subject to the Lord, though many do not want this, many others do. There are many won for the Lord. There is clarity, not ambiguous nothingness in which all go to hell. No, many are won. And those who are lost want to be lost. But many are won to the Lord in a unified way.

Other than that, something rather spiritual in a different way:

We do not know how to pray as we ought. The Holy Spirit takes us and transforms us into the image of Jesus, making us members of His Mystical Body, having us look through, with and in Jesus to the Father. This is how things will be in eternity. Inasmuch as we carry about the death of Jesus in this world in this way, that is how much we are already proclaiming the resurrection, not only of Jesus, but also of our own future resurrection at the Last Judgment. The Holy Spirit prepares us for eternity by uniting us always more to Jesus.

Oh, and all those languages which were understood. Very cool, that. I wish the charismatics would just follow Paul’s rules for speaking in tongues. The one common language that must always be spoken is that one Word, that Logos, now Jesus, spoken by the Father, and resounding within us. The Holy Spirit has us “sound down” (see Luke 1,1-4) the Sacred Tradition of the Church, of which He is the author.

Remember, Sacred Tradition does NOT mean handing down the faith. That’s a tyranny of relativism definition. Although Vatican II uses two sentences to describe this, Trent just comes right out and says it. Sacred Tradition is a handing down of the faith quasi per manus, almost as if my hand, as if it were something so the same that we were handing down an inanimate object, the same for all generation. Instead, we pass down a living faith, but the author of that living faith, of those traditiones, is the Holy Spirit, who speaks univocally to all, throughout the ages. The Holy Spirit is the author of Sacred Tradition, not us, not our efforts. The Holy Spirit leads us to know the truth, the living truth, Christ Jesus, whom we crucified, but who, by His grace, has us be in humble thanksgiving for His goodness and kindness. Very wonderful, that. Happy Feast!

[[The BSA homosexualist leadership is extremely defensive. They just put this up today. [comments] and emphases by Holy Souls Hermitage: ///]]

Membership Resolution Points of Clarification

In April, the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts of America drafted a resolution that maintains its current membership policy for all adult leaders and states that youth may not be denied membership in the BSA on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone. The resolution proposes the following:

Membership in any program of the Boy Scouts of America requires the youth member to (a) subscribe to and abide by the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, (b) subscribe to and abide by the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle (duty to God), and (c) demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and is consistent at all times with the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law. No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.

The Boy Scouts received reaction about the proposal from those who approve of the potential change and those who oppose it. Many of those who oppose it, both for personal and religious beliefs, have asked questions about the proposal and its potential impact on Scouting. The Boy Scouts of America respects the deeply held religious, moral, and ethical beliefs of everyone within the Scouting family and firmly believes that dedicated Scouters can be people of good will and still disagree about this policy. However, the Boy Scouts of America wants to address some key concerns and misunderstandings about the proposal and provide you with Scouting’s perspective as you prepare to vote.

1. This proposal is in line with Scouting’s principles and virtues.

Some have asserted that having different standards for adults and youth is illogical or contradictory and runs counter to the principles of Scouting. Asserting this proposal is contradictory is based on a misunderstanding of the resolution. The resolution states:

Youth are still developing, learning about themselves and who they are, developing their sense of right and wrong, and understanding their duty to God to live a moral life.

Any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting.

The organization will maintain its current membership policy for all adult leaders.
No member may use Scouting to promote or advance any social or political position or agenda.

Members must demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and is consistent at all times with the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law.

By reinforcing that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting, and that no member may use Scouting to promote or advance any social or political position or agenda, this resolution rightly recognizes there is a difference between kids and adults while remaining true to the long-standing virtues of Scouting.

[What a pack of liars these BSA leaders are. Look: the very proposal is about kids who trumpet that they are already defiantly decided to be militant in their advertising of their perversion, regardless of whether they otherwise act this out in sexual actions. This militant attitude is blessed and encouraged by the BSA leaders. What a pack of liars they are.]

2. This proposal is in line with the beliefs of most of Scouting’s major religious chartered organizations.

Some have asserted that the proposed change for youth runs counter to values of and raises concerns among Scouting’s religious chartered organizations. We are unaware of any major religious chartered organization that believes a youth member simply stating he or she is attracted to the same sex, but not engaging in sexual activity, should make him or her unwelcome in their congregation. [Why do they publicly trumpet this if they are not also promoting it? Being proud of that which is a disorder is defiant militancy against any bible-believing religious organization. This is another blatant lie of the homosexualist leadership of the BSA.]

This proposal reinforces Scouting’s belief that sexual conduct by any Scout, heterosexual or homosexual, is contrary to the virtues of Scouting and is reflective of the beliefs of most of our major religious chartered organizations.

While, if this resolution is passed, no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of stating their sexual orientation alone, Scouting expects appropriate behavior from all members, which includes sexual conduct, regardless of sexual orientation. [This is all inconsistent. If you're going to trumpet your going against the natural law and religious law, why oh why would anyone hesitate after that to hesitate to contravene any law of the BSA? Are the homosexualist leadership of the BSA serious? Yep. They're militant.]

3. This proposal remains true to the long-standing virtues of Scouting and allows all youth who sincerely want to be a part of Scouting the chance to experience this life-changing program.

Some have asserted that this proposal didn’t go far enough and the Boy Scouts should remove any sexual orientation standard for membership for both youth members and adults leaders. [Let's not forget the John Jay study which found that 82% of sexual abuse of minors is homosexual in nature. Let's not forget that predators try to insinuate themselves into situations where they will be working with youngsters. Who are those homosexualists who have demanded the BSA become an easy playground for predators?]

The Boy Scouts recognizes some wish this proposal would have included changing the standard for adult members. [If the BSA fails to maintain its standards in the vote, it won't stop until the admission adult militant homosexualists is the result. This would be seen as a resolution of inconsistencies.] The BSA reviewed a variety of policy options that would allow us to provide kids a place to belong while they learn and grow. [But the BSA encourages militant trumpeting...]

The conclusion the executive officers of the Boy Scouts of America reached is that this is the option [=encouraging youngsters to trumpet their militant homosexualism] that did not, in some way, prevent kids who sincerely want to be a part of Scouting from experiencing this life-changing program [life perverting at this rate].

While people have different opinions about this policy, kids are better off when they are in Scouting. [Not if the homosexualist leadership gets their way. By the way, if they don't get their way, the entire executive homosexualist leadership should be removed.]

4. The BSA is a leading expert in youth protection, and kids are safe in its programs. The BSA is fully equipped to administer this policy [The policy itself is sexual abuse, as it encourages youngsters at a very formative time to go ahead and think that they are homosexuals, and that it is great to be militant homosexualists.].

Some have asserted that this proposal will put children at higher risk of being sexually abused or bullied and that the organization will not be able to administer this policy while protecting the safety and privacy of all Scouts. [See above. Also, those who reject the natural law and religious law as does the homosexualist leadership of the BSA are not be entrusted with the sexual safety of youngsters. This safety is what they are militating against.]

The BSA would never consider a proposal that increased risk to young people. To be clear, the BSA makes no connection between the sexual abuse or victimization of a child and homosexuality. The BSA takes strong exception to this assertion. Some of the nation’s leading experts reinforce this position. [And there it is. They are defending that their encouragement of militant homosexuality on the part of youngsters is just great, and they will not tolerate any divergence from this: "Strong exception."]

The BSA has stringent polices that protect the safety and privacy of youth and adult members and has always worked to ensure that it is a supportive and safe environment for young people. [How the BSA is falling!]

As it relates to logistical issues for volunteers, Scouting is already equipped to address these issues. No other organization has the same level of expertise for administering logistics and protecting the safety of its participants. [Kind of self-congratulatory, that.]

Also, to further prepare the organization, the BSA has created an implementation task force to make sure it is ready, should this resolution pass. It is looking into how other organizations have dealt with these issues. The BSA chose the effective date of Jan. 1, 2014, to give the organization the time it needs to make sure it is operationally ready for this policy. [This will be entirely aimed not at possible abuse, which they refuse to consider, but at sanctions and expulsion for those who criticize such militantly homosexualist policies.]

5. Scouting will remain focused on its mission, the Scout Oath, and the Scout Law.

Some have asserted that this proposal will unduly interject sexuality into the BSA and take away parents’ rights to discuss sexuality at the time and place of their choosing. [Got that right!]

The BSA believes parents should decide if, when, and how to discuss matters of sexuality with their kids. [But the homosexualist leadership have taken this away by encouraging youngsters to publicly declare themselves, thus becoming militant homosexualists. This is sexual abuse of youngsters. The BSA are the most influential leaders in sexual abuse.]

This proposal reinforces Scouting’s belief that sexual conduct by any Scout, heterosexual or homosexual, is contrary to the virtues of Scouting. [Liars.]

While, if this resolution is passed, no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of stating their sexual orientation alone, Scouting expects appropriate behavior from all members, which includes sexual conduct, regardless of sexual orientation. [The inconsistencies of the BSA instruct youngsters that militant homosexualist trumpeting is great, and this is sexual abuse of youngsters. So what in hell does the leadership of the BSA mean?]

6. Boy Scouts of America membership is unequivocally unified about the value of Scouting.

Some have asserted that if this proposal is adopted—or if the Boy Scouts does not amend its current policy—Scouting will see significant and unrecoverable losses in membership and monetary support. [Got that right. I've already been working with E.G. for a very workable alternative.]

Recently, the Boy Scouts completed the most comprehensive listening exercise in its history, gathering perspectives from inside and outside of the Scouting family. At the time of this review, most regions, councils, and volunteers participated with the belief that the Boy Scouts was considering a change to its adult leader membership standards, a proposal significantly different from the resolution under consideration. [We remember the oft-times sarcastic responses of the leadership of the BSA to polite statements.]

It is extremely difficult to accurately quantify the potential impact, in terms of membership and financial support, of maintaining or changing the current policy. [Just a slight adjustment there. So, virtue and all that good and pure and not perverted is not a strength, but rather a liability. What a pack of hypocrites.] However, over the course of nearly three months, more than a quarter of a million Boy Scout members and leaders participated in research that examined their views of Scouting.

The Boy Scouts of America is encouraged that this research showed, even with the uncertainty of which direction the membership standards policy might go, their loyalty to the BSA increased, and Scouting’s parents, members, and leaders believe Scouting is fulfilling [Before the vote, right?] its mission to develop youth into responsible, capable adults. [What does that even mean to such leadership?]

Regardless of the results of the vote, the membership policy will not match everyone’s personal preference. The Boy Scouts will undoubtedly face challenges; however, Scouting is bigger than this single issue, and good people can disagree and still work together to accomplish great things for youth. [If the vote is to maintain the status quo, the homosexualist leadership should be immediately sacked.]

7. The BSA is committed to listening to the Scouting family and engaging in open dialogue.

Some have asserted that the Boy Scout’s leaders didn’t listen to its Scouting family in this process or are keeping information from voters. Through this process, Scouting embarked on the most comprehensive listening exercise in its history, gathering perspectives from inside and outside of the Scouting family. [Mocking many who expressed concerns.]

Over the course of nearly three months, more than 200,000 BSA members and leaders participated in research. Our review confirmed that this remains among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today.

The BSA has been and remains committed to sharing information with voting members and the public throughout this process. To learn more about the BSA’s review process and the proposed membership standards resolution, please visit http://www.bsamembershipstandards.org.

Scouting’s vision is to serve every eligible youth in America, and this policy would allow it to serve more kids and focus on their development [This is exactly what this policy change would not do, and in fact, it would do the opposite, trying to get youngsters to entrench themselves in militant homosexuality]. The Executive Committee unanimously agreed that this resolution is in the best interest of Scouting. [So, get rid of the Executive Committee, unanimously.] While perspectives and opinions vary significantly, parents, adults in the Scouting community, and teens alike tend to agree that youth should not be denied the benefits of Scouting. [Typical ambiguity of those trying to push an agenda, shoving it down people's throats.]

These are just a few feet away from Holy Souls Hermitage.

How they survived the chickens rampaging all around, tearing up everything like any 600 pound wild boar would do is beyond me. Perhaps it’s the chicken poop fertilizer.

Not all the plants are in bloom, but there are very many indeed.

The seminarians are away again. Whirlwind. Always.

IRS Targeted Well-Known Christian Ministries / Groups Opposed Gay Marriage – By: toddstarnes (Diary) May 15th, 2013 at 11:17 AM [RedState.Com]

Several well-known religious organizations say they were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service, including the ministry founded by famed evangelist Billy Graham and a 180-year-old Baptist newspaper, Fox News has learned.

Among the ministries targeted are the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Samaritan’s Purse and the Biblical Recorder – the newspaper of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention. The revelations seem to indicate the IRS was targeting more than just Tea Party groups and conservative political organizations.

“I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the Administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” wrote Franklin Graham in a letter Tuesday to President Obama. “This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.’”

Graham is president of the ministry his father founded – as well as the international charity known as Samaritan’s Purse. Both organizations were notified of the IRS audits on the same day – not long after running advertisements supporting North Carolina’s Marriage amendment.

* * *

Thanks to a priest reader who sent this in. Read the rest there — It’s infuriating…

Why isn’t Marxist, anti-American Obama impeached?

By the way, what happening with the Boy Scouts of America?

P.S. Maybe this is why the IRS has been visiting HSH. Heh heh heh. They can come to HSH. I invite them to crash in at 2:00 AM with all their riot gear and take away wheelbarrows not of silver and gold, but chicken poop. Heh heh heh. Maybe they think HSH is not religious enough. I’ll have to ask the seminarians who are visiting Holy Souls Mountain today what they think.

Sent in by an Australian reader. I’d nickname my guardian angel Facepalm except for the fact that he never has time to do this, but is rather rushing about saving me from this and that horror.

The IRS official who led the tax-exempt organizations unit when Tea Party groups were targeted is now in charge of the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare, two Capitol Hill sources tell Fox News.

In other words, if you’re Catholic and don’t pay into Obama’s abortion super-fund via Obamacare, this henchman will cut you down. It’s a promotion for him.

Just impeach Obama. Do it now.

I don’t know for how many years I had been begging my guardian angel to guide me in living a bit of reverence before our Heavenly Father with words like these:

“Guardian angel, you who see the Face of God, now, and I don’t, but you do, you know I’m lost, but you’re my guardian angel, and you see the Face of God in heaven, now. Help me to have the same reverence before God that you have, since, after all, you see Him face to Face, even now, and I don’t. And don’t forget, guardian angel, that you should just smack me down if I don’t pay attention to your guidance.”

Something like that, pretty continuously, uncountable times each day, that is, until one day in returning to the seminary after attending an Extraordinary Use Liturgy Practicum in Chicago. I was driving along on Highway 65 and, as usual, was harassing my guardian angel about helping me have the very same reverence as he did before the Most High God, whom he now sees face to Face.

It seems that he had had just about enough of blockheadedness, and received permission from our Lord to, in fact, smack me down. And he did. Well, not literally. I wouldn’t be alive to tell the story if he did. Instead, I received an instruction from him that was without words, but was clearer than any words could ever be, he reprimanding me in this way more than he could have done in any other way:

“You will never ever have the same reverence before God as I do, not even in heaven, not ever. I am an angel. You are just so not an angel. I have my way of being in reverence before God, and you have your own way of being in reverence before God. Yes, I behold the Most Holy Trinity, but you are to be even more involved in the life of the Holy Trinity in a way that I will never ever come to know. You are to know that Christ our God has made you a member of His Mystical Body. He sees the Father for you, and you are with Him as He sees the Father. He presents you to the Father, it being through the Holy Spirit who brings all this about, having you go through, with and in Jesus to the Father. My mandate as your angel guardian is to have you come to know this kind of reverence, surely not to have you know my own reverence before the Most Holy Trinity.”

I suppose if there was room in my tiny Nissan Versa – a sub-sub compact car – I would have been on my knees. I repeated the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus many, many times: the weight of the glory of God inspires awe. The more I didn’t see the Father with my own eyes, the more humble thanksgiving I had for how Jesus sees the Father for us, eager to have us see with our own eyes, eager to have us in heaven.

In thinking about this some months later, it struck me that this is great for adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, for we do not see Jesus, but the accidental qualities of the Host: with faith we sense the weight of the glory of God, that Jesus is now seeing the Father for us, having us in union with Him by way of this Most Blessed Sacrament, which He provided through His Sacrifice for us, the Just for the unjust, having, therefore, the right in justice to have mercy on us in this way.

Indeed, the Most Blessed Sacrament, The Sign of Obedience unto Death, our union with the Most Holy Trinity, it being that it is by this Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus that we are drawn before the Father by the Holy Spirit.

I was telling my spiritual directees, the philosopher seminarians of the Pontifical College Josephinum, about how to go before Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, that it’s not just about them before Jesus, but also about all those whom the Lord is drawing to Himself in this way through the Sacrifice of this Most Blessed Sacrament. They were never to forget the Humanity of Jesus, I said, never to forget that they themselves are members of His Body, never to forget that when they are before Him, they bring all of themselves, body and soul, as an act of intercession before the Lord for all those He is bringing to Himself, not only those who are in this world, but also all the souls in purgatory.

Some time after this it struck me rather more forcefully that it is with this perspective of faith that anyone is to encourage others to believe or to continue in their belief, with the emphasis being on recognizing the work of Jesus rather than on how close or far someone is from Jesus at any given time: all can come closer to the Father through, with and in Jesus if they are still in this world. And we ourselves, I myself, am the worst of sinners, for I have offended the Most High in ways that only I can do. Our mandate is simply to facilitate for others progress in the spiritual life in whatever way. One can almost hear the flurry of feathers of the Holy Spirit fanning the flames of love within those the Most High is drawing to Himself.

Now, let’s skip ahead in the story of my life to the time in which I had just become a hermit, when my hermitage was non-existent, just another patch of forest on top of a mountain ridge in Western North Carolina.

While getting ready to build the hermitage, I was sleeping in a barn that was fairly open to the elements, with loosely fitting sliding walls and a screen door as protection. Having passed the Winter in sub-freezing conditions, I was now sleeping in a chair in a failed effort to get away from the ever present brown recluse spiders, whose possibly fatal bites I was constantly tending for sometimes hours a day.

While trying to get a bit of rest in this chair, very early one morning,while it was still dark out,  there was another incident when my guardian angel spoke to me. “Come with me,” he said without words, a communication altogether clearer than any words could be, “and I will bring you to the Father,” he continued. This was clearly not in reference to a bodily following, but by way of the spirit.

I did not sense that there was anything to fear, but, of course, lacking in the love of God in which I should be living more fully, I was afraid, thinking that that would mean that I was going to die right then and there. How could he bring me to our Heavenly Father without me dying, especially with my being so slow to believe? Yet, it seemed that he now turned and was on his way, beckoning me to follow. I felt very strongly that I could go with him in spirit. It was such a strong yet gentle, eager invitation, such was his delight to bring me to our Heavenly Father. Such goodness, such kindness.

This guardian angel of mine, so very joyful – perhaps because I give him so much to laugh about – was also so very respectful of me, which really surprised me, for I have crucified the Son of the Living God with my sins. I am just so nothing, less than nothing. So obtuse. And yet, this guardian angel of mine was so very eager for me to join him. Did I say that “eager” is the word that comes to mind?

But I held back. I thought that, since this seemed to mean that I was going to die, I wouldn’t therefore be able to write about Genesis 2,4–3,24 and the Immaculate Conception, a popular version of the thesis I had promised to write. I know that I have no right to any entitlement to do such a thing, but I so very much wanted to do this, and still do. I am such a knucklehead.

It was then, in my ever so obnoxious hesitation, in my utterly un-spiritual lack of trust in my guardian angel — such an insult to him! — that I turned to Jesus and begged him that I might be able to have the joy in this world of writing about His Immaculate Mother. So, I tried to trump my guardian angel by going to the very One who sent him! Did I mention that I am without any understanding?

To my surprise, Jesus then reprimanded me, not with words, but with a communication clearer than any words could ever be. Who am I to receive the rebuke of the Son of God? The rebuke was quite severe:

“You are to trust your guardian angel!”

I felt so very ashamed. I hadn’t trusted my guardian angel. I felt so very, very useless, and now feared that my guardian angel would no longer deal with me. As always, this was stupid of me. If Jesus said that I was to trust in my guardian angel, that meant that my guardian angel was still to be with me.

I felt so badly about this, that I sacramentally confessed offending my guardian angel, which, as you might expect, sparked a great discussion on the angels with my Confessor. That was great. And I was happy to receive absolution! How hard it is for us to understand that our guardian angels positively delight in being our guardian angels.

Jesus continued His reprimand, knowing I’m a bit thick of skull and slow to understand. He asked:

“Don’t you think that if your guardian angel brings you before the Father, that he will not bring you straight to myself?”

And that is when the previous reprimand I received on Highway 65 from my guardian angel came crashing back to me, that I could never have the reverence before the Father that he, as an angel has, but rather that I am to have the kind of reverence that I am to have, that is, as a member of the Body of Christ, unlike any angel, so that I go to the Father through, with and in Jesus.

When my guardian angel beckoned me to follow him to the Father, he was beckoning me to follow him to Jesus.

How slow of mind and dull of heart I am! How blind and deaf. I am such a sinner.

My guardian angel has all the right in the world to smack me down as the worst charge that a guardian angel could ever have, smacking me down for a good end, of course, to wake up and die right, as that’s what counts in eternity and now.

But angels are great. They grab us and drag us along, teaching us to become ever more simple, like little children.

Just thanking them for their countless helps that we don’t even know about is a good way to learn to be a bit more attentive to their guidance. But more on that and other moments with my guardian angel later, please God.

For now, I just want to say that it’s great to know a little bit more what I don’t know, the old known unknowns thing. This makes it harder to be the arrogant, prideful, heap of nothing that I would so desire otherwise to be. Knowing a bit more about how much I don’t know makes it just a bit easier to be in humble thanksgiving before Jesus.

I need to harass my guardian angel about that, about my learning to be in humble thanksgiving. I so just do not know anything about it.

I talk to my guardian angel, a lot. Do you? If not, why not? If so, you’ll know that this is super-cool, and that reprimands are especially a blessing.

P.S. If anyone wants to say that these are “apparitions” or “locutions” or something extraordinary, or that I am somehow special (except in the sense of my being a bit of an idiot), well, I would just like to tell them that they are totally jerks and knuckleheads almost as totally off the wall as myself, missing the point of this entire article, perhaps maliciously, with the point being that we are all to be open to the guidance of our guardian angels, all of us, without exception, including you. Hah!

The Church is a family, the Church Militant upon this earth, the Church Suffering in purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in heaven. A family works together. The family of faith especially so. We must all of us realize that this is absolutely the case for each of us, without exception, and that sensationalizing this is an insult to the manner in which this family of faith works.

Sure, not everyone will have had or will have such experiences (though many do), but those who do, mind you, may have such experiences because — as Saint John of the Cross I think says somewhere in his voluminous writings — because such souls as myself are so very incredibly weak and need all the helps that we, that I, can get. In other words, if I have gotten some extra encouragement, it is because I am such a complete and total and especially mangy jackass!

If anyone upon reading all this would exclaim that I am such an especially mangy jackass, and that it’s a good thing that my guardian angel smacked me down, well, that would be an occasion for me to rejoice, for that would act as an extra thanksgiving to my guardian angel, for which I most grateful.

He died 40 hours after his ordination, just after celebrating Holy Mass.

http://www.catholicvote.org/a-priest-for-forty-hours/

Reminds me a fierce painting for a baldacchino that is almost completed…

New Hampshire Union Leader’s Kathryn Marchoki, in her article “Cleric’s case a puzzle, concern“, published the other day, provides more tidbits about the Monsignor Edward Arsenault case. I’d like to see a more tightly scripted timeline of his responsibilities in the Diocese of Manchester. I’d like to know how he got from the Archdiocese of Boston to the Diocese of Manchester, and why it is that the Bishops of Manchester seemed afraid of him.

Anyway, what I’d like to comment on in this article concerns the sound bites about Monsignor Arsenault as collected by Kathryn:

“That is why it is so surprising and so unbelievable that somebody who knows the rules, somebody who wrote the rules, is accused of violating them,” said Donna Sytek, former House speaker, who serves on the New Hampshire Catholic Charities board of directors.

“I was astonished because (it involves) somebody who had been so involved in the process of setting out expectations for good conduct,” added Sytek, who in 2002 served with Arsenault on a diocesan task force to craft a sexual misconduct policy.

“I saw him as a good and faithful priest. … The allegations are totally not the Arsenault that I knew,” Sytek said.

“This could be an unfounded allegation, so I don’t want to prejudge the outcome,” she added.

Very carefully crafted words. Lots of surprise and astonishment. The possibility of “unfounded” is granted.

But now lets move on to the perspective of a priest, who represents the view of other priests:

Catholics – ordained and lay – also worry the allegations could harm a diocese just beginning to rebound from a deeply wounding clergy sexual abuse scandal.

“Eleven years ago, we had a great crisis in this diocese. It pulls the scab off a little bit,” said the Rev. C. Peter Dumont, a retired priest who served as a regional vicar.

“I just feel awful for the Diocese of Manchester. I just feel awful for the parishes where he served. I feel awful for the church,” Dumont added.

“I’ve spoken to a few of my brother priests and they are hurt,” he said.

If the reporting can be trusted, this would be pitiful inasmuch as there is no nuance offered regarding “allegations.”

If that’s accurate, this would tell you something about some of the priests of the Diocese of Manchester: You are guilty until the time when you can’t prove you’re innocent anyway. Right? That’s what Monsignor Arsenault was doing with The National Catholic Risk Retention Group: No due process for priests. All are automatically guilty no matter what. Settlements are paid automatically regardless of guilt. Even priests known to be innocent are removed forever from the priesthood. This is done to save money, cynically betting on cheap settlements automatically paid upon any allegation, no matter how spurious, vs. litigated claims which may exonerate innocent priests, but may also involve more expensive payouts.

At any rate, it seems to me that such an attitude of breakneck, breathless rush to judgment is — If there are allegations, they are absolutely true no matter what! — is consistent with the attitude of the presbyterate with the likes of Father Gordon MacRae, who is shunned and marginalized and condemned by his own diocesan brothers.

Just my opinion, but I think that the present allegations against Monsignor Arsenault may fade into relative insignificance. If they refer to an inappropriate relationship with a non-vulnerable adult, that may provide an occasion for some to weep over the state of the some in the priesthood, or laughter for others. If they refer to payments under the table (no IRS) from the hospital system he helped to save, well, whatever.

I think there is something more to the financial bit since the FBI was immediately involved by the Attorney General’s office. I’ll opine on that, please God, in the coming days. But even the worst case scenario involving money, say, something along the lines of what RICO was interested in, there is, sorry to say, something much worse, and that has already been established. I’m sure you’ve read it already:

The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)

And yet the two might be connected…

Anyway, more on all this within the next week, I hope.

Also next week, please God, something more on Bishops Francis Christian, John McCormack, Peter Libasci, not to mention the Bishops of Rome, such as John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis.

Just in case that article in the U.L. disappears, I’ll include it here:

May 12. 2013 2:43AM Cleric’s case a puzzle, concern By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
New Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER – The Rev. Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault was the public face of the Catholic Diocese of Manchester during the height of the clergy sexual abuse crisis more than a decade ago.

Arguably the most high-profile cleric in New Hampshire from 2002 through 2007, Arsenault handled the media, oversaw the diocese’s administration and finances, and was the architect of its child protection and ministerial conduct policies.

So it was with more than a little irony that Catholics learned last week Arsenault, 51, is the target of a criminal investigation of possible inappropriate financial transactions involving diocesan funds and an internal review of a possible inappropriate adult relationship.

“That is why it is so surprising and so unbelievable that somebody who knows the rules, somebody who wrote the rules, is accused of violating them,” said Donna Sytek, former House speaker, who serves on the New Hampshire Catholic Charities board of directors.

“I was astonished because (it involves) somebody who had been so involved in the process of setting out expectations for good conduct,” added Sytek, who in 2002 served with Arsenault on a diocesan task force to craft a sexual misconduct policy.

“I saw him as a good and faithful priest. … The allegations are totally not the Arsenault that I knew,” Sytek said.

“This could be an unfounded allegation, so I don’t want to prejudge the outcome,” she added.

Catholics – ordained and lay – also worry the allegations could harm a diocese just beginning to rebound from a deeply wounding clergy sexual abuse scandal.

“Eleven years ago, we had a great crisis in this diocese. It pulls the scab off a little bit,” said the Rev. C. Peter Dumont, a retired priest who served as a regional vicar.

“I just feel awful for the Diocese of Manchester. I just feel awful for the parishes where he served. I feel awful for the church,” Dumont added.

“I’ve spoken to a few of my brother priests and they are hurt,” he said.

He and other Catholics support Bishop Peter A. Libasci’s attempts to convey as much information as possible while the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office conducts its investigation.

“Let the chips fall where they may,” Dumont said of the probe.

Last Monday, the diocese announced it received allegations earlier this year regarding a “potentially inappropriate adult relationship” involving Arsenault. The allegations involve neither minors nor any other diocesan personnel. The diocese and the Attorney General’s Office would not elaborate on the relationship.

In reviewing the claims, church officials discovered “evidence suggesting improper financial transactions … involving diocesan funds,” the diocese said in its May 6 statement.

The investigation also appears to involve Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and a contract it signed with Arsenault for consulting services in 2009. The contract was signed after Arsenault resigned from the CMC board of directors, where he served for 11 years as the bishop’s delegate.

It was one of several high-ranking diocesan posts Arsenault resigned from in January 2009. The others were moderator of the curia, secretary for administration and the bishop’s delegate for ministerial conduct. Arsenault also previously served as cabinet secretary for administration and as chancellor. He took over as head of St. Luke Institute in October 2009 and was appointed monsignor in 2010.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Arsenault said he was in a meeting and could not comment. He has not responded to requests for comments since.

Arsenault, a native of the Readville neighborhood of Boston, has a master’s degree in theology, divinity and finance. Eight years after being ordained a priest, Arsenault moved into diocesan administration, where he soon earned a reputation as an adept administrator who introduced more professional standards to diocesan governance, several people who know him say.

“I could see that he had very strong capabilities in the area of finance and administration,” said Ronald J. Rioux, who served two years on the CMC board of trustees with Arsenault and now is vice chancellor of the state’s community college system.

“He always struck me as very smart, very capable. I always thought he was a very good priest,” added Rioux, who also served on the diocesan finance council with Arsenault. Rioux recalls Arsenault as a “good homilist” when he celebrated Mass at his parish, St. Michael’s in Exeter, as a visiting priest.

Dumont remembers Arsenault as someone who made a point of calling him on his birthday and ordination anniversary and to inquire about his aging mother’s health.

“I know, firsthand, that he was extremely solicitous, kind, helpful to victims and to their relatives. … I’m a witness,” Dumont added.

But Bernie McDaid of Peabody, Mass., who was sexually abused as a child by the late Rev. Joseph Birmingham at St. James Parish in Salem, Mass., recounted his two meetings with Arsenault in 2002 when he and other victims came to New Hampshire demanding Bishop John B. McCormack’s resignation.

“I think he was very cold, aloof, distant, guarded, looking for a political position – he couldn’t wait for McCormack to go out,” said McDaid, who is founder of Survivors Voice, a Europe-based group representing clergy sexual abuse victims.

Others agree Arsenault’s more professional style of running the diocese coupled with his sometimes curt mannerisms sowed dislike among some.

“He was not loved by everybody. But he was admired by several people who, maybe at some point, did not necessarily agree with him,” Dumont said.

“Sometimes he wasn’t pleasant. He was very straightforward. He didn’t mince words. He was callous maybe, but he had many irons in the fire, as it were,” he added.

Arsenault’s greatest legacy likely will be his role in crafting child protection and ministerial conduct policies and helping reach a historic agreement with the state in 2002 in which the diocese admitted its failure to protect minors from abusive priests could have resulted in criminal convictions.

“I think that was a great service to the church,” said a cleric who spoke on condition of anonymity.

• Just because Pope Francis joined the pro-life march in Rome.
• Just because Gosnell was convicted.
• Just because the Stalinesque Obama admin is finally being questioned.
• Just because the knot that is the Manchester Diocese is being unraveled.
• Just because of a thousand other reasons… and…
• Just because!

Yesterday was one of those days.

A zillion years young wonderful great grandma down the mountain banged up her diabetic foot today, leaving a trail of blood around her trailer house. The blood thinner she’s on didn’t help, of course. She lives alone, so I was called in by a neighbor to see if could help out a bit. No problem. Just very minor. She had appropriate bandages made for diabetic skin. So, O.K.! The 409 spray stuff does great for cleaning up blood on the floor.

And then there were some absolutely got to take care of them right now emails to take care of (plus some others). There are now 1114 marked as unread (which isn’t necessarily true) out of 6278. I’ll have to do a major email attack soon.

Meanwhile, the knot that is the Manchester Diocese continues to be unraveled by our Lady. Perhaps the earliest possible I’ll be able to comment on that will be Saturday night at the earliest. Perhaps late Monday afternoon. We’ll see.

Towards evening, there was the… event… The timing of it and the circumstances of it… Creepy! That took hours to tend to. That will be on today’s job-list as well. The distractions are legion. “Legion”… such a choice of words.

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

The Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters at the moment of creation, graciously continues to have florae for the Immaculate Conception spring into bloom on Holy Souls Mountain.

Meanwhile, there is an update on the Holy Spirit Baldacchino being painted by an ever increasing number of people, as directed by L.T., baldacchino artiste extraordinaire. Let’s take a look at more progress. Here are three painters working away. Three, I say. The Lord blesses the sleep of the just (1 Sam 2,8).

I count nine in the following picture.

With the little girl dancing away, I am reminded of the story of the little boy who figured that since he had nothing else to give to the Lord, he would demonstrate for Him the few acrobatics tricks that he knew, that is, in Church, right before the tabernacle, something akin to the little shepherd boy, you know, the little drummer boy, who played for the Lord on that cold but glorious night really not all that long ago.

The Holy Spirit loves it all. All of it.

I’m told that the rickety table of paints that you see was not knocked over during this dance.

Given that certain seminarians are arriving at the hermitage later today, I thought I should fess up. While some may be aware of the terrible burden under which I labor, others may not be so up-to-date as to the actual state of affairs.

One of the very best canonists known to Holy Mother Church, about as high as one can go in the ranks of the Holy See, recently insisted that the decree he himself wrote (so much for Pontifical secrets) is still in force since the first Sunday of November, 2010, despite my being a hermit. It’s kind of like a contempt of court penalty: it continues forever until one gives in and cooperates. There is only one way, only at one location, and only on one day every year, in which I can right what, in my opinion, is mistakenly declared a wrong. That first Sunday of November couldn’t be farther away. It’s a kind of Yom Kippur just for me, a day of atonement in which, however, I will forever refuse to participate.

Yours truly, the bearded one in clericals, just before being put under interdict.

The text of the decree with conditions:

Attenta proditione strepitenti contra aedem propriam
necnon contra facultatem alumnosque theologiae
apud Pontificium Collegium Iosephinum
in Statibus Foederatis Americae Borealis;

Attento quod gravis culpa huiusmodi suscitare debet
ut poena interdicti personali reo plectetur;

Praehabitis quoque omnibus adiunctis in causa;

Omnibus iure habentibus apud supradictam domum interpellatis;

Rev.dus Pater Georgius David BYERS
ex Congregatione Presbyterorum a Misericordia
declaratur subesse interdicto personali in aedem lato, et ad mentem:

scilicet, sub conditione, ut Rev.dus Pater, ante certamen lusorium,
clare ac publice suam fidelitatem erga suos turmales aedis
se aut pronuntiet aut demonstret.

• I have never given in to this demand.
• I obstinately and forever refuse to give in to this demand.

With so much going on in the Church right now, and with our rejoicing in the opening of a Pontificate dedicated to the evangelization of the peripheries (see: Pope Francis and The Judas Crisis), one would think that the Holy See would back off, right? Instead – sigh – this seems to have given various higher-ups a great deal of energy. However, as the coercion builds, so does my obstinacy.

Hier stehe ich.
Ich kann nicht anders.

Perhaps I will be in Skype contact with my rightly famed prosecutor later this evening. Skype is recordable, but he will never get me to recant. Never, I say! To find out more, click on the category – Filed under… “Interdict” — just below.

This is just a bit of humor between myself and the Holy See as a lighter moment for seminarians.

Dogwoods, in the form of a cross, with the stigmata, the wounds, not immaculate in the least, but rather, brilliant white splattered with blood, but in this way washed with the blood of the Lamb, perfect as florae for the Immaculate Conception, who, as a good Mother, desires that we are all of us washed in the blood of the Lamb, that is, us, all of us who have crucified Him by our sins, me, you, all of us. The blooms are blooming weeks later than their counterparts not much further down Holy Souls Mountain.

In other news, Holy Souls Hermitage will be invaded by seminarians today, Sunday. After Spring semester exams are over, it seems to me that they are in “school’s out forever” mode for a day or two, until they get ready to learn Spanish immersion style in the Latin American countries picked out for them by their vocation directors. And then it’s back to the seminary for the Autumn semester. It’s a good sign of the times that the crazy days of Summer begin not at the beach, but in the mountains, at a hermitage, with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and bit of adoration of our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament on the agenda. Of course, there will be a great meal after that. I hear they caught some fish in Lake Saint George.  :)

In other news, I’m very happy with the reception of the article of the great Dorothy Rabinowitz: Rabinowitz: The Trials of Father MacRae. There’s been a sea-change in the comments over the last number of years. Anyone facilitating the wrongful accusation or imprisonment of a priest is starting to be considered a collaborator in sexual abuse. And that’s right, of course. People could get so sick of false accusations that, in the future, they will start to brow-beat true victims into silence. And that’s not good, is it? No, it’s not. Not at all. Justice for all is good.
Please God, there will be more on this towards the end of this week. I’ll need to digitize some documents, with their signatures  :)  and put them up with some commentary. Rather catastrophic for those on the wrong end of being put under oath, should it come to that. And I hope it does. Telling the truth after so many years of not telling the truth is good for the soul. I am reminded of Saint Thomas More’s statement to Meg out by the river:

“When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

Should it come to the taking of oaths, even with a number interested parties in Manchester, N.H., placing their hands on the Holy Bible, and swearing that they are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth before both man and God, well then, I will rejoice in that day, that is, if the truth be told. Taking oaths can help. It’s then that one can realize that it’s all over. No more earthly glory, and facing an eternity of… what…? Yikes! Better to tell the truth. I tell you that if they do, I will, please God, stand up and applaud them wherever I am when I hear the news that the blood of the Lamb has been splattered about over the souls of those needing that blood. Hail Mary…

Pulitzer Prize winning Dorothy Rabinowitz has written another great article on the wrongly imprisoned Father Gordon J. MacRae saga. Here’s the link to the new article at the Wall Street Journal:

Rabinowitz: The Trials of Father MacRae

Here’s the link to a video interview about the article:

Opinion: A Catholic Witch Hunt

Here’s the link to the comments that are being made at the WSJ:

Comments on WSJ

ALSO: See the full announcement over at: THESE STONE WALLS

Please, if you would, with goodness and kindness, drop over to read the article and drop a comment in the comments box. You have to register, which is easy (and then you’ve done it!), but it is well worth it to support the priesthood. There will be plenty of trash comments, but ignore those. Please link back to These Stone Walls in your comment with various pages and posts:

The main page: http://thesestonewalls.com/

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A recent post: http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/why-the-catholic-abuse-narrative-needs-a-fraud-task-force/

Also, if you would, and this is important, write a letter to the editor.

It’s really simple. Just email the letter! Here’s how: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com

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Update: I’ve been urging some others to publicize the article, as that would only be good. Meanwhile, some questions have come up. I’ll see if I can write on those in just a bit. Check back once in a while to: http://holysoulshermitage.com

I was looking over the SPJ Code of Ethics just to make sure I’m not stepping over any lines while writing about Msgr Edward Arsenault. The Code is a great read. One thinks of stories which might have been the occasion for each point included.

I’m not  a professional journalist, and I do look to reason with the natural law, and to the teaching of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church for the formation of my conscience, but, having said that, the SPJ Code has lots of particular wisdom to offer. 

What I discovered — what I already knew — is that I have much to keep in mind just in regard to myself while writing. This is easy, of course, if one has any kind of clear vision about respect for the truth and a healthy wariness of all that which might compromise the truth. In the end, it’s a matter of love of God and love of neighbor, for, in God, love is truth, truth is love.

And yet, we are weak. And forever-newbies like myself — ever so naive, ever so out of the loop — can be particularly vulnerable.

So, what to do? What to do? It’s hard enough for me, weak as I am, to self-edit and take care that I myself not cross any ethical boundaries. It would be nigh impossible to ensure the same for others who come my way with offers of information, which can be baiting at worst (surely that’s not the case) or sincere at best (most likely the case). But, I fear my own stupidity, my own lack of means on this mountain top in the middle of a rain-forest.

The solution, I think, with a number of journalists coming my way, is not to respond, but rather to encourage them, should they think they have anything worthwhile, to trundle off to the N.H. Attorney General’s office and, at the very same time, to the offices of the FBI, not to mention, of course, also the new Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, etc. Please, forgive me, dear journalists, my fear of myself.

Let’s none of us forget, as well, that any leak of information even from those associated with the Diocese in any way, or with the A.G., F.B.I, D.O.J., et al. – — might simply be more baiting. And this might well sink one in the muck of untruth more and more and more… until it is fixed with a healthy dose of caution and code.

When the politics of any case reach far and wide and high, there are plenty of those one would trust to take care of any problem who end up being, instead, a cause of much of the problem. I recommend wrapping one’s mind around the Code of the SPJ.

The pictures of florae in the ongoing series “Florae for the Immaculate Conception” are from Holy Souls Mountain.

Now, I must say that some readers have sent in messages of exasperation and depression and anger (of solidarity), with some feeling themselves to be like sheep without a shepherd, what with the stories we’ve been covering here of late on HSH about Msgr Edward Arsenault, Msgr Stephen Rossetti, Bishop John McCormack and the Diocese of Manchester, N.H.

Actually, I must say that I feel the opposite to despair. Perhaps it’s because I know more of the background, more of what will happen even by tomorrow, Saturday, 11 May, 2013, and then again, possibly, by late next week. There is ever so much more that will be coming to light.

I’ve seen it all before, ten thousand times in my priestly ministry, how Jesus, the Lord of History, the King of kings and Lord of lords, The Priest of priests, let’s this and that fall into place, encouraging some to become saints, letting others proverbially hang themselves, and setting up a situation in which many will have an opportunity to come to life in Him, the Prince of the Most Profound Peace, seeing the awe inspiring irony of truth and justice and mercy unfold before them.

We don’t get anywhere with bitterness or anger or depression or darkness. An ever broadening horizon of love, lifted high into the open Heart of Him who was lifted up high on Mount Calvary, is the only way, the only way not to be controlled by the darkness of bitterness (a failure on our part), and the only way to be enlivened with peace amidst chaos, peace that is enough to go on, in anguish that all be saved, even while we know there are some who will reject that salvation for which they were redeemed. And yet, with love, we can be fired up with love before the mystery of free will, and mercy, and justice.

Don’t forget, we’ve all of us, without exception, crucified the Son of the Living God, the Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception, who is so good and so kind. And yet, our beloved Mother leads us to Jesus, she also being so good, so kind.

Should you desire some comforting words of the Holy Spirit, blazing with ferocity against false shepherds, but supplying Him who is The Shepherd to us, take a look at some of Ezekiel 3 and 34, verses which I think ought best be memorized by the shepherds of our own day. Here they are, appropriately from the NAB: 

Ezekiel 3,17-21

17 Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me. 18 If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death. 19 If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life. 20 If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him. 21 When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Ezekiel 34,1-31 (with warning for the sheep as well, by the way…

1 Thus the word of the LORD came to me: 2 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, in these words prophesy to them (to the shepherds): Thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves! Should not shepherds, rather, pasture sheep? 3 You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured. 4 You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally. 5 So they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered 6 and wandered over all the mountains and high hills; my sheep were scattered over the whole earth, with no one to look after them or to search for them. 7 Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 8 As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves and did not pasture my sheep; 9 because of this, shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 10 Thus says the Lord GOD: I swear I am coming against these shepherds. I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep so that they may no longer pasture themselves. I will save my sheep, that they may no longer be food for their mouths. 11 For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will look after and tend my sheep. 12 As a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his scattered sheep, so will I tend my sheep. I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark. 13 I will lead them out from among the peoples and gather them from the foreign lands; I will bring them back to their own country and pasture them upon the mountains of Israel (in the land’s ravines and all its inhabited places). 14 In good pastures will I pasture them, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing ground. There they shall lie down on good grazing ground, and in rich pastures shall they be pastured on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest, says the Lord GOD. 16 The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal (but the sleek and the strong I will destroy), shepherding them rightly. 17 As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD, I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats. 18 Was it not enough for you to graze on the best pasture, that you had to trample the rest of your pastures with your feet? Was it not enough for you to drink the clearest water, that you had to foul the remainder with your feet? 19 Thus my sheep had to graze on what your feet had trampled and drink what your feet had fouled. 20 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Now will I judge between the fat and the lean sheep. 21 Because you push with side and shoulder, and butt all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them out, 22 I will save my sheep so that they may no longer be despoiled, and I will judge between one sheep and another. 23 I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David; he shall pasture them and be their shepherd. 24 I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I, the LORD, have spoken. 25 I will make a covenant of peace with them, and rid the country of ravenous beasts, that they may dwell securely in the desert and sleep in the forests. 26 I will place them about my hill, sending rain in due season, rains that shall be a blessing to them. 27 The trees of the field shall bear their fruits, and the land its crops, and they shall dwell securely on their own soil. Thus they shall know that I am the LORD when I break the bonds of their yoke and free them from the power of those who enslaved them. 28 They shall no longer be despoiled by the nations or devoured by beasts of the earth, but shall dwell secure, with no one to frighten them. 29 I will prepare for them peaceful fields for planting; they shall no longer be carried off by famine in the land, or bear the reproaches of the nations. 30 Thus they shall know that I, the LORD, am their God, and they are my people, the house of Israel, says the Lord GOD. 31 (You, my sheep, you are the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord GOD.)

VIRTUS® is not excellent.

VIRTUS® does not build trust.

Monsignor Edward Arsenault — h/t to New Hampshire Union Leader

I published this article last year, but it is ever more relevant. Note that Monsignor Stephen Rossetti and Monsignor Edward Arsenault have everything to do with VIRTUS®, The National Catholic Risk Retention Group, and the Saint Luke Institute. Everything, from start to finish. They are the life and soul of VIRTUS®, TNCRRG, and Saint Luke Institute.

One may wish to note their extreme advocacy for normalizing homosexuality and therefore homosexual acts via the active and public promotion of their pet project, VIRTUS®.

Monsignor Rossetti and Cardinal Dulles, who had very different ideas.

If any member of the VIRTUS® crowd were to have applied for admission at the last seminary I taught — where I also evaluated applications of candidates — they would never have been admitted. Those not admitted would be the likes of a Rossetti and Arsenault. The rule is that no militant homosexualists need apply. I agree with that ruling of the Holy See.

My question is why so many (Arch)dioceses hold up these guys and VIRTUS® as the be all and end all of all that is Catholic and necessary. What’s the message there? When is their being discredited ever going to be enough for it to be considered that such (Arch)dioceses won’t lose face if they dump the likes of Rossetti and Arsenault and VIRTUS® and TNCRRG and Saint Luke Institute?

* * *

I was looking up the name of a key “player” in the sex abuse crisis — Monsignor Rossetti — when I came across a paper delivered at the Pontifical Gregorian University during a symposium in February, 2012, recently put up on the web, called “The True Cost of the Crisis – Piercings to the Heart of the Church.” The VIRTUS® team chose to stay anonymous on paper. I suppose we could find out who they were. Sometimes it’s useful to know the backgrounds of those making the kinds of comments they make.

PRELIMINARY DISCLAIMER

I recently went through all the police checks and the VIRTUS® program as part of the process of being admitted to the formation and teaching faculty at the Pontifical College Josephinum. During the question and answer session I noted a number of grave difficulties (among others) that I had with the “logic” behind VIRTUS®. Here are a few:

(1) An actual admitted, incarcerated male sex offender of youngsters in the film was highly praised because of the great concern he supposedly had for the welfare of his teenage victim, whose emotional progress he had closely been following from prison. The message of VIRTUS®, say, for instance, for priest chaplains of prisons (where you’ll also find minors serving adult sentences), is that the chaplains should encourage incarcerated sex offenders of minors to follow the progress of their victims, convinced of the great concern of sex offenders for their victims. This, in fact, might be considered criminal sexual stalking in some, if not all, jurisdictions, all encouraged by VIRTUS®, the “child protection program” from hell. Get it?

(2) A number of suspicious behaviors characteristic of sex offenders were listed as a way to determine if someone might be a pedophile, but it was said that two behaviors or more regarding the same person were necessary for someone to be concerned that a person is a sex offender, so that, for instance, showing porn to youngsters would not, on its own, raise any extremely grave concerns. And that, friends, is just so very wrong on so very many levels. Is the message here that a priest, for instance, should overlook, say, a fellow priest showing porn to youngsters, that is, until he notes a second red flag? As I say: VIRTUS®, the “child protection program” from hell.

(3) There was no presentation of the fact of the strong statistical preponderance of homosexual interest in youngsters. What was it? Something like 81-82% of offenses were homosexual in nature? Yep. This non-mention is a travesty. Are priests to labor under the lie that there is no homosexual preponderance regarding sex offenses against youngsters? Oh, did I mention this: VIRTUS®, the “child protection program” from hell?

So, I already have an axe to grind against VIRTUS®. That axe is pretty sharp, as you will now see:

* * *

THE 2012 VIRTUS® PRESENTATION IN ROME

[[HSH emphases and [comments] ]]

Before we proceed with our analysis, it is necessary that we dispel any lingering misapprehensions associated with one or more of several myths born of the crisis. These include: 1) the crisis is an American problem [I’m very happy they insisted on this, as I’ve met so many clergy from all over the world who think that this is strictly an American problem since, they say, no one outside of America would ever do anything so wicked. Sigh.]; 2) the crisis has been exaggerated by a Godless media that is antagonistic to people or institutions of faith [We’re not talking about the facts being reported, but the exaggeration, such as the premise that priests are guilty until proven innocent, such as the exoneration of priests receiving little or no coverage, etc. All that and more is the normal modus operandi. The VIRTUS® team is not dealing with reality. Is there an ulterior motive?]; 3) the crisis has been instigated by avaricious attorneys whose only objective is to enrich themselves financially [Let’s rephrase that, shall we? How about: “capitalized upon by groups like SNAP and some attorneys.” Let’s not forget that the U.S. Attorney General is doing some investigations on just this point.]; and 4) homosexual orientation causes men to be sex offenders. [This is an ideological overstatement of the case. Those with homosexual tendencies must not think that their tendencies are an excuse to rape youngsters, but has anyone ever made this kind of overstatement? Their bracketed note follows in the main text:] [Nota Bene: Sexual offending is not about sexual orientation. [O.K. ... ] The logical corollary to the proposition that homosexual orientation causes men to sexually offend against males, is that heterosexual orientation causes men to sexually offend against females. [Ooops. They stepped into the deep end with that one. Homosexual dis-orientation is a perversion of normal sexual orientation. There is no analogy to be made between homo- and heterosexual on this point.] The reality is that neither homosexual nor heterosexual orientation is a risk factor, but rather, disordered or confused sexual orientation is a risk factor [And there we have it. For VIRTUS®, homosexuality is not disordered. This is a rejection of the fundamentals of Natural Law, and is a direct rejection of the teaching of the Church on sexuality. Note well, dear readers, that homosexuality is a disordered sexuality according to Natural Law and the Catholic Church. That which is disordered does not follow that which is reasonable, which is why it is in error and disordered. That which is already disordered is more likely to fall into that which is always more disordered. But VIRTUS® explicitly denies this. It think it is criminal that VIRTUS® is allowed to vomit their perverted perspective on priests and laity. Their footnote (1) follows:].] (1) [(1) Terry K, Smith M, Schuth K, Kelly R, et al. The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, 38, 62, 63, 64, 74, 100, 102, 119. [Note well, dear readers, that the John Jay study is not charged with commenting on whether homosexuality is good in and of itself. Nor is the John Jay College of Criminal Justice charged with child protection training. This is an entirely fraudulent citation on the part of VIRTUS®. How very Kafkaesque of VIRTUS® to use the John Jay study to promote homosexuality as that which is naturally good, thus promoting a reason why homosexual activity is a good, all the while ignoring the importance of the fact that 81-82% of cases of sexual abuse among clergy have been homosexual, that is, according to the same John Jay study.]]

In fairness[!], it should be noted that there are, indeed, elements of truth related to each of the foregoing propositions, but none on its own, nor all of them combined, can even begin to explain and fully describe the misconduct crisis. [This “fairness” statement is a misstatement in that objections to such purposed skewing of the facts by VIRTUS® are not answered in this way. Also, this is misleading in that no one has ever claimed that these few points explain everything. This is a disingenuous sidetracking of real concerns. Don't think that VIRTUS® didn't work hard on this presentation.]

Given our theological tradition of understanding sin and grace [This is code in the VIRTUS® understanding of psychology prevalent in perpetrator treatment centers, a relativism which takes whatever traditions and understandings as starting points, whatever they happen to be, with all of that, however, being quite irrelevant to the salvation that this type of psychology purports to bring. The statement of “Given...” is not a given, as we have seen with their total rejection of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, and, therefore, also on sin and grace.], we also know the crisis as a failing of human nature [Actually, that statement is a rejection of original sin and a blaming of God for creating human nature in a faulty manner, for it fails in itself, according to them. Instead, original sin has much to do with why anyone falls. The same ideology of holding a badly created human nature at fault was prevalent at the Rulla institute of the Gregorian, where this conference took place. That institute, and, say, the Saint Luke Institute, have worked hand in glove.] and the ever present reality of [personal] sin and temptation [the provenance of which, for VIRTUS®, can range from God’s faulty creation, to other factors in society, etc.]. The negative consequences of the crisis that the Church has endured have certainly been affected by the four myths previously identified; but they are not at its heart. [Overstating the myths, and misrepresenting human nature as VIRTUS® has done and continues to do, certainly does affect the abuse crisis, and for the worse, considering the huge role that VIRTUS® plays. To state that myths are not the provenance of the abuse crisis is tautologous. Note that tautologous statements are sarcastic and serve only to distract one from the non sequitur “logic” being presented.]

* * *

MORE HSH COMMENTARY: That VIRTUS® presented more papers than all others in the Gregorian’s abuse symposium does not mean agreement with the content of their papers, though it could. The conference seems to have simply been a platform for VIRTUS® to promote the program it sells. It is surely an indication that VIRTUS® is an important player in the child protection program business (and make no mistake, it is big business, with lots of money involved).

The politics of the Holy See in welcoming the existence of such a symposium and wishing the studies well has to be understood with a bit of romanità. Commissions of adversarial parties are frequently made with the end of letting the offending parties hang themselves. Then, perhaps, the Holy See may wish to publish a rather more judicious statement. An example of that would be the outrageous Humanae vitae commission, which was totally contradicted by Pope Paul VI.

So, VIRTUS® team, don’t get your hopes up to think that you’ve won a battle for your promotion of active homosexual behavior by the clergy. Bishops who promote VIRTUS® should think twice about their support for the program and its anti-Catholic premises and instructions so dangerous to those who are vulnerable. If any bishops have been requiring VIRTUS®, it would be good to reconsider that, don’t you think? Yep. Do it now, before more children are hurt by VIRTUS®. For the entire VIRTUS® paper: HERE.

* * *

UPDATE: Some essential reading:

• The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)
• Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force
• Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner- Priest.

Please God, more Scriptural and Patristic sources will be added to the present “rant style” meditations when circumstances at Holy Souls Hermitage aren’t quite so utterly barbaric.

The purpose of this first run through these mysteries is to note especially the goodness and kindness of Jesus amidst the violence and chaos back in the day… and today. Hang on, it might be a bit of a rough ride, as rough and tumble as we focus on, in this post, the Ascension of Jesus:

Acts 1,8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses [(martyrs) μάρτυρες] in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When He had said this, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him from their sight. 10 While they were continuously staring intently at the sky as He was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why are establishing yourselves there continuously staring intently at the sky? This Jesus [this Savior] who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen Him going into heaven.” (nab)

Angels are great. They know how to go right to the heart of the difficulty and set us on the right path. They’ve been watching and protecting and guiding us for a very long time. There’s nothing new for them, ever. They see the face of God right now and want us to know something of this as well.

However, they know that for us, unlike them, that doesn’t mean looking to our Lord directly, for they can see Him, but, right now, we can’t. The angels want that we see God the way we ourselves are meant to ”see” Him while we are yet in this world. And that does not at all involve establishing ourselves solidly in one place so that we can gape into the heavens into which Jesus ascended.

The angels know full well that we are stunned by statements of Jesus that we are to be His witnesses, His martyrs, to the ends of the earth. We’re frozen in fear until…. until… the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Then, no more political correctness, no more sycophantic idiocy before the god mammon, no more holding our lives to be too precious to lay down for our friends.

Remember that, at the consecrations at Holy Mass, the word group of ”martyr” is about testifying to memory by making the subject of testimony present: “Hoc facite in meam commemorationem.” That’s not just a nice memory, but the priestly acting in the very Person of Christ. The subject of one’s testifying, of one’s witness, is brought to be present here and now.

And that’s what the martyrs do, don’t they? When they lay down their lives for their friends — and there is no greater love than that — that love is not theirs, but Christ’s. It is He who lays down His life with us. He has us share in His death and resurrection.

The angels have great reprimands for us, always, if we listen to them. I, for one, am not always the best listener. But sometimes I do listen. What I hear is akin to what they say to the apostles and disciples who are clueless as to how they are to get themselves out of their catatonic state, out of their immobilizing fear. The angels cut through our pretended piety of staring into the heavens with a bit of sarcasm: He will come back in the same way, so, like, just get over it, would you just? Hah!

The angels know that we are to serve Christ Jesus in each other: “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to ME!” And with Christ ascending into heaven, we can no longer watch Him, as it were, do all the work for us. He wants us to put His love into action in our lives. No staring into the heavens! Find Him, His love for us wretched sinners, in each other by being an occasion for that love of His to flourish in each other, encouraging each other to participate in the sacraments, encouraging each other to rejoice in the grace of Christ Jesus among us. He remains with us to the end of the age. Jesus, just so good, just so kind. Come Holy Spirit!

Not convinced? How about this? …

John 14:1 “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” (rsv)

Not long after being ordained I gave a homily at the Fathers of Mercy Generalate in Kentucky about this Gospel. I prefaced my remarks by saying that no matter how great a time Jesus had with His foster father Joseph in carpentry, the construction Jesus would be doing in heaven for us would not be the kind wrought with nails and hammers and wood, but rather….

One of the other priests actually cat-called, “Why not? There’s nothing wrong with carpentry!”

Fine. I went on to speak about the Mystical Body of Christ, and how Jesus prepares a place for us in heaven by having a place for Most Holy Trinity prepared in our hearts and souls right now. Jesus loves us just that much.

Much of the day was spent on the phone catching up with the various contacts, trying to fathom what is happening with Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault.

I’ve written quite a bit this afternoon and this evening as well. But that article is not finished, nor will it be today. There is so very much going on right now. But I do intend to publish something on RICO tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in trying to put this into perspective…

The chickens are put to bed, and prayers still need to be said, and Laudie-dog is chewing on a bone. And… and…

When times are especially dark and dreary, I like to give a flower to the Immaculate Conception, from Holy Souls Mountain, of course. That, more than anything, helps put things in perspective.

Mary was a tough woman. She knew how and knows how to be a good mother. There’s no greater warrior than a Mother who’s protecting her only son.  I spoke about her up in Washington, D.C. a while back. Here’s what I said:

1. The first is a link to the *.mp3 file. If you want to download the file to listen at any time, just click on it, but using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Diversely, in that same browser, right-click and choose “Save target as…”, saving it to the location and with the name you desire. Chrome will not download such files, only play them, just click for Chrome.

GENESIS IMMACULATE CONCEPTION GEORGE DAVID BYERS IVE CONFERENCE FEBRUARY 7 2013

2. If you just want to listen, use this:

3. If you just want to listen, you can use this as well:

For the *.PDF of the talk: IVE GENESIS IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CONFERENCE 7 FEBRUARY 2013

For the *.PDF of the entire thesis (for which I want to write a popular version): GENESIS THESIS

And then, just for fun, because it’s still within the Easter season, and because I’m from Minnesota:

Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault — h/t New Hampshire Union Leader

[click on the graphic to enlarge]
Saint Luke Institute is in — Say where? — York, Pennsylvania?
I guess that’s an errant laptop with the Saint Luke Institute’s IP address inscribed in its system.
Seems like kind of a long commute between York and inside the Beltway of D.C. Just sayin’…

But there are those might want to take some care about advertising that they are looking at posts on Monsignor Edward Arsenault here on HSH and elsewhere.

And while Newspapers like the HuffPo happily link to such stories here on HSH, there are others whom I know are investigating the case of Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault and who had best keep their investigations to themselves for the moment. And I’m not talking about the FBI or the Attorney General’s office or the Diocese of Manchester. People know who owns who and can put two and two together. Little mistakes can sink the Titanic.

If you’re one of the good guys investigating this story, just go and buy a cheap netbook and connect to the internet with a non-company IP. Really. If you’re not a good guy, well, who cares?

Also, just to say, not that it has anything at all to do with anything, but as the FBI investigations now involve the years 1999-2009 as something totally different from any improper adult relationship, I find it interesting that a particular group of attorneys in Washington, D.C., who specialize in defending clients involved with RICO lawsuits, has a rather inordinate interest in posts about Monsignor Arsenault here on HSH.

I’ll outline a RICO-like lawsuit later today, please God.

Oh, and did I say that The National Catholic Risk Retention Group also has an interest in posts about Monsignor Edward Arsenault?

And did I mention that the years involved in the present investigation involve the years when Arsenault was in charge of sex abuse cases in the Diocese of Manchester and was also Chairman and Director of The National Catholic Risk Retention Group. I’ll have to think about whether that’s just an ever so slight conflict of interest given the information in this post: The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)

And it seems to me that people should be reading this post of a priest wrongly imprisoned (what with Monsignor Edward Arsenault having much to do with that): Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force. That’s by Father Gordon J. MacRae (about).

And don’t forget Ryan Anthony MacDonald’s Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner- Priest.

I’m just mentioning any number of not necessarily connected issues in this post. Don’t draw any conclusions.

P.S. The New Hampshire Union Leader says that his consulting contract with the local hospital was not reported to the IRS. They also mention his salary at Saint Luke Institute being 170,000. But that’s beside the point, I think. There’s more to the story, I think. It’s like watching the Soviet nuclear explosion. There’s always more:

At the end of “A Corner of the Veil” (a post on These Stone Walls) there’s a photo of Father Gordon MacRae’s mother at her family home in Logy Bay, Newfoundland, a few years before her death. Father Gordon’s mother is on the right. The lady on the left is her wonderful sister.

Father Gordon J. MacRae (about) has written a truly awe inspiring post: Mother’s Day Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep.

Father provides a hauntingly, hauntingly, hauntingly calming, wonderful, frightening, ever so peaceful and yet blazingly incisive interpretation of Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening. If you’ve never liked poetry, you’ll now rush out and buy anthologies of the same.

In the midst of this article, you’ll read the following, and I would like to place this before Monsignor Arsenault, and Bishops McCormack, Christian and Libasci:

My mother died a terrible death, having suffered for three years from hydrocephalus, the build-up of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. It was misdiagnosed in her early seventies, and by the time it was properly diagnosed, it could not be treated. She visited me in prison with a cane, and then a walker, and then a wheelchair, and then, for the last year of her life, not at all. Though only sixty miles away from my prison, she could not even speak with me by telephone for the last six months of her life. She became paralyzed, and entered a prison of her own.

In our last visit in the New Hampshire State Prison visiting room a year before my mother died, I told her I was sorry for what had become of my life and my priesthood. Most mothers of priests – especially Irish mothers – take a certain pride in the priesthood of their sons. My mother left this world with her own priest-son in prison. I worried about the wounds to her pride my false imprisonment wrought.

But all was not lost. There was grace even in that. Sometime between now and Mother’s Day I hope you might read anew – or for the first time – “A Corner of the Veil.” It describes a promise I made to my mother that I would never take the easy way out of the crisis that priesthood brought me to. I intend to keep that promise, and in a dream last week, my mother showed up to help [continue reading there...]

* * *

A reader from across the pond sent this in about a great idea for a gift for your mother on Mother’s Day. I put this up before Mother’s Day so as to give people a chance to follow this guy’s example in doing something really fantastic for his dear mother.

You can skip the advert in the video after a few seconds.

The Holy See is busy reading about The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG).

It’s just a guess, but I suggest that Bishops John B. McCormack, Francis J. Christian and Peter A. Libasci would do well to read the same, and then call up the Attorney Generals office and the FBI and set up an appointment for today, say, before midnight, to tell the whole sorry story. Oh, and don’t forget about what was indicated in Ryan Anthony MacDonald’s Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner- Priest.

If you do this, dear Bishops, it would do well for you to relate that this is what you are doing in a Press Conference, say, by 1:00 PM today.

“We will do this in the light of day,” says Bishop Libasci.

Great! Just do it.

Pope Francis will be reading about it… soon. It’s better for you to speak up before that. It demonstrates good faith. [[Update: "Soon" now means after a few more days, if not a week. Just when you think a snapshot of the situation can be taken, the scene changes to such outlandish proportions that you have to re-frame the picture. And again, and again. But soon, the picture will be taken, and developed, and printed, and put on display.]]

I like how the Attorney General’s office has already dropped some hints about the scope of the investigation, calling in the FBI because, you know, they can handle matters spilling over into other states if need be. You’ll remember that this isn’t the first time the FBI has spent years investigating matters about which you might well want to speak. [[Update: And now we know that the period they want to cover is from 1999-2009. Perhaps we'll have to have a surely irrelevant spelling bee to see if anyone can spell "TNCRRG".]]

From right to left: Bishop John B. McCormack, Aux. Bishop Francis J. Christian and Fr. Edward Arsenault, announce names of accused priests of the Diocese of Manchester. The attorney for the alleged victims said that he had never seen anything like it. In some cases they didn’t even ask what the dates or allegations were.

Monsignor Arsenault is the heart and soul of The Judas Crisis, the very embodiment of its insistence on their being no due process for priests, that settlements be paid immediately, regardless of the facts, regardless of guilt or innocence.

And now allegations have been raised against Monsignor Arsenault himself.

He’s resigned as head of the Saint Luke Institute. He’s been suspended from active ministry.

While being investigated for an inappropriate relationship with someone described as adult, it was discovered that there were indications that there may have been quite a bit of financial misbehavior, enough to involve the office of the Attorney General.

• I think that Monsignor Arsenault should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
• I think that he should benefit from the due process which he refused to his fellow priests.
• I think that we should pray for him: Our Father… Hail Mary…

Update: The FBI is now involved.

This post literally lit up the State of New Hampshire last night. And people have been checking back in as early as 04:00 hours. So, I thought I would supply this link, though most got that as well:

The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)

I’ll have quite a bit more about this, please God, as the day proceeds. It will be a nightmare logistically today, as there are many other things to tend to away from the hermitage. Anyway, do check back in. I should have some things to say about:

• The revolving door Attorney Generals of New Hampshire
• Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault
• Bishop John B. McCormack
• Bishop Francis J. Christian
• Monsignor Stephen J. Rossetti
• Bishop Peter A. Libasci
• The National Catholic Risk Retention Group
• The Saint Luke Institute
• … and more…

Today, Holy Souls Mountain is in the eye of the massive, swirling rain storm that’s been stalled over the South-Eastern United States for it seems like forever. I mean, has the weather forgotten that it’s supposed to go from West to East in the Northern Hemisphere? I haven’t been out on the road for a few days, so I have to wonder if there is any damage. We’ll see.

I did have quite a bit of difficulty with the Internet connection with the tower some miles away over the mountain ridges.

Meanwhile, there are still florae for the Immaculate Conception to be put up in her honor. Spring has truly sprung on Holy Souls Mountain.

You’ll remember that two weeks ago, Father Gordon MacRae, a priest wrongly imprisoned (about), asked me to write a guest post over on his blog appropriately called These Stone Walls. That guest post was published as Pope Francis and The Judas Crisis. I include it below the page break here for archival purposes, but I encourage you to read it over there if you haven’t already, and drop a comment. I’m told that the day it was published, it got a record number of hits for that month on These Stone Walls. Yikes!

This guest essay written by Father George David Byers, of Holy Souls Hermitage, compares four points of Cardinal Bergoglio’s pre-conclave speech with four scenes of betrayal and evangelization of the dark peripheries of Gethsemane: The Judas Crisis & TNCRRG.

It is with sweet and comforting joy that we thank His Holiness, Pope Francis, for being the Papa of our Catholic Family of Faith. We are confident of his solidarity with us in the midst of our evangelization of the most extreme peripheries of existential desperation.

It is with unbounded trust in his fatherhood as he walks among us that we

rush out as the littlest of children to grasp his hand, wanting to pull him into the peripheries known to us, so that we may show him, our beloved Papa, who willingly comes with us, what we see, peripheries so dark that they necessitate the authoritative governance of his fatherhood as Bishop of Rome in order for those peripheries finally to reflect He who is the Lumen Gentium, the Incarnate Light of the Nations.

Easily getting lost in the maze of badly lit back alleys of the peripheries, purposely labyrinthed with the self-referential ideologies of greed and political correctness, it is Pope Francis himself who hands us a map that leads us to Jesus Christ, who is the Way. That map consists not of images, but of four paragraphs, the four points of his speech to the Cardinals immediately preceding the Conclave. These four points – with my own, more accurate translation below – reflect the Gospel’s four descriptions of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane inasmuch as it is by these accounts that our Lord’s supreme example of evangelizing the most obscure of existential peripheries is manifested with goodness and kindness, Truth and Life.

The peripheries into which we make a foray are those bureaucratic, highly refined, protectionist, and ever so self-referential betrayals that are the hierarchical, episcopal abuses of power regarding the many clergy whom so many bishops know to have been falsely accused of sexual abuse of young people, but whom they condemn as guilty by way of their written policies of immediate cash settlements, policies which tolerate no due-process for priests, but have those priests forever removed from the priesthood, and even imprisoned by criminally stacking any jury in this way. The bishops think that they save thirty pieces of silver even while drawing attention to their façade of solicitude for the Church. In this way, they only further endanger true victims, whose voices will not be heard as people tire of false accusations and a lack of priests.

Have no doubt, the same abuse of power which indulged in sexual abuse, is the same of abuse of power which overlooks that abuse. The abuse of power which condemns as guilty those priests they know to be innocent, is the same abuse of power which will once again indulge in, or overlook sexual abuse. Abuse of power is self-serving, self-referential, self-perpetuating, hidden in darkness of its own non-light, far from Christ Jesus.

When cases against priests reach the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it is assumed that there are no local diocesan policies forbidding due process for priests. We pray that the officials there will take a few minutes to follow the links in the next paragraph, and thus discover the truth of the written policies forbidding due process for priests. It seems that we too easily forget the lack of due process for Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, who, today, may well have been literally left to die under a bridge, forever barred from active ministry (see, for instance, “I Am a Mystery to Myself.” The Last Days of Padre Pio, with associated links). It seems that we too easily forget the lack of due process for Jesus, and, indeed, the time When Jesus Was in Prison, when all of his Apostles, including Peter, collegially ran away.

I’ve recently written on the frankly penned policies which, in an effort to save those thirty pieces of silver, forbid due process for priests: see The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG). Father Gordon MacRae has a number of articles of compelling interest, including, Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force and When Priests Are Falsely Accused Part I: The Mirror of Justice Cracked. Although he doesn’t say so explicitly, the latter article references Father Steven Rossetti, who was head of the horrific Saint Luke Institute at the time. Father Rossetti, along with Monsignor Edward Arsenault, are the cheerleaders of The Judas Crisis, of the betrayal of priests known to be innocent.

Having said all that, it must quickly be added that such Cardinals, Archbishops and bishops are to be called “Friend”, the name Jesus gave to Judas at the moment of betrayal, and this in an effort to evangelize these darkest of existential peripheries. We must remember that eleven of the Apostles returned, having taken Jesus’ evangelizing of their own existential peripheries to heart, He having taken their hearts to His own. And isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that what is of greatest benefit to the Church?

There are no peripheries awaiting our surging forth unto evangelization which could possibly be darker, colder, more cynical – or more needful of that evangelization – than the present policies of most (Arch)dioceses, for such betrayal of innocent priests is an affirmation and confirmation of the abuse of office and power which was and continues to be the cause of the abuse of youngsters, an action singled out for its horror by our Lord Himself.

The following four sections of this article will each include a point from the speech of Pope Francis, a description of betrayal during the account of the Jesus being apprehended in the Garden of Gethsemane, and a further drawing out of an analogy of the abuse of office.

One

From Cardinal Bergoglio’s Intervention

“(1) Evangelizing necessitates Apostolic Zeal. Evangelizing necessitates in the Church a speaking of the truth, a surging forth from herself. The Church is called to surge forth from herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographical, but also the existential peripheries: those of the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of thought and of all misery.”

From Luke’s Account of Gethsemane (22,39-46)

“Then surging forth, He went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him. When he arrived at the place He said to them: ‘Pray that you may not undergo the trial.’ After withdrawing about a stone’s throw from them and kneeling, He prayed, saying, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.’ And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him. He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples, he found them sleeping from grief. He said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not undergo the trial.’”

The Word of the Father surges forth to the immobilization of the Cross, to speak in the silence of death to the darkest of existential peripheries, becoming sin so as to conquer pain, injustice, ignorance and indifference to religion, self-referential ideology and all misery. In surging forth with an acceptance not of His will, but that of the Father, He is betrayed by the failure of His co-evangelizers to pray, so that they, in their self-referential sleep, must become the first subjects of this surging evangelization: “Get up! Pray that you may not undergo the trial!” Their sorrow differs so much from His agony, grieving their own loss instead of literally bleeding goodness and kindness for others. He prepares to carry them in the battle, to lay down their lives with His own, that they might not flee into the futility of doing battle alone, merely to die the death of the self-referential, immediately forgotten by their politically correct sycophants.

Our Heavenly Father sacrifices His Son for this evangelization of the dark peripheries, but there are those who fall asleep, turn in on themselves, and refuse to accept that there is a battle to be fought, betrayers to confront and evangelization to be accomplished with one’s own life being lain down with that of Jesus Christ. One sleeps as the betrayers hiddenly go about their secret work. One permits Satan to have his way with the flock, their lives being shattered because the shepherds sleep with dreams of their own satisfaction, in this way bringing only pain, injustice, ignorance and indifference to religion, self-referential ideology and all misery. The betrayer is upon them, and they don’t want to know it, letting him free to do his work of sacrificing the Son of Another, Jesus, the Son of the Father, so as to satisfy his own self-referentiality.

At least in the U.S.A., the epicenter of abuse, especially from 1968 to 1978, it was as if all were asleep, for those abusing the children of others were permitted to do so with impunity, that is, by those in authority who knew that this was happening.

Two

From Cardinal Bergoglio’s Intervention

“(2) When the Church does not surge forth from herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential and then gets sick (as with the woman collapsing in upon herself in the Gospel). The evils that, in the course of time, afflict ecclesial institutions, have a root in self-referentiality, in a kind of theological narcissism. In the Apocalypse, Jesus says that He is at the threshold and calls. Evidently, the text refers to the fact of His being outside of the door and knocking in order to enter… But at times I think that Jesus knocks from within, so that we might let Him out. The self-referential Church has the pretense of keeping Jesus Christ within herself, and does not let Him go forth.”

From Luke’s Account of Gethsemane (22,47-48)

“While he was still speaking, a crowd approached and in front was one of the Twelve, a man named Judas. He went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said to him, ‘Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?’” (Luke 22,47-48).

Jesus had commanded Peter, James and John to pray that they might not enter into the battle, just as He did when He taught them to pray: “Do not bring us to the battle (alone), but deliver us from the Evil One” (who would attack us far from God). Now they had an example of one of their own, Judas, who had decided to throw in his lot with the Evil One, putting his betrayal into action right in front of their full view.

The kiss of Judas, so repugnant to Jesus, was Judas’ self-referential kiss of death: Jesus is mine! He wants to go forth and evangelize, but He is all mine! I can kiss Him! Possess Him! Sell Him! Betray Him! Kill Him! He is all mine! He will never go forth from me! Look at me! Only me! I am narcissistically mine! But Judas, whose feet had been cleansed of the cursed dust of Satan at the Last Supper was now possessed once again. “Friend!” Jesus exclaimed, always trying to evangelize even the darkest of hearts with goodness and kindness. Yet, the others, immobilized by their lack of prayer, can only watch as Judas goes about his work, sacrificing the Son of Another, Jesus, the Son of the Father, for his own satisfaction. Inversion, theological narcissism, looking only to oneself, as to an idol, cannot tolerate fruitfulness, but only that the children of others are sacrificed as a confirmation of one’s own self-referentiality.

The other Apostles look on, immobilized in their waking slumber, watching as the abuse of children continues for all to see. There were signs of nervousness, of course, but nothing significant would change the course of Judas from 1978 until 2002.

Three

From Cardinal Bergoglio’s Intervention

“(3) The Church, when she is self-referential, without being aware of this, believes to have her own light; she ceases to be the “mysterium lunae” [the mystery of the moon (which reflects the light of the sun, that is, the Son)] and gives way to that ever so serious evil which is spiritual worldliness (according to De Lubac, the worst evil into which the Church can run amuck): that living so as to give glory to one another. Put simply, there are two images of the Church: [1] the evangelizing Church which surges forth from herself, “Dei Verbum religiose audiens et fidente proclamans” [religiously listening to God’s Word and faithfully proclaiming], or [2] the worldly Church, living within herself, by herself, for herself. This must shed light on the possible changes and reforms to be accomplished for the salvation of souls.”

From Luke’s Account of Gethsemane (22,49-51)

“His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, ‘Lord, shall we strike with a sword?’ And one of them struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said in reply, ‘Stop, no more of this!’ Then he touched the servant’s ear and healed him.”

We see here a form of betrayal that is all the more insidious as it is all the more subtle. It is the betrayal of “doing something”, a tantrum of self-righteous indignation, a doing of anything but listening religiously to God’s Word, anything but faithfully proclaiming that Word. What is done under such vacuous circumstances of believing that one is one’s own light cannot be anything other than a confirmation of self-referentiality, a spiritual worldliness seeking to be praised and adored by the world. One cuts off the ear of the one who stands before God’s very Word, attempting to cut short his faithful proclamation, ensuring that all are mirror images of oneself, living within oneself, by oneself, for oneself, never reflecting the light of the Son of God among us. Malchus is cut down without due process. He is guilty by association. Judas was guilty as judged by the King of kings and Lord of lords and the Prince of the Most Profound Peace. But Malchus was judged by the self-referentiality of Peter.

Regarding the treatment of priests who are accused of sexual misconduct, most all bishops follow the bad example in the early life of the first Pope. Priests are held to be guilty for the incredible “reason” that a few Judas priests certainly were guilty. Innocent priests are guilty by association, that is, just because they are priests. Due process for priests accused of abuse of minors is expressly forbidden by The National Catholic Risk Retention Group, a ruling subscribed to or otherwise followed by most every bishop in the U.S.A. See how the policy is explained to bishops, with a critique, here: The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG). The priests are simply hacked down with the sword of immediate monetary settlements being made with the accuser, often without knowing the dates or allegations. The facts are not important. It is the saving of thirty pieces of silver by Judas, and the self-righteous indignation wrought by cutting down the innocent by Peter that are thought to be important. Flashing a sword makes one look nice. But this is condemned by our Lord Jesus Himself. Jesus evangelizes the dark peripheries of the heart of Peter: No, Peter! Put the sword away! There is a redemption to accomplish!

Four

From Cardinal Bergoglio’s Intervention

“(4) Thinking of the next Pope: [We need] a man who, by way of the contemplation of Jesus Christ and the adoration of Jesus Christ, may help the Church to surge forth from herself unto the existential peripheries, that he may help her to be the fruitful mother who lives “by way of the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”

From Luke’s Account of Gethsemane (22,52-53)

“And Jesus said to the chief priests and temple guards and elders who had come for him, ‘Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? Day after day I was with you in the temple area, and you did not seize me; but this is your hour, of the power of darkness.’”

In this last and saddest scene of betrayal, we see Judas, possessed by the prince of the power of darkness, having such influence upon the ecclesiastics of the day. They take the scandal he offers. They rejoice in the lack of due process for Jesus, Priest of priests. They rush to support the accusation of Judas, which became irresistible by its sheer repetition, irresistible with more and more bearing clubs and swords. Father Gordon MacRae masterfully wrote of this “availability bias” in his article defending Pope Francis, called: Strike the Shepherd: Behind the Campaign to Smear the Pope.

This availability bias, demanding submission to any false accusation by way of insisting on lack of due process for priests, is today everywhere present in the self-referential Church spoken of by Cardinal Bergoglio. Those ecclesiastics who wield their swords and clubs against Jesus still today would do well to let the darkest of their existential peripheries be evangelized by the goodness and kindness of Jesus.

Jesus, indeed, provides an example of this evangelization by pointing out the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of those who wield their swords and clubs. For good measure, He mocks their action with the description of a mere hour, which will end as the Day of the Lord continues, providing them a chance to repent. In contemplating and adoring Jesus Christ, the very power of His proclamation – “I AM” – we are encouraged to surge forth into even these existential peripheries, knowing such goodness and kindness of Jesus, and therefore the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing even in the midst of betrayal.

It is true that the many innocent priests who have been betrayed by their bishops are suffering with our Lord for the good of the Church, but it cannot be said that the action of the betrayal is good for the Church, as has so often been said: Pro bono Ecclesiae! The betrayal must be set right without respect for one person over another. Sure, the world is set against priests, including those who are innocent. They come with swords and clubs. Yet, evangelization of the peripheries, those who have been abused, is never served by holding that it is better that innocent priests die humiliated and imprisoned so that many in the episcopacy might save thirty pieces of silver and, they think, their own credibility. Instead, they lose more money, more priests and all credibility by not providing justice for all involved, and only pave the way for more abuse.

How wonderful it would be if Pope Francis were to come to these United States of America, to our darkest peripheries. How wonderful it would be for him to have a chat with our Episcopal Conference about The National Catholic Risk Retention Group and those who imitate their policies. How wonderful it would be – before dealing with those peripheries – if Pope Francis were to visit our prisons, indeed, the New Hampshire State Prison for Men, where the falsely accused priest at the epicenter of this controversy, Father Gordon J. MacRae (about), has been imprisoned for almost two decades.

Should this article make it into the hands of Pope Francis, I have only one message to give him in regard to Father Gordon J. MacRae, his faithful priest-son:

Miserando atque eligendo!

Editor’s Note:  You can listen to Joe Maher’s interview on falsely accused priests here. (at the 38-43 minute mark.)  Joe founded Opus Bono Sacerdotii. Also, Ryan A. MacDonald will have a guest post on These Stone Walls next Wednesday, May 1st.  Father Gordon will return on May 8th.  He much appreciates Ryan and Father Byers stepping in for two weeks while he engages in another writing project.

Saturday is the seventh day of the week. It’s the day that God rested from the six days of creation. All was perfect.

Adam was created on the sixth day, and also fell on that day. He undid himself and all creation groans, as Saint Paul says.

Adam couldn’t possibly fully appreciate creation, indeed, even himself, that is, in relation to God.

But Mary, the Immaculate Conception, free from original sin, alone fully rejoiced in thanksgiving on the seventh day.

The Sabbath, the perfection of the seventh day, the day of rest, belongs to her with the Most High.

Yes, she also had to be redeemed so that she could stand transformed in grace from the first instant of her conception (see Luke 1,28).

But there’s a huge difference in the absolutely clear vision and agility of soul inherent with being immaculately conceived and the dullness of mind and heart that the rest of us suffer through with the consequences of original sin that, even though forgiven, do not leave us until we enter heaven (please God!).

Saturday is, therefore, a day when we, as Mary’s little children, can rightly rejoice that she was able to rejoice in thanksgiving like none of us could.

We rejoice to have such a good mother, Immaculate from the beginning, her divine Son being just that good, just that kind.

Also in Minnesota, but this time further out in the Northern forests, where our home had some tall windows next to the garden, non-stooping birds of all sorts would — and I hate to say this — they would fly with all their might, as if stooping like a falcon in bomb-diving position, and smash against the windows, sometimes knocking themselves out, sometimes breaking their necks. The bangs against the window were sometimes a bit frightening, so loud would the collisions be. There were, thankfully, zillions of birds in Minnesota, much more than in the rain forest here. The solution would be to draw the drapes across the window. That really works. No drapes here. But there’s only been one bird that I’ve seen in my now over two years here that has met his demise by way of window stooping. This kind is pretty common. Not sure what it is.

In other news, I’m bound and determined to:

• Put up a Thanks to Benefactors post
• Put up some insulation in the hermitage
• Put up some posts with Father Mark Gruber’s conferences
• Put up some posts with the interview I did with a most wonderful 93 years young Holocaust era survivor
• Re-trench the trenches on the path up the ridge to the hermitage as the promised flood-warning rains smash down on already totally drenched ground — threatening already compromised slope stability — so that there are not only flood warnings, but also landslide warnings. Yikes! ✔
• Continue with Spring cleaning.  ✔
• Put up some Florae for the Immaculate Conception posts.
• Continue with this novena (join anytime!) – ✔

The Judas Crisis: A Special Request for Priests (1-9 May, 2013)

Update: I was distracted today from my to-do list.

• I ended up ripping off the old door of the chicken coop below the hermitage, the one’s that a pack of transmitter-collared hound dogs smashed through at the beginning of 2012, killing the rooster. The door just literally fell apart as time went by. So, another, from Habitat for humanity, almost for free, went up in its place today.
• I totally dissembled the gradines in back of the alter and reinforced everything, and gave everything a good cleaning, and then put it all back up again. Much better. Also, the sanctuary candle was put next to the tabernacle, even while the lamp-holder was removed from the wall to make room for a more solid wall between the chapel and the wood-stove area.
• I hauled in more firewood before the unending rains really got going. But the day is not over!

Update: More distractions:

• The sanctuary candle went back up, along with Our Lady of Guadalupe (exact color and size) which I received from the sacristan of the Basilica down the way, and also the Icon of the Most Holy Trinity as written by Andrey Rublev.

• A great boon for working on the hermitage a bit has been the ripping down of a… um… plastic tent which I had put up in the hermitage next to the wood stove. I had been living in that for the winter because of the lack of insulation. But now I’m getting to that things like insulation, so, O.K.

Sent in by a great seminarian!

In reading over Ryan Anthony MacDonald’s article — Truth in Justice – Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison? – particularly PART V: A PRIEST IN HIDING (scroll down to the end of the article), it comes to mind that there are quite a number of deaths and disappearances related to the wrongly imprisoned Father Gordon MacRae.

1. In reading over that story about Father Stephen Scruton, who may well have been interfering with those who would later accuse Father Gordon MacRae, I would like to add one more point that wasn’t included in that already long but magnificently researched and written article, namely, about the incident of Father Stephen Scruton leaving his counseling appointment in Boston, when, just as he was to head down the stairs, he mysteriously just happened to fall in just such a way that he would die within weeks and without ever regaining consciousness. It happens, I suppose. But it also just happens that Father Scruton had a particular letter in his hands as he fell to the coma in which he would die. That letter had been penned by Father Gordon MacRae. It was a request that Father Stephen Scruton step forward to say anything that might be relevant about his, that is, Scruton’s involvement, if any. Had he made up his mind to say something? Was he stopped? I know, that’s all conspiracy theory stuff. But I would like to ask a few questions: (1) Now that he’s dead, can his psych records be subpoenaed by New Hampshire’s Attorney General’s office? Surely those records would reveal plenty that is exculpatory for Father Gordon MacRae. (2) Why in the world would the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., so easily let Father Scruton remain silent about all this? Did they? (3) Who was behind the mysterious voice that was heard? It sure does sound like another priest, who is probably alive today, and who could testify about everything about Father Stephen Scruton. And I’m quite sure that that voice belongs to someone who has been following the story quite closely. If he’s reading this, I will make a simple appeal to him in the name of Jesus: Just tell the truth. It will do you good. Wake up and die right. Life is short. Eternity is forever.
2. Another priest was gunned down in place of Father Scruton, with that murder immediately followed by the murder of the accomplice and the suicide of the murderer.
3. One of the prosecutors of Father Gordon MacRae left New Hampshire immediately after the trial. He’s just. like. gone.
4. The other prosecutor committed suicide.
5. Am I missing any?

I’m getting the idea that this case should be getting more attention from the FBI, that is, re-opening the case, but this time concentrating on a statement from Bishop McCormack to Leo Demers and another attorney in a meeting — (Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering the Rights of a Prisoner-Priest) — at which the Bishop said:

“What I am about to tell you must never leave this room. I believe Father MacRae is innocent and his accusers likely lied, but there is nothing I can do to change a jury verdict.”

But that’s not the statement that is so important, for, as I understand it, the Bishop also went on to say that he, Bishop McCormack, cannot publicly speak of Father MacRae’s innocence that is known to him, the bishop, since there are other considerations which are more important.

I mean, hey, if I were investigating this, I would really want to know what’s more important than one of his priests, whom he knows to be innocent, being wrongly imprisoned for the rest of his life.

The only thing I can think of is the dogged determination to protect the policies of immediate and even blanket settlements for all accusers regardless of the guilt or innocence of the priests so accused. It about saving thirty pieces of silver, right?

The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)

We don’t want more deaths like that of Judas. I’m pushing on this since people are not getting younger, and there will always be more coming out about all this, perhaps much sooner than later. The quicker they cave and provide testimony about the truth of the matter, the better it will be for them. What we don’t want with The Judas Crisis is this:

That would just be too sad altogether. Jesus is good and kind and merciful and forgiving, yes, also for any Judas, if only they ask and receive. Peter betrayed our Lord as well, but he came back and our Lord forgave him. And now he’s Saint Peter. That’s what I like to see! Let’s have a Saint Edward Arsenault! Let’s have a Saint Bishop McCormack! Let’s see them know the goodness and kindness of our Lord. Let’s see them fess up to the truth of the matter…

Really, guys, you want to do this within the next few days. Today is the day of salvation. Just do it. Pick up the phone to the Attorney General’s office and ask to be recorded under oath. Make the appointment for Monday morning, early.

Two seminarians whom I taught and advised — good friends — at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, will be ordained today to the transitional diaconate at 7:00 PM. (May 3, 2013). Prayers for them, please! Hail Mary…

ANONYMOUS has scheduled a protest to “occupy” Cathedral Square in downtown Columbus during this time. Cowards. They hide behind masks and computer screens.

ANONYMOUS say they are protesting the firing for breach of contract of a recently self-identified homosexualist from a Catholic school, but, in all reality, they are capitalizing on the ordination of two seminarians so as to make their point that they are going to fight the Catholic Church as such. And to start their onslaught, they are attacking two individuals, my friends, who have absolutely nothing to do with any of this. This means that ANONYMOUS is a group of absolute total cowards.

Some wise direction that was sent out to all involved:

We have been made aware of a potential protest for the Diaconate Ordination this evening. The group Anonymous [...asked...] for people who support “gay marriage” to “occupy” Cathedral Square starting at 4 pm. [...] As you may well be aware, these protests sometimes turn violent. The protesters are simply out to cause a scene and to cause emotional damage to the Catholic community as a whole. Their goal will be to engage anyone who is willing, and then to quickly bring about shame or harm. I cannot emphasize this enough, please do not engage the protesters in any way. It is what they want, and no matter how much you wish to evangelize or defend the Church they are not willing to participate in a fruitful discussion of any kind. When you pass by them, if you feel compelled to say anything, it should be no more than “hello” or “good afternoon.” But even this will invite unwanted responses from them.

Yes, well. That’s a bit naive as well. I mean, these kind of professional protesters can send in those who look like they want to support the Ordination Mass, getting escorted into the Cathedral, but then, just before going inside, purposely engage ANONYMOUS, even violently, so that ANONYMOUS looks to be the victim.

ANONYMOUS made use of a terroristic threat in the event that the Diocese of Columbus does not cave into the request of ANONYMOUS to run the Catholic Church and trash its doctrines and morals. Making a terroristic threat is a felony of the third degree in the State of Ohio:

2909.23 Making terroristic threat.

(A) No person shall threaten to commit or threaten to cause to be committed a specified offense when both of the following apply:

(1) The person makes the threat with purpose to do any of the following:

(a) Intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(b) Influence the policy of any government by intimidation or coercion;

(c) Affect the conduct of any government by the threat or by the specified offense.

(2) As a result of the threat, the person causes a reasonable expectation or fear of the imminent commission of the specified offense.

(B) It is not a defense to a charge of a violation of this section that the defendant did not have the intent or capability to commit the threatened specified offense or that the threat was not made to a person who was a subject of the threatened specified offense.

(C) Whoever violates this section is guilty of making a terroristic threat, a felony of the third degree. Section 2909.25 of the Revised Code applies regarding an offender who is convicted of or pleads guilty to a violation of this section.

Effective Date: 05-15-2002

Those who associate with ANONYMOUS in the present protest may be liable for felony proceedings. Penalties run from nine months to three years. I think everyone in a mask or otherwise causing trouble should be arrested forthwith if they anywhere near the Cathedral. The Super-Max Department of Corrections facility just to the West of Columbus could surely hold them all.

I would also say to the homosexualist one-time teacher who was fired: If you don’t immediately repudiate the terroristic threats of ANONYMOUS, who make it seem that they are speaking on your behalf, well then, that would make it seem that you yourself are the one who has brought them in on this situation. If you are associated with this, I mean, how dare you threaten my friends? I’m personally offended. And this is the way that you want to get reinstated as a Catholic teacher? Anonymous thinks it is the way for sure. Think about it. ANONYMOUS hates you, and is stomping on you in every way. You’re being used and abused by ANONYMOUS.

While analyzing the diatribe of ANONYMOUS, I note that there was an indication that ANONYMOUS has a professional, that is, salaried core group, with everyone else being their puppets. This is a dangerous group. If mercenaries are paid to be violent, they will be.

Threats have been coming into the school itself for days. And that would be consistent with ANONYMOUS. Threatening to interfere with a place which children frequent is what terrorists do. Yep. It’s always the children. Always. And this isn’t just another Sandy Hook incident with some crazy guy. Instead, this is an international terrorist group. And it’s pre-meditated. I hope the police can stop them and their puppets in their tracks.

What will ANONYMOUS do in a situation like this, as retaliation for them not becoming the head of the Catholic Church? They’ll do what they so often do, as reported by those who have been attacked by ANONYMOUS, and that is to hack into websites and plaster homosexual porn all over the screens of the various pages of the websites. And then they go further. They go out of their way to push the police into using tear gas and, in various venues around the world, even live ammunition.

Why do they do that?

Because that’s the kind of person you would want in your local grade school teaching your kids, right? Isn’t that their message?

And, really, why bother the seminarians? Because ANONYMOUS is at war with the Catholic Church.

Update: Protesters were about — what? — a dozen? Those in masks were, like, maybe two or three in number. So sad altogether. I see that they’re blackmailing someone with already public information to be “revealed” on Monday.

Bishop John B. McCormack, Aux. Bishop Francis J. Christian and Fr. Edward Arsenault, announce names of accused priests of the Diocese of Manchester. The attorney for the alleged victims said that he had never seen anything like it. In some cases they didn’t even ask about dates or allegations.

[[I spent some hours today responding to a comment over on These Stone Walls of Father Gordon MacRae (about), specifically on this week's guest post by Ryan Anthony MacDonald: The Story Buried Under the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case, a story I've recently written about: Murder-Suicide Prequel to Calumny and Betrayal of Falsely Accused Fr Gordon MacRae. Here's most of that comment. What a fright!]] ///

I do note that [now Senator, Kelly] Ayotte is one of those “pro-lifers” who sides with most pro-abortion “exceptions.” She has made pro-family, pro-gun statements, and is considered a conservative Republican (for whatever that’s worth these days), and was endorsed by John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Haley Barbour and Rick Santorum, with her name being floated more recently even as a 2012 vice-presidential running mate for Mitt Romney. But, let’s put aside any and all other possible political conflicts of interest anyone might have, and look just as Father Gordon MacRae’s case.

So, in regard to the Attorney General’s office [of the State of New Hampshire, when Kelly Ayotte worked there] and Father Gordon MacRae, I suggest that readers take a look at Ryan MacDonald’s Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering the Rights of a Prisoner-Priest

To all intents, constructions, and purposes that one might imagine in this regard, it really does seem that, from the very beginning – and just as Ayotte was skyrocketing in her career – the Attorney General’s office was in collusion with Father Edward Arsenault and Bishop John McCormack so to obtain, by way of fraud, the confidential files of Father Gordon MacRae that he wanted to give to a defense lawyer, with this fraudulent obtaining of these files having the end of publicly publishing those files without his knowledge or consent. This, it seems to me, transgresses any reasonable understanding of confidentiality laws, an action having adverse effect on all confidential communications of all priests without exception across the country, regardless of guilt or innocence.

Can a bishop bypass confidentiality laws? Can an Attorney General utilize a third party in order to bypass confidentiality laws over against the person involved? Are there civil or criminal penalties, or none at all? Just asking…

At any rate, by the time of Ayotte’s election as a Senator, all of this seeming collusion seems to have cemented into a long-standing close friendship between herself and Father Arsenault, as we see from one of the emails that escaped the last minute email purge at the Attorney General’s office:

Dear Kelly,
You will be great in Washington.
I look forward to having dinner with you
and Joe upon arrival.

In other words, this isn’t just glad-handing someone who’s also from New Hampshire and now in Washington, D.C. as a newly elected Senator; this email instead assumes entitlement to an intimate dinner as a top priority for someone who will be otherwise be utterly mired in a steep learning curve as a newcomer to D.C. politics. Just. Wow.

At any rate, just based on Ryan’s great article, what seems to be happening is that the Diocese of Manchester was and is interested in protecting their policy of immediate and even blanket settlements no matter what, that is, regardless of the guilt or innocence of any particular priest. Such settlements save thirty pieces of silver. See The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG). But didn’t Father Arsenault and the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., need and don’t they continue to count on collaboration from the all too accommodating Attorney General’s office? The kickback for the Attorney General’s office is that everyone gets to play the hero for being tough on abusers – regardless of whether they are actually innocent – with Ayotte herself becoming always more the all around electable hero.

Note that it is precisely because Father MacRae was admittedly known to be innocent by the Diocese of Manchester that he had to be put down in favor of their policies which have it that everyone is automatically guilty, no matter what.. Do the math like a cynic. Holding everyone to be guilty and paying out immediate and even blanket settlements is the only way it is thought by the likes of a Father Arsenault that a diocese can save money over against the risk of outcomes of any litigated proceedings. If Father MacRae’s case were to be overturned, this would throw the policies of Father Arsenault’s The National Catholic Risk Retention Group into confusion, that is, effectively, the policies of immediate and even blanket settlements of most all (arch)dioceses in the United States, particularly Boston and Manchester, N.H. Cooperation of Church and State to hold all priests automatically guilty is thought to be good for all, but this is the old Judas-priest’s cry, Pro bono Ecclesiae! (For the good of the Church!), enabling doing evil so as to pretend that one is achieving good, which is explicitly condemned as worthy of hell by Saint Paul (Romans 3,8).

But, of course, lack of due process for anyone is not good for anyone, and in the long run, hurts real victims, who will be ignored when people get so fed up with false accusations that they will brow-beat even real victims into silence. Giving the green light to false accusations is to re-rape real victims.

Those who collaborate in whatever way in insuring that there is to be no due process for priests are collaborators in abuse. It needs to stop. It needs to stop now.

I suggest that the Attorney General’s office tell the full truth – with a time-line – about what happened concerning Father Gordon MacRae, including details and names of all involved. That kind of honesty helps everyone.

Prayers and blessings.

Father George David Byers

EARLY SECOND CENTURY

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.

Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.

Just because!

The ram in the thicket, which Abraham sacrificed in place of his son Isaac, as a symbol of the Sacrifice of the Redeemer that was yet to be provided by the Lord.

The great Ryan Anthony MacDonald, journalist and author of A RAM IN THE THICKET, has written a guest-post on the blog THESE STONE WALLS hosted by the falsely accused and long imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae (about).

There have been some rather incisive articles of late over on These Stone Walls, including:

• Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force (by Father Gordon MacRae)
• Pope Francis and The Judas Crisis (by yours truly) This article is a lead into another article going to the heart of the matter: The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)<

Some significant, gripping, recent articles by Ryan MacDonald include:

• Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison

• Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner – Priest

• SHOULD THE CASE AGAINST FATHER GORDON MACRAE BE REVIEWED?

Nota Bene: This last link listed above is a response of Ryan MacDonald to a “letter to the editor” of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, a letter that was attacked Father Gordon MacRae with a breathless ignorance of the facts of the case. Now, just to say, in decades gone by, HPR has published some great articles, including one by yours truly (Offering Mass Invalidly - The priest must pronounce the words of consecration — March 1998). At any rate, that gracious response of Ryan MacDonald, presenting the actual facts of the case in order to set the record straight, was not published by HPR, which, I must say, seems rather nefarious to me. But, more on that later.

The demon Azazel taking away the scapegoat

I should also like to note that last article of Ryan MacDonald’s pushing for a review of the case of Father Gordon MacRae is the article for which Ryan MacDonald’s most recent article acts as the Prequel.

Ryan MacDonald has just now published a guest-post on These Stone Walls:

The Story Buried Under the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case

Just now published. This is well worth the read.

It’s a story involving murder and suicide and betrayal of the innocent.

Nota bene: Betrayal of the innocent helps no one, not the ones betrayed, not the betrayers, not the false victims, and certainly not any true victims of other cases, who are re-raped by such capitalizing on their sufferings for the financial benefit of others.

I know of a number of priests who need our prayers in the coming days. Each of them is at the very heart of knowing what it means to be betrayed, each in diverse circumstances, each of them having far-reaching effects on all other priests throughout the world, without exception, whether these others know it or not. There is a great deal that is riding on what happens to them in these days though they are spread throughout the world and, for all I know, never met or even talked to each other. They are all great priests. All have suffered horrific betrayal.

Prayer moves mountains. How about we set a novena time, say between the Feast of the great foster father of Jesus, Saint Joseph, on May first, so that the end date would be on the Solemnity of the Ascension of our dear Lord into heaven?

Saint Joseph will surely direct us also to our Lady and, I think, to Saint Michael. So how about these three prayers every day for the novena?

Mark your calendars!

(1) Prayer to Saint Joseph by Blessed Pius IX on December 8, 1870, on the occasion of his being proclaimed Patron of the Universal Church:

O blessed Joseph, on whom God bestowed the name and dignity of foster-father of Jesus; and gave Mary ever Virgin to be your most pure spouse; head of the Holy Family on earth; finally chosen by the Vicar of Christ as Patron and Protector of the Universal Church established by the Lord Jesus Christ, with the greatest confidence I implore for that same Church militant on earth, your most powerful assistance. Keep, I beseech you, in the special care of that paternal love with which you are ever inflamed, the Roman Pontiff, all bishops and priests united to the See of Peter. Be the defender of all who labor for the salvation of souls among the sorrows and trials of this life. Bring all peoples of their own free will to submit themselves to the Church, which is everywhere the necessary means of salvation. Accept, most holy Joseph, the offering of myself, whole and entire, which I make to you, freely and willingly. I consecrate myself wholly to you, to be always my father, protector, and leader in the way of salvation. Obtain for me exceeding great cleanliness of heart, and a burning love of the interior life. Grant that, following your footsteps, I may direct all my actions to the greater glory of God, in union with the love of the Divine Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary. Finally, pray that I may share in the peace and joy that was yours in your most holy death. Amen.

(2) The Emergency Chaplet of the Immaculate Conception

(3) Prayer to Saint Michael:

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

See: The Judas Crisis and The National Catholic Risk Retention Group (TNCRRG)

These kinds of birds are “stoopers”, that is, they “stoop”, that is, they circle about and then, upon seeing prey far below, tuck down, dive, that is, stoop at breakneck speed, and, nearing their prey at ground level, break off their dive with talons out at a good 100 Gs (from gravitation: perceived weight as related to acceleration/deceleration). Pilots black out in abrupt turns that cause more than 9 Gs, with their flight computers automatically taking over.

Creatures like this particular stooper remind me of my own insane extreme sport frightful velocity stooping as a kid, flying through the air at tree-top level. So I googled — frightful velocity stooping — and clicked on the first entry (airspacemag). What a magnificent, well written, light-hearted story, a day brightener, an occasion to praise God who created such stooping birds. A good read for a coffee break.

Perhaps some of you have been reading the blog enough to remember a snippet from the still being written autobiography, the bit about my love for insane extreme sports as a kid. It was because of my experiences flying through the air that has my heart rejoice when I see stooping birds, especially when they are stooping! Such is my rejoicing that it is an occasion to praise our Heavenly Father.

Once in a while my father would dump us two boys off at the local ski “resort”, which cost, I think, $4.50 on weekdays. It had a few rope-tows, a T-bar, and, finally, a chairlift. It was here that I was introduced to extreme sports. I was soon better than anyone, I thought, on the steep walls of moguls, as they were called, flying straight down these impossible obstacle courses. I would also cut in between ski slopes where no one else dared to go, through deep, wooded ravines – complete with frozen creeks and snow covered boulders – all at breakneck speeds, come what may when exploding up and out the top of the ridge on the other side. I soon learned I could do any of these things only a few times on any given expedition, as this also was hard on my ever ailing legs.

There was, however, one activity a handful of us kids would throw ourselves into again and again… and again. And I was by far the most insane of all of them. Off to the side of “the ridge”, there was a hundred foot long jump that had been built up with bulldozers over the summer. In the winter, a mountain of hay bales was piled high on top of that to make the jump even higher. The idea was to approach the jump slowly, do a few tricks in the hang-time, then land smoothly on the steep slope constructed by the bulldozers. In this way, no one could really get hurt. People did get hurt, of course, doing extra flips and spins in the air that they were not prepared to do, thus keeping the ski-patrols busy with splints and sleds.

I could do plenty of tricks, but I thought all that to be boring. So, instead, I would take the chairlift to the top of the hill, five slopes over and perhaps a quarter mile way, way above the jump, which was itself as far down the hill as possible, just above the parking lots. I would pick up speed by launching myself off the chairlift, then skate on the skis, tucking down and racing like a bullet, barely avoiding people and trees, finally hitting the jump built on top of the jump at full speed, flying along the tree tops and far past the end of the landing ramp of the jump, far out on the flats below. Crack! The sound of the skis slamming onto the hard packed snow below could be heard like a 50 cal rifle shot. I would have just enough time to slow down and not crash into the people who were lined up to go back up the hill. I destroyed three sets of skis in this way… parce que je suis un enfant terrible! Buying second-hand skis was, of course, the order of the day.

Now, it would have been fatal, of course, to fall straight down from such a height, but I was going so fast that there was no danger of being hurt in such a landing, though it seemed like it would be certain death every time, which was the whole fun of it. I would almost be knocked unconscious as the rest of my body would slam down onto the back of the skis. On some days, cameras were everywhere, filming my antics, but that, I thought, was just annoying. They couldn’t possibly understand the exhilaration of hanging between life and death for seconds on end, which seemed much, much longer going through it, time and again.

If such an extreme sport had been a death wish – which some people said it was – this would have been manifested in activities that were actually a risk to life and limb. What I didn’t know is that, in all this activity, I was destroying my knees for life. Yet, I still don’t regret those adventures. I really was having a great time. Even after all this I could still run like the wind, but only for shorter distances. Now I can walk quickly, though after a few seconds that slows up too. But, anyway, great memories! Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good.

Dominica in Sexagesima…

In illo témpore: Cum turba plúrima convenírent, et de civitátibus properárent ad Iesum, dixit per similitúdinem: Exiit, qui séminat, semináre semen suum…

The parable of the sower is the Gospel in the Extraordinary Form today. Even if you will be attending the Ordinary Form, I would like to call your mind to some commentary I made some years ago on a phrase of Saint Catherine of Siena. Keep in mind some words of Saint Paul for the Epistle: “With the weak I am weak…” That’s an examination of conscience as opposed to the opposite, and is necessary for understanding all this, or anything for that matter. O.K. Here we go. This is one to mull over, so I’ll just let it sit here for a while:

We find some of the fruits of the conversations between our Lord Jesus and Saint Catherine in The Divine Doctrine of Jesus Christ. In this post, I include a vignette representing the incisiveness of this doctrine and the wonderful clarity of her own spiritual life. These few words provide the key to understanding what is – it seems for us priests – by far the most difficult passage in the Gospels, a passage found, in one way or another, throughout the Scriptures of both Testaments. One will have to go through quite a purgatory in this life or the next in order to sound out the truth of her words. I once heard her words being mocked by an ecclesiastic who is influential in seminary formation for many Episcopal Conferences, and who for many years now has begged me not to publish my own comments, wanting, as he does, to be the first to write on this passage of Catherine, but to mock it instead of explaining it. Such drama! What to do? Publish this post, of course!

In this passage of The Divine Doctrine, Christ’s words are incisive and ironic, and lead us to the seeming paradox of caritas in veritate, of charity in truth. The words under discussion are found in the Gospels between the Parable of the Sower and Jesus’ explanation of the Parable of the Sower.

Catherine is relating her report of what our Lord is dictating to her. Jesus is speaking about Saint Paul’s interpretation of the key of knowledge, by which we see what the eye cannot see, hear what the ear cannot hear, and understand in our hearts what otherwise cannot arise in the heart of man. Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 2,9, does interpret Isaiah 64,10 – cited in Matthew 13,15, Acts 28,27, et al. – by saying it is by way of the love of God, by way of the crucified Lord of glory, that we see and hear and understand. Paul is accurate, says our Lord – as Saint Catherine relates – so much so that “questo parbe che volesse dire Paulo,” so much so that “this seems to be what Paul wanted to say,” that is, as if it were Paul’s revelation, Paul’s knowledge, Paul’s very own desire. In other words, Paul was so transformed by grace, that it was as if Paul spoke on his own authority. Yet, in this passage, the most erudite of all academic Pharisees himself happily admits that he is speaking by the power of God and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was not conjecturing about what it seems to Him that Paul wanted to say, as if Jesus were Paul’s student: “It seems to me that Paul wanted to say this…” Jesus was rather confirming just how correct Paul’s words were, for they were actualized in Paul’s life with the grace of Jesus, that power of God, and the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Himself fulfilled the vocation of Isaiah, to blind eyes, stop up ears, harden hearts, and remove all understanding lest people, including us priests, turn to the Lord to be saved. Good! We are not to pretend that we can turn to the Lord under our own power like some Pelagian work-your-own-way-to-God idiot. We must allow ourselves, by God’s grace, to be turned to the Lord, to be brought up into His mercy. We hate any demand to give up control over ourselves, even of our spiritual lives, even to the Lord Himself. This is our fallen human condition. It is a crucifixion of our fallen spirits simply to watch the Lord bringing us to Himself. If people want to have a work to do in the spiritual life, it is this, to be crucified. When we have our eyes fixed on Him, our ears listening in obedience, our hearts able to love whatever the cost of a pierced heart, this will then be our greatest joy, a proof of the resurrection of the Lord in our lives, for we cannot be led by a dead god in this way, but only in friendship with the Living God.

But let’s test this friendship with our Lord, shall we? Let’s take a sentence from the Theologian, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who also makes a comment on Paul’s letters, this time on Ephesians, 5,23 – “The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is also the Head of the Church, Himself Savior of the Body.” The question is, who interprets whom? Does Jesus guess what His Body wants, or does the Body know, because of intimate friendship, what the Head of the Body wants?

O de kefalhn thV EkklhsiaV ton Criston einai maqwn, touto pro pantwn dianoeisqw, oti pasa kefalhn tw upokeimenw swmati omofuhV esti kai omoousioV.

Here’s my translation of that, since the usual one is absolutely pitiful:

But the one learning the Head of the Church to be Christ thoroughly understands this before all things, that the entire Head, in subjection to the Body, is of the same nature and same being.

[Gregorius Nyssenus, De Perfectione et qualem oporteat esse Christianum, ad Olypium Monachum, Patrologia Graeca, XLVI, 1863, ed. J.-P. Migne, 1863, 251-286. If I remember correctly, this quote is spread across columns 274-275.]

This is Gregory’s greatest spiritual work, and he here flies into the heavens. He is at his absolute best, his most sublime. He doesn’t say that Christ is subject to us, but that Christ is teaching us to be subject to Himself, making us capable of learning this by way of Himself taking on our human nature. Christ Jesus doesn’t need to learn from us what we seem to want to express (“questo parbe che volesse dire Paulo” – “this, it seems to me – is what Paul wanted to say”). Instead, as Catherine analogously reports Jesus’ words, It seems as if this is what Paul himself wanted to say, though Paul actually said this by the power of God and the revelation of the Holy Spirit!

So, in this friendship with our Lord, blessed are we priests if we thank our Lord for sending women like Saint Catherine of Siena into our lives in every which way. Thank you, Lord! — Jesus is just this good, just this kind. Now, think about it: “A sower went out to sow…”

I’m sure you remember when, back in 2005, frère Roger, the Taizé prior was stabbed to death by Luminiţa Ruxandra Solcan. Was she mentally ill? Probably. Was she also possessed? I don’t know.

But that’s the point I’d like to make in this post. Just because someone is terribly mentally ill doesn’t at all mean that Satan is going to go out of his way to be nice and charitable to that person just because he or she is suffering already.

Instead, it is much more likely that Satan will go out of his way to fill health care workers with hubris, to the end that they think that Satan doesn’t exist, and, even if he does, he surely could never ever bother anyone who is mentally ill, so that the two, illness and harassment from Satan, are, for some unknown reason, mutually exclusive.

Indeed, I’ve met plenty of exorcists who think that the two are exclusive. The reason for that opinion, in every case, is that the priest is unwilling to be politically incorrect, going against the prevailing nonsense, and therefore risking looking foolish in the eyes of his bishop or the press or the medical community or his own parish or his fellow priests…

• But why would Satan ever be so charitable so as not to bother someone who is sick?
• Isn’t it true that the harassment of Satan can even be the cause of or aggravating factor with, say, the ever so hypothetical fracturing of someone’s psyche by way of defense mechanisms put in place in an attempt to escape whatever?
• Isn’t it true that the ever so hypothetical dissociative identity disorder is ever so hypothetical, suspect even?

And let’s turn that around:

• Is every possessed person necessarily also crazy? When Jesus exorcised the Legion of fallen spirits in the Gadarene demoniac, was that demoniac not then immediately in his right mind, calmly sitting down?

We read this from FoxNews:

Just as the St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church choir began its final hymn, a man vaulted over pews and lashed out at the singers, sending four churchgoers to the hospital with stab wounds, authorities said. Worshippers screamed as the shocking and chaotic scene unfolded Sunday with the attacker continuing the onslaught until he was tackled and held by church members for officers, who raced to the scene, police said. Four parishioners were injured, including church choir director Adam Alvarez and flutist Gerald Madrid, police spokesman Robert Gibbs said. All four were being treated at hospitals and listed in stable condition. [...] It was not immediately known what sparked the bizarre attack at the church on the city’s Westside. Investigators don’t yet know whether Capener had ties to the victims or whether he regularly attended the church, Gibbs said. FoxNews

The Los Angeles Times adds some this:

Another parishioner [...] told The Times she was sitting right behind the man, who “was kind of twitchy, sketchy looking. He had a tattoo of an upside-down star on his wrist. [...] The man climbed over the pews, punched and then repeatedly stabbed the choir’s lead singer. He said, like, ‘False preacher!’ I don’t know why. LATimes

This kind of thing happens occasionally in this or that church right around the world. But, let’s discern:

• The tattoo, although probably pointing to Satanism, doesn’t necessarily mean anything in this case, but it could.
• The cry of “False preacher!” is really strange. It could point to this fellow having been traumatized by a soloist/preacher in, say, a Baptist church, when he was younger than he is now. Sure. But it could also point to Satan being bothered by a particularly reverent hymn being sung.

There are many unknowns. I’m happy that people were not jumping to any conclusions at all in this case, but just noted things. That’s a good balance. Kudos to them for keeping their sanity in an insane situation.

But not all are so balanced, especially some priests who have been taking care of souls by way of exorcism for the past number of decades.

Now there are some newly trained priests who are available, but I noticed that some also tend to over-romanticize exorcism, you know, the old “It’s so special and I’m so special for having something to do with this!” rubbish. That’s always a tell-tale sign that these few have zero idea of what is going on during the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that they offer daily, when all hell breaks out before the great glory of the Lord’s love for us. If they only had a smidgen of understanding about this, they would know that exorcism is just another sacramental that they can use out of charity during the normal course of affairs in the care of souls. Just do it and it’s done and praise the Lord and move on in humble thanksgiving.

To help some of that understanding along a bit, I’ve penned a rather lengthy and rather incisively ferocious series on exorcism, which can be found on the sidebar of http://holysoulshermitage.com. Here are some of the articles, with 39 perhaps being of immediate importance to some would be assistants of exorcism:

01 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Mountain, Saint Michael, Malachi Martin

02 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Go to Confession!

03 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Have the possessed go to confession

04 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t do an exorcism over a confessing penitent

05 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Rejoice in the Beatitudes!

06 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Figuring out terminology: Part I

7 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – More on terminology: Major and Minor

8 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage — Lacking a Mandate

9 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t have any heroes except Jesus!

10 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t be doing esoteric “studies”

11 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Call only the devil the devil!

12 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Never take gifts!

13 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Limited minutes sessions — UPDATE

14 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t be dramatically romanticized!

15 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Rejoice in irony!

16 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t play Manichaean “Hide and Go Seek” with Satan!

17 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Mary’s role in exorcism

18 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage — The weaker you are, the better!

19 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Just be the worst sinner ever!

20 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, bin Ladin… [By far the most popular post]

21 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Mind games with the devil!

22 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Demonizing religion, religious demonizing, and the genius-project of jacking up the stakes for world peace

23 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t do the devil’s work! This reminds me of Signorelli’s anti-Christ…

24 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – No dead person causes trouble

25 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Is an exorcism in Latin more powerful?

26 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Genealogical trees are not possessed! and a note about purgatory

27 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Genealogical trees are not possessed! UPDATE

28 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – psychology / psychiatry and skeptics!

29 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Choose utterly boring assistants

30 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Fortune telling and Ouija boards: ideomotor or idiotmotor? A note on the vulnerability of cynical skeptics of religion

31 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Curses schmursches! Well, almost…

32 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Discernment: discovering “unknown unknowns”!

33 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Failed exorcisms and what is worse than any failed exorcism

34 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Most important post in this series: A successful exorcism is humorous!

35 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Don’t do an exorcism on those who want to be possessed (like when Shirley MacLaine goes Out On a Limb)

36 Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – What to do if I think I’m harassed by Satan?

37 – Exorcism tips from Holy Souls Hermitage – Clericalism insults the laity!

38 — Exorcism Tips from Holy Souls Hermitage — No entitlements!

39 Exorcism Tips from Holy Souls Hermitage — Fisking the CDF Instruction on Healing (2000) and Inde ab aliquot annis (1985)

I heard talk of that about a facility in Poughkeepsie, what was once called the New York State Insane Asylum, where Rosemary Kennedy had her lobotomy, and where I was once the Catholic chaplain. The Hudson River facility once had a population of 18,000, with 9,000 patients and 9,000 staff and administration. The idea in its remaining years was to reduce numbers of patients and close the money hungry facility, no matter what. It finally closed the other year.

While I didn’t hear of carrying patients across state lines, I did hear of allegations about simply leading the patients into the forest down by the river and abandoning them. They would be found dead of exposure within a number of days. That seemed a bit too incredible. When I would ask about that, the process seemed to be a bit more complicated, with a bit more distance between the hospital and the deaths, so that the alleged situation involved having patients who were truly incapable of living in group homes assigned to group homes nevertheless. It wouldn’t take long to see the same result in the forest down by the river, it seems.

Whatever about that, I was once sitting in one of the admin offices, waiting to speak to one of the higher-ups, and whiled away the time by paging through some of the pamphlets left by pharmaceutical companies trying to sell their wares. One was a medicine that purportedly “cured” schizophrenia. Wow, thought I. So, I read it more carefully, including the microscopic fine print on the back of the pamphlet. It said that the medicine would allow nearly all patients to be discharged successfully from psychiatric institutions. The only catch was that the medicine would certainly kill at least one in every one hundred patients for an unknown reason. But — hey! — you save money!

Of course, such things may only be urban myths (and I don’t know if they used that medicine or not). However, I do know that there was a great deal of tension about finding ways to reduce the patient population.

It is a sign of a total collapse of a culture and nation when the most vulnerable are treated like trash to be dumped.

We’ve being doing that for decades — and by the tens of millions — with the unborn and just born.

Now we’ve moved on to vulnerable adults.

Very soon it will be about saying that Catholics cannot act according to their consciences as formed by the Church, and they will be penalized and worse for respecting life. But we’ve already come to that too. All out genocides follow pretty quickly. Know your history. But even if you don’t, that should be common sense.

One of the greatest gifts one could give society is to take care of those who are disabled in any way. Sure, we sometimes need help. Sometimes, institutions are necessary. I know of one set up for children who… eat… themselves… But, if it is possible, taking care of the disabled at home bears a witness that is known far and wide, and is greatly appreciated. If more would do this, we would have a much more loving culture. But right now, few do. And we live in a culture of death.

This is the greatness of Jesus, that He reached into this darkness, taking it all on Himself, so that He would have the right in justice to have mercy on us.

That mercy is not about doing away with the just effects of original sin in this life, such as weakness of mind and will, emotions all over the place, and sickness, and death.

Rather, that mercy of His is about having us, weak as we are, live His love for others, respecting them, caring for them, having hope that all will be different in heaven, where sickness and disability and death are no longer. When we do live this love, we ourselves gain so much.

Remember the FoxNews  interview of the father of the little boy embraced by Pope Francis?

It’s the little boy who teaches us how to love. It’s the disabled who teach us how to love. It’s the disabled who teach us that there is no “we” and “them”, but only WE, all of us together, hear on this earth, and for eternity, when we will be whole and entire, when the tables will be reversed on those who so hated the disabled as to have them killed for the sake of money, for the sake of convenience, for the sake of the sense of “power”, of playing god.

Jesus was that disabled boy, that disabled girl, disabled man, disabled woman, while He willingly hung on the cross to teach us how to love without counting the cost, never backing down, no matter how convenient, how expedient that might seem to have been for some. Love right unto death. And Jesus would have us learn that. And we can. We have all the opportunities in the world right before us, if we would only open our eyes.

Jesus is just that good, just that kind, to provide the strength.

Question: Although patient dumping is common to both political parties, is this new bid for patient dumping a fairly direct consequence of Obamacare?