Wednesday, February 28, 2018

The Man Who Was “Ante-Pope”--Cardinal Carlo Martini

The Man Who Was “Ante-Pope”

Before his death in 2012, Cardinal Carlo Martini eerily called himself an “ante-pope,” a “precursor and preparer for the Holy Father.”

Martini was the leading antagonist to Popes John Paul II and Benedict—a Jesuit famous for groaning that the Church was “200 years behind.” In Night Conversations with Cardinal Martini, he cringed at the “major damage” caused by Humanae Vitae. The Church spoke “too much” about the sixth commandment and sin. He said legal abortion was, ultimately, “positive.”

For Martini saw himself as a dreamer who kept us “open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit.” Hadn’t the prophet Joel said that your sons and daughters would prophesy and your old men would dream dreams? The old cardinal dreamed of young “prophets” who’d criticize the Church and a “strong middle generation” who’d effect “changes.”

Martini said that in “preparation” for the 2005 papal election, he and others discussed the “new answers” that the next pope would “have to give” on sexuality and Communion for adulterers. For Martini was the leader of the St. Gallen “mafia,” the anti-Ratzinger group that wanted a “much more modern” Church under Cardinal Bergoglio.

According to Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer, Cardinal Bergoglio quoted Martini frequently and was introduced by him to the Gallen group after the two Jesuits reconnected in 2001. Cardinal Bergoglio placed second in the 2005 conclave, amidst a “dramatic struggle.” The group reportedly ceased meeting the following year, and Martini—long sick with Parkinson’s—died in 2012.
But in a fiery last interview published immediately after his death, the ante-pope burned with disdain.

The Church was “tired,” its rites were “pompous,” and he who had dreamed of a “young church” now stared at countless ashes. How he wanted the embers beneath the ashes to burn! Where were the men who burned for the spreading of the “spirit”? Where were the men who would preach “discernment” and carry the Eucharist to those in “complex family situations”?
“Are we afraid? Fear instead of courage?” he cried.

As Ivereigh notes, Cardinal Bergoglio could soon be heard quoting the jeremiad, telling the embers to burn beneath the ashes of a Church that kept Jesus “tied up in the sacristry.”

Months later, the “Martini Pope”—as Sandro Magister puts it—now reigned. Pope Francis soon praised Martini as “prophetic”—a “father for the whole church”—and hailed his agenda of “focusing” on synods. In 1999, Martini “had a dream” of hurtling the Church into “permanent” synodality—that is, permanent revolution. The decentralized, “synodal” Church would foment changes on marriage, sexuality, penitential practice, priestly celibacy, women in the Church, ecumenism.

So at the rigged Synod on the Family, one Gallen alumnus, Cardinal Kasper, pushed for Communion for adulterers and another—who had told a king to legalize abortion and a sexual abuse victim to seek forgiveness—waxed poetic about “the womb of mercy.” A leading Martini disciple, Archbishop Bruno Forte, drafted the interim report on the “positive” aspects of sins against purity—and later laughed that Pope Francis had promised to “draw out the conclusions” for Kasper’s proposal because speaking “plainly” would’ve made a “terrible mess.”

Cardinal Baldisseri—who, according to The Rigging of a Vatican Synod?, was overheard explaining how he’d manipulate that synod—calls this year’s synod on young people a “continuation of the subject of the family.” He says the youths bemoaning Church “prohibitions” via web surveys and Facebook will marvelously prophesy what Christ wants to “cut out.”

“As in the days of Samuel and Jeremiah, young people know how to discern the signs of our times, indicated by the Spirit,” the synod’s preparatory document intones. That text, as Matthew McCusker shows, is pervaded with Modernism, which heretically claims that doctrines come from “experience” and thus must “evolve.”

Modernists—as Pope St. Pius X warned—hold that “truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.”
At a pre-synodal planning seminar with Baldisseri, one young prophet invoked her sage “experience” to lament how “closed” the Church is to those with “radical” views on issues like transgenderism. In other remarks published by the Vatican, she extolled a fourteen-year-old who “need[ed] to create her own religion to find one that is welcoming.”

Another young prophet announced: “The pope asked us to ‘make chaos,’ that’s precisely what we’re doing.”
Indeed, Pope Francis had urged the young—specifically “agnostics,” those “estranged” from the Church, and “atheists”—to “criticize” the Church in fulfillment of Joel 3:1-2. “‘The old will dream dreams, and the young will prophesy,’ namely, with prophecies they will take concrete things forward,” he explained.

He was quoting Martini once again, for the ante-pope had dreamed all this, too. Grandiosely invoking Joel in Night Conversations, Martini presaged that the “things we are waiting for” would gust in “via the uninhibited qualities of young people.” The Church “can’t teach young people anything.” It “can only help them to listen to their inner master.” Being taught by the young is a new “pastoral principle.”

They were Martini’s “glowing coals”—“working to save the world” with their leftist politics, forging new “beginnings” with their “less inhibited approach to sexuality.” Were they “still interested in criticizing us, the Church”?
For their sake, Martini had dreamed of a pope who’d admit Humanae Vitae’s “mistakes”—a pope who wouldn’t need to retract the encyclical because he’d just “write a new one.”

In 2014 Pope Francis was asked if the Church could “take up again” the topic of contraception, for “Cardinal Martini believed it was now time.” He replied that “it all depends on how … Humanae Vitae is interpreted”—and now one of his top theologians, a Pontifical Academy for Life member, says some circumstances “require contraception” under Amoris Laetitia. 

Other members of the deconstructed pro-life academy defend aborting children and say we’ve evolved past that wispy term “intrinsically evil” because Pope Francis says “time is greater than space.” The new dean of the similarly subverted John Paul II Institute—who wrote books with Martini and organized a radical “shadow synod”—sits on the commission set to “re-interpret” Humanae Vitae on the sly.

“If it gets too peaceful in the Church,” the ante-pope taught, just recall Christ’s “desire to throw a flaming torch of inspiration onto the earth.”

So once the ante-pope’s torch has burned into Humanae Vitae, burned into the very notion of intrinsic evil, the permanent revolution will blaze forward. It will show us why Martini called Luther a “great reformer” and said “you cannot make God Catholic”; why next year’s Amazon synod will crusade for married priests and women deacons; why the Germans are letting some Protestants receive the Eucharist and a respected Vaticanist says an “ecumenical mass” is being readied; why Pope St. Pius X cried of the Modernists: “What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed according to their principles?”

Then, like some strong and ominous wind, it will sweep aside the ashes to unveil the ante-pope’s “utopia,” where everyone ends up “transparent and accepted by everyone else.” Then the prophets will cry, with the dreamer, that “the times are long gone when the Church could talk you into having a guilty conscience.” Then the sons and daughters will prophesy that—according to the logic condemned by Ven. Fulton Sheen—there is no Hell, no sin, no judge, and no judgment and so evil is good and good is evil.
Then it shall be as the old ante-pope had dreamed.

That is why we must pray and make reparation and speak out, now.



Sunday, February 25, 2018

Father Rutler's Weekly Column February 25, 2018

Father Rutler's Weekly Column

February 25, 2018
Few lands are more cheerful than beautiful Switzerland. There are the mountains, the blonde girls yodeling, the lads sounding Alpine horns across the canyons, St. Bernard dogs with brandy, and all that chocolate and material prosperity. The cynic would dismiss that as a caricature. Think of Orson Welles in the 1949 film The Third Man: “. . . in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

   The cuckoo clock was actually invented in the Black Forest of Germany. And while thoughts of Switzerland evoke peace, its last strife being a brief civil war in 1847, it is highly militarized and was famous for its mercenaries (which is how the Holy See got the Swiss Guards), and it has mandatory conscription for all able-bodied males. With the lowest crime rate in the world, it ranks only below the United States and Yemen in per capita gun ownership. Switzerland is the second largest exporter per capita of assault weapons, ammunition and tanks to such countries as Saudi Arabia. No country has an unblemished history, and in 2013 the government formally apologized for the forced labor of half a million children in the past two centuries. Officially neutral in World War II, it profited greatly as a banker for Nazi gold.

   While proud of its reputation for enlightened social policies, abortion is legal there and the first-trimester limit can be extended for “medical and psychological reasons.” In our time of mania for tearing down politically incorrect statues, there remains in the heart of Bern the 1546 Kindlifresser statue of an ogre devouring babies.

   If the monstrous man were eating lobsters, the statue might be torn down because the Swiss government has passed a law effective March 1 that bans the boiling alive of lobsters, since it is claimed that lobsters can feel pain. Lobsters may only be cooked after first having been electrocuted or sedated. This will not have much impact, since Switzerland is land-locked, with negligible crustacean consumption; but imported lobsters must be shipped in seawater and not packed in ice. This runs parallel to California’s legislation banning foie gras, which requires the forced feeding of geese. But partial-birth abortion remains legal, even though human life in utero can feel pain after at least the first eight weeks of gestation. 

      We can eat lobsters even in Lent, by a revelation given to St. Peter (Acts 10:13-15). But the same God knew (Jeremiah 1:4-5) that unborn babies are sensate. That notwithstanding, there are places where lobsters and geese are safer than human babies. Inconsistent? As Sir Walter Scott wrote: “O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”

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Friday, February 23, 2018

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, is not to be admitted to Holy Communion until he repents of his public abortion advocacy.

Catholic bishop bars pro-abortion U.S. senator from Communion until he ‘repents’


Thu Feb 22, 2018 - 9:29 am EST
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois, February 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Thomas Paprocki announced last week that Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who lives in his diocese, is not to be admitted to Holy Communion until he repents of his public abortion advocacy.

The catalyst for this announcement was the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have made most abortions after 20 weeks illegal (the bill had an exception for babies conceived in rape and incest).

“Fourteen Catholic senators voted against the bill that would have prohibited abortions starting at 20 weeks after fertilization, including Sen. Richard Durbin, whose residence is in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois,” said Paprocki.
“I agree completely with His Eminence, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, who called the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act ‘appalling,’” he said.


Paprocki noted that Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law says those “who obstinately persist in mani­fest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

“In April 2004, Sen. Durbin’s pastor, then Msgr. Kevin Vann (now Bishop Kevin Vann of Orange, CA), said that he would be reticent to give Sen. Durbin Holy Communion because his pro-abortion position put him outside of communion or unity with the Church’s teachings on life,” Paprocki recalled.

“My predecessor, now Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha, said that he would support that decision,” he said. “I have continued that position.”
Paprocki explained, “Because [Durbin’s] voting record in support of abortion over many years constitutes ‘obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin,’ the determination continues that Sen. Durbin is not to be admitted to Holy Communion until he repents of this sin.”
“This provision is intended not to punish, but to bring about a change of heart,” said Paprocki. “Sen. Durbin was once pro-life. I sincerely pray that he will repent and return to being pro-life.”

The Catholic Church teaches that the Eucharist confected by the priest at Mass is the literal body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. No Catholic who has committed a serious (mortal) sin is supposed to receive the Eucharist until he or she has repented of that sin and gone to Confession. Giving Holy Communion to a public figure whose sinful actions, votes, and statements prevent him from worthily receiving Holy Communion constitutes scandal in addition to sacrilege. Doing so can mislead and confuse the Catholic faithful. 


In addition to his ardent abortion advocacy, Durbin votes for and publicly advocates against other Catholic moral teachings. He is a strong supporter of same-sex “marriage”; the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign gives him 100% on their scorecard. He also earned a 100% from abortion lobby group NARAL.
Durbin has said anyone can be a Democrat as long as they support abortion – and that Democrats who “personally” oppose abortion need to keep that view to themselves.

He supports funding America’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood. In addition to aborting over 321,000 babies a year, Planned Parenthood prescribes hormone therapy for the gender-confused, dispenses contraception, and encourages sexual behavior that violates natural law – all of which are incompatible with Catholic moral teaching.

Ironically, Durbin was one of the senators who came under fire for asking a Trump judicial nominee questions that some scholars said violate the Constitution’s prohibition on a religious test for public officials.
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, told Amy Coney Barrett.
Durbin joined in Feinstein’s questioning, asking Barrett, “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?”

He boasted of being the product of 19 years of Catholic education, but then admitted, “every once in a while Holy Mother the Church has not agreed with a vote of mine, uh, and has let me know.”

Bishop Paprocki also cited the USCCB’s 2004 statement on Catholics in Political Life, which says, “Failing to protect the lives of innocent and defenseless members of the human race is to sin against justice. Those who formulate law therefore have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good.”

Monday, February 19, 2018

Why the world and the devil hate men, and what the Church can do about it

Why the world and the devil hate men, and what the Church can do about it

The evidence is clear: All suffer if men fail. 

Time for a quiz! Which group is most likely to be unemployed, suffer violence, be injured at work, become homeless, be murdered, be addicted to drugs or alcohol, die of cancer or commit suicide?

(HINT: The answer might seem counter-intuitive.)
ANSWER: Men.

Last week, I wrote about the studies discussing the widespread unhappiness of women, its various causes and distinctively Christian remedies. Even as the world, the flesh and the devil rage against women and femininity, these same rage against men and masculinity.

Remember that Satan hates God, and so hates creation, love and humanity. The building block of love and humanity is family, emerging from the marital union of man and woman. God created us as male and female, for each other, for family, for Heaven. Of course, then, Satan seeks to undermine and destroy what God has intended for us.

In our fallen world, humanity offered redemption and Heaven needs men to be husbands, fathers, priests, providers and warriors. Should it surprise us then, that during this dark phase of the war between good and evil, natural and supernatural forces are arrayed against the essentials of men and masculinity? Some more extreme rhetoric calls men “disposable,” but there are subtle ways that idea is communicated.

For example: In 2012 the Obama administration presented “The Life of Julia,” a video depicting the cradle-to-grave care provided for her by the federal government, without reference to father, family or husband.  Wags asked, “If Uncle Sam is your Sugar Daddy, why would you need a man?” No man need step up as a protector, provider, father or husband for Julia, because the federal government would meet all her needs. Julia’s male contemporaries, all dressed up and no place to go, as men, having no need to cultivate virtue, could descend to  boredom, diversion and addiction.

What is left, then are desperate men, unhappy women, abandoned children, a sick and dying civilization. Men are drawing a tragic conclusion: “Why pay the price for being a heroic man if men are unwelcome?” And so men abandoned the pursuits of Church and family.

But has the world yet learned its lesson? Evidence suggests not; witness the rise in college courses on “toxic masculinity.” Men are withdrawing and dying, even as they are told that they are unwelcome and unnecessary. Women and children suffer from the absence of the men they truly need. What are we to do?

Fortunately, there are those in the world and the Church (here and here) who are insisting upon the goodness and necessity of men and masculinity. Authors such as Father Larry RichardsHarold Burke-Sivers and David Cavillo are writing books sounding the call for Catholic manhood. Father George Rutler’s latest column is an inspiration for men who would hear the call to be heroes. All that good work needs to be complemented by a re-statement for our times of the masculinity and fatherhood of St. Joseph.

The evidence is clear: All suffer if men fail. Men are failing because the natural and supernatural forces arrayed against them are prevailing, and the best blessings and wisdom of nature and grace are not being offered to them precisely when they need them most.

Let’s respond by coming to know and tell the truth about the crisis of men in the world and in the Church. Let’s answer with clarity and charity when we hear the myths of “toxic masculinity” or “male privilege.” Let’s reconsider how we are raising our boys, so that they can become the godly men they were meant to be, and that our women and children need and deserve.

In our parishes and dioceses, we need to promote Catholic wisdom and male fellowship. The “Faith & Ale” movement may be a good place to start. Weekly meetings to pray over the Sunday Scriptures, as seen in the “Gospel Forum,” can be a seedbed of faith and friendship for Catholic men. Lives and souls will be lost, and God’s glory diminished, if we don’t act to heal and liberate men, and call them to the heights that God intended for them. With Lent just a few weeks away, we might consider a commitment to intense intercession for men as our Lenten sacrifice. We need to act while there is still time.

When I write next, I will speak of the pernicious effects of gender ideology on our children. Until then, let’s keep each other in prayer.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

German cardinal: liturgical ‘blessing’ for gay unions is ‘truly…sacrilegious’

German cardinal: liturgical ‘blessing’ for gay unions is ‘truly…sacrilegious’

Featured Image
Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes 
GERMANY, February 8, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes criticized fellow German Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s suggestion that Catholic priests should consider “blessing” same-sex relationships liturgically.
Marx’s idea “truly seems sacrilegious” and “ignores the clear Revelation of God,” Cordes wrote in a response on kath.net. Dr. Maike Hickson translated it at One Peter Five.

“The Church is in its pastoral care bound to Holy Scripture and to its interpretation through the Church’s Magisterium,” wrote Cordes. “Marx does not even mention that homosexuality always contradicts the Will of God,” citing church teaching through the centuries.

Rather than being about receiving “God’s assistance for themselves,” those engaging in sodomy and wishing to have it “blessed” by the Church “aim with their request at the recognition and acceptance of their homosexual way of life and its ecclesial valorization.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “under no circumstances” can homosexual activity “be approved” as it is “intrinsically disordered.” Such acts are “contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” (CCC 2357).
However, Marx said on February 3 that homosexual couples need “closer pastoral care” and “one must also encourage priests and pastoral workers to give people in concrete situations [of homosexual unions] encouragement. I do not really see any problems there.”

Marx is the President of the German Bishops’ Conference.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Marx also said “yes,” he could imagine the creation of a rite for homosexual couples to be blessed in the Church.
This “encouragement” from priests which he called for might include some sort of “liturgical” recognition of their union.

But “how this would be done publicly, in a liturgical form,” is “another question...that is where one has to be reticent and also reflect upon that in a good way.”

After Catholic News Agency’s initial report on Marx’s comments, his office contacted the outlet and said they had mistranslated part of what he said.
The cardinal’s office sent CNA “a request for correction of [its] translation of the interview in question, expressing concern that CNA's translation constitutes a false reference and does not properly reflect the position of Cardinal Marx.”
The cardinal’s office maintains that rather than saying “yes,” there is a possibility of liturgical “blessing” of gay unions, he answered the question in a more subtle way without giving an explicit “yes.” However, the German Bishops’ Conference doesn’t seem to deny the rest of his statements on how “one must encourage priests” to give encouragement to homosexual couples, which could include public blessings that would take a “liturgical” form.

The cardinal’s staff asked that CNA change his answer about liturgically “blessing” gay unions to: “There are no general solutions and I think that would not be right, because we are talking about pastoral care for individual cases, and that applies to other areas as well, which we cannot regulate, where we have no sets of rules.”
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has also spoken out against Marx’s proposal.
“Any such ‘blessing rite’ would cooperate in a morally forbidden act, no matter how sincere the persons seeking the blessing,” wrote Chaput. He explained such a “blessing” would encourage people to continue living in a way the Church considers gravely sinful and spiritually damaging, and therefore would be uncharitable.

“There is no love – no charity – without truth, just as there is no real mercy separated from a framework of justice informed and guided by truth,” he wrote. “Creating confusion around important truths of our faith, no matter how positive the intention, only makes a difficult task more difficult.”

“There are two principles we need to remember,” Chaput wrote. “First, we need to treat all people with the respect and pastoral concern they deserve as children of God with inherent dignity. This emphatically includes persons with same-sex attraction. Second, there is no truth, no real mercy, and no authentic compassion, in blessing a course of action that leads persons away from God.”

“This in no way is a rejection of the persons seeking such a blessing, but rather a refusal to ignore what we know to be true about the nature of marriage, the family, and the dignity of human sexuality,” he explained. “Jesus said the truth will make us free. Nowhere did he suggest it will make us comfortable.”

Marx, one of the pope’s nine main advisors, said in 2016 that same-sex relationships have “worth” which must be recognized by the Church.  

“Padre Pio is often with me during exorcisms, and the devil fears him”

“Padre Pio is often with me during exorcisms, and the devil fears him”

He came to the attention of the media because he was the leader, on December 4, of a meeting at the Telesio Grammar School in Reggio Calabria, Italy, to discuss the “horror game” that has been popular online for quite a while, the “Charlie Charlie Challenge.”

A conference with the Focolarini
Fr. Piero Catalano, disciple of Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the famous exorcist of the diocese of Rome who died in 2016, is a priest and exorcist of Reggio Calabria, explained why he uses the relics of saints during exorcisms and invokes Saint Pio of Pietrelcina against the devil to good effect.

After a life dedicated to volunteer work with the Gen Movement (connected to the Focolari Movement founded by Chiara Lubich), on December 8, 1988 he became consecrated to God in the priesthood. He has been the pastor of two towns on the Jonica coast of Reggio Calabria—Roccaforte del Greco and Saint Pantaleone—and today is the pastor of the Parish of Saint John Nepomucene and Saint Philip Neri in Arangea.

The demons fear even to say his name!
Fr. Piero studied for years to be an exorcist and is a spiritual son of Fr. Amorth. He started practicing prayer of liberation at the age of 18, and was named an exorcist three years ago.

In his office, he has many relics of saints. “I use them during my exorcisms,” he explains to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (last December 19). “Which saint do I invoke most often? I have a special love for Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, who often makes himself present during exorcisms. The possessed person becomes afraid. He’ll say, ‘The one with the beard is here!’ And I reply, ‘By any chance, is he named Saint Pio of Pietrelcina?’ The demon will respond, ‘No, his name is Francesco Forgione.’ The devil fears even to name him.”

From nausea to cold
Fr. Piero says that he becomes aware of a demonic presence, a possession, or a vexation, through typical reactions of the demon. “For example, as soon as I put my hand on the person’s head, he or she pulls back, turns very cold, feels like he or she is choking, or becomes nauseated, etc.” If it’s not a case of demonic presence, then the exorcist limits himself to a prayer of liberation.

“Do you want to come over to my side?”
“The demon,” Fr. Piero observes, “does everything possible to tempt us exorcists. Once, he asked me, ‘How much money do you want to come over to my side?’ I started to laugh, because I’ve made a vow of poverty. I don’t have money to pay for my own funeral if I die, and I share everything with the poor. And the devil said, ‘If I could, I’d kill you instantly.’ Then I replied, ‘But you can’t because I belong to Jesus!'”

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

The Rosary to Heaven

You know the one about St. Peter investigating how souls were entering Heaven without his permission?

A funny and pious account of what Our Lady is doing in Heaven. 

Social networks are sharing the story that we reproduce below. It is certainly not a treatise on theology but, imperfections aside, it reflects how much Our Mother strives to help us reach out to Jesus — even when it is so hard for us to persevere in virtue.

It is said that St. Peter was once troubled when he noticed the presence of several souls whom he did not remember having let in through the doors of Heaven. He then began to investigate, and finally found the place they were sneaking in through.

He went diligently to the Lord and said to him,
“Jesus, I realized that we have several souls here that I do not remember letting in. I did some investigations and found out where they are coming from. I would like you to see it for yourself, if you don’t mind.”

Jesus, with all serenity, accompanied Peter and observed that, in fact, there was an entrance through which an impressive number of souls was constantly ascended to Heaven.

Still somewhat alarmed, St. Peter suggested:
“Should not we close this entrance, Lord?”
Jesus, smiling and even delighted with the scene, replied:
“No, no … Leave it alone. This is Mama’s thing!”

Mary had left a huge rosary hanging from a window, and through it a multitude of souls were climbing steadily up to Heaven.
It is no wonder that when we ourselves close the doors of Paradise with the bars of sin, Mary opens a window form us, so that we can always have a second (and third, and fourth) chance.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome

It would take a modern Dante to determine which circle of Inferno each type of misbehavior merited.  But of one thing, I am certain: at least in my own experience, I've never encountered more brazen and manipulative liars than Communist Chinese officials responsible for relations with religious believers.
Which is what makes it so disturbing that last week reports surfaced that the Vatican asked two underground Chinese bishops, loyal to Rome, to step aside in order to allow two bishops of the Patriotic Church, submissive to the Communist regime, to take their places.  That news drove the heroic 86-year-old former Cardinal of Hong Kong Joseph Zen to go to Rome without an appointment, stand outside the Casa Santa Marta, and ask to be allowed to present a letter from the underground believers — who are willing to resist despite personal costs — to Pope Francis.  Reliable sources say the pope received the letter and promised to read it.  (UPDATE: Cardinal Zen has published an account of these events this morning that confirms the basic story and adds that he is pessimistic about the line the Vatican is pursuing.  In addition, he says that the government is cracking down on religious institutions, and starting February 1, "attendance to Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated.")

Cardinal Zen has been energetic in warning about the unreliability of agreements with the Communists.  (Rumors of an imminent agreement between China and the Vatican have been floating around for a couple of years now, without anything definite being revealed.) Asia News, a publication of the Vatican, itself reacted to last week's news with a warning about substituting "illegitimate" bishops for "legitimate" ones.  The ChiComs (as we used to call them during the Cold War) are smart and shrewd.  They know how to manipulate Western values, in this case, "unifying" the churches, i.e., the religious inclination to think we can fix all problems with dialogue, building bridges, diplomatic arrangements.

Meanwhile, China continues to cut crosses off church buildings, close some, dynamite still others.
Meanwhile, China continues to cut crosses off church buildings, close some, dynamite still others. The New York Times reported just two weeks ago that China had destroyed the Golden Lampstand church — with 60,000 worshippers the largest evangelical community in the country.  The reason: the large, conspicuous edifice had been "secretly" constructed, had failed to get official building permits, etc.  These are the usual fig leaves of tyrannical regimes all over the world when they attack religion.  I've heard top Chinese leaders blame local authorities for "excesses and errors," but these seem to recur with a suspect regularity that no one seems to take steps to stop.

The Chinese Communists studied the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the liberation of the nations behind the Iron Curtain thanks to St. John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many others in the West who kept the pressure on Moscow.  They appreciate the power of religion and clearly believe they can prevent Christianity from doing in China what it did in Poland and elsewhere.  The tools are familiar: co-opt when you can, persecute and destroy when you can as well, and control information to make it appear you are simply asking for reasonable law and order within your borders.

From the regime's point of view, there's great need for all that.  Most Chinese have a vague attachment to old folk religions.  Maybe 15 percent are Buddhist and generally quiet — except in Tibet where resistance to Beijing remains alive.  And then there are Christians, lots of them, if not a large percentage — yet.  Reliable figures are hard to get, but 60 million (at a minimum) is a reasonable estimate.  It's safe to say that more Christians are in church on a Sunday morning in China than in all of Europe.  And that despite potentially serious consequences for worshipping in "unapproved" congregations.

Protestants probably make up around two-thirds of that number, but the Catholic Church, of course, has a stronger institutional structure.  The Chinese are used to playing a long game.  Given that Christianity is growing rapidly there, the regime will have a hard time if there are tens of millions more Christians who believe every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, meaning they possess human dignity and freedom.

It's safe to say that more Christians are in church on a Sunday morning in China than in all of Europe.
One of the common foreign-policy questions about China is precisely how Communist it is — and therefore whether it has in its very DNA the old Marxist drive to stamp out the "opium of the people," i.e., religion.  The economy is managed, but not wrecked along ideologically Marxist lines, as in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.  It's not exactly capitalist, of course, but there's some very serious innovation and entrepreneurship all the same.  The heavy hand of the state is nonetheless quite evident, not least in the population control measures that even the Chinese now know will bring decades — at least — of trouble as their population ages.  But is it a hard atheist system?

I wrote about the history of Chinese persecution of religious believers in my book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century.  At the time, the Falun Gong, about 10 million people, were being ruthlessly persecuted by the Chinese because that basically traditional spiritual movement was "a threat to social stability."  And yet it was said then and now that there were numbers of Christians in the Chinese Communist Party as well.

Whatever China's ideological composition, the independence of the Church is something that many Christians fought and died for over centuries in the Christian countries of Europe.  Independence from political regimes is crucial so that the Church can be free to carry out its spiritual mission, not only evangelizing people but working and speaking out, whatever regime it lives under, about justice and right order in society.

The Vatican seems to be stumbling in its relations with a regime that we can be sure will not respect the freedom of the Church since it doesn't respect the freedom and dignity of its own people.  Vatican negotiators would do well to remember the lessons of the Communist Era in Europe, particularly Solzhenitsyn's warning that we must fully understand the nature of Communist regimes and not give in to the illusion that the split between us and them  "may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations."  Because the split is spiritual, deeply so, not political.