Hallelujah! Christ Is Born!

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How Do You Get An Inquisition Started?

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Michael Voris explains.
But of course Stefan has been saying this for ten years.

A Synod Or A Revolution?

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What's really taking place these days at the Synod of Bishops in Rome?
Michael Voris sums up the dangerous affair.

The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil

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What follows is a very impressive and insightful piece by Camille Paglia although I would amend the title to The Modern World Cannot Comprehend Evil. To my thinking the terrifying reality she expresses is a consequence of losing our Christian insight on The Fall and the constant struggle in this world between Good and Evil. This may sound very basic but we have abandoned the basics.

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Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil

The disappearance of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham two weeks ago is the latest in a long series of girls-gone-missing cases that often end tragically. A 32-year-old, 270-pound former football player who fled to Texas has been returned to Virginia and charged with “abduction with intent to defile.” At this date, Hannah’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Wildly overblown claims about an epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses are obscuring the true danger to young women, too often distracted by cellphones or iPods in public places: the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder. Despite hysterical propaganda about our “rape culture,” the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides.

Colleges should stick to academics and stop their infantilizing supervision of students’ dating lives, an authoritarian intrusion that borders on violation of civil liberties. Real crimes should be reported to the police, not to haphazard and ill-trained campus grievance committees.

Too many young middleclass women, raised far from the urban streets, seem to expect adult life to be an extension of their comfortable, overprotected homes. But the world remains a wilderness. The price of women’s modern freedoms is personal responsibility for vigilance and self-defense.

Current educational codes, tracking liberal-Left, are perpetuating illusions about sex and gender. The basic Leftist premise, descending from Marxism, is that all problems in human life stem from an unjust society and that corrections and fine-tunings of that social mechanism will eventually bring utopia. Progressives have unquestioned faith in the perfectibility of mankind.

The horrors and atrocities of history have been edited out of primary and secondary education except where they can be blamed on racism, sexism, and imperialism — toxins embedded in oppressive outside structures that must be smashed and remade. But the real problem resides in human nature, which religion as well as great art sees as eternally torn by a war between the forces of darkness and light.

Liberalism lacks a profound sense of evil — but so does conservatism these days, when evil is facilely projected onto a foreign host of rising political forces united only in their rejection of Western values. Nothing is more simplistic than the now rote use by politicians and pundits of the cartoonish label “bad guys” for jihadists, as if American foreign policy is a slapdash script for a cowboy movie.

The gender ideology dominating academe denies that sex differences are rooted in biology and sees them instead as malleable fictions that can be revised at will. The assumption is that complaints and protests, enforced by sympathetic campus bureaucrats and government regulators, can and will fundamentally alter all men.

But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. Psychopathology, as in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s grisly Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), was a central field in early psychoanalysis. But today’s therapy has morphed into happy talk, attitude adjustments, and pharmaceutical shortcuts.

There is a ritualistic symbolism at work in sex crime that most women do not grasp and therefore cannot arm themselves against. It is well-established that the visual faculties play a bigger role in male sexuality, which accounts for the greater male interest in pornography. The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey.

Sex crime springs from fantasy, hallucination, delusion, and obsession. A random young woman becomes the scapegoat for a regressive rage against female sexual power: “You made me do this.” Academic clichés about the “commodification” of women under capitalism make little sense here: It is women’s superior biological status as magical life-creator that is profaned and annihilated by the barbarism of sex crime.

Misled by the naive optimism and “You go, girl!” boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.

[Source]

Unfaithful Bishops and Catholic Media

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Latest episode of The Vortex by Michael Voris of ChurchMilitant.TV

Become A Counter-Revolutionary Inside The Church

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Little by little various Catholics are waking up to this disaster, this mockery of the church and it is a mockery. Holy Communion in the hand, altar girls, rock band masses, ugly uninspiring church buildings and architecture, a collapse of Catholic education, a failure to preach on anything significant or meaningful or even truthful in many cases, a near complete sell-out to the Democratic Party in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in government money for  “fighting poverty”, in short, the men who ordained them to the priesthood and consecrated them to the episcopate brought revolution to the Church and these man are maintaining that revolution, however blindly.

Episcopal Failure Causes Deepest Division

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Should the Church love so little that she encourages people to eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, so as to be “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27)?

I can’t blame Dr. Jeff Mirus for his “moral frustration” for “appointing to high office bishops who obscure Catholic teaching.” For the serious minded Catholic it’s a heart-breaking reality every day.

I’m sure there are plenty of divisions in the Church caused by the kind of pettiness and vanity that create cliques and express themselves in endless gossip. But in my experience over the past forty years, by far the greatest divisions within the Church have been created by bishops and priests who have failed to explain and defend Catholic doctrine. By their verbal contradictions, their administrative policies, and their failure to staff teaching positions with those who think with the Church, such clergy have created the deepest divisions of all.

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Now, do not Churchmen who misrepresent, deny or complain about Catholic teaching foment division? Should the members of the Church be unconcerned about these remarks? Should they not rather give voice to their concern? Once again, more disunity has been caused in the Body of Christ by exactly this sort of episcopal failure than by any other single factor in my lifetime.

Read the full commentary here: An Appointment that Francis Should Withdraw

HomoFascism Causing A Newfoundland Conniption

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Matt Barber is wanted in Canada for hate crimes. Apparently he has upset some of the “pride” people from my home province of Newfoundland.

The Telegram, another mainstream Canadian publication, further reported that both my column and the fact that the Newfoundland Herald published it each constitute “a hate crime under the Criminal Code of Canada.” (Ahh … don’t you love the smell of tyranny in the morning? Come and get me, you homofascist Canucks.)

Check out Matt’s twitterfeed also.

The Sound Of Abortion

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Impressive depiction of the magnitude of the abortion calamity. (No graphic images)

I discovered it earlier this week on a very good posting by Catholic Bandita entitled If the Catholic bishops responded to abortion the way they do to child migrants

Professional Catholics Or Pseudo-Catholics?

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…a faithful Bishop…needs to gather together all the unfaithful professional Catholics in his charge and summarily fire them at the exact same moment in one fell swoop on a Friday afternoon. Do exactly what happens in corporate America; hence the name Black Friday. When they're in the room the IT manager will be deactivating their diocesan emails. They will be instructed to hand over their keys, their pass cards….

So which is it, professional Catholic or pseudo-catholic?

Witness The End Of A Civilization

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Yesterday, President Obama signed his executive LGBT non-discrimination order, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity among federal contractors.

Dr. Jeff Mirus describes it as the end.

It seems to be our lot to witness the end of a civilization. We can trace its death to the empire of desire. Clearly, this pleasure principle began to affect us in unusually deep ways with the wholesale separation of sex from life in contraception. Since then, it seems, there has been no turning back. Our deadly divorce from reality now seems all but irrevocable.

Coincidence? There’s that all too familiar reference to contraception again.

You mess with God’s design and you could lose an entire civilization. And people ask me why I have such a visceral reaction to a local “pride” parade and why I’m calling on Bishops to repent of their neglect and disobedience.

My children and grandchildren will have to live with the tyranny of the new social order.

Yours will too.

Take No Pride In Sin

From Facebook page for CBC

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Today the "Pride" Parade took place in our fair city of St. John's, NL.

See my Twitterfeed (simply glance at the column to the right of this posting) for my remarks throughout the afternoon on the disgraceful event. The parade was the culmination of one full week of "Pride" celebrations, launched with a flag raising on Monday past from both Confederation Hill by our provincial government Justice Minister, as well as from City Hall by our mayor and Councillors. The Telegram captured the "celebratory feel" of the event in their article earlier this week.

Think about it, a very high profile public celebration of sodomy and gender bending winding its way slowly through the streets of St. John's and nary a word of protest from Christian ministers and churches. And, no surprise, the numbers of participants are increasing year by year. If you listen to the conversation on the airwaves you can quickly determine that the LGBT activists are chomping at the bit to get into the schools and get a chance to pervert the thinking of children at the earliest possible stages. As with any kind of evil, corruption and rot, the stuff spreads by infection.

Unless of course, the gatekeepers who—for the most part—claim to be children of light (i.e. Christians) do their duty to resist the spread of the disease by standing firm on the moral law of Christ. But typically there is little of such resistance today from political leaders.

Yes, again, for the proliferation of this kind of public filth, I blame weak Catholic Bishops who promote pseudocatholic beliefs in Canada which give rise to a perverted religion which is actually a cultish enemy of the Christian faith. Most, if not all, of them, neglect to teach the Moral Law and the very important concept of the Common Good. As a result we get highly secularized Catholic politicians who don't have a clue about the values of the kingdom of Christ because their consciences have been no better formed than the average agnostic or atheist with whom they have rubbed shoulders all their lives.

Such as Mayor Dennis O’Keefe, who attended “very Catholic” St. Bonaventure’s College and who paves the way for all the “progress” which the homosexualists make in our city.

In fact, just about all the “progress” made on the social front (abortion, homosexuality, same sex “marriage”, divorce, etc.) in our province and throughout Canada has been pioneered and spearheaded by an inordinate number of Catholics who wind up in law and/or politics often because of an inherited and deep seated Christian ethos of serving their fellow man.

But all to no avail because the Bishops seem to take no interest in shaping and forming the consciences of their flock with solid moral teaching in order to ensure that the Catholic politician makes his/her mark for Christ and not for the Father of Lies.

#WakeUpBishops. They will have much to answer for on Judgment Day.

America Needs A Genuine Catholic As President

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Catholic Bandita declares that she favours GOP Rick Santorum.

I like the way Rick Santorum comes out strong on fiscal issues – see his new book Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works – as his lead argument, but then refuses to back down when asked a question on social issues. He recognizes that the Left is waging a culture war and that we have to fight back to defend the First Amendment and the family as the basic unity of society

I think she makes an important argument about the state of the GOP leadership. She recently covered The Case Against Mitt Romney in 2016 and again made the case for Santorum.

Hopefully Santorum will be better positioned for the Presidential run of 2016. Clearly he is the only Catholic politician in the POTUS contest who reflects, more or less, Catholic social teaching and fidelity to Church doctrine. If I felt the urgent calling to travel to the USA to help any one American presidential candidate get elected in 2016, at this stage it would have to be Santorum.

It really all comes down to the common good.

Toronto Blogging Priest An Ally Of Msgr. Foy On Humanae Vitae

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Fr. Denis Lemieux can get very animated by the truth of Holy Mother Church. He just completed a series on Humanae Vitae. I’d like to meet this priest, as I would Msgr. Vincent Foy.

From a recent blog posting:

Sex is a very good thing, created by God and blessed, a power for love and life in this world that is very strong. But fragmented into its component parts, which is exactly what contraception does—the physical pleasure over here, the expression of love over there, the creation of a new life somewhere far, far away—all that inherent power within sex runs amuck, is turned in on itself, and does great harm. Not because sex is bad, but because (to put it baldly) we are bad, or at least somewhat so.

Apparently then, not every Canadian priest suffers from preposterous beliefs.

On Slander, Calumny And Detraction

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Lisa Graas @CatholicLisa has a very useful entry on calumny (often called slander) and detraction. Distinctions in this field are crucial.

Very timely…considering I have, at times, been accused of exactly those serious sins.

As you can see, the less someone deserves a good reputation, the less right he has that we preserve it for him, and we may even reveal secret faults if our intention is for the common good and not merely just to damage a deserved good reputation. In the case of someone who is leading others astray, secret faults may be revealed for the good of those who are being led astray.

It is always helpful to know the real definitions of things before we go around accusing people of calumny and detraction. You see, if we falsely accuse people of calumny and detraction, we are then guilty ourselves of calumny.

On detraction, if someone (such as a blogger) reveals something that is true about the private life of a person who is publicly leading people into heresy or sin or some physical danger, and if the intention is for “the common good” or for “legitimate private welfare,” that is not detraction. Just revealing something that was private is not, in and of itself, detraction. It is only detraction if it does not serve the common good or the legitimate private welfare of the person being spoken about or someone else.

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Is there a lot of calumny and detraction in the blogosphere? I don’t think so. If there is, however, then the best way to deal with it is to explain what calumny and detraction are and let people decide for themselves if they are guilty, not to accuse people.

Read her full posting here.

Sodomy, New York City And A Cardinal

Michael Voris hits the ball once again out of the park.

Evil advances for one reason and one reason only…because the Catholic Church is not fighting it. Pope Saint Pius V said “all the evils of the world are due to lukewarm Catholics and Saint Pius X, Pope Saint Pius X, said “all the strength of Satan's reign is due to the easygoing weakness of Catholics. And perhaps most frighteningly of all, for leaders, Pope Saint Pius X, when congratulated by his mother upon his appointment as bishop of Mantua, he replied, “Mother you do not realize what it means to be a bishop. I shall lose my soul if I neglect my duty.”

Pseudo-Catholics Are Living A Lie

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“Not nice”: the only anathema that the Church of Nice hands down. So the church is gonna have to take a hit and accept that the vast majority of its membership who call themselves Catholic simply aren't. They're already not in union with the Church on a score of teachings but are allowed to continue behaving as though they are. It’s living a lie. A new evangelization needs to appeal to anyone who will listen, who will hear—not  to those who won't face the reality of hell for all eternity.

We have a false religion at work in Canada, as I've insisted many times, thanks to too many unworthy Bishops.

Michael Voris says they're simply living a lie.

Canada’s Bishops Fiddle While Justin’s Star Rises

Some pundits laugh when the suggestion is made that Justin Trudeau might one day be Prime Minister of Canada. He’s just too much of a pretty boy, not ready for prime time.

But that’s wishful (conservative) thinking. Justin’s star is indeed rising.

Make no mistake about it, as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin will finish what his father started. In fact he’ll go one step better! He’s already proved that. And Canada will sink further into its moral abyss, one engineered mostly by all the “devout” Catholic Prime Ministers who strangely knew nothing about the concept of the “common good” of society.

Nor do all the other rank and file Catholic politicians raised up on the milk of pseudo-catholicism. One wonders whether, in fact, the Catholic Bishops themselves know much about such a concept. According to Karl Keating of Catholic Answers, MOST of them have no knowledge of the writings of Benedict XVI,  John Paul II, or even Vatican II!

A few years ago, during the reign of Benedict XVI, these scholars, a man and a woman, were appointed by the Vatican to high posts connected with a then-current synod of bishops. Working closely with the bishops both before and after they came to  Rome and with the Roman authorities who arranged for the synod, the pair discovered something surprising: most bishops who come to synods are unprepared to teach anyone much of anything.

You, like me, probably think the role of a synod is for bishops to think deep thoughts and to conclude their gathering with published findings and marching orders that go out to the world's many dioceses. That may have been what Rome had expected when synods began to come into regular use some years ago, but realities "on the ground" have upended those expectations, according to the two scholars.

What the Vatican discovered is that the world's bishops—not all of them, but most of them (emphasis mine)—simply haven't done their homework. At this previous synod, it turned out that most of the bishops showed no knowledge of the writings of Benedict XVI or of his predecessor, John Paul II. Many of them hadn't even read the documents of Vatican II! (This was more true for bishops from Third World countries, but it applied to bishops in Europe and North America too.)

How could such unprepared men expect to know the depth of what Benedict and John Paul had been teaching if they never read those popes' encyclicals and their other writings? How could these bishops maneuver well in the modern world if they hadn't even become familiar with what was promulgated at Vatican II?

It proved to be an awkward realization for Rome. The men who were expected to go out and spread the word didn't even know what the word was. And so the synods quietly have become something else. Instead of being sessions at which learned bishops issue teachings for the masses, they now are sessions at which the bishops themselves are taught the teachings.

[Source]

Maybe this explains why the Catholic Bishops of Canada unleashed such a Pandora’s Box in 1966 when, unbelievably, they declared then-current legal restrictions on the use of contraceptives to be “harmful to public order and to the common good.” Of course that travesty of justice (and outright denial of Catholic teaching) was followed up in 1968 with the rejection of the Pope’s teaching as expressed in Humanae Vitae. Since then a blackout from the Bishops on the subject of the moral law, accompanied by unrestricted abortion, has devastated Canadian society.

During the 38 year reign of renegade Catholic Prime Ministers in Canada the Catholic Bishops didn’t take decisive action to discipline any of them by means of Canon law provisions and Vatican directives. Nor did they make efforts to control the fallout from such severe scandal by rightly molding the consciences of the everyday lay Catholic, especially the politician. Indeed, there’s been a long history of defending the renegades, even, more recently, pretty boy Justin.

And now we hear some Bishops are concerned because of a pro-abortion policy instituted by Justin Trudeau. Was Trudeau’s action really a surprise? It’s impossible to believe that both Trudeau’s priest and his Bishop were unable to determine his position on abortion, if they were interested in finding out. And don’t you think they should have been interested? Clearly, up to this point, nobody with spiritual oversight over Justin really thought his soul was in danger. Again, how is that possible?

But, nevertheless, that’s the current pseudo-catholic paradigm in Canada.

And for the good of Canada’s future, saving Trudeau’s soul ought to be a top priority with the Bishops.

More Fallout In Canada From Evils Of Contraception

Image credit http://theoatmeal.com/ with slight modification

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

We really are going to lose Canada if the Catholic Bishops continue to dither about Humanae Vitae and the Winnipeg Statement. And when I say "lose Canada" I really mean "lose the hard won blessings of God on our society." It pains me to think of what suffering and evil my children and grandchildren will have to endure in such a society. 

I know, I know, I sound like a broken record. Does every social evil in Canada have to lead back to the widespread use of contraception? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean we stop our critical examination of cause and effect in any particular area of  inquiry.

Look, after digesting the latest outrageous attacks on Christians in Canada—leaving aside the assault by Justin Trudeau—ask yourself if we are not entering into a new era of Christian persecution in Canada. A chill in the air seems all too real since the controversies over Trinity Western University and most recently over the Nanaimo city council.

Go here for a video intro by Ezra Levant on the Trinity Western battle and here for the scoop on Nanaimo. I support Ezra’s efforts entirely as he covers both these controversies on a new website dedicated to anti-Christian bigotry. My guess is that as Canada moves “forward” Ezra will need to seriously ramp up his activities in this regard.

For a more expansive look at what’s happening with Trinity Western, read a fine analysis which was posted just yesterday. The title of the posting is foreboding: If you don't support same-sex marriage, don't look for a legal career in Canada.

In our own local setting, where our metropolitan newspaper can’t find time for a word or letter about mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, the editorial team seems possessed of an urgent need to make room for condemnations of Trinity Western. Well, at least they gave Trinity Western a chance to say a few brief words of defense. Fair and balanced, right? And they wonder why readers are losing interest in traditional media (their newspaper ) and instead getting their news from unreliable online sources!! Apparently, they say, “the freak show is winning.”

Like I've been saying, what Bishops do and what they don’t do can move mountains but always their decisions filter down to the most ordinary facets of life.

Is Cardinal Collins Admitting That Humanae Vitae Is Being Ignored In Toronto?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

In yesterday’s interview with Brandon Vogt of WordOnFire blog on the subject of Marriage, Divorce, and Communion, Cardinal Collins did a very fine job of reiterating and confirming the Church’s teaching on marriage. In expounding and defending the Word of Christ he fulfilled his duty as a Successor of the Apostles and I trust that whatever the consequences of the upcoming Synod His Eminence will continue to be faithful in proclaiming the same truth unwaveringly to his flock in Toronto.

However, very important questions relating to the evils of the contraceptive mentality must be raised as a result of statements arising from this interview. The Cardinal is quoted as saying:

But Christian teaching is based upon the natural law that is written in our very natures by God, and especially upon the revealed word of God. We discover God's will, and the scriptures and the living faith of the Church help us to do so. We do not shape God's will according to what currently seems best to us.

So when Pope Paul did not change what he could not change, but re-affirmed Christian faith, many, many people were upset, and simply decided to ignore the teaching. That is our present situation (my emphasis).  I certainly hope that we do not suffer a repeat of that, as unfounded speculation swirls concerning a change by the Church of the explicit teaching of Jesus on marriage.

When the Cardinal said, “That is our present situation”, was he indicating that in his Archdiocese the teaching of Humanae Vitae was likewise being ignored? Either it is being ignored in Toronto also or it is not. I think we have a right to know the answer to that question.

If it is being ignored in Toronto also then only Cardinal Collins can, and must, answer for that grave denial of the Catholic faith. As the Cardinal himself stated, “Pope Paul did not change what he could not change, but re-affirmed Christian faith.” If Toronto is ignoring Humanae Vitae, it is ignoring a divine truth that even a Pope dared not change, a weighty truth that was intimately connected with the Christian faith, according to Cardinal Collins.

But how would we evaluate whether Toronto was ignoring Humanae Vitae? By definition, to ignore is “to refrain from noticing or recognizing” and to “disregard.” If the Archdiocese functioned as though HV did not exist or as though it didn’t matter, then couldn’t we say that Toronto was ignoring Humanae Vitae?

In his encyclical Humanae Vitae, which Cardinal Collins noted “upset” many people, Pope Paul VI declared contraception to be a grave sin and intrinsically evil. Were the majority of practicing Catholics (those that generally seek to live out their Catholic faith) in Toronto ignoring Humanae Vitae, we should probably find that they, like Catholics from other prominent dioceses in Canada, disregarded the Pope’s characterization of contraception and that they failed to identify the behaviour as gravely sinful. As a result, we should also expect to see high numbers of Catholics engaging in the practice, as do high numbers of the general population.

Again, if Toronto were ignoring Humanae Vitae, we should probably find that it was due largely to a lack of emphasis by the Archdiocese on the subject matter of Humanae Vitae. That is to say, very little effort would be expended in teaching and preaching on the subject of contraception, either in homilies, statements by the Cardinal or in printed matter released by parishes or the Archdiocese. Very few, if any, seminars or workshops dealing specifically with the evils of the contraceptive mentality, as expressed in Humanae Vitae, would be taking place.

On a more basic and practical level, since the teaching of Humanae Vitae is so intimately connected with the marital act, one would expect to see very little emphasis on the “hard teaching” about contraception taking place in marriage preparation classes in the Archdiocese. More to the point, one would expect that the Archdiocese would rarely, if ever, highlight the practice of contraception as a grave (mortal) sin and again would rarely, if ever, characterize it as an evil practice. To further avoid the possibility that Catholics would take seriously the sinfulness of artificial birth control, as identified in Humanae Vitae, the Archdiocese would be very reluctant to insist on its priests requiring Confession of their parishioners who practiced this mortal sin, in contravention of the Vatican’s Vademecum for Confessors (Prop. 2.4).

Furthermore, when discussing abortion and pro-life matters, the Archdiocese would be very reluctant to highlight the incontrovertible connection between the practice of contraception and the resultant outcome of abortion, what some call the “evil twin” link, because contraception, in fact, does more to fuel abortion than any other phenomenon.

In short, the Archdiocese would, largely through silence, ignore that the “knowing choice to reject the definitive teaching of the Magisterium on an important matter of morality [in this case, contraception] is formal heresy.”

So I ask again: Was the Cardinal indicating that in his Archdiocese the teaching of Humanae Vitae was likewise being ignored? Either it is being ignored in Toronto also or it is not. If it is NOT being ignored then we should observe an entirely different dynamic—than the one described above—at work in the Archdiocese of Toronto in regard to the practice of contraception by Catholics. If the teaching of Humanae Vitae is being honoured in Toronto, let us understand what Cardinal Collins is doing there that other Bishops in Canada are not doing so that His Eminence might lead the charge and help to turn back the tide of the culture of death in our great nation.

However, if the teaching of Humanae Vitae IS being ignored in Toronto, then we have a right to ask the Cardinal why he is not, as a worthy Bishop, doing everything possible to teach the divine truth contained in Humanae Vitae and to spare the sheep under his care the temporal and spiritual judgments of a pernicious, evil practice?

Some Catholic leaders claim that, in respect to Humanae Vitae, the current state of affairs in our parishes is just too big a problem to tackle and fix. Presumably, Catholics are doomed to continue in the practice of behaviour which to God is repulsive and repugnant, which also is fatal to one’s faith and which also contributes to the deaths and murders of millions of innocent Canadians? Is it conceivable that the Cardinal also could be resigned to such a horrendous and preposterous notion?

If we examine more of the Cardinal’s statements in his recent interview, we are forced to ask more questions:

In a society in which permanent commitments are not valued - and that applies to the priesthood and religious life as well as to marriage - it can take great spiritual strength, and is certainly counter-cultural, to renew each day a sacred lifelong commitment, trusting in the grace of God. That must be our path as Christians, and anything that tends (even unintentionally) to re-inforce a culture that undermines fidelity to sacred permanent commitments must be resisted, as also any action that suggests that the Church does not take seriously the permanence of such covenants.

Our Lord's teaching on marriage, like his whole teaching on discipleship, can at times be very difficult. Especially in the world in which we live, but really in all periods of history, a certain heroism is required in the Christian life. We are all called to holiness; that is not just the vocation of the few who are canonized, but of all of us.

Could not the same challenges be put forth in regard to adhering to the Church’s teaching on contraception? Is not the grace of God sufficient and effectual for heroic living in terms of the full understanding of chastity, which forbids contraception? “We are all called to holiness; that is not just the vocation of the few who are canonized, but of all of us.”

The Cardinal stated well:

Many people who are divorced, and who are not free to marry, do enter into a second marriage. There are various reasons that can lead to this, and their fellow parishioners should not occupy themselves speculating about them. Catholics in that tragic situation can be involved in many ways in the life of the community, but they may not receive the sacraments, such as Holy Communion, since whatever their personal disposition is or the reasons for their situation, known perhaps only to God, they are continuing in a way of life which is objectively against the clear command of Jesus. That is the point.

Cardinal Collins says that Catholics who continue “in a way of life which is objectively against the clear command of Jesus” may not receive the sacraments. Humanae Vitae reiterates the clear command of Christ as well. Will he likewise forbid the sacraments to Catholics who obstinately persist, after clear instruction, in the grave sin of contraception? If not, then why not? He needs to explain this scandalous contradiction.

Was the Cardinal blinded to an obvious truth when he later said in his interview:

The Synod on the Family will surely deal with the whole range of issues facing the family today, not only this one issue of communion for those who are divorced and remarried. For example, one of the key problems we face now is that couples are more often living together without getting married. And there are many societal trends, especially in the western world, that undermine the family.

Notice that the Cardinal admits that it’s a “key problem” in the entire debate. He says “couples are more often living together without getting married.” Why is that? It would be both pointless and impossible for such a cultural norm described by the Cardinal to occur except for the widespread availability and practice of contraception. Your Eminence, why not attack the problem at its root? Why not re-examine the upcoming Synod in that light? Be bold, Your Eminence, and lead the way to a new future for Canada!

As Monsignor Foy said, “the greatest evil in the Church today is the contraceptive mentality.” It is, in fact, almost single handedly responsible for a host of other evils that we face, not the least of which is the crisis affecting the subject of this interview: Marriage, Divorce, and Communion.

Be Loud And Clear Concerning Evil

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

“Why is so called gay marriage sweeping across America? Because the only force on earth that might have stopped it, the Catholic Church, has not attacked the root evil, has not been clear, has not been loud. The coddling of active homosexuality within the Church has crippled Church leaders’ ability to respond."

Feast Of Corpus Christ: I Affirm My Subjugation To Christ

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

I affirm my subjugation to Christ, Victor over death, hell and my sins.  Before the Eucharist, Jesus my God and King, I am content to kneel until with His own hand He raises me.

O God, who bequeathed to us under a wondrous sacrament the memorial of Your Passion, grant to us, we implore, to venerate the sacred mysteries of Your Body and Blood in such a way that we constantly sense within us the fruit of Your redemption.

FLASHBACK: Archbishop Collins Please Redress Schwarzenegger-McGuinty Scandal

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

This is a timely reprint of a press release issued in June 2007 dealing with the ongoing scandal in Canada of Catholic politicians defying Church teaching and the indifference/inaction of Catholic Bishops on the matter.

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Vote Life, Canada! Calls on Toronto Archbishop to Redress Scandal Surrounding Governor Schwarzenegger's Stem Cell Deal with Ontario Premier McGuinty

MEDIA ADVISORY, June 4 /Christian Newswire/ -- "The scandal caused in Canada and the US by so-called 'devout' Catholic politicians who defy the true Catholic faith reached new depths of disgrace last week," says Eric Alcock, President of Vote Life,Canada!

Even as Governor Schwarzenegger met with Premier McGuinty to contract a deal which underwrites $30 million in public funds for the willful destruction of embryonic human beings, both politicians brazenly affirmed a staunch Catholic faith.

Catholic teaching condemns embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) as a crime against the dignity of embryonic human beings since they have a right to the same respect as the child already born. Furthermore, Alcock noted, "ESCR is a worse crime than abortion since no mother sets out from the beginning to abort her child whereas ESCR always envisions the purposeful, willful destruction of human life at the embryonic stage."

"Canada has descended a path of barbarism and secularism, even sponsoring the monstrous evil of abortion, thanks to a succession of 'devout' Catholic politicians and Prime Ministers," says Alcock. "Their testimony confirms the spiritual apathy and neglect of Canada's Bishops, practically all of whom continue the cowardly policy of leaving the defense of innocent Unborns to a persecuted minority of 'fundamentalist' pro-lifers."

Ironically, Alcock disclosed that in Toronto on the same day of Schwarzenegger's and McGuinty's scandalizing actions, Toronto's Archbishop Collins was delivering a speech entitled "The Contribution of Religion to Society." One point the Archbishop made was that religion contributes to the common good of society by bringing to bear on current social issues the insights arising from religion's ancient heritage of wisdom.

Alcock also pointed to an interview in December past when Archbishop Collins inferred that he would not rule out excommunication for politicians who defied Church teaching. Father Raymond J. de Souza judged in an article in the National Post that "the sheer size of Toronto and its status as the nation's media capital make the Archbishop the sine qua non of the Church's presence in Canadian public life."

Therefore, for the sake of Canada's Unborn, Vote Life, Canada! calls on Archbishop Collins to reverse the trend of deadly silence among the Bishops, to immediately and publicly address this scandal through reaffirming Church teaching on ESCR and to initiate Church Canon law discipline for all professing Catholics who refuse to make their consciences correct with Magisterial teaching, starting with Premier Dalton McGuinty.

[Source]

Msgr. Foy To Catholic Bishops: Repudiate Contraception Or Lose Canada

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

98 year old Monsignor Vincent Foy, the longest serving Catholic priest in Canada, has been much in the news lately and has compiled notes from recent interviews. It’s a wonderfully direct diagnosis of the moral malady in Canada.

In a very short space he references everything from the Winnipeg Statement to sex education to Justin Trudeau to Islam.

1. What effect do you think the Winnipeg Statement had on Canada in the late ’60s and 1970s?

First of all, it was a major cause of the suicidal birth rate. It was also a major cause of the contraceptive mentality and the “slippery slope” of adultery, fornication, venereal diseases, homosexuality, AIDS, pornography, radical feminism, sterilization, violence, child abuse, abortion, disintegration of marriage, increase of divorce, corrupt sex education (such as the “Fully Alive” sex instruction program in schools), euthanasia and the catastrophic loss of faith and morals that I have written about. This has contributed to the decline in our economy. The error of the Winnipeg Statement is quoted often in marriage preparation courses, in the confessional etc.

2. What effect, if any, do you think the Winnipeg Statement is having on Canada and Canadian Catholics today?

Today we are suffering from the evil effects (some of which I mentioned above) of the Winnipeg Statement. Couples often say ‘We know the bishops allow us to use contraceptives.’ Likely they have never heard of the Winnipeg Statement as such.

3. After “Liberating Potential” was released in 2008, do you think there will ever be any political will in the CCCB to revisit Winnipeg a third time? (I believe it was revisited in ’69 too.)

I pray that the CCCB will have the courage to admit and retract their previous error. Perhaps the newly appointed bishops will have the courage to repair and stop the damage.

4. Why do you think it’s important that the CCCB repeal Winnipeg today, even though it’s been 45 years?

It is essential that the error of the Winnipeg Statement be corrected. As Dietrich Von Hildebrand, one of the best theologians of the twentieth century, said: it is essential not only to assert the truth; it is also necessary to correct errors. The CCCB is morally obligated to officially retract the Winnipeg Statement.

5. Recently Justin Trudeau, a prominent Catholic, publicly dissented from Church teaching on abortion. Do you think this is a consequence of the Winnipeg Statement? If yes, why? If not, why do you think some Catholics have gotten to a point where they feel so comfortable blatantly opposing Church teaching?

I think it is one of the effects of the Winnipeg Statement. Justin Trudeau’s views and policies are heretical and anti-Catholic.

6. How would you answer those that say, “We don’t need to repeal the Winnipeg Statement because we have Liberating Potential, and other texts, that offer Catholics sufficient teaching on life issues?”

Currently, over 80% of women of childbearing age are using contraception. There are six times as many abortions through contraceptive use as there are through surgical means. Liberating Potential is a positive affirmation of Humanae vitae. As well, Dietrich Von Hildebrand says, it is necessary not only to teach the truth; but also to correct error. The Winnipeg Statement has never been specifically repudiated. I am very edified that we have so many current bishops in Canada, who had nothing to do with the publishing of the Winnipeg Statement and who preach and fully support Humanae vitae.

7. If the Winnipeg Statement is repealed, do you think it would have an effect on Canadian Catholics? And if so, what form would that take and how long of a process do you see that as being?

Yes, if with the repeal the doctrine of Humanae vitae were preached from every pulpit on frequent occasions. A repeal would take the form of a specific acknowledgement of the error of the Winnipeg Statement by the CCCB. It would help if the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would condemn the Winnipeg Statement by name. We know now that the heresy of Winnipeg Statement could not be repeated because the Holy See demands that any statement of a doctrinal nature by a bishops’ conference; must be approved by the Holy See. The Winnipeg Statement of course was and never will be approved by the Holy See. The Holy See speaks on behalf of the Pope to express the teaching of Christ and His Church.

8. Some Catholics today, such as Trudeau Jr., oppose Church teaching on contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. How does the Church change the hearts and minds of its members to better reflect the teachings of Humanae vitae, Veritatis Splendour, the Catechism of the Catholic Church etc.?

By frequent teaching of the truth by bishops and priests.

9. Where do you see the Church in Canada in twenty years — as it relates to the core issues of abortion, contraception, and euthanasia — as it stands in contrast to the secular culture’s embrace of these social issues?

Unless contraceptive practice by the majority is overcome, the Church in Canada will continue to decline. Muslims will gradually attain ascendency in terms of population increase and political power. While Muslims may be against abortion, contraception and homosexual acts; the Koran condemns Christianity. Sharia law and anti-Christian persecution would lead to the closing of our churches. Already there are more mosques in France than there are churches. More children attend mosques than churches. However, in other places where there are true Christians, the Church is growing in numbers, for example, in Africa and parts of India and other parts of the Far East. Vocations to the priesthood are increasing worldwide.

Visit Msgr. Foy’s website posting here.

Why Is Judie Brown Of American Life League Hopping Mad?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Judie Brown of American Life League is hopping mad. I totally understand why. It’s time for many more Catholics to get hopping mad. It won’t be a day too soon.

So Judy, you’ve caught my attention. I’m interested…and curious. Please tell us what your new strategy will be.

Here’s some of what her email said:

Dear Friend of Life, 

Pro-abortion 'Catholic' politicians like Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Andrew Cuomo ought to be ashamed of themselves.

So should their bishops----Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, DC, Cardinal O'Malley of Boston and Cardinal Dolan of New York!

How dare these politicians vote for abortion and Planned Parenthood time after time after time?

And how dare their bishops not discipline them, thereby scandalizing and demoralizing good Catholics?

You bet I'm mad at both. I'm angry for all the babies who die while 'Catholic' politicians and bishops hobnob and dine and issue statements about peace and justice all the while the holocaust of the unborn goes on, directly aided and abetted by their action and inaction.

The blood of the babies is on the hands of the pro-abortion politicians for their sins of commission! The blood of the babies is on the hands of the bishops for their sins of omission!

This isn't that hard, really.

Earlier in my own life, abortion was illegal.

And Catholics who wanted to go into public life as politicians, or those called to the priesthood and were elevated to becoming bishops, knew that abortion was always and everywhere wrong and anyone who voted for it or participated in this crime would be excommunicated, denied communion, and denied all of the Sacraments until they repented of their evil ways!

This is in fact the most merciful way to help sinners change, so that they don't burn in the fires of hell!

At American Life League, we have been fighting every day since 1979 to end abortion. We are scandalized that the American bishops of the Catholic Church are not doing their job! It is within my rights as a Catholic to first ask, and then demand that our shepherds, our bishops take action now!

For decades we complained about Mario Cuomo and Teddy Kennedy, as two of the earliest prominent pro-abortion 'Catholic' politicians. Their horrible track records of voting for abortion and for Planned Parenthood's filthy and evil ways were a matter of public record. Despite that, they were celebrated by their bishops and were ultimately buried with full honors in a Catholic Church, with their respective Cardinals watching on.

And since they weren't corrected, admonished, shunned and excommunicated, their sinful support of abortion and Planned Parenthood is now touted and expanded by their own kids and family members!

A whole new generation of Cuomos and Kennedy 'Catholics' are in public life right now voting for and advocating for abortion and Planned Parenthood!

Had only Ted Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo's bishops acted then, maybe their progeny----and millions more American Catholics----would have said "I don't want to be embarrassed and excommunicated like Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy. There must be something seriously wrong with supporting abortion and Planned Parenthood. I'll find out more, and do more, and I'll be pro-life."

But that didn't happen! What a shame! What a wasted opportunity of saving so many souls! How many Catholics were led astray, putting their own immortal souls in jeopardy!

Don't tell me it didn't matter then, or doesn't matter now. In fact, today, if you ask 'sweet, Church-going little old ladies' from Ted Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts about him, they'll tell you what a wonderful man he was. And good-hearted New York Catholics still say what a fine man Mario Cuomo was, so why not vote for his son Andrew?

Since the bishops didn't speak, the people in the pews think abortion and Planned Parenthood are a-ok!

And the only one saying it's not ok is American Life League and a few other voices crying in the wilderness! Enough is enough! It's time for the American bishops to put their mouth where their money is and come out in favor of LIFE!

I love my fellow Americans and my fellow Catholics too much to let these sins that cry out to heaven for justice go on any longer. I have followed biblical precepts of approaching pro-abortion 'Catholic' politicians and bishops quietly and privately first, and then returning with others to persuade and point out the error of their ways.

But they're not listening! So now, we must do like the bible says, and expose them for what they are until they change or get out of the way of righteousness! As Christ Himself counseled us to do:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. ---- Matthew 18:15-17

In short, all Catholic politicians must vote against abortion and against Planned Parenthood funding, and if they don't, Catholic bishops must act swiftly and publically to explain why what they are doing is wrong and declare them excommunicated, to save all other Catholics from being led astray.

Every Catholic Diocese Needs A Faith Movement

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

"The Faith Movement exists to explain the Catholic faith to our contemporary world. It does this through an apostolate which seeks to answer the questions that young people are asking today about their faith. It runs residential conferences which give young Catholics the opportunity to meet and make friends with others while learning about their faith and coming to meet Jesus Christ through the sacraments of the Church; particularly the Holy Mass and Confession."

h/t EM via Tim Finigan 

Are Lost Souls Drawn To Christ By The Church Of Nice?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

You're a sincere and authentic Catholic trying to keep your head above water in the Church of Nice. You've been witnessing to your neighbour for a long time about Christ and His Church. You knew this day had to come, the day when you invite your neighbour to Church. Michael Voris finishes the story.  

"I'm a convert to Catholicism for a number of years now and what you say about the church of nice is spot on. The Catholic Church I attend bears no resemblance to the Catholic Church I read about while I was in the process of converting. It is extremely disappointing."

New Uprising Of Faith For Archdiocese Of St. John’s?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

From a blog entry dated September 1, 2005, St. John’s NL:

I find it very sad and awful that in our own archdiocese of St. John’s, Newfoundland, a tremendous amount of effort has been put into the preparation of a document entitled A Challenge To Change. This report was commissioned due to very serious problems being faced by the Archdiocese because of shrinking population and shortage of priests.

A whole host of comments, suggestions and speculation was offered as to the causes and cures for this crisis, the major solution advanced being the clustering of parishes. The report clearly acknowledges that Newfoundland, a province where a high percentage of the population is Catholic, has the lowest birthrate in Canada. The report concludes with a summary of the “responses” and “other comments” offered by parties involved in the process, the very last comment stating in an eerie, prophetic sense, the following: “At best this is a stop-gag measure. With one new priest every 3-5 years the end is in sight. We need to be preparing for a non-clerical church.”

What’s the most surprising, even shocking, and obvious omission in this report? Nowhere does it even mention that Catholic failure to follow Church teaching regarding the evil of contraception is an inevitable cause of low birthrates and dwindling populations.  And can there be any doubt that an apathetic and disobedient community of Catholics (as evidenced by this attitude) fails to inspire young men to the priesthood?

The Church is dying, and rather than allow the fresh breath of the Holy Spirit to speak new life by means of the Truth given to the Church, we prefer to discuss how we should dress the dead body and make final preparations for the funeral.

The video shown above appeared in a newscast last month on NTV News, on May 21 to be precise. On the same day, The Telegram released its story on the financial woes of the Archdiocese of St. John’s. Some relevant portions include:

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s has appealed to its parishioners because of the state of its finances…

…

And as part of long-range planning, it will also examine its holdings to see which churches can be closed and buildings sold. For example, St. Paul’s and Mary Queen of Peace are close to one another, he said.

Among the 38 parishes, there are also a number of rural churches that no longer have large enough congregations to sustain the ex­pense.

“Sometime we have to ask some tough questions,” (Archbishop Martin) Currie said of the future.

…

Currie acknowledged the younger generation is not as active in church matters, including donations.

“Hopefully, we can have a new uprising of faith,” he said.

A new uprising of faith? “But faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Can faith be separated from obedience to the Word of Christ? A certain Christian hymn declares, “By the pathway of duty flows the river of God’s grace.” And again, in Holy Scripture, “If ye love me keep my commandments.”

And Christ speaks today, revealing His commandments through His Church, through Her Magisterium. Through the medium of the Church’s teaching we know the will and mind of God to all those who call themselves followers of Christ. These foundational truths of the Word of God and the Catholic Church confirm for us that the Archbishop will not see any new uprising of faith in the context of this appeal because the basic problem being addressed here is adverse social consequences directly resulting from decades’ long disobedience to Church teaching on artificial contraception.

I’ve appealed to readers here, there and everywhere to examine the basic connection between our coming demographic crunch and the contraceptive mentality, particularly emphasizing the Catholic Bishops’ failure to communicate Catholic teaching on this subject.

There are profound effects upon a man and upon a society when he engages in an unnatural behaviour, that is, an action contrary to the natural law. Psychological effects, spiritual effects, social effects are chief on the list. Which, do you think, are the more significant effects, i.e. the ones with the longer term consequences? A true Catholic, in response, would doubtless point to the spiritual effects. According to Father John Hardon, S.J., the spiritual effects of contraception are fatal to the faith. According to Monsignor Vincent Foy, the denial of the Church’s teaching on contraception is “a crime…leading our beloved Church in Canada deep into the Valley of Death.”

Unnatural behaviours are objectively evil, that is to say they are fundamentally opposed to God and His nature and are repugnant to him. Now here’s where we connect again with the news report from the Archdiocese of St. John’s. Don’t you think that someone who represented the person and interests of God in a community would be careful to warn people of the dangers of offending God by such actions and the risks to their eternal salvation? After all, we are talking about sin and evil, plain and simple, regardless of the great numbers of people in favour of such behaviour or even practicing it. Clearly, widespread participation in sin hardly absolves the leader from his responsibility to warn the people.

Let’s ask ourselves how God views such behaviour carried out by His own people? Does he just see a happy clappy bunch of Catholics, a little bit ignorant but just trying to do their best, or does he want to vomit for the most part? The average Catholic is guilty in this matter, no doubt, but in all the condemnations Jesus issued he reserved the worst judgments for the religious leaders of his day who, in addition to themselves, were leading many others into the ditch.

There are social and national consequences to sin. Thousands, if not millions, of people are impacted and may suffer greatly, or even perish, as a result. Consider Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood in Noah’s day, Nineveh, Israel in captivity, etc. Do some Bishops not grasp this concept? Or is it simply that they do not believe in sin, or don’t believe that their denial and apathy concerning Church law constitutes sin?

Indeed, the tormenting fact is that millions are already perishing due to the sin of contraception, a practice which became pervasive in the 1960’s and which paved the way for the legalization of abortion in Canada. There is a direct link between these two great evils and so far abortion has resulted in over 3.5 million deaths, to say nothing of the unimaginable numbers of little souls, who, over the same time period, have lost their bodies to spontaneous abortion in the womb due to use of the contraceptive pill. This is truly the most tragic social outcome of the Bishops’ silence. And, still, the killing continues day after day.

So let’s never forget proper perspective in this matter. Declining numbers of the faithful showing up for Mass and fewer dollars in the collection plate is hardly the real news story because hidden beneath the ink are more complex—and deadly—social consequences of the “sterile sex” phenomenon. Too many Bishops steadfastly refuse to discuss the link to the practice of this socially destructive behaviour let alone point to spiritually destructive aspects of the practice. Even when it is destroying a Bishop’s own flock and the surrounding society so many are content to say nothing and hope the ship won’t go down. Could we imagine a more severe case of compromise in spiritual leadership?

Perhaps they believe, like Cardinal O'Malley, that they can't speak out in the public square on any issues because they’ve lost their moral authority over the sexual abuse crisis.” If so, I say “Resign” immediately and make room for worthy Bishops who will not remain silent on the evils of the day.

When will Bishops acknowledge the word of Christ on this evil, do their duty by preaching and warning the people and so save their dioceses from sure collapse? And on that same day the killing of the innocents will abate.