Letter to Pope Francis from Catholic Men

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No, you can stop there. Painting with the “they’re all bad brush” ignores many, many things. I was there before and after Vatican II. I was there in the mid-1960s when the strangers appeared in our neighborhoods. The ones who took advantage of our trust and preached their immoral gospel. Illegal drug use was encouraged, cohabitation with sex was encouraged. In fact, have lots of sex was encouraged. To be followed by topless bars, strip clubs and (PORN) Adult Bookstores. Did the Church cause all that? The planned addictions occurred. Lives were ruined, Marriages were ruined. The attack on the Church and the Family took decades but worn down by the constant noise made by the radicals, too many lost their way. I was there for all of it.

If anyone reading this hasn’t been to confession for years, please go. God’s infinite mercy is waiting for you.
 
Ok, back to the letter……I think is a good idea. And I’ve read where similar ideas are being generated, like the USCCB considering a petition to the Vatican for a ‘Catholic lay team’ of knowledgeable specialists to investigate the McCarrick issue. The only caveat being that “American thinking” as to institutional procedure may be misplaced in assuming the “Vatican thinking” is likewise. That is to say that Vatican organizational structure and governance ( vis-a-vis justice and accountability ) is nothing like any government or business structure in the US. By example, Federalist Paper #69 & by extension the US Constitution states that even the President of the U.S. is NOT above the law . In my view this disparity is part of the over problem.

Additionally, I think the quest ‘to find out what happened’ that allowed McCarrick to resume associating with seminarians after Pope Benedict’s directive for McCarrick to submit to a life of “prayer and penance”, is obfuscating the obvious timeline of transition of Popes (reflecting my first point).

Lastly, as I understand it, the sexual abuse is impossibly intertwined with the misappropriation and down-right fraud of “Church money”. (I say fraud because the laity’s gifts given in good faith to the poor and for legitimate Catholic causes INSTEAD being used for beach house trysts or for blackmail payoffs is fraud IMO). Catholics may not want to acknowledge that point but I believe it is inescapable. Others may think that the Vatican doesn’t care much about U.S. Catholics or that U.S. Catholics lack influence but if the money slows to a trickle, the Vatican will take action, I think.
 
My observations about ecclesiatical failings does not mean I do not recognize the secular spirit of revolution in the 20th century. I’m saying it infiltrated Holy Mother Church. Just so you think I’m not unbalanced I will say that I do think the encouragement to read scripture was good and that the allowing of the laity to be defenders of the faith was excellent.
 
Mark121359 said:
I think most of us here would recognize three of the signees of this letter.

Scott Hahn, PhD
Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization, Franciscan University

Al Kresta
President & CEO, host, Ave Maria Radio

Doug Barry
Founder/Director of RADIX-BATTLE READY Catholic Apostolate
EWTN Battle Ready
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Patrick Madrid said on the radio the other day that he just signed it too.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Clearly this group of men is composed of Americans, or largely so. I’m not persuaded that the Pope thinks about the U.S. a great deal, or have the regard for it that Americans tend to think everyone should.
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FYI - The letter is also addressed to the US Bishops
 
If you don’t like my views, instead of reporting them, talk it out.
 
And not too many Americans at that. But then Americans can’t help acting American-ish.

I wonder if there was a place to sign that the letter was rather useless and provincial how many would have signed. That is the short coming of on-line petitions. It is like a ballot with one name on it. But like I said, Americans will be Americans.

Just for kicks, I looked up another petition in Ireland, a country with 2% the population of the United States, they have 4700 signatures of Catholic LGBT folks to change the Church’s language about homosexuality.
 
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pnewton said:
Just for kicks, I looked up another petition in Ireland, a country with 2% the population of the United States, they have 4700 signatures of Catholic LGBT folks to change the Church’s language about homosexuality.
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I’m glad you made, or rather reinforced that point. Ireland obviously just went through a move away from the Natural Law, on abortion. You point to a possible correlation with rejection of the Natural Law in another way.
 
The seeds of corruption was sowed by those theologians who call themselves “exegetes” and claim exclusive right for themselves to tell us who Jesus is. You see example of this in this topic:
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Did St Paul believe in Jesus? Sacred Scripture
Can I get a thorough debunking of this? [Did St Paul believe in Jesus?]
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A fundamentally messed-up image of Jesus is projected into the minds of the believer depicting an “almost” LGBT Jesus who actually encourages Pope Francis and his friends to take over the church for the LGBT mafia. This false image of Jesus is a creation of evil minds who are out there to destroy everything we believe in. Theologians are plague of the church because they do not understand that the historical Jesus, as divine as He is, is rich enough to guide His church without inference from evil human mind.

I discuss this here:
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One Jesus or two Jesuses? Sacred Scripture
I have been puzzled for some time already about the question if Jesus of the Bible which is identical to my Jesus of faith and the historical Jesus are one and the same or two separate persons? Sometimes we take the historical Jesus as a “lower edition” of our Jesus of faith. But why would history be lower than anything else? Should not our faith be completely based on historically accurate accounts and thus on the historically understood person of Jesus? I am puzzled as ever.
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Cardinal Gerhard Muller also says:

“I had a relatively good relationship personally to the Holy Father but then they instituted a special college separated from the Congregation, within the Congregation…,” he explained. “They decided against our opinion [and] in many cases to recuse the penalties. (…) This group of ten had agreed that guilty priests should receive a penalty but not dismissal from the clerical state, a punishment Müller believes is absolutely necessary to justice for the priest’s victim or victims. “We see now the result of this absolute false politics [that] are naive,” he said.

www.lifesitenews.com

Cardinal Müller: Root of clergy abuse crisis is laxity in 60s and 70s - LifeSite

'If abuse is so great...the only solution, and the only justice for the victim, is that the perpetrator must be dismissed from the clerical state,' he said.
www.lifesitenews.com www.lifesitenews.com
 
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I agree that the root of the clergy sex abuse crisis (and other crises involving the laity) was the laxity, both doctrinal, moral, and disciplinary, in the 1960s and 1970s. I also believe Pope Francis has never been part of that problem. However, his 2 predecessors tried to restore the doctrinal foundations, which is a necessary part of the solution, and appointed bishops who also tried to be part of the solution.

I do not see similar action towards a long term solution today, either in the Holy See or in the bishop appointments. Their view of the “crisis” is that the tip of the iceberg has now become visible, so they want a quick solution to that, to address the symptom. They are not looking at the relativism, and enmeshment in the “Spirit of the Age” by much of the clergy and hierarchy, as any part of a problem at all. The Vatican, and some newer bishops since 2013, don’t appear to value doctrine at all, make no effort to spread doctrinal knowledge among the laity, let alone to spread it to non Catholics.
 
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Amoris Laetitia is not the topic here. There are plenty of thread where you can express an opinion, and others can respond without sidetracking this topic pointing out all the logic errors in the statement above.
 
pnewton said:
Amoris Laetitia is not the topic here. There are plenty of thread where you can express an opinion, and others can respond without sidetracking this topic pointing out all the logic errors in the statement above.
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AL is not about sex abuse. But it is allegedly about rule bending, about intentional ambiguity, about failure to affirm and act on some basic moral truths. That seems somewhat parallel to the way some in the Church responded to clerical sex abuse a few decades ago.

The fact that the Vatican sees no reason to respond to the Dubia, and to the countless other bishops, priests, and laity, with similar voncerns is disturbing, and suggests the same “culture” is still in place.
 
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So, since you started this thread, you would be okay with the logic deficiencies above being pointed out and the whole issue of why Pope Francis did the right thing taking over here? Because the comparisons assumes a whole heck of a lot, and that is for just the barest touching. We might as well bring in Trump as well for comparisons.
 
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pnewton said:
So, since you started this thread, you would be okay with the logic deficiencies above being pointed out and the whole issue of why Pope Francis did the right thing taking over here? Because the comparisons assumes a whole heck of a lot,
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It’s not unreasonable to point out a parallel. There was a pattern especially starting in the 1960s to psychologize everything, to de emphasize the reality of sin, to deny the need for punishment. “Fr. X isn’t a bad man, when the therapist says he is cured, we will reassign him to a distant parish. There is no black and white, only shades of grey. We must not be judgemental”.

Some of that almost intentional ambiguity is hinted at in recent Vatican documents, where a footnote leaves a hole in pastoral practice big enough to drive a truck through.
 
commenter said:
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pnewton:
So, since you started this thread, you would be okay with the logic deficiencies above being pointed out and the whole issue of why Pope Francis did the right thing taking over here? Because the comparisons assumes a whole heck of a lot,
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It’s not unreasonable to point out a parallel. There was a pattern especially starting in the 1960s to psychologize everything, to de emphasize the reality of sin, to deny the need for punishment. “Fr. X isn’t a bad man, when the therapist says he is cured, we will reassign him to a distant parish. There is no black and white, only shades of grey. We must not be judgemental”.

Some of that almost intentional ambiguity is hinted at in recent Vatican documents, where a footnote leaves a hole in pastoral practice big enough to drive a truck through.
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You can express you view on recent Vatican documents and on the 60s and on all things progressive if you like. But it would a mistake to assume that the signers of the letter in the OP agree with your enhanced interpretation.
 
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