I have no credentials, knowledge or desire to pass judgment on a judge. But the enemies who loudly roared against the nominee showed no other qualifications, as champions of controversy, than a hardened front and a strong voice. As for their key witness of discredit, \u201cDoctor\u201d Ford, she turned out to be a cumbersome monument of incredibility, and a simple, squalid and genuine fake.<\/span><\/p>\nI only watched a short section of her testimony. There was a kind of confession in her looks which her modesty had not craft enough to color. And it was remarkable how easily and quickly she moved from a tearful recollection of her ancient offended chastity to a wholehearted laughter shared with her attorneys.<\/span><\/p>\nFor people run with great avidity to give evidence in favor of what flatters their vanity, feeds their ambition and satisfies their avarice. In the instance, the vanity of publicity and the ambition of being the <\/span>center of national attention. As for avarice, this doctoress of Freudian psychology will no doubt monetize her notoriety, and soon sink into the swallowing gulf of dark oblivion.<\/span><\/p>\nBut I digress.<\/span><\/p>\nThere are several and various events connecting the open rebellion against the Pope and the bitterly contested nomination of a Supreme Court judge. I will attempt to separate from each other the scenes that are connected only by the order of time.<\/span><\/p>\nPope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Vigan\u00f2 as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States in 2011. An Apostolic Nuncio equates to the charge of an Ambassador of the Vatican. Why \u201cnuncio\u201d and not \u201cambassador\u201d? Because the word \u2018nuncio,\u2019 whose etymology is related to the word \u2018announcement\u2019, suggests and implies two functions: to diplomatically represent the Vatican with a foreign government, while simultaneously (and importantly), strengthening and maintaining the ties between the Vatican and the many churches and hierarchies in a country.<\/span><\/p>\nThe term was already used in the early Middle Ages, to describe the representatives of the Pope at the Court of Byzantium, prior to the schism of 1054, that divided Christianity between the Catholic and the Orthodox. After the Council of Trent (1545-1563) the \u2018nuncios\u2019 also took up the role of the official ambassadors.<\/span><\/p>\nIn his letter to Pope Francis, from which I quote extracts, the Cardinal does not mince his words,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBishops and priests, abusing their authority, have committed horrendous crimes to the detriment of their faithful, minors, innocent victims, and young men eager to offer their lives to the Church, or by their silence have not prevented that such crimes continue to be perpetrated.<\/span><\/p>\nTo restore the beauty of holiness to the Church, which is terribly disfigured by so many abominable crimes, \u2026 we must tear down the conspiracy of silence with which bishops and priests have protected themselves at the expense of their faithful, a conspiracy of silence that in the eyes of the world risks making the Church look like a sect, a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia. \u201cWhatever you have said in the dark \u2026 shall be proclaimed from the housetops.\u201d (Lk. 12:3)<\/span><\/p>\n\u2026 But now that the corruption has reached the very top of the Church\u2019s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths regarding the heart-breaking case of the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, D.C., Theodore McCarrick\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\nThe letter mentions the two preceding Nuncios to Washington, prematurely deceased, who<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 did not fail to inform the Holy See immediately, as soon as they learned of Archbishop McCarrick\u2019s gravely immoral behavior with seminarians and priests.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nOne of the deceased Nuncios had conducted an investigation and one of his aids, professor at the diocesan seminary in Newark, wrote a letter to the Vatican. In which he said that,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026there was a recurring rumor in the seminary that the Archbishop (McCarrick) shared his bed with seminarians, inviting five at a time to spend the weekend with him at his beach house. And he added that he knew a certain number of seminarians, some of whom were later ordained priests for the Archdiocese of Newark, who had been invited to this beach house and had shared a bed with the Archbishop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nCardinal Vigan\u00f2 proposed a course of action as follows,<\/span><\/p>\n\n- Given that it seemed a new scandal of particular gravity, as it involved a cardinal, a scandal added to the many others affecting the Church in the United States,<\/span><\/li>\n
- and that, since the matter had to do with a cardinal, and according to can. 1405 \u00a7 1, No. 2\u02da, \u201cipsius<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Romani Pontificis dumtaxat ius est iudicandi\u201d; (it pertains to the Roman Pope the right and task to judge),<\/span><\/p>\n\n- I proposed that an exemplary measure be taken against the Cardinal that could have a medicinal function, to prevent future abuses against innocent victims and alleviate the very serious scandal for the faithful, who, despite everything, continued to love and believe in the Church.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The Cardinal\u2019s proposal resulted in Pope Benedict XIX imposing on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions that included,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 to leave the seminary where he was living, and he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThere is evidence that these sanctions were communicated to Cardinal McCarrick by more than one party, including Cardinal Vigan\u00f2 when he was appointed Nuncio to the US.<\/span><\/p>\nVigan\u00f2 then says,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI repeated them (the sanctions) to Cardinal McCarrick at my first meeting with him at the Nunciature. The Cardinal, muttering in a barely comprehensible way, admitted that he had perhaps made the mistake of sleeping in the same bed with some seminarians at his beach house, but he said this as if it had no importance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe point is that these sanctions were not enforced. Vigan\u00f2 adds,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026McCarrick had no difficulty in insistently presenting for the episcopate candidates known to be active homosexuals \u2014 I cite only the well-known case of Vincenzo de Mauro, who was appointed Archbishop-Bishop of Vigevano (a town near Milan in Italy), and later removed because he was undermining his seminarians .\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAfter the election of Pope Francis,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 McCarrick boasted openly of his travels and missions to various continents. In April 2014, the Washington Times had a front-page report on McCarrick\u2019s trip to the Central African Republic, and on behalf of the State Department no less. As Nuncio to Washington, I wrote to Cardinal Parolin asking him if the sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict were still valid. \u00c7a va sans dire (it goes without saying) that my letter never received any reply!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI omit the list of other Church authorities, in the US and the Vatican who, according to Cardinal Vigan\u00f2, were conniving to protect McCarrick. However, based on the profile of the eminences involved and the sequence of events, it is not far-fetched to hazard a tenable reason for the otherwise inexplicable and unprecedented resignations from office of Pope Benedict XVI.<\/span><\/p>\nOr rather, the only previous historical instance is that of Celestine V, Pope in 1294 for only five months. Those were the times of Dante Alighieri. Dante dedicates some lines to Celestine V in the \u201cDivine Comedy.\u201d The reluctant Pope is not in Hell but permanently resides in a kind of Hell\u2019s ante-chamber. Dante points to him and says, \u201cThere is he (Celestine V), who for cowardice, made the great refusal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWith Benedict XVI I cowardice couldn\u2019t be the issue. Given the evidence produced by Cardinal Vigan\u00f2, Pope Benedict probably realized he could not control or overrule the homosexual, or homosexual-protecting cabal, he was surrounded by.<\/span><\/p>\nWith suitable modifications, it is possible to infer a parallel with the situation of recent US presidents, surrounded by so-called neo-conservatives, who are neither \u2018neo\u2019 nor conservatives. But this is another matter altogether.<\/span><\/p>\nStill, puzzled as to why the sanctions against McCarrick were not enforced, Vigan\u00f2 travels to Rome for a conference.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026.On the morning of Thursday, June 20, 2013, I went to the Domus Sanctae Marthae, to join my colleagues who were staying there. As soon as I entered the hall I met Cardinal McCarrick, who wore the red-trimmed cassock. I greeted him respectfully as I had always done. He immediately said to me, in a tone somewhere between ambiguous and triumphant: \u201cThe Pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAt the time I knew nothing of his long friendship with Cardinal Bergoglio and of the important part he had played in his recent election, as McCarrick himself would later reveal in a lecture at Villanova<\/span><\/p>\nUniversity and in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter.<\/span><\/p>\nNor had I ever thought of the fact that he had participated in the preliminary meetings of the recent conclave. \u2026Therefore I did not immediately grasp the meaning of the encrypted message that McCarrick had communicated to me, but that would become clear to me in the days immediately following.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026The next day the audience with Pope Francis took place. After his address, which was partly read and<\/span><\/p>\npartly delivered off the cuff, the Pope wished to greet all the nuncios one by one. In single file, I<\/span><\/p>\nremember that I was among the last. When it was my turn, I just had time to say to him, \u201cI am the Nuncio to the United States.\u201d He immediately assailed me with a tone of reproach, using these words: \u201cThe Bishops in the United States must not be ideologized! They must not be right wing, they must be shepherds!\u201d Of course, I was not in a position to ask for explanations about the meaning of his words and the aggressive way in which he had upbraided me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nCardinal Vigan\u00f2 continues with arguments against the nomination of various pro-gay Archbishops and Bishops in the United States, promoted and prompted by McCarrick.<\/span><\/p>\nHere is the conclusion of the letter,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAt the Angelus on Sunday, August 12, 2018, Pope Francis said these words: \u201cEveryone is guilty of the good he could have done and did not do \u2026 If we do not oppose evil, we tacitly feed it. We need to intervene where evil is spreading; for evil spreads where daring Christians who oppose evil with good are lacking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIf this is rightly to be considered a serious moral responsibility for every believer, how much graver is it for the Church\u2019s supreme pastor, who in the case of McCarrick not only did not oppose evil but associated himself in doing evil with someone he knew to be deeply corrupt. He followed the advice of someone he knew well to be a pervert, thus multiplying exponentially with his supreme authority the evil done by McCarrick. And how many other evil pastors is Francis still continuing to prop up in their active destruction of the Church!<\/span><\/p>\nFrancis is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his action, he has divided them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ\u2019s flock.<\/span><\/p>\nIn this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick\u2019s abuses and resign along with all of them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe Pope chose not to answer questions about Vigan\u00f2\u2019s open letter. But in a homily, he made indirect reference to it. Which prompted the Cardinal to write a second open letter, of which I will only quote the following statement,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026the Pope\u2019s reply to my testimony was: \u2018I will not say a word!\u2019 But then, contradicting himself, he has compared his silence to that of Jesus in Nazareth before Pilate, and compared me to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAfter the second letter, an official voice of the Catholic establishment (in the instance Cardinal Ouellet), accused Vigan\u00f2 of having built a \u201cpolitical fabrication,\u201d of having lodged a \u201cmonstrous accusation,\u201d of having launched a \u201cblasphemous attack on the Pope,\u201d of having inflicted \u201ca grievous wound on the Church\u201d etc.<\/span><\/p>\nFrom now on, the affair acquires the tone of a tabloid, with invectives, accusations, hints and innuendos about Vigan\u00f2\u2019s obscure, supposed, and diabolic motivations. A detailed rendition would last as long as a night in the Arctic when nights are longest there. I have already driven the reader past the bounds of reasonably bearable patience. Incidentally, McCarrick resigned his cardinalship in July 2018.<\/span><\/p>\nThe next step in connecting the turmoil in the Catholic Church with the nomination of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is an attempt at tracing the roots of the turmoil itself, and an examination of why it became inevitable.<\/span><\/p>\nIn a previous article, \u201cQuo Vadis Vatican?\u201d I described the revolutionary about-turn of the Catholic Church on her relationship with the Jews, during the Second Vatican Council. Meaningful, for example, is the following statement by Cardinal Kasper,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe Catholic Church can attend to (whatever \u2018attend\u2019 means is left unsaid), attend to those who, from culture or habit, feel uncomfortable with the liturgical reforms and other reforms of Vatican II. But the Catholic Church cannot accept in any form and for whatever reason, the lingering-on of the prejudice and the diffidence and contempt towards Jews and Judaism. Let\u2019s just consider how the accusation of having killed Christ, created and continues to create in certain places the conditions of an enmity that curses both Judaism and the Gospel of Humanity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTranslated this means, the Catholics are essentially committing a sin by being unfriendly to the Jews. The Church, he says, needs no longer to proselytize and promote Jewish conversion. Simply because Israel was always in alliance with God, and was loved by God. The Jews are \u201cour elder brothers of the Bible.\u201d Therefore Israel does not need to convert to Christianity, unlike practitioners of other religions.<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to the same prelate Kasper, after Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church has been and is in a continuous evolution, even re-evaluating established dogmas. One of the great results of the change is that the Catholic Church is now co-existential (his words), with Judaism. And, though not openly stated, \u2018co-existential\u2019 implies shared values and\u2026 policies.<\/span><\/p>\nWhich brings us to another important Encyclical, recently issued by Pope Francis, which has to do with the family, \u201cAmoris Laetitia\u201d (The joy of love (in the family)). The essence of that long document can be summarized into one sentence, \u201cThe Church must be firm and flexible.\u201d Given that \u2018flexible\u2019 is the antonym of \u2018firm,\u2019 once more we find an imposed lexical stress that the language itself is not really equipped to bear.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the instance, the flexible firmness \u2013 or if you like, the firm flexibility \u2013 involves the issues of same-sex marriages, abortion, divorced couples, single parenting, sex-neutrality, homosexuality, transgenderism, sodomy etc. Issues that American Judaism, by their proud admission, has taken the lead in aggressively promoting and even enforcing. [Remember the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples].<\/span><\/p>\nThe Encyclical \u201cAmoris Laetitia,\u201d more than a program, represents a summary of an evolution begun 50 years ago. Out of several, I will produce one example, which will bring us closer to the connection with the storm surrounding the appointment of the latest Supreme Court judge.<\/span><\/p>\nEugene Kennedy (1928-2015) was a psychologist, award-winning writer, public intellectual, syndicated columnist, etc\u2026. and professor emeritus of Loyola University Chicago. He was a priest who dropped his priestly robes to get married, and a follower of Erik Erickson, a German-American Freudian psychologist of Jewish roots.<\/span><\/p>\nIn 1970 Kennedy, with the approval and sponsorship of the American Catholic authorities appointed Erickson to conduct a study on the psychological profile of 219 priests.<\/span><\/p>\nErickson had developed yet another theory on the psychological development of human beings. According to him, there are 7 stages of development in humans. Stage 6 is intimacy. In a nutshell, sex is needed to reach the final stage #7 of maturity. Otherwise, a man is immature.<\/span><\/p>\nSay this to a group of people, Catholic priests, who have made a vow of celibacy. The inevitable conclusion is that, ipso facto, all priests are immature. In the instance, Catholic-funded Jewish psychology tells priests to act on their sexual desires, including, of course, homosexuality.<\/span><\/p>\nFor psychology\/psychiatry is a Jewish science, promoting Jewish values and in particular sexual liberation. Psychiatry substitutes the essentially free-of-charge Catholic confession with a license to sin, in exchange for juicy fees paid to the psychiatrist.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Kennedy study, being conducted on behalf of the Catholic Church, was published with great clout, and we can imagine the devastating effects it had on the morals of the Catholic priesthood.<\/span><\/p>\nBy the way, though raised as a Catholic, I am writing agnostically, and as a long-time follower of what Kant defined as the \u2018categorical imperative.\u2019 A trivial example of which may be found in the reason why most of us stop at a red traffic light, even if we are confident that no police is around to give a ticket.<\/span><\/p>\nStill, all conversations with my Catholic school friends and some of their Catholic parents, grandparents and relatives have led me to one conclusion. Episodes of deviance in the Church may have always occurred, but none of my friends and relatives \u2013 and I \u2013 saw or reported any. The explosion of scandals is a historically recent phenomenon.<\/span><\/p>\nWe reached the final link in the connection I was looking for. Kavanaugh is a Catholic, a point not openly discussed but not overlooked in the contentious debate. His enemies are the enemies of a view of life and society at the opposite pole of what (at least until recently), the Church represented. They keep their design always in view and lay hold of any expedient that time should offer.<\/span><\/p>\nThe core of the issue is very well exposed in a satirical article written for \u201cVeterans Today,\u201d by Kevin Barrett, and titled \u201cKavanaugh converts to Judaism to save Supreme Court nomination.\u201d Where we read,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIn the latest shocking turn of events in an increasingly twisted saga, embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has announced his impending conversion to Judaism. Speaking at a hastily-convened press conference on the Capitol steps, Kavanaugh said he will undergo a conversion ceremony, including a public circumcision by top Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi Yehuda Karinski, at the National Cathedral in Washington DC beginning at noon tomorrow\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBy converting to Judaism and having the end of my penis sliced off, I will prove once and for all that I am qualified,\u201d Kavanaugh stated.<\/span><\/p>\nHe explained that his conversion solved the problem of Catholic overrepresentation on the court\u2014he would have been the fifth Catholic out of nine justices\u2014while simultaneously helping address the crisis of Jewish underrepresentation. Kavanaugh explained that there are currently only three Jewish justices, making up a mere 33% of the Court, despite the fact that Jews constitute more than 65% of America\u2019s ruling elite.<\/span><\/p>\nAs the fourth Jewish justice, Kavanaugh explained, he will be striking a blow against anti-Semitism by helping the Jewish community overcome institutionalized barriers of prejudice and racism that have impeded its natural rise to a position of complete dominance over all American institutions of power.<\/span><\/p>\nKavanaugh also claimed that his public circumcision, which will be broadcast live in wide-screen close-up by CNN, NBC, Fox, and all other media, will provide a moving spectacle of atonement for his alleged crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n\u2026. Defenders of Kavanaugh\u2019s decision to convert included the five Jews who had been leading the anti-Kavanaugh movement: Diane Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer, Debra Katz, and Michael Bromwich. In a joint statement, the five vowed to switch sides and support Kavanaugh as soon as his conversion was completed and his offending penis mutilated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThere you have it. It is a sign of the times that fear trumps truth when truth must be sought in satire. Outside satire, as a right line describes the passage from point to point, a right opinion is that which connects distant truths by the shortest intermediate propositions.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the instance, the intermediate propositions were not the shortest. On the other hand, whether to see life as it is will give us much consolation is uncertain. But the consolation which is drawn from truth, if any there be, is solid and durable; that which may be derived from error, must be, like its original, deluding and fugitive.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd if I have taxed the patience of my 25 readers, I did not do it on purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n- 1. On the principle that one picture is worth a thousand words, this is a very short video clip from a recent Catholic Youth Synod in Rome<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n
![\"Christine](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2002\/10\/Christine-Blasey-Ford.jpg\")
<\/a>