If I Were To Found My Own Church….

A man who shouldn't be Cardinal...

… I would feel, actually, a blasphemer. This, for the simple reason that I am not God, and God already found His own Church on Christ. So no, I could never even think of something like that.

I know it's obvious. But Cardinal O'Malley did not say it, so I will have to.

Of course one could, in a joking manner, make the absurd argument. “Hey”, he might say, “these are not my rules. They are God's rules. If you don't like them, complain by him!”. Or: “hey, these are not my rules. If it depended on me, I would make chocolate a remedy against cholesterine!” Statements like this only declare, in a joking manner, that we know nothing, and are prone to sin. They are fine in the proper context.

The problem with Cardinal O'Malley, though, is that he created the wrong context, and he gave entirely the wrong perception. Firstly, by choosing to say “I would love to have women priests” he touched a taboo, making a comparison that he knew would be easily misunderstood, and which smacks of political correctness on the cheap. Secondly, he did not add the necessary caveat, adding to his words an expression like “but I would be the biggest idiot on earth only if I thought to do so, because God has already founded His own Church, which is the only one”, or “but only a cretin can think that he knows better than God, and what whatever God states cannot be improved upon, and we accept it instead of discussing it; otherwise we aren't Catholics, but heretics and idiots”.

Instead, the Cardinal chose a different, very arrogant approach. The message he sends is more like “I feel with you rabid feminists, and humanly speaking I cannot avoid thinking that you are right. Embarrassingly enough, Jesus differs. But Jesus cannot be wrong so hey, we'll have to live with this embarrassment; one we can't humanly understand or justify in any other way than by stating that it comes from Him so there must be something right in it”.

Come on, Your Grace. You can't fool us on this one.

I could now, for the edification of the Cardinal, write not one but several blog posts explaining why it is the greatest blessing that women cannot be priests. But as I am pretty sure he knows all already much better than I do – being more than a couple of springs more seasoned than I am – I will let it be for today; safe in the knowledge that the man wanted to pander to the world, hiding behind the finger of “for some reason, Jesus chose that way, so let's bear this burden with Christian resignation”.

This is not one who defends Christ. Rather, he is one who says he does not understand Christ's apparent misogyny, but he deals with it in obedience.

Not much of a Cardinal, this one.

M

 

Refuting The Absurd

I seem to notice that with the election of the new Bishop of Rome, The Humble Francis, and with the alarming increase in modernist antics among his prelates, a new sport has developed. This new blogging discipline consists in denying an even bigger evil than the one Francis & Co. are accused of, as if this were evidence of the falseness of the accusations.

So, we read here or there that such and such defrocked priest is still defrocked. Well of course he is, it is not that priests are easily “refrocked”, nor has anyone accused Francis of wanting to reintegrate in their priestly functions all the nutcases who have been kicked out in the last years. Please note that in order to be kicked out from the priesthood one needs to have been an obvious madman for many years, and nothing else will do (unless, perhaps, one is a Traditionalist). As it is, scores of Jesuits and assorted idiots can happily promote sodomy year in and year out, and they live and die as priests in good standing (Father Gallo docet). In short, to say that Francis isn't a raving lunatic proves absolutely nothing as to his not being an utter and complete disgrace.

The same mechanism is at work when Francis does something very stupid, or worse. Yes, he can baptise the child of concubines, but honestly I struggle to remember one single article or blog post that claimed he is not allowed to do it. The gravity of what he did lies, for the umpteenth time in his still young pontificate, in the implicit but still very loud message he sends with his gesture, not in a matter of Canon Law.

The latter, though, even applies to his liturgical abuse on Maundy Thursday 2013. Again: whilst he is the Pope and has, therefore, the factual power to avoid sanctions if he breaches the rules, the fact remains that the rules are there to be followed and the Pontiff, the First of the Servants, should also feel the first obliged to do so. Still, the same observation was made on this occasion: he can, so where's your problem.

The same has happened again with the most recent antics of Cardinal O'Malley. No, he wasn't baptised “again” and he knew that; but certainly, his gesture gives to external observers – particularly if casual ones; the well instructed ones cannot but be scandalised – the impression that there is no difference, or no real one, between being a Catholic and a Protestant. How stupid were, then, all those who have died or have suffered horrible persecutions for the One True Church, and how intolerant was Jesus to found only One Church, as if Catholics thought they possess… the Truth!

Every time, the neocon “nothing to see here” crowd tries to persuade us that everything is normal because the Cardinal has not openly apostatised, the Bishop of Rome can commit liturgical abuses without being censored by anyone, and he can obviously baptise the baby of concubines if he believes – or at least this is the rule – that there is a grounded hope that the baby will receive a Catholic education. But this is just not the point. This is like grounding one's idea that Hitler was fine on the fact that he was never known to chew the arms of little Jewish children, or to drink their blood.

It should be clear to every blogger and Catholic journalist that the Church is, even in Her current miserable shape, still a formidable opponent for everyone who want to openly, formally, challenge and demolish Her tenets; and that therefore every open challenge to Her must perforce occur in a way that, at least in the form, does not openly deny the received truth. She is not the Labour Party, that can be transformed in something radically different just by way of a Congress; or the Italian Communist Party, that can decide to switch allegiance from the Warsaw Pact to the NATO literally overnight. Everyone who wants to play Che Guevara with the Church will have to make his revolution – what he can do of it – according to certain rules.

The gravity of the words and acts both of Francis and of his prelates must be measured accordingly.

Mundabor

 

A Cardinal Has A Great Idea

How very moving! I was chocking back vomit for hours!

And it came to pass a Cardinal woke up one morning and had a bad feeling about his own Baptism. Particularly because his baptism has been – he can’t remember, but he was reliably informed – a Catholic one.

In times in which a Pope pays attention his Jewish buddy, the Rabbi, really eats kosher – he might make a mistake, you see; which would be very bad -, the Cardinal must have thought his baptism was too one-sided, stained with “excessive doctrinal security”, not at all “inclusive”. This Cardinal is a member of a very exclusive group of Cardinals, you see. He must show he can go with the flow.

Even the Cardinal understood, though, that what is done is done. You can’t undo a baptism and ask to have another one in an ecumenical ceremony. It just doesn’t work. What to do?

At this point, the Cardinal had a brilliant idea: at the next “ecumenical” service down at the Methodist an overweight woman thinking she is more than a layman will perform a strange ceremony of renewal of Baptism, or “reaffirmation”, or such like crap. A bit as if Baptims was like silver, with the need of being polished every now and then lest it loses beauty. It also is, you see, a ceremony. They love these things, the Proddies. Fuzzy feelings all around, and a way to revive past emotions of one’s childhood, like the First Communion. Oh, how good and saintly one can feel!

“Great”, the Cardinal must have thought. “If I can’t undo my baptism, I can at least send a clear message the overweight woman is, in a way, a bit of a priest, and I can go and receive something from her my postman could not do. It doesn’t get more ecumenical than that. I must check the press is there, though. Yes, I will not ask for the ceremony to be performed on me from a man. It must be a woman. Otherwise people might say I am being sexist even when I am being ecumenical”.

I am pleased to inform you everything went according to script.

The Cardinal went, saw (not easy to miss, the woman) and received. The photo is everywhere. The woman “minister” (or whatever) had to “choke back tears for hours” (see above: they really are junkies for fuzzy feelings. Thank, God, that you made me a Catholic!). A triumph of ecumenism, with the modest Cardinal now firmly following the example of the Bishop of Rome, He Who Will Make You Eat Kosher.

“Who knows?” – the Cardinal thinks – “if the Blessed Virgin might have thought she had been lied to, than perhaps she also thought God was too sectarian? The boss says God isn’t Catholic! Perhaps he is a closet Methodist?”

The Cardinal is now thinking of the next steps. Should he ask the Jews to get his Bar Mitzvah? Hey, he is a bit old for that, but he has a beautiful singing voice. Or he might wash himself in the Ganges: the river stinks, but the trip would be beautiful. Another idea could be to take part to the Friday thingy in the Mosque, with genuflections and all. Photographers alerted beforehand. “Islam Is Religion Of Peace, Says Cardinal”. Beautiful headline…

Alas, for the moment the Cardinal will have to be happy with the tears of the well-nourished woman. But who knows where Francis is going to lead the Cardinals to…

Mundabor

Interfaith Services Must Stop Now

Cardinal O'Malley criticised Jesus' lack of charity and inclusiveness.

I am informed a Catholic Cardinal has participated to an interfaith service… No, wait: if I read it correctly, the service in Boston war held in the Cathedral, so Cardinal O'Malley did not, strictly speaking, “participated” in it, but he hosted it.

I have read many stupid arguments in favour of interfaith services, but the idea that a bomb or terrorist attack would make such exercises less unjustified seems to me a new height of stupidity. One gets the impression there are people on this planet who wake up in the morning with such an hysterical need for “unity” or “solidarity” that in their mind God's rules do not find application anymore. “Sorry Jesus, we just had a bomb, so can you please forget that you are the Way, the Truth and the Life and take place in the pews like everyone else? How do you say? Well yes of course, you will have to endure infidels basically preaching from Your house, but come on, there has been a bomb, can't you be tolerant and inclusive for one day? What? That man? Yes, he is President Obama. Why is he speaking from the pulpit? Well he is, yeah, like, sort of… preaching, really…”.

The simple fact is, ” interfaith services” are either wrong or… wrong. This being the case, there can be no contingent circumstances that make them right; it would be like saying that it is good to be blasphemous to show our separated atheist brethren that we are inclusive of their concerns.

More in general, I truly cannot understand this obsessive need to pray together. What is this, the kindergarten? Don't people know that there are Christians, Jews, Muslims and many others? Don't they know Muslims are infidels? Have they forgotten what “infidel” means? Have they forgotten what “prayer” is?

If people want to gather to show they don't like bombers, fine. Make a day of it and meet on some street on a fine April day. But why every tragic event should become the excuse for more rubbish is beyond me. What I begin to think is that for an awful lot of people a fuzzy feeling of “togetherness” has become vastly more important than prayer; nay, it has become the real motivation for prayer, so that many people (starting from disgraceful Cardinals) cannot even see the problem in common prayers in which Jesus is just a flavour among many others.

The traders have taken over the temple, and are using it to sell emotional rubbish.

I am sure O'Malley voted for Bergoglio. No, truly, I am.

Mundabor