Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal: time to sack trendy bishops and restore the faith
by Gerald Warner
It has become fashionable to claim that the sex abuse scandal currently afflicting the Catholic Church is “its biggest crisis since the Reformation”. Oh, really? Tell me about it. The abuse issue is just a small part of the much larger crisis that has engulfed the Church since the Second Vatican Catastrophe and which is more serious than the Reformation.
Abolish clerical celibacy? The last thing a priest abusing altar boys needs or wants is a wife. There is no compulsory celibacy in the Church of England, but that has not prevented vicars and boy scouts furnishing gratifying amounts of copy to the tabloid Sunday papers for the past century. Celibacy goes against the grain of today’s “unrepressed”, “non-judgemental”, let-it-all-hang-out attitude to sex; its continued existence is a reproach to the hedonist Western world; so Rome must be persuaded to abolish it – likewise its condemnation of divorce, abortion, contraception, homosexuality and all the other fetishes of liberal society. Dream on, secularists.
“Irish abuse victims disappointed by Pope’s letter.” Of course they are. They were disappointed by it before they had read it, before it was even written. Any other response would diminish the power they find themselves wielding against the Church. Have they a legitimate grievance? In most cases, yes. They have a ferocious grievance against the “filth” (Benedict XVI’s term, long before he came under public pressure) who defiled them and treated them like animals.
How could clergy transgress so gravely against the doctrines of the Church? What doctrines? These offences took place in the wake of Vatican II, when doctrines were being thrown out like so much lumber. These offenders were the children of Paul VI and “aggiornamento”. Once you have debauched the Mystical Body of Christ, defiling altar boys comes easily.
The “neglected” sacraments and devotional practices that the Pope says could have prevented this did not just wither on the vine: they were actively discouraged by bishops and priests. In the period when this abuse was rampant, there was just one mortal sin in the Catholic Church: daring to celebrate or attend the Latin Tridentine Mass. A priest raping altar boys would be moved to another parish; as for a priest who had the temerity to celebrate the Old Mass – his feet would not touch the ground.
There was a determined resolve among the bishops to deny any meaningful catechesis to the young. That is the generation, wholly ignorant of the faith, that in Ireland achieved material prosperity in the “Celtic Tiger” economy. Initially it still attended Mass (or what passed for Mass) out of social conformity. Then the sex abuse scandal gave Irish post-Vatican II agnostics the perfect pretext for apostasy: tens of thousands who had never been abused, nor met anybody who had, found an excuse to stay in bed on Sunday mornings.
The abusive priests are not the only hypocrites. “I am so shocked by the abuse scandal I am leaving the Church.” Right. So, the fact that some degenerates who should never have been ordained violated young people – in itself a deplorable sin – means that the Son of God did not come down to earth, redeem mankind on the cross and found the Church? This appalling scandal no more compromises the truths of the Faith than the career of Alexander VI or any other corrupt Renaissance Pope.
Should bishops be forced to resign? Oh yes – approximately 95 per cent of them worldwide. These clowns in their pseudo-ethnic mitres and polyester vestments with faux-naïve Christian symbols, spouting their ecumaniac episcobabble, have presided over more than sexual abuse: they have all but extinguished the Catholic faith with their modernist fatuities. They should be retired to monasteries to spend their remaining years considering how to account to their Maker for a failed stewardship that has lost countless millions of souls.
Benedict XVI should take advantage of a popular wave of revulsion against the failed episcopate to sack every 1960s flared-trousered hippy who is obstructing Summorum Pontificum. It is a unique opportunity to cull the hireling shepherds and clear away the dead wood of the Second Vatican Catastrophe. It is time to stop the apologies and reinstate apologetics; to rebuild all that has been destroyed in the past 40 years; to square up to liberals and secularists as so many generations of Catholics did in the past; to proclaim again the immutable truths of the One True Church that, in the glory of the Resurrection, can have no legitimate posture other than triumphalism.
I generally agree with Mr. Warner. His tone isn't going to win him any friends, but the overall assessment of the scandal is correct.
One distinction that we must keep in mind: the actual teachings of Vatican Two vs. the way those teachings have been held hostage by the revolutionary elite. I daresay that 90% of what gets called "Vatican Two reform" these days is anything but what the Council Fathers actually teach in the documents themselves.
JPII and BXVI have dedicated their pontificates to restoring an authentic understanding of the Council as one exercise in the continuing, historic ministry of the magisterium. Nothing in the documents of VC2 contradict VC1, Trent, Latern IV or any other Council. This is why VC2 must be read in a way consistent with those Councils. BXVI has rightly called us to a "hermeneutic of continuity" and away from the "hermeneutic of rupture" that has plagued the Church since 1965.
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I tend to agree with Warner here but I agree with Fr Z on this one: this really is the fault of the "Spirit" of Vatican II people.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your observations.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the General Chapter of Calaruega (1983, if I am right), in which it has been decided to allow to men with omosexual tendencies to join the Order of Preacher?
I am inclined to think that such a decision went in the direction of the "hermeneutic of rupture".
Best, Luca.
How was filth in the priesthood handled in the four decades before Vatican II?
ReplyDeleteI think Warner makes several excellent points (and I like his bluntness), but I do think he lays too much at the feet of Vatican ll -- I would agree, by the way, that it's the flawed "Spirit of Vatican ll", not the actual documents of that Council, that have been so destructive.
ReplyDeleteBut I keep wondering how really firm the faith was before Vatican ll, "Spirit" or otherwise, that it could collapse so easily. Clearly, at least as measured by Mass attendance, there was external observance, but one wonders how really deep it was. There must have been a great deal of dissatisfaction with the status quo for so many religious orders to go so thoroughly nutty. My own parents considered themselves observant Catholics, but I'm the only Catholic left out of a family of six -- and I'm a revert, at that. The Faith was not passed on -- and Vatican ll can't be blamed for all of that. Too many parents left the education of their kids to the Catholic schools, even while they watched the catechesis crumble. No doubt many, like my own parents, complained bitterly about the poor catechesis but did nothing on their own to instill the faith. Religion was, perhaps, a cultural norm, like wearing hats or some such external thing, but was taken for granted and not treasured. That's survivable if the surrounding culture is friendly to Judeo-Christian values: when it's not (as in the changing culture of the Sixties), it's catastrophic.
Mr. W assumes a cause-effect relation between the loss of the Old Mass and priestly chastity. If only we'd had the Tridentine Mass, he argues, this pedophilia never would've happened.
ReplyDeleteThis reasoning, while not only uncertain because untestable, openly commits the post hoc fallacy -- assuming two events are causally related because one follows the other in time. But sin (and in particular pedophilia) originates in our wounded nature. The Mass, on the other hand, is the medium of God's grace, and no legitimate liturgical rite or use (old or new, Latin or vulgar) provides more or less grace than another.
My guess as to the reason why "Spirit of Vatican II" happened is that there was an atmosphere, encouraged, really, of experimentation and new, fresh thinking, which wasn't bad in itself, just that it went to excesses not imagined at the Council.
ReplyDeleteMany of those who were there through that time would most likely see themselves as pioneers and leaders in bringing the Church to the world (which Vatican II called for).
Unfortunately, the "rupture" element took over from the "continuity" element.
I agree almost completely with Mr. Warner, however how does he blame the teachings of Vatican II when Vatican II didn't teach anything that hasn't been taught before? I understand that the modernists within the Church, and there were/are plenty, took the documents of Vatican II and used them to abuse the Church and the faithful in many ways, but don't blame the council, blame the individuals who misused it. We need to be perfectly clear about the actual teachings of the council and the misuse of the council as a means of radicalizing and destroying the Church.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the post-Vatican 2 Church. My most vivid memories of childhood at the parish parochial school are the priest, on the rare occasion when he appeared, teaching us to chant "Hare Rama, Hare Krishna" and subjecting us to numbing, awful folk masses. Of course, he quit the priesthood. I watched as the nuns, growing weary of the real, hard work of teaching, switched to "pastoral care." I saw the traditions of the church being discarded like trash. Sacramentals, saints, and the Virgin Mary were treated as embarassments. All this Vatican 2 wrought. Now, we have the pedophilia scandals. Am I surprised? No, not at all. I EXPECTED IT. Any institution that throws away its ancient, sacred traditions deserves to be most severely punished. This is the hand of God, chastening us for rejecting the faith. This Novus Ordo nonsense must be ended.
ReplyDelete