Curious Thoughts on Catholics, Lawsuits, Cardinals, and Supposedly "Conservative" Bloggers

Hello Everyone,

Today while cruising "home base", the Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers website, this shows up in the feed, with a hat - tip to Fr. Tim Moyle of "When the Rubber Hits the Road":

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/06/01/cardinal-pell-consults-lawyers-after-vatican-adviser-calls-him-almost-sociopathic/#.VWw9Y8lA49w.twitter

Summary: There's a whole lotta infighting at the Vatican. A priest abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, a layman elected to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, launched a series of public slanderings and calumnies against known Conservative Cardinal George Pell, currently the Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy. The worst claims are that ++Pell bribed someone to shut up about priest abuse the victim received, and that +Pell is "almost sociopathic."

Worse, Saunders threw away any credibility he had as a representative for the Vatican including his Pontifical Commission, by taking it to public air on the Australian television news program, 60 minutes. This may or may not be directly related to the American version. No surprise, this stuff is for ratings.

Because of this public defacement, the Catholic Herald states that "“In the circumstances, the cardinal is left no alternative but to consult with his legal advisers.”

Hmmmm .... This got me thinking.

Recently, Certain Basilian and Jesuit priests have been threatening laypeople including bloggers with lawsuits. These people of course, used their blogs to fight back against the liberal, wayward priests, or had their lawyers use their wonderful legal skills to "smack down" said priests before the lawsuits left the ground running.

Not to mention, a certain prelate by the name of Cardinal Burke also weighed in on the matter of Catholics suing other Catholics, and basically put on South Park's "Don't Sue" panda costume. What does that panda advocate? "Don't sue."

Also, said bloggers and right-winged people of all strokes on the Catholic side of the blogosphere, have used a certain scripture passage (1 Corinthians 6-11 by the way,) to silence those with the Word of God as further weapons not to sue people and prove them right.

So clearly it's has been decreed wrong for liberal priests to sue Catholic bloggers and laity.

However, here's a "Traditional"/Benedict XVI/Conservative Cardinal" who is being unjustly attacked by someone who's also Catholic, and he is a victim of sexual assault from a priest. And yet, here is the conservative, supposedly spotless Cardinal, consulting his lawyers for legal advice .... of which one can rightly assume that a true and proper option would be to sue for defamation of character and/or libel.

So it seems, we have an interesting predicament here do we not????? Should Cardinal Pell sue?

If he does, he violates the Scripture thrown against Catholics to tell them not to sue, and he clearly is ignoring the advice of ++Burke and the other bastions of Catholic Truth, that right-wing Blog-o-sphere, that we shouldn't sue other Catholics. Clearly there is a hypocrisy, even if the lawsuit is just, that this Catholic is suing other Catholics for the right reasons.

This begs another question: If the right wingers/Radical Catholic Reactionaries/Conservative Cardinals were quick to condemn those liberal priests for their threat of lawsuit against other Catholics, will they do the same for Cardinal Pell, despite proper self-defense? Or will they remain silent in order to uphold their screed they have placed in public across the Catholic Blog-o-sphere? Or, will the blog-o-sphere become magically hypocritical save one of "their own" and rationalize their once "doctrinal" stance on lawsuits and Catholics? I suppose they might hide the turnabout in some sort of "clarification" or rationalization.

Now, should Cardinal Pell NOT sue, then yes, he clearly has upheld what ++Burke and company have said, and good for him .... or is it? They say that silence is assent, and that might actually make the world believe that Saunders and his emotionally/psychologically-fueled tirade is actually true, when clearly, right now there is no evidence proving his story is true. Therefore, as it stands, Saunders' story is false and a lie. It is further proven a lie as Sauders and ++Pell have never crossed paths, either in Australia, nor in their workings in the Vatican. If Saunders takes this further, and actually somehow gets validity to his story, placing Cardinal Pell under judgement, legal or clerical  .....

then a new question arises. Will Pell's "conservative" blogging and clerical "allies" (I mean that loosely. It's more that they are not liberals in the Church but defend each other, blindly and without considering ALL angles to a case or story...) decry the injustice, and perhaps realize that there are just cases when a man should actually have a legal defense, and that just might .... gasp .... mean that a lawsuit is a valid legal defense for a truly calumnied man? Especially in this case, whereby it so happens it is a Catholic defending himself against another Catholic? Or will silence be the answer, just for the sake of upholding what is in the Catholic Blogopshere?

A quandary indeed ..... Hope you enjoyed my thoughts for today.

Pax, Julian.

My Two Cents: Recent Idol Worship of Cardinal Burke by Right Wingers and Trads Behaving Badly

Hello Everyone,

I've got a bit of a beef today. It involves blog coverage and a specific article about a specific cardinal.

Over the past few days, some right-wing to Trad Behaving Badly blogs have been posting THIS article about every Traditionalist/Latin Mass goers' favourite Cardinal, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke.

They LOVE this guy and idol worship him because they think he's an anti-thesis to the wishy-washy, spineless bishops out there and the current, "liberal" papacy of Pope Francis, the supposedly most anti-Traditionalist, fluffiest pope EVAH (credit to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) this side of Vatican II. In addition he's one of the few Cardinals in our modern "Vatican II Church" to have celebrated a Pontifical Solemn Latin Mass and is pro-Latin Mass.

In a nutshell, I am disgusted with this article for a few reasons:

• While the original source is an Italian publication, The translated English source is the Trad Behaving Badly blog, Rorate Caeli. If you recall my last article on Jan 12th, where I highlighted an excellent analysis of the Trads Behaving Badly (TBBs) from Spike is Best, the author says this: "And just a friendly neighbourhood reminder: Rorate Caeli is the schismatic-but-without-the-guts-of-declaring-it blog that on the very heels - within minutes in fact - of the public declaration of the election of Pope Francis posted "The Horror" as their reaction, and did not offer any sort of apology stating their filial obedience to the Holy Pontiff. Thus, everything they post, write, disseminate, can be dismissed out of hand without second thought whatsoever, in the full comfortable knowledge that the neo-orthodoxy which they present is entirely floated."

• Being a TBB site, Rorate Caeli`s propaganda piece is another brick thrown at the windows of the Church. It promotes Radical Traditionalism through a good and noble prince of the Church, hijacking him like the liberals do with Pope Francis, but for their political TBB agenda. This does another dis-service for Traditional Catholics in both forms of the Roman Rite and/or Latin Mass attending Catholics.

• This is another intentional stab by these TBBs, who come dangerously close or do act sedevacantist, at our current Holy Father, Pope Francis, because he recently moved or "demoted" a number of the Benedict XVI elected/"Traditionalist" Cardinals from  key positions in the Vatican Curia or councils, and has left Cardinal Burke with only one position vs, what he had before. The TBBs also relate this demotion and reorganization as an insult to another "God" of theirs, Benedict XVI, who is a considered a "saviour" of the Church in their minds(with exception to the SSPX and sedevacantists, who believe that the ``Modern Church`` is plagued no matter who's the Bishop of Rome), because he freed the Latin Mass from public scrutiny, as well as that they view these changes as the end of the Benedict XVI types of cardinals, and in with the "liberal" Francis types. Basically, it's further pitting Francis against Benedict, when for the most part, Francis has been supporting and been supported by His Holiness Emeritus, and has been seeking the Emeritus Vicar of Christ's counsel. What an insult!

• A real big beef to me: This is a slap in the face to the other good Cardinals/ Archbishops/bishops out there who ARE doing excellent work and even "smelling like the sheep" as Pope Francis wants us to do, but because they aren't super-trads or getting their photo taken with pro-lifers on the battlefield AND being gung-ho about the Latin Mass, they are not "true" princes of the church unlike others.

I particularly am insulted and make pertinent that last point, and I use my Own Eminence as an example. I am under the spiritual authority of His Eminence, Cardinal Thomas Collins, under the Archdiocese of Toronto. He has to look after a diocese of a few million Catholics, including a number of lay organizations, as well as deal with nasty complainers through snail-mail AND online, including Trads Behaving Badly in my archdiocese, who have the gall to use smear campaigns online against himself and his Office of the Archdiocese of Toronto. Whether it`s accusing the Office/++Collins of trying to swindle people in their wills out of money like a "mercenary" as part of my Archdiocese's pastoral plan, accusing them of incompetence in other matters, or the usual complaining about x priest in x parish because he's doing something  more "traditional" or "spiritual" and not "pastoral," these people consistently attack His Eminence and the Archdiocese and know no bounds and don't care for his, nor his office's sake.  

++Collins has publically in the Catholic (and secular media, supported the Traditional Latin Mass, even going so far as to instill a priest permanently in Scarborough after the FSSP mission went bunk. He has allowed both St. Lawrence AND the Oratorians of St. Phillip Neri to have their Latin Masses in the Archdiocese. Other dioceses in this world have ZERO Latin Masses, and bishops who hate or stonewall the Latin Mass, and like, em, other things like their prestige and the "Spirit of Vatican II." If he was a nasty liberal archbishop who was all Novus Ordo-y/"Spirit of Vatican II", there wouldn't have even been the indult Mass in my diocese pre-2007 when he took over after ++Ambrozic. or he would have banned the Oratorians/St. Lawrence from having the Latin Mass, completely ignoring Summorum Pontificum + Ecclesiae Unitatem. So compared to other dioceses in the world in the "modern, Francis-led Church", one could say we are miles ahead and blessed to have this Archbishop with regard to the Latin Mass. (who could become Pope one day, of only now 4 Canadian Cardinals  ...). He DOES care about the Latin Mass, he just doesn't endorse the TBB elements hanging around, as he has indicated when he spoke last year for a Theology on Tap event to youth with the Sisters of St. Joseph, about groups in the Church being more Catholic and/or elitist that others, which is a barrier to discipleship.

Furthermore, My Eminence CONSISTENTLY, attends the Canadian national March For Life, which is held annually in May. He has been going to this for a number of years, and is known to the pro-life organizations as a pro-life bishop, alongside ... the newly-appointed Cardinal Lacroix. ++Collins even STOPPED the annual collection/payments to the questionable organization known as Development and Peace, who are known to have international partners that promote pro-abortion/contraception education and measures in other countries. Don't believe me? For the purposes of evidence to support why ++Collins would ban this collection check out the SoCon or Bust blog. Other dioceses in Canada .... not so much.

Might I also add that His Eminence has a profound respect and admiration for the young people of this Archdiocese? He makes the effort and time to see them, whether it is personally, or he GOES OUT to their events, such as the 808 community prayer and social group, and Theology on Tap nights for Young Adults, and has in past arranged for special spiritual events tied to lectures, such as the annual OCY Palm Sunday gathering. Being a young adult now involved in youth ministry, these are positive signs I look for in a prince of the Church. If that prince is not involving himself with the future of the Church, and yes, it also includes unemployed [or in a number of other's cases, underemployed] young people, then he clearly does not care much for his (arch)diocese, and the future of the Catholic Church.

So seeing an article like this, from a known TBB website, getting passed around the Internet by a number of conservative and TBB blogs, makes a Latin Mass liking, young practicing male Catholic, like me, royally cheesed off. An article like this, has no Joy of the Gospel in it, and if anything, is violating the first commandment, by putting a prince of the Church ahead of our Lord, Jesus Christ, while insulting his current Vicar all at once.

In addition, it's making the good bishops and archbishops of the world like My Eminence ++Collins, look like they are lazy and liberal, when the truth is the opposite. So what if they are not dressing in the cappa magna and holding Solemn Pontifical Masses. Does that make them any less valuable vs. ++Burke? NOT AT ALL. Thanks again for being sourpusses and spreading "Lent without Easter" again.

As for the rest of you, ``Keep Calm, and spread the Joy of the Gospel`` to paraphrase those products, and attend good Latin Mass communities who promote Traditional Catholicism in a positive light. Pax Tibi Christi, Julian Barkin.