Governors, courts and law enforcement are butting heads over constitutional rights.

Protesters in Wisconsin, Virginia and Michigan — all headed by Democrat governors — are lashing out at lockdown measures they claim are repressive.

On Wednesday the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out a stay-at-home order, ruling health secretary Andrea Palm didn't have the authority to issue it.

And in Virginia, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins refused to enforce Gov. Ralph Northam's executive order, saying "we will not trample the constitutional freedoms of our citizens to enforce an edict of the governor."

Seattle police officer Greg Anderson was fired after a video he made went viral.

Anderson: "Regardless of where you stand on the coronavirus, we don't have the authority to do those things to people just because a mayor or governor tells you otherwise." 

On Wednesday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke about protesters wanting to open the state back up for business: "This is not appropriate in a global pandemic, but it's certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic."

Whitmer continues, "These protests, you know, in a perverse way, make it likelier that we're going to have to stay in a stay-home posture."

Across the United States, people are becoming more restless, wanting to return to work and the way life was before, and they're not taking no for an answer, setting up a larger clash that will not only wind its way through courts, but also have a resounding effect on the November election.

Stories of sexual abuse and the protection of sexual abusers by the Society of St. Pius (SSPX) have recently been given a certain amount of publicity due to the hard journalistic work of Church Militant's Christine Niles. The episodes that have come to light are horrifying and are documented by unimpeachable evidence — court judgments, credible eye-witness accounts and the statements and documents of the SSPX leadership. They demand explanation, and it may be helpful for a person like myself, who has some knowledge of the history of the SSPX and some familiarity with SSPX milieux, to attempt such an explanation.

I will state at the outset that I agree in substance with the doctrinal and liturgical positions of Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, I think that he was correct to found the SSPX in order to carry on these positions; I think he was correct to persist with the SSPX when Rome tried to suppress it; and I think he was correct to consecrate bishops in defiance of the Holy See in order to carry on his religious society.*

Indeed I have publicly defended the theological positions of the SSPX in the past; I have been a regular attendee at SSPX Masses; and two of my daughters were baptized at SSPX chapels. I make these statements about Abp. Lefebvre in order to rule out any claims that my position on sexual abuse in the SSPX is motivated by theological animus against the Society. The question of their truth or falsity is quite independent of the question of the nature, extent and causes of sexual abuse in the SSPX, so I will not pursue them further.  

Cover-Up Culture

The facts documented and in some cases uncovered by Church Militant have shown that in the SSPX there is a culture of covering up sexual abuse, protecting sexual abusers from the law and providing sexual abusers with opportunity for further abuse. This is both a culture and what amounts to an official policy of the clerical leadership, although I do not suppose that the policy is written down anywhere. The statements made by the American district of the SSPX in response to the Church Militant stories have confirmed this to any informed and reflective observer.

Consider its most recent statement. This is arrogant and dishonest, and fails to address any specific charges. The following paragraph, in particular, is a straightforward lie:

The Society deeply regrets that some of its members may have engaged in serious misconduct and, in the worst cases, criminal or delinquent behavior. It is a blemish on the Catholic priesthood, on the Church and on the work of Abp. Marcel Lefebvre. However, that does not mean that the Society encourages them, that it protects them, or, even less, that it covers for them. On the contrary, it strives each time, according to the seriousness of the cases, to sanction them and to deal with them, according to the rules of justice, having first of all concern for the victims.

The activities of the SSPX in protecting and covering for pedophiles in its midst are clearly documented in legal proceedings.

The case of Fr. Frédéric Abbet in Belgium is an example. Here the SSPX obstructed efforts of victims to find out about Fr. Abbet's crimes. After learning that he had molested boys, Bp. Fellay assigned Fr. Abbet to a residence next to a boy's school where he committed further crimes. Bishop Fellay did this despite the order of an internal SSPX tribunal that ruled that Fr. Abbet should have no contact with children for at least a decade. He even overrode the tribunal's very sensible ruling that Fr. Abbet should not be allowed access to the internet, thus showing that he had gone into the case in detail and intended to remove every hindrance to Fr. Abbet's committing further crimes.

The SSPX statement is intended to rally the supporters of the Society to deny the truth about the SSPX and sexual abuse and to intimidate victims who are thinking of coming forward with their stories. It shows that the decision of the Society is to try to face down their accusers in order to continue with their policy towards sexual abuse. This response is made all the more striking by the fact that the statement replaces an earlier, much more reasonable-sounding one that was put up and then taken down. It is likely that the earlier statement was the work of the Society's competent PR man, James Vogel, and that its replacement comes from the clerical leadership.

External observers will find this puzzling. Aside from the iniquity of this strategy, its hatefulness in the eyes of the Lord Whom the Society is supposed to serve, and the severe divine vengeance that it will bring down upon its perpetrators, it is clearly too late for it to work. There are too many victims coming forward, too many police investigations and too much publicity.

There is a stage in all these kinds of scandals where it is too late to cover things up and put the toothpaste back in the tube, and this stage has now been reached with the SSPX. Why is the SSPX pursuing this strategy, and why did it adopt this policy towards sexual abuse in the first place? These are the questions that this essay is intended to answer.

Isolated From Reality

One explanation might be the following. The leadership of the SSPX lives in a somewhat isolated environment that it has previously been able to entirely dominate. This domination creates arrogance among the leadership, and means that they can often dispense with real ability. It also circumscribes their conception of reality, making them think that the whole world is like the artificial environment that they have created and that they are able to control. So part of the explanation for the current state of affairs in the Society is that the leadership are arrogant mediocrities who are not capable enough to react to a new and difficult situation or even to really grasp the situation that they are in, and who are just falling back under stress to the strategies they have always used before.

There is probably some truth in this explanation. But things have now gone too far for it to fully explain the Society's stance. Once police investigations and criminal charges begin, delusion and incompetence usually have to give way. What we see now is a deliberate defiance of attempts to oppose the SSPX's favorable policy towards sexual abuse. Why is this happening?

The first step in explaining the Society's actions is a proper characterization of their underlying motives and goals. The actions of the leadership of the Society and of many of their followers show that they have internalized the psychology and dispositions of a sexual abuser.

As a general characterization, sexual abusers are not just people with a lamentable weakness of the flesh that they fail to control. They are serious criminals, and they have the mentality and behavioral patterns of a criminal. These include total absence of empathy for their victims and a capacity to lie without the slightest guilt or hesitation. There are also characteristics that belong to sexual abusers in particular. They not only victimize people, they hate and despise their victims. If this were not so, they would not get pleasure from damaging and tormenting them. They hate them because they hurt them, rather than vice versa.

What is more, they think that anyone who objects to, interferes with or condemns their abuse is doing them a monstrous injustice. If this happens, they consider themselves to be ill-treated, and to be entitled to vengeance against the objectors and compensation from the world in general. 

Shuffling Predator Priests

This conception of things can be seen to govern the way that the SSPX has dealt with sexual abusers in its ranks. Consider the example of Bp. Fellay and Fr. Abbet. One can understand why the SSPX from a selfish point of view might have discouraged the victims of his abuse and tried to silence the whole affair. This would avoid scandal and possible financial losses for the Society. But why then move Fr. Abbet to a post where it was certain that he would commit more offenses? Why remove every restriction that might hinder his committing further abuse? Would this not risk causing further scandal, as in fact, it did? Why overrule the SSPX's own tribunal to make this seemingly counterproductive move?

Similar questions are raised by the case of Fr. Phillipe Peignot, who was ordained a priest for the SSPX in 1982. He sexually abused five boys in 1985–87. These crimes were known to Fr. Paul Aulagnier, his superior (Fr. Aulagnier was the district superior of the SSPX in France from 1976–1994), but he was not removed from any priestly responsibilities. Further sexual abuse by Fr. Peignot was reported to Fr. Aulagnier in 1990, and these reports were made known to the then-superior general of the SSPX, Fr. Franz Schmidberger.

The victim of this abuse was assured by Fr. Schmidberger that Fr. Peignot would not be allowed to have any further contact with children. However, Fr. Schmidberger reversed this decision shortly afterwards, allowing Fr. Peignot to work at scout camps. When a later district superior of France attempted to restore the ban on Fr. Peignot's having contact with children, Bp. Fellay — who had by then become the superior general — overrode the ban again. 

The reason for these decisions is that Fr. Schmidberger and Bp. Fellay understood the sexual abuse being committed in the way that the sexual abuser understood it. To impose any sort of punishment for sexual abuse, from the point of view of the abuser, is a crying injustice to the person punished. It is also unfair because it is giving the victim what they want. Since the victim is seen as an enemy who deserves punishment himself just because he is a victim, it is wrong — in the sexual abuser's understanding of things — to gratify the victim's vindictive and unreasonable demands by imposing any sort of punishment on the person who abused him.

Instead, they believe the opposite should be done. The abuser should be treated in a way that erases the injustice of the accusation, and that demonstrates that the victim's evil pursuit of the abuser is being rejected and countered in the way that will hurt the victim most. This is done by placing the abuser in a position that gives him the opportunity to abuse again — in Fr. Abbet's case, by moving him to a priory conveniently attached to a boy's school.

We can see this outlook with many other cases where priests of the Society are found to be guilty of sexual abuse and are not only protected but moved on to fresh fields and pastures new, where they can continue abusing. Father Peignot, for example, was repeatedly assigned as a chaplain for boy scouts and scouting events after his sexual molestations became known to the SSPX authorities. There are many tasks for which the Society needs priests. He could have been put to work in a parish, in a convent or in some other capacity, rather than the one place where he would have most opportunity to abuse young boys. It also emerges in the astonishing practice of SSPX authorities protecting sexual abusers who are not priests, but simply laymen with some connection to the Society. This seems to be a new departure in corrupt behavior within the Church.

The mentality of the sexual abuser is also shown in the way that the Society treats victims of sexual abuse. From a self-interested point of view, a good approach to these victims would be to mollify them as far as possible, to make them think that the Society sympathizes with them, is on their side and is shocked and dismayed at their abuse and doing its best to stamp out this evil. However, the SSPX consistently takes the opposite approach. It attempts to undermine and crush victims wherever possible. This is a workable strategy in some respects, but it is high-risk since the strategy is very damaging to the Society if found out. It is chosen because it conforms to the sexual abuser's desire to attack the victim and to get revenge for the injustice of being accused.

This diagnosis of the motives and actions of the SSPX might seem outlandish to anyone who has not studied the facts in detail. However, the more one knows about the way the SSPX deals with sexual abuse, the more one sees that it is in fact correct.

Strong Influence of Sex Abusers

Why would the authorities of the SSPX think and act like this? In one way, this question is easy to answer. It is because sexual abusers are influential enough within the Society to be able to determine its policy and shape its conception of sexual abusers and their victims. They form the culture of the organization. As a result, the persons in authority conform to and implement policies that reflect the outlook and interests of these abusers.

This phenomenon has been seen elsewhere in the Church. It occurs when sexual abusers are either at the top of an organization or else become influential enough that their interests cannot be sacrificed despite their not occupying the top post. The former situation is easy enough to understand. It occurred in the Legionaries of Christ, which was founded and led by a sexual abuser who had total control of its actions and personnel. The latter situation is more complex and requires some analysis. I will assume that the SSPX was not run by sexual predators from the outset and that it is the latter situation that is relevant here.

One should begin this analysis by acknowledging that when most people encounter evidence of sexual abuse, they don't want to hear about it and do their best to deny or ignore it. This is one of the most shocking discoveries made by those who are themselves abused or who attempt to help victims of abuse. The reason for it is that recognizing the existence of sexual abuse leads to accepting difficult, upsetting and threatening responsibilities.

Most people do not want to do this and indeed often do not have the psychological wherewithal required for it, so they choose to ignore or deny the abuse or distance themselves from the situation. In order to justify this denial, they often attack the victim, whom they resent for having placed them in an uncomfortable situation.

The individual authority-holders in the SSPX are as prone to this reaction as anyone else, and they are also affected by the serious consequences for their institution if the accusations turn out to be true. This gives sexual abusers an initial advantage when their victims accuse them.  

However, this factor comes into play when sexual abusers have already been incorporated into an organization. It does not explain how they got there in the first place, and it does not explain how they come to be present in an organization in large numbers and to determine its approach to sexual abuse.

Any explanation of how this came to happen with the SSPX must begin with the founder, Abp. Marcel Lefebvre. I will assume that it did not happen with his knowledge or as a result of his decision. I could be wrong, but this assumption fits with what is known of his past. He was a successful missionary and bishop for decades, and there does not seem to be a record of his appointing and covering up for sexual abusers in these roles. Nonetheless, the influence of sexual abusers in the SSPX is so strong that it must have established itself when he was the superior general. How might this have happened?

Choosing Quantity Over Quality

What follows is speculation from the facts that are available. The explanation I will propose is that the influence of sexual abusers in the SSPX resulted from the general shortcomings of the men trained and ordained as priests of the Society, shortcomings that were not properly guarded against or even understood by Abp. Lefebvre.

The editor of a respected French Catholic journal told me once that Abp. Lefebvre made the mistake of choosing quantity over quality when he set up the Society. This is true, but itself requires explanation.

The starting point for this explanation is that Abp. Lefebvre never seems to have done a postmortem on the preconciliar Church. He did not identify the weaknesses that caused it to collapse so quickly and thoroughly. He seems just to have thought that the preconciliar systems of training and theology were good ones that had been wrongly abandoned because of weakness, folly or treachery among the ecclesiastical leadership, and that what was needed was for them to be restored. Indeed he thought that they would be restored within a reasonable timeframe and that the postconciliar changes and problems would not be a lasting condition.

He also seems to have overestimated the number of Catholics who thought as he did on religious subjects out of mature understanding and conviction and to have been willing to take at face value the men who came asking to join his Society. It is as if he considered such men to be like seminarians in the 1920s, when the population of Catholics who were committed to the systems and beliefs of the preconciliar Church were much larger, the opportunities and status on offer for seminarians of this sort were far greater and the backing of ecclesiastical authority for these systems and beliefs was solid.

He did not see that in his own totally different situation, the motivations and character of the men who came forward to join his enterprise would have to be radically different from those of the seminarians of the 1920s, and that their professions of faith and commitment would often spring from motives and personality traits that did not appear on the surface and that were less than ideal.

Nor did he take into account the implications of the fact that the preconciliar system of priestly training was built on the inculcation of blind obedience and conformity. It is one thing to have such a system for training leaders in an important, powerful organization that is a dominant force in many countries. In that sort of situation, you can still attract serious, capable people who are willing to put up with the training and will survive it somewhat intact. There is also a corrective to the effects of this training, resulting from the fact that the senior leaders eventually have to discharge important responsibilities.

The pressure of these responsibilities does at some point select for men with character and initiative. The situation of a small, marginalized, despised community where leaders are trained and selected for blind obedience and conformity is very different. Sociologically, this kind of community has the characteristics of a cult. In consequence, the men who come forward as seminarians for a Catholic community of this kind will often be ones who want to be leaders in a cult. Richard Williamson, whom Lefebvre ordained as a bishop, is a clear example of this phenomenon, but there will have been many others.

Politics And Predation

The political connections of many of the first followers of the SSPX would also have brought problems of which Abp. Lefebvre was not aware. In France, many of these followers were former supporters of the Vichy regime in the Second World War. They were inclined to affiliate themselves with the SSPX in part because of an old alienation from the Holy See that had been produced by the condemnation of Charles Maurras' Action Française, and in part out of resentment towards a French hierarchy that had rapturously supported Pétain and then left all the Vichy followers in the lurch after the Allied victory.

Archbishop Lefebvre did not himself belong to this section of French society. He had been a missionary in Africa during the Vichy period, which meant that the question of involvement with Vichy did not really arise for him, and indeed his father had worked for the French Resistance and was beaten to death by the Germans in the Sonnenburg concentration camp in 1944 as a result.

But he did not seem to recognize what loyalty to Vichy and the far-right meant in the 1970s. It is as if such loyalty to him meant no more than a generic conservatism of the 1920s that included some sympathy with Action Française. In particular, he did not grasp the moral significance of committed anti-Semitism after the Holocaust.

One of the worst stains on Vichy France was the fact that it stripped Jews of civil rights in its Statut des Juifs and handed over Jews to the Germans to be murdered — without even having to be asked to do so by the occupiers. Many Vichy supporters after the war rationalized away these anti-Semitic crimes without either facing up to them or approving of them. But some of them not only approved of these crimes, but approved of the Vichy régime because it had committed them.

It would not be fair to reproach Abp. Lefebvre for not excluding supporters of Vichy France from his movement. For one thing, the majority of Frenchmen had belonged to this category at one time. But he does not seem to have exercised enough discernment with respect to this group. He does not seem to have grasped that they included very sinister elements, which had to be identified and rejected.

One can make an educated guess that there was a link between far-right politics, anti-Semitism and pederasty among elements of the SSPX clergy and faithful. It is well known that there was an important homosexual and pederastic element in National Socialist and Fascist circles. The homosexual English journalist Johann Hari has described this association in the case of Ernst Röhm, the commander of Hitler's stormtroopers (the SA) from 1930 to 1934, a man who played a key role in Hitler's taking power in Germany.

From a Jan. 2008 Huffpost article:

As [Ernst Röhm] put it in his autobiography, "Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than the good bourgeois order." As historian Louis Snyder explains, Röhm "projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behavior pattern of high repute. ... He flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted his cronies do the same. He believed straight people weren't as adept at bullying and aggression as homosexuals, so homosexuality was given a high premium in the SA."

Hitler had Röhm shot as a threat to his power in 1934, but the association of homosexuality with Nazi sympathies persisted after the fall of the Third Reich.

Jörg Haider, the right-wing Austrian politician who died in 2008, is an example. Hari remarks, "With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past 30 years have been gay." In Vichy France, the homosexual man of letters and traitor Robert Brasillach became a hero and martyr to the French far-right after he was very properly executed by de Gaulle. He is still glorified by them.

Far-right extremists who joined the SSPX as priests or who were influential as lay donors may have belonged to a pederastic wing of this element. This would have provided a nucleus and network of sexual abusers. Networks of this kind do not advertise themselves, so it is impossible in the present state of knowledge to say how far this was the case.

For the reasons given above, right from the beginning a significant portion of the men who came forward as seminarians for the SSPX were attracted to the post of leader in a marginalized, closed, authoritarian community, and/or were sympathetic to Nazi and fascist political ideals. These men were morally, intellectually and spiritually warped. Their faults were ones that would naturally make them inclined to sexual abuse as a form of sexual gratification, because such abuse involves the domination, humiliation and destruction of its victims — exactly the kind of activity that appealed to them, made them want to be leaders in a cult-like group and attracted them to far-right political views.

This inclination would have translated into action in many cases. And persons of this kind who did not share these inclinations, or at least did not act upon them, would have had a natural sympathy with those who did act on them. They would also have come from a far-right milieu in which such abuse was not uncommon, and its toleration and concealment was the general rule. That is how sexual abusers came to have an important presence in the SSPX.

The Ideal Camouflage

Not only was Abp. Lefebvre unaware of the risks of ordaining men of this type, it would have been easy for individuals of this kind to pass off their traits to him as virtues. In an interview with The Wanderer, Fr. Paul Aulagnier observed that Abp. Lefebvre "hated the modern world's revolutionary spirit that refused subjection, submission, subordination to a created order, to a divine order." These warped individuals could easily present themselves to him as sharing this hatred and as 100% on his side in this respect.

Moreover, in the set-up that he established, they got results, up to a point. Their drive for power and love of humiliating their underlings meant that in a religious community set up on preconciliar lines that enforced blind and unquestioning obedience, they could ensure discipline and make things run well in the eyes of their superiors. Their methods and personalities meant they could not produce significant achievements or foster growth in the communities they were in charge of. Their influence would explain much of the huge wastage rate among the priests of the SSPX, estimated to be as high as 40% after ordination. But these failures could be explained away as due to the difficulty of operating in a hostile, anti-Catholic world.

Many people, including the author of this piece, have been astonished and taken aback by the extreme contrast between the moral and theological doctrines that are the reason for being of the SSPX and the Society's practice of protecting sexual abusers. But from the point of view of the abusers themselves, this contrast had important advantages. It provided the ideal camouflage and enabled them to use an appeal to the very doctrines they were violating in order to protect themselves. Since the Catholic faith is, in fact, true, it provides the best and strongest bait to draw people into acceptance of a cult-like set-up. In the twisted psychology of sexual abusers and sociopaths, this deceitful appeal to the Faith they were profaning added an extra pleasure and spice to their abuse.

Certain special factors seem to have obtained with the SSPX in the United States. The original attempt to establish the SSPX in the United States was a fiasco that resulted in the departure for sedevacantism of many of the priests ordained for the Society there. Archbishop Lefebvre, according to what I have heard, was inclined to give up on the United States as a result. He was talked out of this by the then-Fr. Richard Williamson, one of the few SSPX priests in the United States not to depart for sedevacantism.

Williamson, from this point on, was the most influential founding figure for the Society in the United States. His anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies are well known but do not exhaust his repellent characteristics. Even the most brainwashed SSPX adherents have been known to observe that his behavior on occasion is bizarre, aberrant and unhinged.

One former novice in an SSPX contemplative convent told me that when Williamson came to give a spiritual conference to the nuns, his talk dealt exclusively with conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The former SSPX seminarian Arturo Vasquez has observed: "I entered the scene of the SSPX in the late 1990s when the powerful triumvirate of Fr. Peter Scott, Fr. Ramon Angles and Bp. Williamson ruled the United States district, turning it almost into a far right-wing cult."

Father Angles is an example of the combination of Nazi views and pederasty mentioned above, venerating Hitler and sodomizing a 14-year-old boy, Michael Gonzalez, who subsequently committed suicide and referred to Angles' crime in his suicide note. The combination of Williamson, Scott and Angles was a recipe for unparalleled disaster, producing SSPX communities in the United States that pullulated with every kind of physical and sexual abuse.

In the case of the SSPX in the United States, one may wonder if a certain Eurocentrism was not at work. Would the extreme and blatant methods of the SSPX leadership in the United States — and the conditions they produced — have been seen as acceptable by the Society in France, for example? Probably not, but expectations were lower for the midwestern United States. And it must also be admitted that Bp. Williamson's methods got results on a material scale. He built up a community that raised money, produced vocations, built and filled seminaries. It must regrettably be acknowledged that this was possible because, in one respect, his methods were suited to the American environment.

Americans have many good qualities, and I hope it will not cause offense to say that, like all other nationalities, they have some weak points as well. One of these is a certain vulnerability to the appeal of religious cults. The country, after all, was founded by Puritans who were cultists, and their influence can be felt to this day — in political correctness, for example, which is a cult of a secular kind. Williamson (an Englishman) knew this, and worked on this weak point to develop cult-like groups in the SSPX in America.

The Bottom Line

So the explanation proposed for the influence of sexual abusers in the SSPX is the following: They established themselves firmly in the society under Abp. Lefebvre for the reasons given above. The existence and activity of the Society, always a difficult struggle, became even more challenging after the death of its founder. Acting in solidarity, the faction of sexual abusers would have been able to make itself indispensable to whomever was in charge of the Society and to ensure that the leader of the Society was — if not one of its members — at least in full sympathy with it. Bishop Fellay fit that bill perfectly. This power enabled the faction to cause the policy and mental attitudes of the leadership of the Society to conform to its own in matters of sexual abuse, with the results that we see today.

Rather similar developments occurred in many other dioceses and religious orders throughout the world in the 20th century. The only significant differences in the case of the Society are the particular mechanisms through which sexual abusers came to power and influence and the contrast between the Society's professed exemption from the corruption that besets the rest of the Church and the real state of affairs.

What is the future for the SSPX under these conditions? A real reform seems unlikely. Corruption is too well established in the Society, and there is no will in Rome to intervene and force positive changes. One possibility is that the Society will decide to cut its losses and effectively shut down its U.S. operations, preserving itself in Europe and other countries where its activities are more secure. The leadership knows that there is both less tolerance of sexual abuse in the United States and a more severe problem there. It seems, however, unlikely that this strategy can work in the long term, due to the gravity of the information already made public and the fact that these offenses will continue to be committed absent a drastic reform of the Society. The future of the SSPX is as uncertain as the future of anything in the corrupt and largely ruined Catholic Church.

*For Church Militant's position on the SSPX, please see this resource page. 
 

"Papa don't preach," screeches Madonna in her album True Blue. "People of God, don't proselytize," thunders Papa Francesco from his bully pulpit. 

Like a teenager tormenting his parents with Heavy Metal, Francis is amplifying his polemic against proselytism to earsplitting decibels. 

"Proselytism is a sinful attitude," he fulminated, en route to a 2016 gabfest with Lutherans, counting down to the 500th anniversary of arch-heretic Martin Luther hammering a nail on a Wittenberg church door.

When a girl told Francis she wanted to invite her unchurched friends to church, Francis grabbed his interfaith fire extinguisher and hosed down her evangelistic brio. 

"It is not licit that you convince them of your faith; proselytism is the strongest poison against the ecumenical path," he chided. Then, with Jesuitical equivocation rivaled only by the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare's Macbeth, he added: "You must give testimony of your Christian life ... But without wanting to convince." 

"Proselytism is a solemn nonsense, it makes no sense," the pontiff purred to his pet hack Eugenio Scalfari, when asked if he would try to "convert" La Repubblica's lefty, atheist editor. 

Francis is as slippery as a used car's warranty when explaining what he means by proselytism (or evangelism, for that matter). He's following Humpty Dumpty's dictum from Alice in Wonderland, "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'" 

The closest he comes to defining "proselytism" is in a soapbox rant before fellow Jesuits in Mozambique. "Evangelization is essentially witness," he told his Ignatian compadres. "Proselytizing is convincing, but it is all about membership and takes your freedom away." If you're insured for cerebral aneurysm, try deciphering his weaponized ambiguity.

Francis told the Jesuits of a young woman who introduced to him a Hindu boy and Anglican girl who had "converted to Catholicism." Francis admits he "felt a certain bitterness" after the encounter with them "because she told me in a triumphant way, as though she was showing off a hunting trophy." 

Did Bergoglio think the converts were coerced into converting to Catholicism? Does the pope's infallibility extend to interpreting her tone? Isn't it more likely the woman was simply super-excited to introduce two converts to a successor of the Apostles?  

Francis even berated the hapless Pilo Albertelli High School students in Rome: "You can't tell Jewish and Muslim children, 'come and be converted,'" as "We are not in the times of the Crusades." 

His sardonic sermonizing against proselytism peaked during the pandemic. The world watched Francis' bumbling online pulpiteering — and an almost daily bungling of biblical texts. "Conversion" is a swear word, never mind Francis' ugly caricature of the biblical term in his daily homilies. 

The pope's imprecations against "conversion" cease miraculously when Francis proselytizes the global community on greenhouse gases. In this Grimm Brothers fairy tale, the Holy Father kisses the ugly toad named "gospel conversion" and it magically transforms itself into a stunning princess named "ecological conversion."       

Funny, it's not okay for Catholics to proselytize and bring people to Christ and into the Church. But it's okay for Francis to proselytize the world with the Gospel according to Greta Thunberg and bring people under a one-world, globalized government where there will be no more carbon emissions.   

Proselytism is never a bad word in the Bible, where it occurs 89 times in different forms in both Greek Old Testament (LXX) and New Testament. The rabbis distinguished between Gentile proselytes to Judaism who were circumcised and bound themselves to keep the whole Mosaic Law and those who were uncircumcised and kept only the Noachide laws. There were proselytes in the motley mob on the day of Pentecost! If it was good enough for the Bible, it should be good enough for Catholics, no? 

Paradoxically, Francis' polemic against proselytism is itself turning into proselytism. "Of course, there are many forms of proselytism. The one practiced by soccer teams acquiring fans is all right, obviously!" Francis exclaims. "We must evangelize, which is very different from proselytizing."

But, Holy Father, you've not told us what the difference is. And why is it we almost never hear you telling us to go out to the uttermost parts of the earth and convert heathens like missionaries have done since the day of Pentecost? 

We are mind-numblingly discombobulated by Francis' exhortations which die the death of a thousand caveats: Evangelize, but don't convince. Witness, but don't persuade. Testify, but don't invite anyone to join the Church. 

If St. Paul took Pope Francis seriously, we'd be left with a fat-free version of the Acts of the Apostles. "Every sabbath," the Apostle to the Gentiles "would argue in the synagogue [in Corinth] and would try to convince Jews and Greeks" (Acts 18:4). The Greek word for "argue" or "reason" is dialegomai  — "dispute." And the Greek has an equally strong word for "convince" — peitho — "persuade."    

In Ephesus, St. Paul "entered the synagogue and for three months spoke out boldly, and argued (dialegomai) persuasively (peitho) about the kingdom of God" (Acts 19:8). "Not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded (peitho) and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods (Acts 19:26), reports St. Luke. 

Even King Agrippa tells Paul: "In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?" (Acts 26:28). 

Wherever Paul went, he proselytized and even triggered riots because people left their previous cults and religions and joined the Church. Wherever Pope Francis and his cardinals go, people of other religions serve tea (and halal samosas at Ramadan Iftar meals). 

I could go on till hell freezes over (or the Vatican runs out of cash) and demonstrate from Scripture and church history how missionaries always married skillful persuasion to holy witness. If it was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me.  

Evangelistic witness has always married words to works. Our words clarify our works and our works give credibility to our words. So if we feed the hungry, we don't do it as social workers; we explain why we are doing it and in doing so we introduce people to the Bread of Life so they are fed — not just for this life, but for eternal life.

But if we pretend that their religion is equally salvific, as the pontiff seems to be doing when he called for pan-religious prayer meetings on Mount Carmel (watch out for Elijah!), that's neither evangelism nor witness, isn't it? This is precisely what the Catholic Church has been doing since Nostra aetate, yeah? 

If someone gave me a dollar every time a Catholic priest or bishop in India told me "evangelism is making a Hindu a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim," I'd have enough money to plug the black hole in Peter's Pence.   

At a recent conference, Christians were asked how important evangelization was to their understanding of the Christian faith. Affirming it's critical were 60% of mainline Protestants, 85% of Evangelicals and only 3% of Catholics. And Pope Francis rails against his pet straw man phantom of Catholics proselytizing?

In the vestibule of the Gesù, the headquarters of the Jesuits in Rome, stands a towering full-length statue of the founder St. Ignatius of Loyola. On the base of this statue are inscribed Ignatius' words to his Jesuits: Ite et inflammate orbem — Go forth and ignite the world. In a corner opposite the statue, there is a red fire extinguisher.

When Pope John Paul visited the Gesù in 1983 he remarked wryly upon the apt juxtaposition. Imagine what he'd say today!   

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Grand Lodge of Italian Freemasons is praising Pope Francis' covenant with Islam as "a turning point in civilization because it will open a new era" if applied.

The "Catholic part" of the Abu Dhabi declaration was drawn up by the pope alone and "the Vatican Curia 'did not put a pen' in the drafting of the text," claims Freemason Pierluigi Cascioli in the latest issue of Nuovo Hiram, the journal of the Freemasons of the Grand Orient of Italy.  

The "Human Fraternity for World Peace and Common Co-existence" pact was signed between the pontiff and Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb. It was born out of a personal friendship that grew between the two after some meetings, even though it began "under the banner of mutual distrust," notes Cascioli, citing an informed Vatican source.  

"The document was exchanged several times between the two parties before it was signed," he writes.

"The appeal for greater fraternity is based both on the faiths of the authors of the document," Cascioli explains, expressing his hope that the Catholic Church will "formalize this doctrine" in a magisterial text as it has formalized its "social doctrine" in magisterial statements.  

Pope Francis and Ahmed al-Tayeb ground the appeal to human fraternity on "values which not only are fully compatible with each of their the specific faiths but which arise from their two distinct faiths," he says.

"The appeal for greater fraternity is addressed to all humanity, even to the five billion people who don't share one of their two faiths" as they fully share the values in the declaration based on the "lowest common denominator" of reason. "It is thus an appeal to everyone: erga omnes ... ." he emphasizes.

The Freemason concedes that both Catholics and Sunnis will object to the deal and say of their respective religious leaders: "He shouldn't have signed a document together with him."

Given the opposition to the document "it would be illusory to expect immediate major upheavals," Cascioli recognizes. "Pope Francis and the Grand Imam express avant-garde positions: How many of their followers will follow them? How far are the two leaders ahead of their respective 'bases?' Pope Francis is far from his base. The Grand Imam is very far from his."

However, "borrowing a term from the world of medicine," Cascioli views the Abu Dhabi Document as "a slow-release drug." 

"Pope Francis and the Grand Imam have built an airport runway. A plane to ascend must give itself a strong impulse, with which it overcomes the force of gravity and takes off. Human beings (Catholics, or Sunnis, or the remaining 5 billion) should give themselves the 'courage of fraternity,' which is driven to take off towards a better world," he writes. 

Cascioli notes that the "equality" goals of the document face obstacles when it comes to the rights of women and homosexuals.   

Regarding women's rights, "Sunnis are further behind than Catholics" even though Catholics "should do more to ensure effective equality between women and men."

Noting that the declaration condemns "discrimination" and invites all to "mutual respect," the Freemason questions whether this includes "respect for women and men who have homosexual or bisexual tendencies." 

Every human being is "called to live eroticism according to one's specific personal sensitivity. Every human being has the right (or rather, the duty) to live his eroticism according to his nature. According to nature, yes as nature has shaped it," he stresses.

"According to recent estimates, there are 21 Islamic states that prescribe the death penalty for homosexual acts," he laments, specifying Brunei, where according to the new Sharia code from April 3, 2019, homosexual acts are punishable by stoning to death.

"In sailing competitions, boats must go around a buoy. If the declaration is implemented, Abu Dhabi — a city located on the sea, on the edge of a desert — will constitute a buoy of civilization," he concludes. 

Throughout history, the Catholic Church, through its Magisterium, has condemned any attempt towards "unity" with other sects or religions. "Certainly, such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy," Pope Pius XI declared in Mortalium Animos (1928), his encyclical against religious unity and the ecumenical movement. 

Significantly, Pius XI recognized that such an initiative can arise from a "desire both of strengthening and of extending to the common welfare of human society that fraternal relationship which binds and unites us together."  

Eight popes in the course of 200 years have issued 20 legal interdicts condemning Freemasonry and never have any of the pronouncements been revoked. 

Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus emphasizes that "the ultimate and principal aim" of Freemasonry "was to destroy to its very foundations any civil or religious order established throughout Christendom, and bring about in its place a new order founded on laws drawn out of the entrails of naturalism."

In his bull In eminenti apostolatus (1738), Pope Clement XII condemned Freemasonry for its reliance on mere natural virtue while ignoring Christ's unique role as Savior. 

In the post­war period, Freemasonry was banned in almost all the Arab countries and in 1978 was condemned by the religious authority of Mecca as the "most dangerously destructive organization to Islam and to Muslims."

Writing in the scholarly Brill Handbook of Freemasonry, academic Charles Porset observes that Freemasonry "presents itself as a secular religion lodged in the cracks of the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Trent" and is a "religion of the modern age," of which "the lodges are the crucible."

The French theoretical physicist Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) was amazingly prolific and contributed much to hydrodynamics and thermodynamics, but his most important influence may be his philosophy and history of science. He refuted the superficial analysis of the relationship between physical science and religion as distorted by rationalists since the 18th century. Drawing on the qualifications of reason as given by St. Thomas Aquinas, Duhem explored the foundations of scientific analysis in the Middle Ages in the experimental constructs of men like Buridan, Oresme and Bacon.

The doctrine of divine providence and the systematic order of the material universe, as systematized by the Catholic scholastics, gave the logic for scientific analysis. In short, it is only because there is a benign order to the universe that there can be material science, and this is true even among those who ignore that fact.

Such symmetry in the universe is replicated in history. This is why numerical systems are significant in the Bible. For instance, the Ascension of Christ happened 40 days after the Resurrection. There is nothing "magical" about numbers themselves, but the fact that the number 40 occurs 146 times in the Bible should strike any reasonable person as an indication that God choreographs events to accomplish his purposes.

Christ spent 40 days in the wilderness and predicted that Jerusalem would fall 40 years after His death and resurrection. Not by chance did He spend 40 days between His resurrection and entrance into glory, preparing His followers for the rest of history. He would not let Mary Magdalene "cling" to Him because He had to instruct others.

He tutored those two men on the Emmaus road in the meaning of what the Scriptures had predicted. He went back to the rented Upper Room to show that He was not an illusion. He then spent time instructing crowds on occasion and evidently devoted more time to preparing the Apostles for their missionary work. He was making clear that the Church is not a vestigial apparatus, but is the embodiment of His logic that created the universal order.

The strange cloud that surrounded Him as He seemed to vanish in His return to eternity was, like the Transfiguration, a glimpse into a dimension for which human optics lack a capacity fully to perceive. But it can be interpreted by the fact that the benign order of the created world is the result of a power for which mortal language has the term "love." 

Inadequate as it may be, it definitely makes demands on those who want to participate in the divine glory that is so extravagant that it can be intimidating in what it requires. Having spent four years at hard labor in Siberia as a penalty for love of truth, Dostoyevsky wrote: "[A]ctive love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams."
 

BRENTWOOD, England (ChurchMilitant.com) - A priest who displayed Hindu, Buddhist and African idols in front of the altar in his church has provoked further outrage by chanting a Hindu mantra during an "interfaith" service of eucharistic adoration. 

Father Britto Belevendran, pastor of the Church of the English Martyrs, Hornchurch, in London, intoned the Pavamana Abhyaroha (all-purifying holy chant) from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad together with the praṇava sacred syllable OM, during a pan-religious service concluding with the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. 

Belevendran's service, relayed on YouTube, was in response to Pope Francis' invitation "to believers of every religion" to "unite themselves spiritually in a day of prayer, fasting and works of charity" on Thursday, to implore God to end the Wuhan virus pandemic.   

Wearing a rainbow stole, Belevendran sang the Hindu mantra in the Hindu sacred language of Sanskrit: Asato ma sad gamaya, tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, mrtyor mamrtam gamaya ("Lead me from unreality to reality, from darkness to light, from death to immortality").   

"This mantra is a flagrant contradiction of the Christian doctrines of creation and incarnation and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament," a Rome-based expert in Indic religions told Church Militant. 

The writer, who has published a missiology textbook on religions in the Indian context, explained that Advaita Hinduism understands creation and this world as an illusion (maya).

"This Vedic mantra, taken from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, is affirming the non-reality and non-existence of creation and asking God to lead us out of this delusion — which includes Jesus' Real Presence — to the vidya or knowledge of the fact that everything is maya," she noted. 

"In fact, matter is an obstacle to achieving moksha or salvation," she explained. "Only when one acknowledges that self and creation is an illusion and one's consciousness is in reality part of the eternal consciousness does one attain salvation by merging with the Ultimate Reality — Brahman, which is not a personal God, but a principle."

"In monist Hinduism, matter does not matter," she noted. "In contrast, the biblical God creates a real world and loves His creation. In Jesus, God becomes matter, i.e., flesh, and dwells among us. The Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist pushes this materiality even further as God becomes matter in forms of bread and wine."

"To pray this prayer at a service where the Blessed Sacrament, God made flesh, is exposed and adored, is the ultimate contradiction. It is spitting in the face of the monstrance — a desecration," the scholar, who has studied Sanskrit, lamented.

"Ironically, Fr. Belevendran is also insulting Hinduism and making a mockery of their sacred beliefs," she said. "No wonder Hindu fundamentalists are attacking Christians in India and accusing us of misappropriating their religious texts and symbols. In the West, we call it 'cultural appropriation.'"

During the service, Belevendran repeatedly affirmed Hinduism and denied Christianity by inviting his online audience to "go into the soul: from the conscious to the unconscious; from the external to the internal."

At one point, the priest made the claim that "the Mystical Body of Christ also includes people of all faiths and none. The entire humanity is there, within that Mystical Body of Christ; Christ hidden in everyone!"

Speaking to Church Militant, Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, remarked: "This is profoundly troubling, and needless to say such religious syncretism has always been condemned by the Church." 

"It is also deeply patronizing to other faiths to imply that they are compatible with the truths of Christianity: They have their own claims to truth which should be taken seriously and treated with respect," Shaw stressed. "The ancient texts revered by Hindus should not be used as a source of quaint decorative religious poetry, like a tourist's souvenir."

Belevendran, who features on the Sex Therapy Counseling in Upminster website, defiantly went ahead with the pan-religious service, even though hundreds of Catholics bombarded a Twitter feed on which his diocese of Brentwood had posted a picture of the idols of Buddha, Shiva (the Hindu god of destruction) and an African idol. 

The diocese of Brentwood deleted the picture from its Twitter feed after backlash from incandescent Catholics tweeting in response, calling it idolatry, syncretism, blasphemy and sacrilege.   

The administrator hosting Belevendran's service on YouTube has been constantly deleting negative comments. A comment by Indian Catholic Joanna Fernandes that read "What is wrong with you? And you heretics in the Catholic Church. GET OUT" was swiftly erased. 

Belevandran's YouTube site also posted a warning: "Everyone is welcome to the English Martyrs You Tube channel to participate in worship and praise of God. Abuse and harassment will not be tolerated. Persistent activity which is abusive or harassing will be removed and reported. If this persists, we will contact the police."

"Hearing that a Hindu prayer was proclaimed during eucharistic adoration appalls me," Deacon Nick Donnelly told Church Militant. "To do so is the antithesis of God's purity and holiness because, as St. Paul says, 'the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons' (I Cor. 10:20).'" 

The popular U.K. author and journalist elaborated:

This priest was entrusted with that which is most precious in the Church, Our Lord really and truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. Down the centuries countless faithful have given their lives to save the Host from profanation and desecration, but instead of protecting this precious trust, this priest has deliberately chosen to proclaim a pagan prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. This syncretism is an example of how corruption and ruination have entered the Church.

Church Militant contacted Belevendran for the third time this week to ask how he would respond to Dalit ("untouchable") converts from Hinduism who feel betrayed by a Catholic priest praying a prayer from the Brahmanical Hindu Upanishads during eucharistic adoration.

Brahmanical Hinduism, based on the Vedas and Upanishads, promotes the oppressive caste system; millions of Indian untouchables converted to Christianity to free themselves from three millennia of caste discrimination. 

The pan-religious service has been promoted by the diocese of Brentwood under Bp. Alan Williams, where Belevendran serves as interfaith advisor.      
 

Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae, we are very grateful to a friend who sent us this valuable article published by the Cooperatores Veritatis website that contains a prophecy about the Church made by Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, that has certainly been forgotten by most. It seems extraordinarily relevant, and this is why Cooperatores Veritatis has brought it to light. We hope you enjoy reading it.

A Day Will Come: The Rediscovered Prophecy of Pius XII

In 1972, a biography of Pope Pius XII was published in France entitled Pie XII devant l’Histoire, written by Msgr. Georges Roche and Philippe Saint Germain, never translated into Italian [or English]. The authors relate various unpublished statements made very "long ago" — in 1933 — by Cdl. Eugenio Pacelli to two of his friends, Count Enrico Pietro Galeazzi and Msgr. Slozkaz, regarding the apparitions at Fatima and the apostasy of the Catholic Church.

It is interesting to note that it was only in 1944 that Sister Lucia Dos Santos wrote down the visions and secrets. For this reason, what Cdl. Pacelli said in 1933, which is all tragically coming true, leads us to conclude that everything was not revealed to us [by the Holy See's statement on the Third Secret of Fatima] during the Jubilee Year 2000.

We have translated these statements of the future Pius XII — which are truly prophecies — for you here. Read and meditate.

In Pius' Own Words

Let us suppose that communism is one of the most evident instruments of subversion used against the Church and the traditions of divine revelation. Then we will witness the contamination of everything that is spiritual: philosophy, science, law, education, the arts, media, literature, theater and religion.

I am worried about the confidences given by the Virgin to little Lucia of Fatima. This insistence by the Good Lady on the dangers that threaten the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that would be contained in the altering of the Faith in its liturgy, its theology and its soul.

I sense all around me that the innovators want to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, throw out all of its ornaments and make it full of a sense of guilt for its historic past. Look, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must rediscover a sense of pride about its past, otherwise it will dig its own grave.

I will fight this battle with all my strength within the Church as well as outside Her, even if the forces of evil one day take advantage of my very person, my actions or my writings, just as today they attempt to distort the history of the Church. All the human heresies that alter the Word of God are made to seem like they are better than Her.

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God, that God's Son is only a symbol, a philosophy just like any other. In the churches, Christians will seek in vain for the red lamp where Jesus waits for them. Like the sinful woman weeping before the empty tomb, they will cry out: "Where have they taken him?"

It will be then that there will arise priests from Africa, from Asia, from the Americas — who have been formed in the missionary seminaries — who will speak out and proclaim that the Bread of Life is not ordinary bread and the Mother of the God-Man is not a mother just like many others. And they will be torn to pieces for having testified that Christianity is not a religion just like others, because its Head is the Son of God and the [Catholic] Church is His Church.

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino @pellegrino2020
 

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Since his papacy, Pope Francis has received support from the political and theological Left due to some of their shared views on climate change, immigration policy, globalism and more. 

Francis has now held the Chair of Peter for over seven years, and throughout those years, the pontiff's words and actions have caused much confusion among faithful Catholics. 

On this week's Mic'd Up, Christine Niles interviews Dr. Daniel Mahoney, author of "Pope Francis, Wayward Shepherd." 

One of the Pope's biggest campaigns has been climate change. He's dedicated numerous publications to the supposed issue, his most famous being his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home. 

In the encyclical, he states, "Climate change is a global problem with grave implications." He also calls upon world leaders to "listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, who suffer most because of the unbalanced ecology."

These views have resulted in many globalist organizations joining arms with the Vatican. A prominent one is the United Nations, which has built into its platform the promotion of abortion, contraception, euthanasia and more. Its promotion of these intrinsic evils are directed at putting an end to, in its view, the problem of "overpopulation." 

Pope Francis has also been outspoken against populism, saying that the growing movement pushing against elitist globalism makes him think of Hitler. 

Although Pope Francis has compared abortion to hiring a hit man, suggested gender ideology is akin to the annihilation of human beings and recognized the family is being severely threatened by the attempt to redefine marriage, his alliance with the political Left and its globalist agenda allows for a continued partnership.

Christine Niles interviews Dr. Daniel Mahoney, author of Pope Francis, Wayward Shepherd. 

TRANSCRIPT
 

If there has been one hallmark of the Francis pontificate, it is the politicization of the Church. And not just pure politicization, but a Marxist-flavored, globalist-socialist politicization. 

The leftist urges of this pope and his pontificate were ably addressed in the book, The Political Pope, by our good friend and wam-bam investigative reporter, George Neumayr. Neumayr is a senior editor for The American Spectator. He pulls together various strands of the pontificate and rightly labels it "political." 

Of course, there's nothing objectively wrong or immoral about a pope being involved in politics. It's pretty much unavoidable. Pope St. John Paul II was heavily involved in politics, quietly operating behind the scenes with U.S. President Ronald Reagan in helping bring about the downfall of the former Soviet Union through secret liaisons with the Polish Labor Union Solidarity and its leader Lech Wałęsa.

But politics was not his chief concern and neither was helping to create a world where Marxist principles — disguised as care for the poor and climate change — ruled the day. In fact, quite the opposite was true. As it was with previous popes, any venturing into politics was always about more spiritual-minded aims than purely humanistic ones. 

[Transcript unavailable]

Daniel Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and earlier this year he wrote a blistering takedown of the Francis pontificate in the magazine National Review titled "Pope Francis, Wayward Shepherd."

[Transcript unavailable]

Mahoney is the guest on this week's Mic'd Up, which you can view by just clicking on the provided link. If you're already a premium member, it'll start right up. If you aren't, just sign up and watch the episode.

In it, we trace some of the very early influences on the young Jorge Bergoglio, including one particular woman who was Marxist and — the future pope freely admits — had a tremendous influence on him.

One topic Mahoney addresses is the non-Catholic response of thinking and treating the pope as though every word he says is sanctified and comes directly from God. Hint: They aren't, and they don't. Papal adulation of this sort is really a kind of recent phenomenon, where the man who is pope is almost deified by some in the Church. 

Remember that it wasn't until only relatively recently that Catholics even knew anything about the pope beyond his name when they heard it at Mass. Outside of that, for the vast majority of the life of the Church, they had no idea what he looked like and no idea what he even sounded like. Pope Leo XIII — of happy memory — was the first pope to ever actually be filmed, and that was only a little more than a century ago — 1896.

And it was only on Feb. 13, 1931 — less than a hundred years ago — that a pope was first heard over the radio, his voice electronically transmitted, which no doubt would cause some today to pine for "the good ol' days." Even up to and into the age of television in the 1950s and 60s, seeing the pope on TV was still somewhat of a novelty, and certainly a rarity to hear him.

But with the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978 and the eventual election of John Paul II, with 33 days of John Paul I in between, the papacy exploded into living rooms across the world. Here was a young, vibrant man — just 58 when elected — barnstorming across the world in dramatic, made-for-TV scenes, standing, for instance, in the midst of millions of his fellow countrymen in Poland, challenging the very existence of godless, Marxist communism by his very presence.

There was the leader of the Catholic Church — the successor to St. Peter, the Rock on which Christ built his Church — facing down the forces of atheism, with an army of millions hanging on his every word. It was awe-inspiring, spectacular imagery — God vs. Satan, Heaven vs. Hell. And all of it came with massive political overtones — West vs. East, freedom vs. communism. No producer could have written this script.

But what it did, aside from enthrall billions with the Church and the Pope, was to usher in a new ear for the papacy. No longer would the pope be a distant, far off, unknown personage. The papacy had gone "prime time."

Seven years after Pope John Paul died, his successor, Pope Benedict — never especially comfortable in the new age of the electronic papacy — would resign, giving way to Pope Francis. Francis embraced the electronic papacy and then some, using its built-in advantage to set about changing the Church into a political force and downplaying its spiritual significance.

But the politics Rome was now pushing would not be a defeat of socialism, but its resurrection, legitimizing it as a force for "good" in areas of climate change, illegal immigration and so forth. And many faithful Catholics have responded in kind, fed up with the social-justice mantra being used to usher in some kind of globalist utopia while the Faith itself is treated shabbily.

[Transcript unavailable]

Again, this week's Mic'd Up — well worth the watch.

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HECHINGEN, Germany (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Catholic priest omitted the name of Jesus while praying from a mosque rooftop with the local Muslim imam during  Friday Islamic prayers in the German town of Hechingen.

Father Michael Knaus, pastor of St. Luzius parish, joined Imam Ahmed Gezer on the canopy of the Süleymaniye mosque on May 8, praying, "Lord, I came here as a brother of all people who were created in your image." 

Knaus recited a portion from St. Francis of Assisi's hymn: "Make me an instrument of your peace, so that where there is hatred, I would love; so that where one is offended, I would forgive; so that where there is conflict, I would reconcile."

Imam Gezer chanted the adhan — the triumphalist Islamic call to prayer proclaiming the finality of Muhammad and the supremacy of Islam over Christianity: "Allah is greater. I testify that there is no God but Allah. I testify that Muhammad is Allah's prophet. Come to prayer. Come to security/salvation. Allah is greater. There is no God but Allah."  

"I am simply concerned with the peaceful coexistence of denominations and religions," Fr. Knaus insisted, defending his decision to join the mosque prayer on the basis of Pope Francis' call for a pan-religious day of prayer for deliverance from the pandemic.

But Muslim convert to Christianity Sam Solomon told Church Militant he was profoundly disturbed by such developments in the wake of Pope Francis' Abu Dhabi declaration and call by the Higher Committee for Human Fraternity for a pan-religious day of prayer.   

"As a Christian from a Muslim background, I represent a growing community of converts from Islam to Christianity," Solomon said. "In reference to the pope's efforts to establish a 'human fraternity' with the Muslim world, my main concern is the overlooking of two major issues — the status of Muslim converts to Christianity in the Islamic world and the lack of any theological agreement between Islam and Christianity."

"Converts in Muslim countries are under intense persecution by the authorities, rejection by their own families and discrimination at every level. It would help greatly if the pope — and other church authorities for that matter — take up the plight of the converts and not hide their persecution under the rug in the name of 'human fraternity,'" the Shariah expert and jurist stressed.  

"If normative Islamic doctrine were all about 'peaceful coexistence of denominations and religions,' there wouldn't be a problem; but instead, it teaches supremacy, subversion and conquest of unbelievers," noted Islamic commentator Christine Douglass-Williams. 

She elaborated:

Knaus, like so many others, has chosen to turn a blind eye to this normative Islamic doctrine, which views Christianity as inferior, calls for warfare against Christians and lives out these doctrines today in ongoing jihad warfare against Christians in Africa and the Middle East. His 'historic gesture' at the mosque was in line with many gestures the pope, who has made it his priority to see the Catholic Church partner with Islam in efforts toward achieving 'world peace.'

Tuba Sekerci, the mosque's commissioner, repeated in German the prayer for peace from the previous week: "O Allah, protect everyone in Hechingen, in Baden-Württemberg, in Germany and all over the world from this pandemic as we are currently experiencing it."

At the end of the prayer at which 50 Muslims were present, Adnan Bürkev, chairman of the Hechingen Muslim community, praised Fr. Knaus: "That was great. It has to be that way. We have to stick together in Hechingen. We all pray to God. Finished."

However, Solomon in his book Not the Same God: Is the Qur'an Allah the LORD God of the Bible? categorically states "that notwithstanding many apparent similarities, the Allah of Islam as expressed in the doctrine of Islamic monotheism (i.e., Tawheed) is the diametric opposite of the Triune LORD God of the Bible — opposite in nature, character, knowability, description and attributes."  

"The Qur'an, although seemingly innocent — its main objective was and is to undo the message and mission of Christ," Solomon observed. "The Qur'an denies any form of divine nature associated with Issa (Jesus) and attacks a version of the 'Trinity' as a form of polytheism and 'shirk' (associating partners with Allah), which is the ultimate blasphemy in Islam."

"Yet some of the most outspoken 'Christian' theologians/scholars would without hesitation, declare that, 'Muslims and Christians believe in the same God,' based on 'sufficient similarities,'" he lamented.

On May 1, local Christians and members of Germany's populist Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) Party assembled in Gammertinger Strasse to protest Mayor Philipp Hahn's decision to permit the Süleymaniye mosque to publicly broadcast Muslim prayers over a loudspeaker for the first time in the town's history.

Some Catholics displayed a crucifix while others protestors paraded German flags at the demonstration.   

Knaus said his decision to pray with the imam was in part motivated by the protest. In his online sermon for St. Luzius Church, the Catholic priest criticized the protests against the Muslim Friday prayer. "It hurt me," said Knaus, "to see that Muslims should be prevented from praying. I find it shameful."

Local Protestant pastors Herbert Würth, Horst Jung Bauer and Frank Steiner, who were also invited to participate in the mosque prayers, declined to take part. 

Locals pointed out that the priest led the prayer dressed in a suit and tie without his cassock or clerical collar. He also took off the earring he normally wears on his left ear while preaching or celebrating Mass.

A number of Christians protested on the local newspaper's website.

"The churches in Germany are NGOs [non-governmental organizations] serving one-world socialism," one lamented.

"Despite the lousy attendance at the church, they spend weeks fretting about distance rules. And then they pray in the mosque!" another commented.

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - An Italian politician has recently demanded the arrest of billionaire Bill Gates, accusing him of "crimes against humanity" in a speech delivered to the Italian parliament.

In an impassioned seven-minute speech, Member of Parliament (MP) for Rome Sara Cunial attacked the Italian government's heavy-handed and destructive response to the Wuhan crisis that was, she maintained, carried out under the influence of Gates, whom she denounced as a "vaccine criminal." 

"We have understood people, for sure, don't die for the virus alone. So people will be allowed to die and suffer, thanks to you and your laws, for misery and poverty," Cunial said.

The MP pointed particularly to the suffering of the children "who will lose more" as a result of oppressive lockdown measures and forced vaccinations. She called them "raped souls" for whom "the right to school will be granted only with a bracelet ... to get them used to slavery." She said they exchange their freedom "for a push-scooter and a tablet."

Cunial also denounced Italian government's deference to the World Health Organization (WHO), "whose main financier is the well-known 'philanthropist and savior of the world' Bill Gates."

The MP's coup de grâce was, however, the demand for Gates' arrest that she directed to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte: "Next time you receive a phone call from the 'philanthropist' Bill Gates, forward it directly to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity."

Cunial has been an outspoken critic of vaccinations, calling them "free genocide" on a Facebook post, which resulted in her being suspended by her party (although she was later readmitted).

The MP's ire was piqued by recent news that Bill Gates offered a $10 million bribe to the Nigerian House of Representatives for a forced vaccination program for the Wuhan virus. Nigerian opposition political parties rejected the "foreign-sponsored bill" that mandated the compulsory vaccination of all Nigerians and demanded the speaker be impeached if he forced the bill on members.

The United States is not without prominent critics of Gates and his immunization agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of the Children's Health Defense and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, recently lambasted Gates, referring to the billionaire's "obsession with vaccines."

"Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feeds his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft's ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy," Kennedy said in an article posted on the Children's Health Defense website in April.

He cited Gates' meddling with the well-being of young people in particular. Promising hundreds of millions of dollars to eradicate polio, he "took control of India's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), which mandated up to 50 doses ... of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five."

The meddling resulted in an epidemic that paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children between 2000 and 2017. 

According to Kennedy, "The most frightening [polio] epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain."

In remote Indian provinces, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, designed to protect against sexual infections, on 23,000 young girls in 2009. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders, with seven girls dying.

Moral travesty was piled on physical misery as Gates-funded researchers, according to Kennedy, pressured the vulnerable village girls into the experiments by bullying parents, forging consent forms and refusing medical care to the injured girls, according to the Indian government.

Kennedy also pointed to Gates' interference in Africa, including the forcible vaccination of thousands of African children against meningitis, which resulted in approximately 50 of the 500 vaccinated children developing paralysis.

"We are guinea pigs for the drug makers," South African newspapers complained.

Suspicions have also swirled around Gates involving an ominous meeting called Event 201 that took place in New York City in October 2019, just weeks before the Wuhan virus rocked the world. 

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted "a high-level pandemic exercise" intending to illustrate "areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences."

To counter suspicions among those who noted eerie coincidences between the substance of the Event 201 meeting and the pandemic that occurred only weeks afterward, the CHS issued a statement which said: "To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise." 

Numerous sources have also reported on another suspicious pre-pandemic warning made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, now part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, just days before President Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Fauci predicted a "surprise outbreak" would occur during the Trump administration," saying, "There is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases," in a speech titled "Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Administration" at Georgetown University Medical Center. 

Church Militant has reported extensively on the moral dangers associated with vaccinations, particularly on the use of aborted babies to create them.

One article titled "I Will Not Kill Children to Live" reported on the pastoral letter Bp. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas issued in April urging the faithful to resist vaccinations made from aborted fetal cell lines. 

Gates and his wife Melinda lead the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and according to its website, is "[g]uided by the belief that every life has equal value" and "works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives." The website speaks of the foundation's work to "ensure more children and young people survive and thrive," a phrase echoing throughout leftist media chambers of late.

Cunial's speech was met with wide applause and ended on a determined note urging fellow Italians to resist unnecessary lockdown measures and refuse to surrender to compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations orchestrated by Gates and his associates: "We, the people, will build the fires of resistance to such an extent it will not be possible to repress all of us." 
 

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to claim that banning public worship during the pandemic violates religious freedom — those findings in a new poll. 

The same University of Chicago-AP poll also shows Republicans over Democrats say prohibiting drive-in services violates religious freedom, by a margin of 2 to 1.                                        

Meanwhile, faithful Catholics around the world have been questioning church closures.

"I believe that faith strengthens your immune system. If you really believe, you won't catch it," said one worshipper.

The Wall Street Journal has noted that all along, a vocal minority of Catholics have criticized the suspension of Masses, arguing that a crisis is when they need the Church the most.

The virus has prompted secular and religious leaders to say they are using prudence in suspending public worship, but as some reporters have noted, there seems to be a disconnect between natural prudence and supernatural faith.  

What seems prudent on the surface may not coincide with the ultimate good of God's will, as Jesus' words to Peter remind us, after insisting Jesus not suffer and die: "Get behind me, Satan!"  

The voice of the faithful has not fallen on deaf ears.

Recently, a federal judge ruled Kentucky churches could open for public services beginning May 10. 

Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) of Oregon is suing its governor for what it calls a blatant violation of the state's Constitution.

And the concern of faithful Catholics has prompted a petition letter from Abp. Viganò on Church independence and religious persecution.                                 

As more parishes resume public Masses and confessions in a post-Wuhan world, time will tell whether a "new normal" arises from the ashes.

WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - One of the last pro-life Democrats to be weeded out of Congress is claiming that politics is replacing religion.

Catholic Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., who was abandoned by the Democratic party in the March primary, told CNA on Wednesday that there's no room in the Democratic party for pro-life candidates. Despite being the incumbent since 2005, Lipinski says Democratic leaders left him alone to unsuccessfully battle a massive pro-abortion lobby.

"They found it very important to get rid of me from the party, so I think that should be a message to the pro-life movement," said Lipinski.

He's calling upon Catholics to form a pro-life coalition that supports pro-life candidates even if they are Democrats. He noted the key issue for Catholics and other moral-minded voters should be pro-life issues, with other issues taking a back seat.

"That's when you're successful, is when you say 'as long as you're with us on this issue, we accept you, we want you as part of our movement,'" asserted Lipinksi. "I think that's important for the pro-life movement to continue to expand." 

He added, "The pro-life movement needs to support pro-life Democrats."

But pro-life voters, unlike Democratic leaders in Congress, are seemingly doing just that with the few pro-life Democrats that can still be found.

The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA), known for its staunch support of Republican Donald Trump's 2016 bid for the White House, lamented the fact that Lipinski lost in March to the radical pro-abortion candidate Marie Newman.

"We offer condolences to our friend, Congressman Lipinski, who fought fiercely and admirably in this race, and to the pro-life citizens of his district who have lost a champion," said SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser. "Congressman Lipinski has long been a profile in courage, bucking the sad trend of Democrat leaders vying to be the greatest advocate of abortion. We are deeply grateful for his bravery in standing strong."

Dannenfelser was chosen by Trump in 2016 to head his campaign's Pro-Life Coalition.

Likewise, Catherine Glenn Foster, President of Americans United for Life (AUL) called Lipinski's loss "a loss for Illinois and for our entire nation. Dan Lipinski is precisely the sort of leader America needs in our public square — principled, pragmatic and prudent," said Foster.

Lipinski urged Catholics to put their faith into practice when it comes to voting without placing politics above their religious convictions.

"If we're truly going to be Catholic," declared Lipinski, "we should make sure that we put our Catholic beliefs, and how that moves us when we enter the public sphere — we should put that before partisanship. And I'm just concerned that people are not doing that."

The admonishment by Lipinksi echoed the teaching from Cdl. Raymond Burke. The former head of the Vatican's Highest Court reaffirmed in January that no Catholic politician can be pro-abortion.

"No devout Catholic, no practicing Catholic, can be in favor of abortion," Burke told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. He was fielding a question by MacCallum on fake Catholic Joe Biden's pro-abortion voting record and his being refused Holy Communion.

Noting the former vice president's "consistent record of being pro-abortion" Burke repeated Church teaching that no Catholic could "justify voting for legislation and policies that promote abortion." 

Catholics Generally Split on Abortion

Regardless of Church teaching, Catholics were divided in the last presidential election between Trump, who was ostensibly pro-life, and radical abortion advocate, Hillary Clinton.

Lipinksi took note of the dismal voting regard of so many Catholics.

"Catholics are very split—almost evenly split—between the Democratic and the Republican Party, but the most important thing is to be Catholic first," affirmed Lipinski.

As pro-life groups may on occasion support a rare Democrat like Lipinski, so pro-life groups like Texas Right to Life (TRTL), are battling Republican in Name Only (RINO) candidates, who do little else than give lip service to pro-life issues. In 2018, TRTL was even targeted by the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops for unmasking RINOs who only drag their feet on pro-life legislation.

Lipinski further lamented the polarization of society.

"We live in a very polarized society, and I think that's bad for our society, bad for our country," he said.

But this polarization seems to be coming from the Democratic leadership itself and is precisely over pro-life issues. This polarization by top Democrats gives pro-lifers few options when seeking to support virtually non-existent pro-life Democrats.

Democrats like Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, who wanted Lipinski gone, makes it clear there's no room for pro-life candidates in the Democratic party.

"I support a big tent," she tweeted, "but there's no room under the flaps for anyone who is actively seeking to deny women control over our bodies."

CLICK TO WATCH THE VIDEO
 

TRANSCRIPT

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to claim that banning public worship during the pandemic violates religious freedom — those findings in a new poll. 

The same University of Chicago-AP poll also shows Republicans over Democrats say prohibiting drive-in services violates religious freedom, by a margin of 2 to 1.                                        

Meanwhile, faithful Catholics around the world have been questioning church closures.

"I believe that faith strengthens your immune system. If you really believe, you won't catch it," said one worshipper.

The Wall Street Journal has noted that all along, a vocal minority of Catholics have criticized the suspension of Masses, arguing that a crisis is when they need the Church the most.

The virus has prompted secular and religious leaders to say they are using prudence in suspending public worship, but as some reporters have noted, there seems to be a disconnect between natural prudence and supernatural faith.  

What seems prudent on the surface may not coincide with the ultimate good of God's will, as Jesus' words to Peter remind us, after insisting Jesus not suffer and die: "Get behind me, Satan!"  

The voice of the faithful has not fallen on deaf ears.

Recently, a federal judge ruled Kentucky churches could open for public services beginning May 10. 

Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) of Oregon is suing its governor for what it calls a blatant violation of the state's Constitution.

And the concern of faithful Catholics has prompted a petition letter from Abp. Viganò on Church independence and religious persecution.                                 

As more parishes resume public Masses and confessions in a post-Wuhan world, time will tell whether a "new normal" arises from the ashes.

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Child vaccinations are plummeting amid the Wuhan virus pandemic. 

On May 8, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a study using data from the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program. The VFC is a national program that provides federally purchased vaccines to approximately 50% of U.S. children aged 0–18 years. The CDC found:

There was a 2.5 million-dose decline in orders of regular childhood vaccines — not counting influenza vaccines — and a 250,000-dose decline in vaccines containing measles protection in that period, the authors reported.

Doctors and public health experts have worried that a vast number of regular health care needs — including preventive care interventions like vaccinations — have gone unmet in the past few months as people shy away from interacting with a health system that has, at least in some places, been overwhelmed by caring for COVID-19 patients. Pediatricians in particular have been concerned that children may be missing critical vaccinations, which the new data confirm has happened.

The study revealed childhood vaccination efforts nearly stopped entirely between March 13, when the national emergency officially began, and April 19, leaving pediatricians concerned. 

Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrician and scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program in Nashville, said, "Routine immunizations in young children are critical to maintain during the pandemic. The usual childhood diseases are still around and we need to protect our children from them."

The CDC has its own argument encouraging childhood vaccines on its website:

Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect infants, children, and teens from 16 potentially harmful diseases that can be very serious, may require hospitalization or even be deadly. And immunizations are not just for children. Protection from some childhood vaccines can wear off over time. Adults may also be at risk for vaccine-preventable disease due to age, job, lifestyle, travel or health conditions.

Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccines expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, when asked about doctors holding more pediatric appointments amid the crisis, said, "I think that didn't happen," and, "I think there were a number of practices that didn't do that because they were too scared. And so this is the result. You have this dramatic decline."

With a Wuhan virus vaccine expected by the end of the year, some mainstream media sites are justifying the idea of mandatory vaccinations. But this poses a problem for faithful Catholics who are against getting vaccines developed from aborted fetal cell lines.

On April 17, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released a statement telling the U.S. Food and Drug Administration it cannot create a vaccine using aborted fetal cell lines, requesting that work on vaccines follow "the principle that human life is sacred and should never be exploited." The letter was also sent to President Donald Trump and lists Janssen Pharmaceuticals as one company using these "old cell lines."

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas also weighed in on the issue by pledging against receiving any Wuhan virus vaccine derived from these aborted fetal cell lines: 

So sad ... even with COVID-19 we are still debating the use of aborted fetal tissue for medical research ... let me go on record ... if a vaccine for this virus is only attainable if we use body parts of aborted children then I will refuse the vaccine ... I will not kill children to live.

Strickland also wrote a letter on April 27 saying, "Scientists I've spoken with assure me that there is no medical necessity for using aborted children in order to develop the much-needed vaccine to protect us from this particular strain of coronavirus."

The questionable future for ethical vaccinations has faithful Catholics concerned. Despite this, many parents still wishing to vaccinate their kids to avoid Wuhan infection are trapped in a moral vortex, forcing them to be a contributing factor in the profound drop in child vaccinations.
 

QUITO, Ecuador (ChurchMilitant.com) - Ecuadorian pro-lifers are opposing a United Nations (U.N.) effort to introduce abortion as part of a Wuhan virus financial aid package.

In March the U.N. announced an appeal for $6.7 billion for its COVID-19 Humanitarian Response Plan, which would provide emergency funds for "vulnerable nations" to fight the virus. One of the plan's provisions is to "maintain continuity of maternal, neonatal and children's health and other sexual and reproductive health services during the pandemic."

Abortion is illegal in Ecuador but includes exceptions for the so-called life and health of the mother and in the exceptional case of a rape of a mentally disabled woman.

The U.N. has been pushing for the expansion of abortion in the majority-Catholic country since at least 2015 when its Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) slammed the nation's pro-life laws.

Lawmakers have been successful so far in opposing the push to legalize abortion. In September 2019 abortion activists rioted in the streets of Quito — the nation's capital — after lawmakers voted down an amendment to the current law that would allow abortions in cases of rape and fetal abnormalities.

Quito's Abp. Alfredo Mateus commented "Abortion cannot be the answer that a civilized society gives to the pain and anguish of women, men and their families. Talking about abortion as a solution is a painful irony ... abortion cannot be a 'solution' — it is a drama, a failure of every society."

Peru, Ecuador's neighboring Catholic nation, has also been fighting against the expansion of abortion using the Wuhan virus as an excuse.

In April, a Peruvian lawmaker questioned a new directive implemented by the abortion-activist minister of health allowing so-called emergency contraception in the event a pregnant woman tests positive for the virus.

The lawmaker demanded the minister of health "indicate what the legal basis ... the scientific and medical basis the norm is based upon."

Doctors also spoke out against the rule, saying:

At this time in which all our efforts as a nation should be aimed at improving our precarious health system to mitigate the serious impact of the pandemic, the circumstances are being used to dictate measures that threaten the lives of Peruvians in their most vulnerable stage, life in the womb.

The U.N. has been notorious for pushing abortion, with the U.N. Human Rights Committee in 2018 calling abortion part of "the right to life of a pregnant woman or girl" in its proposed human rights treaty.

It also calls for access to "safe, legal and effective access to abortion," affordable contraceptive methods and the removal of "existing barriers ... including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers."

Pro-life scholars slammed the treaty, saying no U.N. treaty "can be fairly interpreted to include a right to abortion under any circumstance."

Stefano Gennarini, director of legal studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights, asserted "Such interpretations of U.N. treaties are illegitimate," adding "U.N. treaties should be used to expand protections for children in the womb, not take them away. They directly undercut the claim of a positive obligation to permit abortion, and they call into question the integrity of U.N. experts and their methods of interpreting treaties."

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KIEV, Ukraine (ChurchMilitant.com) - Greek and Roman Catholic bishops in Ukraine have joined together urging authorities to ban surrogate motherhood and international child trafficking.

The catalyst for the bishops' appeal was the recent publication of a heart-wrenching video on the website of the BioTexCom clinic, a so-called center for human reproduction, broadcast from the Kiev hotel Venice.  

The video showed almost 50 babies, born from surrogacy, "crying in their hospital beds and deprived of parental warmth, treated as goods for which no buyer had yet applied," according to Polonia Christiana, a Polish news site. 

The Ukrainian hospital prepared the video to reassure surrogate-parents-to-be that the babies were all right and under the care of pediatricians. The reassurance was directed to parents in the United States, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, France, Germany and China who could not collect their babies because of the pandemic and the closing of borders or were considering "purchasing" one.

Ukraine is known as a "surrogacy-friendly state," with the practice advertised as "well regulated," with contracts considered enforceable under legislation enacted at the federal level. Under Ukrainian law, the child belongs solely to the intended parents from the moment of conception.

Shaken by the video, the hierarchs of both rites addressed the Ukrainian government with an urgent demand to ban such practices: "Surrogate motherhood, that is, treating people as a commodity that can be ordered, prepared and sold, which, to our great regret, is actively allowed by Ukrainian legislation, is a problem, is trampling on human dignity." 

Controversial BioTexCom video promoting surrogacy in Ukraine
 

The bishops referred to the legalized status of surrogacy in Ukraine as "a moral evil that causes countless suffering and disgrace to both the child thus born and the woman who gave birth to her." 

"No circumstances or effects can justify the practice of surrogate motherhood," the Greek and Roman Catholic clergy insisted.

Lyudmila Denisova, representative of the Ukrainian Parliament for human rights, called the practice a "scandal," objecting to Ukrainian children being passed on to foreign parents. Denisov asked the parliamentarians to change the law, arguing that surrogate motherhood in Ukraine should be available "exclusively to Ukrainians," in an effort to better track their care.

What the BioTexCom hospital had to say was more blasé. In a statement published on its website, owner Albert Tocziłowski touted the cheap price for which his facility sold babies. BioTexCom offers babies for $30,000–$70,000 as part of a "package deal," while such services can cost up to $300,000 in the United States. The deal includes baby, flat in Ukraine, surrogate mother's salary, flights, etc. 

Surrogacy is becoming more common — and legal — throughout the world. But this is such a profitable business that — especially in poor countries — centers dealing with this practice are multiplying, according to Polonia Christiana.

Homosexuals or homosexual couples, who mainly use the help of American clinics, find the service useful — exemplified by the recent case of CNN's Anderson Cooper buying a surrogate baby boy.

One same-sex couple in Italy, where surrogacy is illegal, said, "The consent of the Italian authorities to collect children from Ukraine could contribute to a change in the world for the better."  

The Ukrainian bishops concluded their statement by demanding that:

the state authorities finally pay attention to family policy in Ukraine — to create an appropriate state body that would take care of Ukrainian families and would ensure that our mothers would not have to trade their bodies and children carried under their hearts, that they and their children-loved ones could survive.

They signed it on behalf of their churches — the Synod of Bishops of the Kiev-Halice archbishopric of the greater Abp. Światosław Szewczuk and the Latin Metropolitan of Lviv Abp. Mieczysław Mokrzycki on behalf of the conference of bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian Catholic priest in the Philadelphia archeparchy with strong ties to Ukraine talked to Church Militant about "corruption of all kinds" being "a massive, massive problem in Ukraine."

"Almost nothing would surprise me concerning Ukraine today when it comes to profiting monetarily," he said. "A sad reality."

Those who attentively read the Society of Saint Pius X's (SSPX's) response to recent reports by Church Militant will, if they keep the full text of those reports in mind, be as struck by its failure to attempt a refutation of certain allegations as Sherlock Holmes was by the dog who didn't bark in the night, and whose passivity showed that the criminal wasn't a stranger to him.

In a text of no less than 14 paragraphs and nearly 1,000 words not so much as a single sentence even questions, let alone denies, the information which Church Militant provided on the Nazi sympathies of Fr. Ramon Angles, a leading priest of the SSPX.

To call this omission the most shocking aspect of the SSPX response would not be unreasonable. Flimsy as the response's defense of SSPX handling of sexual abuse might seem, it at least tried to give the impression that serious efforts are made to combat evil of such gravity.

Failure to address the allegations against Fr. Angles suggests either that those who composed the response knew them to be accurate, that they unthinkingly disregarded the allegations due to a failure to appreciate their seriousness or worse. Those with more extensive knowledge of the SSPX will not, however, find this omission shocking at all.

Father Angles' relatively little-known sympathy for the Nazis and former SSPX member Bp. Richard Williamson's notorious denial of the Holocaust is not just the tip of a larger iceberg but almost to be expected in an organization founded by Abp. Marcel Lefebvre.

The WWII-era regimes he favored had been been "pragmatically" and sometimes informally aligned with Hitler, were authoritarian and quasi-fascistic while opposed to domestic Nazi takeovers and significant elements of Nazi ideology, unfavorable to German expansion into most regions but willing to accept it when it occurred, contributing forces to Hitler's war against Soviet Russia (freeing up German troops for use elsewhere) while refusing to initiate hostilities against the Western Allies.

Simplistically taring Lefebvre as a "Nazi sympathizer" would be inaccurate. Saying he was willing to turn a blind eye to such sympathies and saw "pragmatic" collaboration with Nazi Germany as legitimate is another matter. Evidence shows such a contention to be a matter of fact rather than of speculation.

One former superior of the American district of the SSPX, Fr. Hector Bolduc, verified in a letter to a Mr. Thomas Case that he had once had to correct a priest of the district, Fr. Gregory Post, for wearing elements of a Nazi uniform at an airport, that when the two discussed the matter Fr. Post showed him his collection of Nazi artifacts and that when he informed Lefebvre of the matter, the archbishop's response was to shrug and say "what can one expect, that's Gregory." Post was ordained in 1972 as one of the first priests of the SSPX (and its first American priest), at a time when membership was small and its handful of seminaries personally known by Lefebvre.

Precise documentation of other cases in which Lefebvre overlooked such attitudes is hard to find but the sheer multiplicity of their presence within the SSPX suggests a general attitude of indulgence.

Richard Williamson, for example, also among the seminarians whom Lefebvre was able to know fairly well, was made a seminary rector seven years after ordination as a priest and was later consecrated by Lefebvre as a bishop.

Almost exactly one year after Lefebvre's illicit episcopal consecrations, an eight-year search for the notorious war criminal Paul Touvier came to an end when police found the man at a French residence for priests of the SSPX, some of whose members had long aided his efforts to remain in hiding.

Having deserted from the French army during Hitler's 1940 invasion, Touvier joined the Milice, a paramilitary organization which was run by France's collaborationist Vichy government and known for its use torture, summary killings and other brutal tactics against opponents of the regime, and whose members took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler.

Touvier worked under the direction of Klaus Barbie, one of the more notorious Gestapo agents known as the "butcher of Lyon." He directly ordered the murder of seven prisoners, was in the chain of command responsible for the murder of at least two other people and took part in the deportation of Jews to concentration camps.

Either the activities of SSPX members on behalf of this man were kept secret from Lefebvre, despite being carried out right under his nose, or he was willing to tolerate them.

Incidents of such a nature have not, as some might imagine, ceased with the departure of Bp. Williamson from the SSPX.

In 2001, Austrian SSPX priest Fr. Florian Abrahamowicz gave a public address honoring men who died as soldiers of Mussolini's "Republic of Salo," an action of even greater severity than most Americans will realize. Mussolini entered the war only as de facto dictator. Officially he was prime minister under King Victor Emmanuel III, subject to removal by the Grand Council. After king and council removed him, arrested him and took Italy out of the war, Hitler broke him out of jail and created the Republic of Salo as a puppet state for him to rule.

In 2006, this same priest praised former SS officer Erich Priebke, one of two men who commanded the March 1944 Ardeatine Massacre in which 335 people were killed — five because they had accidentally been put in the same trucks as those selected for death and murdered to prevent word of the event from spreading. Abrahamowicz was not expelled from the SSPX until 2009, and then only for "disciplinary reasons."

Over four years after that expulsion, the SSPX held a funeral Mass for Priebke after the Vatican had forbidden Catholic churches to do so. The superior of the Italian district of the SSPX defended its defiance of the foregoing directive on the grounds that Proebke could not be considered an unrepentant sinner as he had regularly gone to confession, regretted the deaths of those murdered and condemned mass murder of Jews as immoral.

What the district superior failed to mention was that many people who live in adulterous "civil marriages" go to confession regularly and that, in an interview not long before his death, Priebke insisted he was not responsible for the murders and had merely been following orders, denied that the Holocaust had taken place, referred to the war crimes proceedings at Nuremberg as "show trials" and, when asked if he considered himself a Nazi, made evasive statements about "loyalty to our past," "what still determines my sense of honor" and the fact that "National Socialism perished with the defeat of Germany and today there is no longer any prospect of its continuation."