“Cremate eos omnes”

How can we help our errant bishops repent and return to the light of Faith?

Turn them over to the secular arm.

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Fr. Kenny kindly linked to my last post on turning toward the Lord in prayer.

…social media can be – while a great way to keep in touch – also a waste of time, a hindrance to prayer.

Which, coincidentally, I was thinking about just today because I was outlining a book about prayer. Prayer has so many forms, and we should avail ourselves of creativity in exploring the world of prayer. What does the Bible have to say? Each book of it is, in its own way, a sort of relational

Personal prayer, liturgical prayer, meditative prayer, contemplative prayer, spoken prayer. Then the strange examples we see in the life of Jesus – He groaned from the depths of His spirit; He sighed from the depths of is being; he went up to the mountaintop and prayed all night.

Going up to the mountaintop is an interesting concept in and of itself. The mountains in the Holy Land aren’t the Himalayas, but they aren’t exactly hills. Going to the top would take most of a day, during which conversation might take place with the disciples or the apostles. It would also involve rest and refreshment. So we see the idea from Psalm 95, repeated in the Letter to the Hebrews, of entering into the Lord’s rest.

Shutting things down, heading to the high place, and entering into the Lord’s rest. Or – asking Him for the grace to enter into His rest.

I’m really being edified by some of the notes and tips I’m receiving from all around about this new direction, all of it has been very encouraging and I can assure y’all that I’m working on the next Thing. It does seem like the right choice, and swearing off Twitter has already started to channel my energies to more actual writing, and less tossing stuff up onto Twitter. Less brainless surfing and “data gathering” and more actual thinking.

(Here comes the but…)

But we can’t totally walk away from doing things either.

So we return for a moment from the heights of the mountain top to the Cities of the Plain, to discuss what faithful Catholics can do to help their bishops see the importance of transparency and moral and legal accountability, mainly by the creative use of threats and extortion. Cut off the funds – and tell them you’re doing that – until they come clean.

And they won’t. Nothing will make them do the right thing voluntarily.

This is why the next step is going to be unavoidable: turn them over to the secular arm.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro is a bad guy. He’s a homosexualist campaigner, pro-abortion, with a 100% endorsement rating from NARAL. No one should ever vote for him. And he was the instrument of God in his work on the Pennsylvania Report.

Most Catholic laity don’t know how diocesan finances work, that some of the income comes from real estate and other investments, but most of it comes from you. (This is if you’re not in Germany – which I know some of you are – where things are completely different because of the Church Tax. In Italy it’s more complex, since the Italian State owns much of the patrimony.) Dioceses levy a tax from parishes based on the reported annual collections. One of the ways that some parishes are responding to the crisis is to withhold the tax, deposit it into a special savings account, and to “invite” the secular legal authorities to take the bishops singly and collectively out behind the woodshed for a thoroughly deserved thrashing.

The simple fact is that these bastards knew. They knew that the evil and perverted men they’d encouraged to enter the priesthood had been using their position to rape and molest children and adolescents, young boys and teenagers, and even their own seminarians – And. They. Don’t. Care. They _don’t. Care._ 

So, it’s time to_ make them care_.

A friend of mine wrote the following in a PM yesterday:

“My sister is attempting to red pill her parish. She’s going to encourage the St. Escrow approach to tithing. But she’s wondering if there’s a good list of concrete “demands” to make of her parish and her diocese. Like, we won’t release the funds until you do X, Y and Z. Any ideas on demands to make?”

I put it to a group of bloggers and journalists and have received the following suggestions:

Invite the District Attorney to examine the diocesan records and finances. When full transparency is met, funds are released.

Diocesan records on what, specifically? On the priests? On the history of complaints? Hush money paid out? D. All of the above.

Full financial transparency, including any payouts or settlements for lawsuits.

Release names of all credibly accused priests.

Transparency regarding priests accused of “boundary violations” – including with adults.

(Not forgetting that “boundary violations” is Bishop-code for priests preying on seminarians and other adults.)

Commitment of bishop to a Code of conduct.

Publish the names of the serial kiddie fiddlers, and where the money is going, every cent.

Demand publication of finance reports over the last decade (at least). Demand publication of the percentage of parish funds being given to the diocese, the percentage of funds from the diocese being given to the USCCB and then what monies are being given over to the financial sinkhole which is the Vatican.

Tell them, in short, if they don’t come clean with all the info – financial and otherwise – by this particular date, you’ll be taking your concerns to the local, state, and federal authorities to demand justice.

Secular authorities are in a hunt-n-kill kind of mood lately. Diocesan officials know that the prosecutors are smelling blood in the water since Pittsburgh. Don’t imagine that the timing of the new class-action lawsuits was accidental. They obviously waited for the USCCB meeting in Baltimore to effectively declare that the bishops intended to do nothing.

This happened 2 days ago:

Police raid “secret archives” of Houston archdiocese in sex abuse probe

NB: Houston is the diocesan seat of Daniel DiNardo, the president of the USCCB.

One week after a CBS News investigation into how the archdiocese of Galveston-Houston handled sex abuse allegations, law enforcement seized documents at the archdiocese’s offices Wednesday. Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon arrived unannounced with 60 armed agents who left with boxes full of private documents from the archdiocese’s “secret archives.”

“We are treating the Catholic Church in the same way we’d treat a bank that has records, in the way that we’d treat a criminal enterprise,” Ligon said.

Ligon’s search comes just as a wide-reaching federal investigation into the Catholic clergy sexual abuse appears to be getting underway. At least 13 state attorneys general have also launched their own state investigations.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo leads the archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

“I know that he’s probably not pleased at all, but it’s not my job to please the cardinal,” Ligon said.

At least one of the victims of Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, went to DiNardo with their allegations, but it wasn’t until they went to police that the priest was arrested — after DiNardo promoted him.

…”in the way that we’d treat a criminal enterprise”…

Because that’s what they are.

What we really need to do is screw up our nerve and help the people we know hate the Church. These are the only people who can never be influenced by the Catholic instinct to preserve the bishops’ reputation. The only ones who are ever free to say, “It’s not my job to please the cardinal.”

The institutional structures of the Catholic Church around the world is a house riddled through with termites. It only has the bare appearance of being a standing structure. We just have to put our collective shoulders to it and the whole rotting thing will collapse in a pile of sawdust. It’s corrupt to the core, an apple completely riddled through with worms, no meat to salvage.

And we have seen, since the Baltimore debacle who is and isn’t on the side of the angels. To paraphrase the Abbot Arnaud Amaury: “Burn it all. God will know His own.”

If they don’t know who is, is not, has, and has not been involved in kiddie diddling, then collections aren’t the issue. Law enforcement is the issue.

It’s time to stop being polite and deferential.

 

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