Sin in the sphere of morality brings about or fosters doctrinal errors. The plague of homoheresy, or even the breeding homosexual subculture (according to words of Cardinal Burke) in many local Churches (cf. the case of the former Cardinal T. McCarrick in the USA or the earlier case of Ireland) is only a symptom of evil based on submission to sexual deviation by many of those who have lost their faith seriously in spite of their high position in the hierarchy of the curial administrative system or in theological seminaries.
Mechanism of reinforcing the “worldhood” of the Church
Wesprzyj nas już teraz!
All of this has already happened in the history of the Holy Church: dependence of rulers of this world, moral corruption among the clergy, the weakness of St. Peter’s Successors. In short, the Dark Ages. Moreover, these sins have always fostered the expansion of heresy, such as Arianism in the Constantinian age, when Byzantine emperors regarded themselves as “bishops in external matters of the Church”, or in the age of Protestant reformation, which, apart from the spiritual darkness of the soul of Rev. Martin Luther, became the ground on which many bishops submitted to the trend of the world (cf. the phenomenon of accumulation of ecclesiastical ranks and offices) to such an extent that, instead of being shepherds, they became mercenaries, or sometimes even wolves prowling in the Lord’s sheepfold. The Protestant “reformers” of the Church reserved the status of “supreme bishops” or “per force bishops” of new apostolic communities detached from succession for the rulers promoting their cause.
New “emperors”, new “investiture”
At the beginning of the 21st century, we can observe a repetition of the mechanism when heresy is brought forth by the sin of submission to the rulers of this world along with the moral collapse of a large group of those who have been called to fulfil pastoral offices in the Church. The rulers of this world are different. They are no longer Roman emperors residing in Constantinople or in Aachen (as kings of Germany) and demanding the same obedience from bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) as from their vassals who received an investiture from the hands of their secular overlord.
Today’s imperators are different. These are fashionable philosophical, theological, anthropological and political trends, and there is a legion of them. This is exactly their first name; the second one is revolution. The latter is called in various ways. In our times, there is a very popular version of revolution called a “change of the paradigm of the Church”. The principle has been known for ages: an erroneous philosophy (e.g., the conviction of the possibility of separating the doctrine, i.e., the teaching of the Church, from its pastoral practice) creates an erroneous theology (e.g., a new “pastoral” approach to the indissolubility of the sacrament of marriage and the proper reception of the Holy Communion) that leads to inadequate pastoral service (“The Cross? What cross? Self-denial? Oh, it’s excessive rigour and pharisaism”).
To take away the most precious treasure of the Church
As usual, the Legion – Revolution targets the Sacrament of the Altar and the related sacrament of priesthood. This has existed since the beginning. According to the Scripture, the devil entered Judas’s soul at the moment when the apostle rejected in his heart the Saviour’s teaching of the Blessed Eucharist that is written in the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. Many disciples of Christ openly deserted him because of this “difficult teaching”. Judas remained along with other apostles, but only in order to disclose his treason in full perfidy on the night of Holy Thursday after receiving his payment from the rulers of this world. A real prefiguration of the Legion – Revolution of modernists, or today’s supporters of the gradual “change of the paradigm of the Church” that takes place from the inside, but in spiritual and financial communion with the rulers of this world. The latter (Cardinal Kasper et consortes) fit perfectly into the definition of a “reformer of the Church” formulated by Gilbert Chesterton: “Such a reformer takes something that is called the Church, assumes that it will continue to exist, assumes that it will be still called the Church and agrees to that on condition that it has no longer anything to do with the Church. Expressing superstitious respect for its name, it intends to turn its essence inside out.”
In successive ages, the “sack of Judases” continuously poured out its dreadful content. Could Arians, who negated the divinity of Jesus Christ, believe in His real presence under the species of bread and wine, let alone the sacramental character of priesthood? Of course, they could not. For Protestant “reformers”, Catholic teaching (i.e., repetition of Christ’s teaching) on Eucharist was “too difficult”, so they turned away from it at a different pace, but ultimately. The rejection of the Sacrament of the Altar meant the rejection of altars and, consequently, the rejection of sacrificers (priests).
In our times, the “sack of Judases” releases supporters of “full communion” with Protestants, i.e., the people who reject faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine. However, the essential question should actually concern not the faith of Protestants (the matter is quite clear here), but the faith of the cardinals and bishops, not only those residing on the Rhine and the Spree, who strive toward “full communion”.
All supporters of the Legion – Revolution do not regard the Blessed Sacrament as the greatest treasure, this evangelical pearl for which one must give everything away and to which everything must be submitted, because it is the “source and summit of life of the Church”. They regard the Blessed Sacrament as a means of fulfilling other goals – for instance, ensuring that children of parents living in non-sacramental or interfaith marriages do not experience discomfort during important ceremonies (e.g., the First Communion) due to the absence of their parent(s) at the Lord’s Table. They think so because they have lost their faith that the Saviour is really present in his body and soul in the consecrated host. Someone with living faith in this real presence would not be able to preach the heresy of “full communion”.
The salt of the earth, or subcontractors for ideological projects?
Since the eucharistic Christ is no longer the point of reference, the “source and summit” of life of the Church and its paradigm yesterday, today and forever, it is replaced with the “world”. Contemporary political & media areopaguses would like the Church to be reduced to the role of a non-government organisation working for the benefit of “open society”. In this context, it is worth recalling the content of e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s staff disclosed during the American presidential campaign in 2016; trustful in the victory of their leader, Clinton’s closest collaborators already saw themselves as promoters of “open society” inside the Church.
One could say: nothing new. The rulers of this world have always tried to support “imperators” inside the Church. Things get worse if submission to such pressure is shown by those who have been called to be shepherds, not subcontractors for ideological projects. The mechanism of this dependence and its disastrous fruits can be seen like in a lens on the example of the spiritual and intellectual condition of the Church in Germany, whose leading hierarchs, beginning from Cardinal Richard Marx – the chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, perfectly fit into the “political consensus” of the Bundesrepublik that is determined by ideologically motivated political correctness.
Ecology, immigration, the condemnation of “political hatred” and “divisions in society” – everything comme il faut, both in the Chancellor’s Office and in the German Bishops’ Conference. And in the background we can hear buzzing arguments as a complement of the mechanism of dependence that has been known for centuries. Now they are called “church tax”. In Germany the Holy Communion is available to adulterers or persons who do not believe in the Blessed Sacrament (Protestants), but woe unto those who fail to pay Kirchensteuer. The supporters of the “new paradigm of the Church” and the “revolution of mercy” use – how awful it sounds – rigour and are very “closed” to such non-payers.
Less Rahner, more St. Peter Damian in seminaries
Thus, the renewal of the Church (not only in Germany) is conditional upon depriving it of its “worldhood” (German: Entweltlichung); during his pilgrimage to his homeland in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged his German fellow bishops to do so. This is a necessary condition, but not the most important one. The most important thing is to believe seriously in what has been taught by the Church faithful to the Tradition and the Gospel for two thousand years. And faith without (good) deeds (and refraining from wrong ones) is dead.
Sin in the sphere of morality brings about or fosters doctrinal errors. The plague of homoheresy, or even the breeding homosexual subculture (according to words of Cardinal Burke) in many local Churches (cf. the case of the former Cardinal T. McCarrick in the USA or the earlier case of Ireland) is only a symptom of evil based on submission to sexual deviation by many of those who have lost their faith seriously in spite of their high position in the hierarchy of the curial administrative system or in theological seminaries. Here I will repeat the claim that I have already raised on other occasions about the necessity to reissue the treaty Liber Gomorrhianus by St. Peter Damian – Doctor of the Church, which attacked the plague of sodomy spreading among the 11th-century clergy, and to enter it into the obligatory reading list in seminaries. It is worth realising, particularly in our times, that Gregorian reforms promoted, among others, by the aforementioned Doctor of the Church did not only consist in the spectacular “struggle for an investiture” with the empire. That was only the last step of the long process of renewal of the Church. The purification included also the removal of the scent of lavender from the Temple of the Lord.
In capita et in membra
Today, like never before in our times (i.e., at the turn of the 21st century), the old appeal for reform (which means the authentic renewal of the Church, not simpering to the current imperators) in capita in membra, which is known from the times of great Cluny reformers of the Church, should be voiced. The tentacles of the homosexual mafia encompass not only American seminaries and episcopal curias, which has been revealed again by a scandal over the Ocean. A letter of Archbishop Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio (in the years 2011-2016), revealed something even worse: the indifference of Pope Francis to homosexual degenerates prowling on the highest levels of the Church’s hierarchy.
We must agree with the commentators on the Catholic side who indicate that the modus operandi of the current Pope towards the plague of homosexual subculture tormenting the Church is a proof of the deep crisis into which the Office of the Successor of St. Peter continues to sink. Critics of the letter of Abp. Vigano say that the testimony written by the former nuncio has “divided the Church” or even has caused a “civil war” within it. The truth is, however, that Christ’s sheepfold is divided even more seriously by failure to strengthen its faith by the current Successor of St. Peter. And, after all, “reinforcing our brothers’ faith” is the deepest sense of Peter’s service according to the words of the Saviour himself.
Has the teaching contained in the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, which arouses serious theological doubts (cf. Dubia by four cardinals), reinforced our faith? Has the Pope’s tolerance of scandalous and open attacks on the Blessed Eucharist by some cardinals and bishops in the form of preaching “full communion” reinforced our faith? Finally, has our faith been reinforced by the fact that the current Bishop of Rome tolerates the promoters of change of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality so that this outrageous sin would become an expression of “enrichment” of the Church? There are many proofs of this policy – from the appreciation of James Martin SJ (appointed as a consultant in the Vatican) to the purging of members of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Institute for Family Studies in Rome. And what can be said about the diversion during the first session of the Synod of Bishops on the Family, when an attempt to smuggle pro-homosexual motifs in the final positio was made?
It is also worth noting Francis’s strange (to say it euphemistically) conduct from the very beginning of the scandal concerning the disclosure of a network of homosexual predators dressed up in cassocks. Already the wrong diagnosis of the problem by the Pope, who put everything down to “mistaken clericalism”, was a reason for huge concern; it was already known (at least from the publication of conclusions of the grand jury from Pennsylvania) that “mistaken clericalism” was only a tool used for cultivating and hushing up a much bigger evil – deviant sexual behaviours of a number of priests. How can a treatment be effective if the diagnosis is wrong?
To make matters worse, Pope Francis appointed the Archbishop of Malta Charles Scicluna, who had already been known for his “pastoral kindness” towards “LGBT persons” in his homeland, as the head of an apostolic visitation to the USA responsible for examining the case of homosexual infiltration in the local Church. Will this hierarch be able to withstand spiritually and intellectually the same “LGBT persons” who are patrons of the homosexual mafia in the American Church? Again, this is a rhetorical question.
In the light of Abp. Vigano’s testimony, the last facts simply seem to be an element of the strategy of the “hostile takeover” of the Church by the Lavender Mafia. I think that the former nuncio’s words shed a new light on the circumstances of Benedict XVI’s abdication.
A new Cluny? A new synod in Sutri?
At the end, let me return to history. Cluny was established at the beginning of the 10th century. Over one and a half century had passed since the establishment of the abbey renewing the Church in membra before the convalescent process reached the See of Peter in capita to liberate it from the influence of the rulers of this world. This means that dark decades are ahead of us, but maybe somewhere – in Africa, in Asia or on the Vistula – God is preparing a new Cluny. Or maybe a decentralised network of orthodoxy preventing the decentralisation of heresy is being formed.
The history of the Church has delivered many proofs that “God can write straight on curved lines.” Providence does not know the law of unintended consequences. This leads us to look at the role of secular government in the current crisis of the Church. At this point, it is worth making another historical digression. In 1046, at the Synod in Sutri, the German emperor Henry III brought about the deposition of three candidates for Peter’s succession from the papal throne and forced the choice of Leon IX through. The previous bishop Toul was connected with the emperor’s court, but also with the Lorraine circle of renewal of the Church. As history showed, this holy pope opened a string of great popes – reformers who patronaged the renewal of the Church in capita et in membra in successive decades. Including his emancipation from the imperator’s power. Certainly this was not Henry III’s intention underlying his decision made in 1046. Let me repeat: the law of unintended consequences applies only to human actions.
Who knows, maybe the actions of contemporary imperators who institute proceedings clarifying the actions of homosexual mafias in seminaries and curias will fall under this law, too. Maybe pursuing such an investigation on the federal level in the USA (via the Department of Justice), which would involve serious financial consequences for the Vatican in the long term, will play the role of a new “Synod in Sutri”. Time will tell, but God is the Lord of History and only He is the Lord of the Church.
Grzegorz Kucharczyk
