De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  Many Catholics were deeply disturbed to see Cardinal Mahony being welcomed in the Vatican by Pope Leo XIV. This follows a rehabilitation of the disgraced Cardinal under Pope Francis. Does this, combined with Pope Leo's support of Cardinal Cupich reveal a deeply worrying direction under this papacy? More details in the write up here .

An important post from Anthony Stine - he asks the question surely everyone is wondering since the last batch of Cardinals was announced: "Francis has elevated a number of highly questionable prelates to senior positions in the roman curia recently and elevated more questionable junior members of the episcopate to their first positions as the local ordinary of their own dioceses and many of them have something in common that a lot of people aren’t really talking about. Statistically too many of these men have direct ties to Ted McCarrick for it to be coincidental. Today I’m going to give you the highlights of that because the sheer number of McCarrick’s men who are getting promoted right now leaves me asking a rhetorical question: Is Ted McCarrick the de facto pope?"  

When I actually consider how dreadful the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio has been, I am literally amazed that he has been allowed to remain in post. There are no more excuses. He is a knave who deliberately favours thieves , abusers , narcissists and charlatans . He has enshrined Pagan idols in the Vatican and promoted globalist, anti-Catholic agenda's  which work against the Gospel. The Catholic Church is a network of dozens of churches, all unified by their association with the Pope, who acts as a physical point of unity for the Church. The simplest working definition of a Catholic is a Christian who is in communion with the bishop of Rome, as I have posted on this introductory page to my blog . Has Pope Francis served as a point of unity or division? His whole Pontificate is a tirade of condemnation. Not of the evils of the world which threaten the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom, no, Francis criticises the faithful: the faith itself  and those who hold it in high r...

  On Tuesday 24th November, a few days before the consistory in which  Wilton Gregory was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church, JD Flynn posted an analysis of recent comments by the Archbishop of  Washington that he is happy to give Holy Communion to Joe Biden. Gregory, who was then made a cardinal at the weekend, told a journalist on Tuesday that in his diocese, he will not deny Holy Communion to a politician who has pledged to enshrine access to abortion in federal law and permit federal funding of abortions. This seems to be in defiance of the recent US Conference of Catholic Bishops statement which, though massively hypocritical in itself , did point out that there were serious problems with some of Biden's policies. The conference president, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, closed the meeting on Nov. 17 by announcing the creation of a bishops’ working group to prepare for the Biden presidency. The USCCB president noted several Biden policies that “pose...

  The interview has been transcribed and is posted in full at the National Catholic Register , this is the text: More than any other person except for Theodore McCarrick himself, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is responsible for triggering the 449-page Vatican report released this week that details what other Church leaders knew about the disgraced ex-cardinal’s decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct, and the actions they took or failed to take with respect to what they had learned. As the report itself documents, the archbishop was the first senior Vatican figure to call concretely for action to be undertaken against McCarrick, at a time when Archbishop Viganò was serving as a senior official in the Secretariat of State. Then, after the archbishop was subsequently posted to Washington as the U.S. nuncio from 2011 to 2016, he was again involved with the Vatican’s handling of the McCarrick file. And in August 2018, Archbishop Viganò released his initial 11-page “testimony” regardi...

 Church Militant have done a superb job in breaking down the McCarrick Report in this presentation: I'm a businessman, nearly 50, I've been in business since the early nineties and I would say I have a fair grasp of how the world works. The old adage "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" attributed to English Catholic historian, politician, and writer Sir John Dalberg-Acton, is something I have experienced at very close quarters and on very many occasions, especially among small business owners. There is a huge temptation to cheat. When you gain an advantage - you poke your head above the parapet of normal life and your business achieves even a miniscule modicum of success, there is a common tendency to consider that, rather than the beneficiary of some stroke of chance, or the hard work of a team, you are somehow solely responsible for whatever small degree of success you may be experiencing. I have met literally thousands of business o...

The world has been waiting for two years for the answers as to how a Catholic Cardinal was able to use his position & privilege to travel the world, meet international leaders and abuse children and young men, in plain sight of his colleagues. The answer came in a 449 page document issued by the Vatican issued 10th November 2020. You can read the whole thing here . I'm going to give you an abridged version, but first of all I think it's really important to remember a few things. Firstly, let's hear from the man himself. In this speech given at Villanova University in 2013, the then-Cardinal McCarrick openly boasted of his vital influence in the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Pope. The fact that McCarrick's support and influence was in Bergoglio's election is a fact which has been confirmed by others: Despite this, you may recall that Pope Francis denied knowing anything about McCarrick back in May 2018 in an interview . In August that year, on a plane a...

George Neumayr, author of The Political Pope and the man who famously confronted a gaggle of American Cardinals in Rome , makes an important point in The American Spectator while commenting on Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's latest intervention. He reminds us that, although Cardinal Sandri has been chosen by the Pope to be "pilot of the next conclave secundum Franciscum " (a scandalous choice, given he is utterly compromised, having played a role in covering up the monstrous misdeeds of Marcial Maciel, the Legion of Christ founder) Pope Francis has already put another Maciel acoylyte in a position of power and influence for the next conclave: Cardinal Kevin Farrell. Farrell was promoted to camerlengo at the same time that his mentor Theodore McCarrick was defrocked. Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s office of Laity, Life and Family, was consecrated as a bishop by McCarrick in 2001 after McCarrick was installed as Archbishop of Washington. Farrell was a clos...

I remember a grave scandal that took place in my diocese. I pursued it as far as I could but found the establishment were totally against taking any action. They didn't say that, they just didn't act. A priest I moaned to about this told me the best way to deal with scandalous things was to "draw the curtains and wait for everything to just die down". This only served to scandalise me more and also to make me feel deeply disillusioned with the men who lead the Church. If this is the Church in my own local microcosm, we can clearly see the same mechanisms at work presently in the Church in macrocosm. It was 13 months ago now that Pope Francis promised a thorough investigation into the abuses committed by Theodore McCarrick, even saying himself: "We we will follow the path of truth wherever it may lead" as we scour through "the entire documentation." What have we had since? They've simply drawn the curtains. We are supposed to put up (ou...

American Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, a priest of Newark, N.J., who was ordained by McCarrick in 1994, served as his personal secretary from September 1994 to June 1995, and later acted as a go-between and personal aide during McCarrick’s multiple visits to Rome over a 19-year period has published c orrespondence which confirms that restrictions on laicised Cardinal & political manipulator Theodore McCarrick were imposed by the Vatican in 2008 as previously revealed by Archbishop Vigano . In the released correspondence, McCarrick also claims that Cardinal Donald Wuerl, then the Archbishop of Washington, was aware of them and involved in conversations about their implementation. Pope Francis said that “about McCarrick I knew nothing, obviously, nothing, nothing.” https://t.co/hpMZcduptH — Ines San Martin (@inesanma) May 28, 2019 McCarrick actually asserts that the Vatican wanted to “avoid publicity” and thus kept the restrictions confidential. The correspondence furthe...

Father Alexander Lucie-Smith has written an important article in the Catholic Herald about "McCarrickism". He says : ...McCarrickism: the rise and predominance of a certain kind of prelate. First of all, they handle money well; they raise funds with ease; they know all the right people, all the powerful politicians, all the millionaires and all the influencers; they do not rock the boat, they do not challenge the spirit of the age; rather they get on very well with the lords of this world. These prelates do not often share “Uncle” Ted’s proclivities, nor is soft living the absolute norm. What McCarrickism always means is a spirit of accommodation with the world and the spirit of the age; a worldly wisdom; the ability to get on equally well with the Bushes and the Clintons. Above all, it means not taking sides, even when one of those sides would seem to be that of the Catholic Church; or if stands are to be taken, they are on the most fashionable of causes – McCarric...

The Holy Press Office has published a statement from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, concerning the case of Theodore Edgar McCarrick, a key campaigner for Jorge Bergoglio's election to the Papacy . The Congresso of the CDF, which investigated the accusations, has issued a decree finding McCarrick “guilty of the following delicts while a cleric: solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power”. The Congresso has imposed the penalty of “dismissal from the clerical state”. The statement of the CDF notes that McCarrick’s appeal against this decision was considered on 13 February 2019 by the Ordinary Session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “Having examined the arguments in the recourse”, the statement says, “the Ordinary Session confirmed the decree of the Congresso”. McCarrick was notified of the decision on 15 Februa...

When you weigh up the debate surrounding former nuncio and abuse whistle-blower Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, you quickly recognise his submissions as deeply Catholic. The retired nuncio has penned an open letter to the disgraced former Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick, suggesting a public act of repentance would bring “healing to a gravely wounded and suffering Church.” Viganò asks McCarrick to publicly repent of his alleged “crimes against minors and abuses against seminarians,” saying “time is running out” and that his “eternal salvation is at stake.” Writing to the former archbishop of Washington D.C. on Jan. 13, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Archbishop Viganò said “no matter what decision the supreme authority of the Church takes in your case, what really matters, and what has saddened those who love you and pray for you, is the fact that throughout these months you haven’t given any sign of repentance.” Archbishop Viganò said he was “among those who are p...

Smiling faces? Vatican releases photos of Pope meeting US bishops over abuse crisis Opus Dei announced on Monday that it had paid a settlement following accusations of misconduct against a priest of the society made in 2002. Fr. C. John McCloskey was the subject of a complaint by a married woman to whom he had been giving spiritual counsel. As a result of the complaint, Opus Dei paid a reported settlement of $977,000 to the woman in 2005. Read the full story here . Honestly, I have lost patience. I'm a Catholic because I believe in Jesus Christ and because I believe that His teaching is the way the world should be: focused on the dignity of each and every human individual, attuned to justice and truth, quick to forgive shortcomings and failures, but constantly focused on building a community which adheres to the standards and ideals taught by Jesus Christ. THIS IS NOT IT! If we fail to represent Christ in our societies and our communities an...