Pope Benedict XVI express "Horror" 40 years too late -- over Irish clergy abuse

Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Bark! Bark! Bark! When Pope Benedict XVI express "horror" over the 40-year old lust-affair the clergy of Ireland has been feasting on -- within the papal Altar of Sodomy of John Paul II -- many Catholics are suddenly excited!

Wolf! wolf! Wolf! Bark! Bark! Bark! And the Pope thinks he has done his mea culpa for his predecessor John Paul II.

The Irish Times reported that:

Pope Benedict, in the strongest language he has ever used in relation to clerical child sex abuse, has expressed his own "personal anguish and horror" at what happened in the Ferns diocese over a 40-year period from the early 1960s onwards.

He said the "incomprehensible behaviour" of some clergy in Ferns had "devastated human lives and profoundly betrayed the trust of children, young people, their families, parish communities and the entire diocesan family".
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"Strongest words ever"? Catholics and the world still don't get it.

A comment from Malaysia nails it:
The Pope expressed his horror. Then what? The Pope knows what he should do. Unfortunately, he is not doing anything about it. Just like the past popes, they died without doing anything to 'punish' the evil-doers nor to prevent it from happening again!
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Pope Benedict XVI-Ratzinger, God's Rottweiler's "horror" comes 40 years too late.

Ireland's Catholic Church is in the process of extinction.
See 'Vanished' - Irish leave churches standing empty .

See Church slowly facing up to vanishing priests and empty pews


Those Irish Bishops are in Rome to report to Pope Benedict XVI that they - and the Irish Church - are sinking with the Titanic ship of John Paul II http://jp2m.blogspot.com/

And all that Benedict XVI, God's Rottweiler, can do is act like the little boy who cried "Wolf Wolf" in horror?

Too late, brother Bishops, too late, Benedict XVI, the sheep have been devoured by the wolves of JPIIPP John Paul II Pedophile Army.

Pope Benedict XVI the Puzzling Pope

The Puzzling Pope
Who Is Benedict XVI?

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1776

The Rule of Benedict
David Gibson
HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95, 400 pp.

Reviewed by Andrew M. Greeley

Recently, Vatican postage stamps, adorned from time immemorial with the papal triple crown, conveyed a different note: “Episcopus Romae,” Bishop of Rome. An ecumenist in the curia explained to Zenit News Service that it was a nod to the Orthodox, who prefer that title. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Yet a year and a half after his election, Papa Benedetto remains an enigma. Who is he really? After the generally hostile reaction to his election in the European and American media, he does not seem to fit their initial fears. Nor does he fit the happy dreams of observers like Richard John Neuhaus or George Weigel who waited eagerly for the purges that have not happened. Instead, the pope suspended the founder of the Legionaries of Christ because of sexual-abuse charges, and replaced Joaquin Navarro-Valls, head of the Vatican Press Office, with a Jesuit, Frederico Lombardi of Vatican Radio, a change, one hears, stoutly resisted by Opus Dei.

Is Benedict the liberal conciliar adviser to Cologne’s Cardinal Joseph Frings? Or the disciple of St. Augustine who was horrified at the Vatican II document, The Church in the Modern World, because he believed modern secularism constituted the greatest threat to the church? Is he the frightened scholar who fled Tübingen and its unruly students in 1968, convinced of the need for order in the church? Or the zealous hammer of heretics who presided over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), née the Inquisition? Or the theologian who argued that the council did not really represent drastic change in the church? Does the new pope really want a “smaller and purer church”? Or is he the author of the first half of the extraordinary encyclical Deus caritas est? Will the real Benedetto please raise his hand? When is the other Prada slipper going to drop?

David Gibson, author and onetime reporter for Vatican Radio, wrestles with these questions in The Rule of Benedict, a sympathetic yet not uncritical examination of the pope’s career. Gibson traces Joseph Ratzinger’s life through the Hitler years in Germany (Ratzinger was five when the Nazis took power), his seminary training, his choice of Augustine’s pessimism over Aquinas’s optimism as a theological paradigm, his disillusion following the council, his brief term at Munich, and then the long years at the CDF. Augustinianism, Gibson contends, resonates with Raztinger’s pessimistic personality and his deep skepticism about modernity.

I don’t doubt this, yet it would be a mistake to overlook the grief in Germany in the decades after the war. In Jazz Age Catholicism, Stephen Schloesser, SJ, reminds us that the great Catholic writers (literary and musical) in France during the 1920s lived and worked in an atmosphere of profound sorrow over the terrible losses of the Great War. Yet they retained a spirit of engagement with their times and a sense of Christian hope. A sensitive young man who grew up in the much deeper pain in Germany after 1945 might have found it difficult to be optimistic about the modern world. (Is Mozart part of the modern world? The Magic Flute, it seems to me, is an Enlightenment opera, and Benedict is known to be a Mozart aficionado.) Benedict, Gibson suggests, sees the modern world as a dark, dangerous place for the church and for Catholics.

Gibson also seems to understand Cardinal Ratzinger’s dislike of liberation theology, but is unsympathetic toward his attack on it. Still, Marxism and Christianity don’t blend well, and by now it seems clear that Marxism doesn’t work. The romance with Marxism in South America and among some political theologians in Europe, one might argue, was a perilous fad. Social Democracy may be a difficult course, but the only one that has even a remote chance of working.

The cardinal’s suspicion about dialogue with Eastern religions seems to reveal the same fear of contamination. Doubtless, there were some shallow faddists in that field, though Jacques Dupuis was not one of them. The persecution of Dupuis by the CDF was hardly one of Ratzinger’s finest hours, even if Dupuis was cleared, more or less.

The most interesting chapter in the book-“Pontifex Maximus, Pontifex Minimus”-compares the papal styles of John Paul II and Benedict, the latter far more low-key than the former. There will be no cult of personality during the present incumbency, and many will think this an improvement. Benedict seems to understand his role as that of telling the truth, not, as he says, his personal opinions, but the agreed Catholic truth. He sees himself preaching as a pastoral minister rather than as a theologian, a task that would require tact and self-discipline of any theologian who was also pope.

It would also appear that Benedict’s vision of a smaller church is not a prediction, much less something he will create by a purge, but rather something that he fears as possibly an inevitable development. After his election, as I pondered in Rome the hit lists that Weigel and Neuhaus were probably preparing, I read on the net Hans Küng’s remarkable plea that we give the new pope a chance, especially to produce his first encyclical. Since Küng knew him well as a friend, colleague, rival, and adversary, I figured that we too ought to give Benedict a chance. Two events since then have confirmed that inclination: Benedict’s reconciliation with Küng, a remarkably gracious event; and Deus caritas est, Benedict’s astonishing first encyclical.

The latter, which Gibson dismisses as not new and not pertinent to reform and renewal, astonishes, especially as perhaps a theme-setting document for Benedict’s time in office. In the erotic love of husband and wife, the pope sees an image of the love between God and humankind, a hint of the presence of grace in the dark and threatening modern world. Given St. Augustine’s disgust with sexual love, this hopeful view of the human condition can hardly be described as Augustinian pessimism. It could provide a perspective through which, over the long run, Benedict and his successors could charm Europe back to the faith. The idea does not originate with Benedict. St. Paul clearly understood it. Moreover John Paul II in his early audience talks developed a similar theme. But the clear and lapidary style of Deus caritas est made it a document for the modern world.

Nor does Gibson consider Fr. Neuhaus’s cri de coeur in First Things against Benedict’s failure to be more vigorous in ridding the church of homosexual priests and seminarians, especially if they are Jesuits. If First Things and even more conservative groups like the Remnant are disappointed in the pope, there are grounds yet to suspend judgment.

The Rule of Benedict is a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of the new pope than many others. Unfortunately, it does not leave room for the possibility that the papacy changes the man who occupies it, a prospect that Küng suggested a year and a half ago. Room should be left to consider that the data might fit such a model. For example, Benedict’s mix of discretion and firmness during his visit to Spain, where the government behaves as if the Loyalists had won the civil war, suggests that the pope is not one who looks for fights (though his remarks about Islam at Regensburg-pulled out of context as they were-might better have been left unsaid). The returns, it seems, are not in yet. Perhaps they never will be. Benedict may always be an enigma. That wouldn’t be all bad.

Gibson’s least successful chapter is about the church in America. He subscribes to the media analysis that sees the church in this country as deeply polarized with only a small center remaining. But the polarization model fits neither the American nation as a whole nor the church in particular. The center still holds, and strongly. American Catholics are not divided between, say, First Things and Commonweal. (Alas, most U.S. Catholics have heard of neither.) While there have been some losses to the church in the last several decades, it seems impossible to drive out most of the laity, no matter how much the leadership tries. At every level-pope, curia, diocese, parish-the leadership does not understand the faith and the spiritual depth of its people. Hence the laity become an inkblot onto which those in power can project their personal opinions and biases. Social research might be a help, but who needs social research?

In a similar vein of empiricism, I would hope (perhaps foolishly) that as the pope and his colleagues ponder a long-term strategy for winning Europe back to the faith-a contest for which the church has enormous resources, if it would only recognize them-they might postpone faulting the laity for the decline of faith and reifying abstractions such as secularism, materialism, relativism, Marxism. Instead, they might begin, in prayerful and humble examinations of conscience, to wonder how they themselves or their predecessors might have contributed to the loss of Europe (should it really be lost). They might even ask quietly, “What have we done wrong?”

Pope Benedict XVI's Great Sex Scandal: California here I come!

In 2002 when Pope John Paul II came to North America for his last WYD World Youth Day, the epicenter of the priest pedophilia has just bursted in Boston. Yet he did abosolutely nothing and said nothing about it at the WYD. When the laypeople succedded in forcing Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law to resign, Pope John Paul II countered the laypeople by making Law as the Archpriest of the St. Mary Maggiore in Rome.

Today, his clone, Benedict XVI is doing the same. God's Rottweiler is busy biting at groups like the Jesuits, the Gays, the Muslims, but he refuse to acknowledge the AIDS brewing within the Catholic Church under his very eyes and nose. As someone said: The enemy is not them, it's us!

Watch out for California. Roger Cardinal Mahonyof Los Angeles, apple of the eye of Benedict XVI, Will Not Be Able to Hide Behind His Scarlet Much Longer.

* * * * * *

"When Los Angeles Bursts, It Will Make Boston Look Like an Altar Boys' Picnic!"

The Newchurch bishops would dearly love the Great Sex and Embezzlement Scandal to go away. They've done everything to hide it, to lie that it is under control and to involve JPII and Benedict-Ratzinger in their lies, but the Novus Ordo is so thoroughly corrupt that the slime is rising to the top at an ever increasing rate. The full extent of the degree to which these bishops have corrupted their offices, and have engaged both actively and passively in the foulest crimes that cry out to High Heaven for vengeance hasn't even begun yet.

Thomas Doyle, a Novus Ordo presbyter who was part of the Newvatican diplomatic corps 20 years ago when he warned the Catholic hierarchy that it needed to deal promptly with what was to become the Great Sex and Embezzlement Scandal, revealed on June 26 that the scandal is far from over. "The epicenter is California," Doyle said. "When Los Angeles bursts, it will make Boston look like an altar boys' picnic."

Mahony, who is generally considered the Arch-heretic of Newchurch because of his public denials of Catholic doctrine, has consistently refused to go public about the rampant sex crimes in his diocese and has lashed out at anyone who pressures him. It was Mahony who got Governor Frank Keating, a former FBI investigator against the Mafia, fired as chairman of the Sex Crimes Investigating Committee of the U.S. Newchurch bishops, because Keating publicly stated that the bishops were acting as criminally as the Mafia. Keating warned that some of the bishops should be prosecuted and sent to jail. He later called on Novus Ordinarians to withhold donations. This is the same Mahony, by the way, who was exposed in a U.S. News & World Report article as playing a confidence game with mortuaries in his diocese.

Doyle, a Newdominican, said that he was originally sure the Newchurch bishops would deal with the Great Scandal promptly. He now admits that the reaction of the bishops stunned him. In a P.R. conspiracy originating from the U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops, the media that reported on the abuse and the lawyers who sued Newchurch were labeled as anti-Catholic, he said. This ploy is very similar to the P.R. disinformation campaign of Newchurch bishops against traditional Catholics, who are lied about as "schismatic," when even Newrome doesn't hold this position. "I was in a courtroom when a judge told a bishop to answer questions or go to jail," Doyle said. "Their exalted position is being threatened, even their tax-exempt status." [Wisconsin Journal Sentinel]

In fact, victims of the New Order termed the measures adopted at the Newchurch bishops' recent June 2005 biannual meeting "backpedaling," saying that the bishops were failing to live up to the commitments they made at their 2002 meeting. "Time and time again since Dallas, bishops have moved backward toward the failed policies of the past, not forward toward real prevention in the future," said the president of one of the Novus Ordo abuse organizations.

The scoreboard. Two chairmen of the National Review Board, one a governor and FBI agent, the other an appellate court judge, have denounced the bishops as simply setting up a smokescreen for P.R. purposes and acting like Mafia criminals. Victims organizations have denounced the bishops as hypocrites (didn't Christ use the same word of the Church hierarchy of His time?). And the Novus Ordinarians continue pusillanimously to attempt to justify an invalid Mess, often phony Sakraments, heretical doctrine, and a criminal morality. Will they ever wake up and smell the coffee?

The U.S. Newchurch bishops, without exception, have conspired to destroy the Roman Catholic Faith and its morality. There is not a single one of them who is not involved, either "through what they have done or what they have failed to do," as their New Confession puts it. Not a single bishop has resigned in protest from the organization known as the "U.S. Conference of [Newchurch] Catholic Bishops" headquartered at Washington, D.C. This is the same organization that is being investigated by various police agencies for possible RICO (organized crime) felonies.

The Tower of Power maintained by Newchurch bishops is built on sand, and now everyone knows it. One sometimes can only hope that the feds will once and for all indict the USCCB and all the Newchurch bishops in it for crimes committed against young and old and put the Novus Ordo Tower of Power out of business once and for all. Then maybe truly Catholic bishops could be found for at least some of the 425-odd vacancies.

http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0507.htm (scroll to the bottom)

Feast of St. John Brebeuf and Companions

Pope Benedict XVI's third (biggest) bite: the Muslims

The Jesuits are mild victims of Benedict XVI's bite, after all they have a fourth "Vow to the Pope" as Jesuits. During the Jesuit Suppression, they never fought back against the Popes who suppressed them, exiled them and confiscated all their assets. Whether it's secular or religious persecutors they are facing, the Jesuits are like lambs being led to the slaughter house, or like Chirst the Lamb of God.

The patron of this weblog, St. John Brebeuf, is a classic example of a Jesuit Lamb; he never fought back against the Indians who martyred and cannibalized him and his companions. In fact all the Jesuit martyrs never fought back against their persecutors.

St. John Brebeuf: Jesuit Missions
Jesuit Saints and Martyrs
and Jesuit Missionaries

The gays are also free-spirit people and they won't fight back against Benedict XVI either. The gays are friendly and mild, they just want to enjoy their life and be like everybody else in society.

But for his the third victim, God's Rottweiler has finally met his match, the Muslims! Watch out what those suicide-martyrs can do! If they can reduce the Twin Towers of New York into rubbles, the Vatican is a piece of cake to them. Lord, have mercy on us!

There's even a "fatwa" call on the Pope! Lord, have mercy on us! See Jihad Watch!

Time to get cracking at the Vatican!

Where will Pope Benedict run away to with his papal red shoes, to the island of Oz with his Swiss Guards?

Here is the most recent victim of Benedict XVI Rotweiler bite: the Muslims!

Pontiff erred in his Islam remarks, 38 Muslim leaders assert in 'open letter'

Catholic Online

By Mark Lombard10/16/2006

AMMAN, Jordan (Catholic Online) – Pope Benedict XVI erred in assertions and made misstatements about Islam in a September address that provoked a storm of protests from the Muslim community, said an open letter signed by 38 Muslim scholars, officials and chief muftis from more than two dozen countries throughout the world.

The Oct. 15 “Open letter to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI,” which was to be delivered to the Vatican envoy in Amman on that day, said the Muslim leaders accepted the pontiff’s “unprecedented personal expression of sorrow and … clarification and assurance that your quote does not reflect you own personal opinion,” and applauded his efforts “to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life.”

The four-page letter was posted Oct. 14 on the Islamica Magazine Web site, a quarterly based in Los Angeles, Calif.

“In the spirit of open exchange,” the 38 Muslim leaders said, they hoped to use Pope Benedict’s reference to the comments of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus as “the starting point for a discourse on the relationship between reason and faith.”

In his Sept. 12 address at the University of Regensburg during his pilgrimage to Germany, Benedict, in rejecting any religious motivation for violence, quoted between the emperor’s characterization of some teachings of Islam’s founder, the Prophet Mohammad, including about jihad or holy war. "He said, I quote,” said the pope of the emperor, “‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’”

The pope said that the emperor, in his dialogue with an unnamed Muslim scholar, must have been aware of early Islamic teaching that "there is no compulsion in religion" as well as later Quran precepts about “holy war.”

Among other issues the pope touched on in his remarks included why spreading the faith through coercion is unreasonable as violence is “contrary to the nature of God" and whether God is absolutely transcendent for Muslims and not bound up with "any of our categories, even that of rationality."

Since then, Pope Benedict has stated several times that he did not share the emperor's views on Islam, though agreed with the relationship expressed between faith and reason.
“We must point out,” the letter reads, “some errors in the way you mentioned Islam as a counterpoint to the proper use of reason, as well as some mistakes in the assertions you put forward in support of your argument.”
The 38 Muslim leaders suggested that the pope’s reference to the “learned Persian” painted an inaccurate picture of Islam calling him a “very marginal figure” belonging to a “school of jurisprudence which is followed by no one in the Islamic world today.”

“‘Holy war’ is not an Islamic term, the clerics, scholars and officials said, noting that the world jihad “means struggle, and specifically struggle in the way of God.”

“This struggle may take many forms, including the use of force,” they said. “Though a jihad may be sacred in the sense of being directed toward a sacred ideal, it is not necessarily a ‘war.’”
The letter points to Jesus throwing out the money-changers in the temple quoted in the New Testament and the Old Testament account of God’s drowning of Pharaoh as places where Christianity acknowledges that violence does not go against “God’s nature,” while it notes that “cruelty, brutality and aggression are against God’s will.”

Islamic “authoritative and traditional” understanding of war, the Muslim leaders said, notes that non-combatants cannot be legitimate targets, religion cannot be the sole reason to attack another and, beyond legitimate self-defense and maintenance of sovereignty, Muslims must live peacefully with their neighbors.

“If some have disregarded a long and well-established tradition” of Islam, they said, “where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, his Prophet or the learned tradition.”

The Muslim leaders condemned the Sept. 17 murder of Italian Consolata missionary Sister Leonella Sgorbati in Somalia and “other similar acts of wanton individual violence” in reaction to the pope’s comments on Islam “is completely un-Islamic.”

They said that the pope’s reference of the phrase “there is no compulsion in religion” was not from early Islam, but rather from its later political and military ascendancy. It served, the leaders said, as “a reminder to Muslims themselves, once they attained power, that they could not force another’s heart to believe.”

“This verse,” they stressed, “was precisely an answer to them not to try to force their children to convert to Islam” from Judaism or Christianity.

They called the pontiff’s assertions that Islam teaches that God is absolutely transcendent and not bound up with Western categories, including rationality, are each “a simplification which can be misleading.”

“To conclude that Muslims believe in a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil is to forget that God says in the Quran, ‘Lo! God enjoins justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk and forbids lewdness and abomination and wickedness.’ … Equally, it is to forget that God says in the Quran that ‘He has prescribed for himself mercy,’ and … ‘My mercy encompasses everything.’”

“Is it not self-evident,” they asked, “that spilling innocent blood goes against mercy and compassion?”

The 38 scholars, clerics and officials attacked the notion that Islam commands its faithful to “spread their faith ‘by the sword,’” or that it has been largely spread by coercion.

“Islamic teaching did not prescribe that the conquered populations be forced or coerced into converting,” they said. “Had Muslims desired to convert all others by force, there would not be a single church or synagogue left anywhere in the Islamic world.”

While noting that “history shows that some Muslims have violated Islamic tenets concerning forced conversion and the treatment of other religious communities,” the Muslim leaders stressed that “forcing others to believe – if such a thing be truly possible at all – is not pleasing to God and that God is not pleased by blood.”

The letter questions the emperor’s assertion that that which Mohammad brought as new to religious understanding was “evil and inhuman.” “The Prophet,” it said, “never claimed to be bringing anything fundamentally new.”

“Faith in the one God is not the property of any one religious community,” the leaders continued. “According to Islamic belief, all the true prophets preached the same truth to different peoples at different times. The laws may be different, but the truth is unchanging.”

The 38 Muslim clerics, scholars and officials noted the roles both faiths play in the world community, and the special role that the pope plays on the global stage.

The relationship between Christianity and Islam, as the largest and second largest religions in the world accounting for more than 55 percent of the its population, is “the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world.”

“Yours is arguable the single most influential voice in continuing to move this relationship forward in the direction of mutual understanding,” they said.

“We share your desire for frank and sincere dialogue, and recognize its important in an increasingly interconnected world. Upon this sincere and frank dialogue, we hope to continue to build peaceful and friendly relationships based upon mutual respect, justice and what is common in essence in our share Abrahamic tradition,” they said. The 38 expressed Muslims’ appreciation for the pope’s expression of sorrow and clarification and his Sept. 25 statement of “total and profound respect for all Muslims” to a group of ambassadors from Islamic countries. “We hope,” the leaders concluded, “we will all avoid the mistakes of the past and live together in the future in peace, mutual acceptance and respect.”

The signers of the “open letter” included:

- Grand muftis from Russia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Syria, Egypt, Oman, Croatia, Kosovo and Uzbekistan.

- Educators from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Morocco, the United States, Gambia, Egypt, Malaysia, Belgium, Jordan and the United Kingdom.

- Other leaders from Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iraq, India, Morocco, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Bosnia.




Read also "Pope's Islamic stumble baffles the experts"
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=1766

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Pope Benedict XVI's second bite: the Gays

Pope Benedict XVI was chosen as Person of the year by the Washington Blade because of his stance on gays as he keeps calling them "morally inrinsic evil" people.


Blessed bigotry: Pope Benedict XVI is Anti-Gay Person of the Year
God’s rottweiler’ actively pursues political agenda against gay marriage, priests


EDITORS’ NOTE:As 2005 draws to a close, many media outlets will announce their selections for person of the year. In past years, Blade editors have selected a Story of the Year instead.

This year, the Story of the Year was, in our view, the extraordinary efforts of one individual to not only put a halt to the acceptance of gay people legally and within the mainstream culture, but to roll back such acceptance to an earlier, less tolerant and more discriminatory time.

Presiding over what some describe as the "strongest bully pulpit in the world," Pope Benedict XVI, just eight months into his tenure, has unilaterally targeted gays as moral threats to society.
From banning gay priests to publicly lobbying against legal recognition for gay couples in Spain and Italy, Pope Benedict XVI has aggressively lobbied against gay rights across the globe.

"His rhetoric is obscene. He wants gays clearly taken care of — it's almost like the Final Solution," said Kara Speltz, a Catholic lesbian activist for Soulforce, an organization dedicated to ending anti-gay discrimination within all religions.

For 20 years, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger served under Pope John Paul II before being elected the 265th pope on April 19.

During that tenure, Ratzinger authored some of the Vatican's most anti-gay rhetoric, including a 1986 Vatican letter calling homosexuality "an intrinsic moral evil" and a 2003 battle plan instructing Catholic politicians to oppose gay marriage and gay adoptions.

Dubbed "God's rottweiler" and "the enforcer" long before taking the helm of the church that boasts a billion members worldwide, Benedict's fervent approach to gay and other social issues is an intentional one meant to influence public policy, according to Chester Gillis, chair of the theology department at Georgetown University.

"He knows very well the kind of claims he makes have political implications. He intends for them to have political implications," Gillis said. "He wants to influence public policy in numerous places in the world and hopefully sway the powers that be to his side, especially on so-called social issues."

Pope has 'ear of the world'Under John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger served as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office once known as the Holy Inquisition. In that role, his writings were mostly circumscribed to Catholics and internal discourse within the church, Gillis said.

But now as pope, his words aren't just read by bishops but are heard throughout the world, giving Benedict enormous credibility when it comes to political influence, Gillis said.

"It's the strongest bully pulpit in the world," Gillis said. "What he says is noted by everyone.

Everyone may not agree or follow what he says, but clearly he has the ear of the world — and that's a very privileged position."

Benedict's most recent anti-gay action to gain worldwide attention was the Vatican's "Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders," released Nov. 29. The document essentially bans gay priests.

The official "Instruction," from the Congregation for Catholic Education, stated, "One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply-rooted homosexual tendencies."

The "Instruction" also said men "who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture' cannot be admitted to seminaries." The only exception would be for those with a "transitory problem" that had been overcome for at least three years."

In the United States, gay rights groups including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force publicly challenged the ban and urged gay Catholics and their allies to speak out against it to local priests and bishops.

On Dec. 14, a group of gay Italian clergy posted an open letter to the Vatican on the website of the Italian news agency Adista, stating they felt like the Catholic Church's "unloved and unwanted children," the Associated Press reported.

Adista, which leaked the document on the gay priest ban last month, said 39 priests, 26 diocesans and 13 more members of various religious orders had signed the letter. But the text reproduced on the website did not include the signatures or list their names, the AP reported.
"We don't have more problems living chastely than heterosexuals do because homosexuality is not a synonym of incontinence, nor of uncontrollable urges," the letter states.

"We are not sick with sex and our homosexual tendency has not damaged our psychic health. … We are Catholic priests … with homosexual tendencies, and that fact has not stopped us from being good priests."

In November 2002, in the midst of the church sex abuse crisis, the Vatican press office announced that the Congregation for Catholic Education was drafting guidelines for accepting candidates for the priesthood that would address the question of whether gays should be barred. However, the document reportedly had been in the works well before then.

Gay Catholics and others have criticized the Vatican for blaming gay priests for the child sex abuse scandal, which they argued had nothing to do with homosexuality.

"This is a scapegoat scheme masquerading as Vatican decree," HRC President Joe Solmonese said in a statement. "What is being released today is a decree serving as a diversion that neither keeps children safe nor holds criminals responsible."

Soulforce's Speltz said Benedict is simply seeking to dissuade independent thought among Catholics and church leadership.

"He's trying to create 'Stepford Priests,'" she said. "And if any heterosexual Catholic thinks this is a good thing, they're living in an illusion."

Fighting gay marriageThe Vatican's losing fight against legalizing gay marriage in Spain came just weeks after Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. The Spanish Parliament legalized same-sex marriage June 30. Same-sex marriage also is legal in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium.

After the vote, the Catholic Church denounced the move as "unjust" and a threat to families.

Sam Sinnett, president of the gay Catholic organization Dignity USA, said it was not the people supporting Spain's public policy who had it wrong when the measure was approved, but rather the church's hierarchy, which is out of step with the times.

"Their consciences are misinformed," Sinnett said in May. "They need to learn about social and medical sciences [about homosexuality] and incorporate them into theology."

The Catholic Church's global influence, meanwhile, shouldn't be underestimated, Sinnett said. The United Nations grants the Vatican status as a Non-member State Permanent Observer, rather than treating it as a nongovernmental organization.

"That means it has greater influence on all countries," Sinnett said. "When they use that power to interfere in the politics of another sovereign country, that is incredible."

Mel White, founder of Soulforce, said this summer that Benedict and the Vatican's response to Spain's politics is indicative of the "Dark Ages mentality" of the Roman Catholic Church's leadership.

"They have gone from cardinals sitting in Vatican City having bad ideas to spreading these bad ideas to the world. The Vatican is now superimposing its theology on everybody," White said. "It has too much power to be considered anything but an enemy."

The Vatican has also been long criticized for opposing condom use in all circumstances. The policy has been blamed by many AIDS experts for contributing to the spread of the virus in many developing countries with large Roman Catholic populations.

By DYANA BAGBY Friday, December 30, 2005

Pope Benedict XVI’s strong stance against homosexuality makes him a dangerous threat to gay causes across the world, gay activists and religious experts said. (Photo by AP)

Pope Benedict XVI on homosexuality:“Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

“Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (October 1986)

“Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.

This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.”

“Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (October 1986)

“The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior.”

“Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” (July 2003)

'Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development."

“Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognitions to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” (July 2003)

“There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.”

“Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” (July 2003)

“The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.”Speech by Pope Benedict XVI at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome (June 6, 2005)

“[T]he church, while deeply respecting the people in question, cannot admit to the seminary and the sacred orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture. Those people find themselves, in fact, in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women. One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply-rooted homosexual tendencies.”

“Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders” (Nov. 4, 2005, approved by Pope Benedict XVI on Aug. 31, 2005.)

“If instead it is a case of homosexual tendencies that are merely the expression of a transitory problem, for example as in the case of an unfinished adolescence, they must however have been clearly overcome for at least three years before ordination as a deacon.”

“Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders” (Nov. 4, 2005)

http://www.washblade.com/2005/12-30/news/national/bad-pope.cfm

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A gay's first encounter with Benedict XVI

My Encounter with Pope Benedict XVI
Signorile.com
April 20, 2005

[The event described here occurred on January 27, 1988. I will forever be grateful to the new pope for being so integral to my development.]

One protest that was announced was an upcoming zap of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, the German prelate who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. He had written a paper for the Vatican in which he said that homosexuality was "intrinsically evil" and a "moral evil." Cardinal Ratzinger had said the church had to fight the homosexual and fight against legislation that "condoned" homosexuality.

The Ratzinger appearance was at St. Peter’s, a church known for its modern architecture, at Citicorp Center...When I arrived, the place was packed. It was in a big amphitheater that looked like the United Nations General Assembly chamber than a church. This wasn’t going to be a Catholic mass; St. Peter’s wasn’t even a Catholic Church. Ratzinger may have been a religious figure but he was also a political leader, especially since he was the church’s antigay crusader, here to fight against gay civil rights legislation. The church wanted him to speak in a slick, modern, secular-looking space, free of ornate and intimidating religious décor and adornment. It made the gathering accessible and open to people of all faiths and political persuasions.

Ratzinger sat at the altar, along with Cardinal O'Connor and several other prelates. Judge Robert Bork, the conservative Supreme Court nominee who'd just been rejected by the Senate, sat in the front row. Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr., was there too, as was an incredible array of Upper East Side women, the upper crust of New York's Catholic Society. There were prominent Wall Street businessmen and local government officials. And rows and rows of nuns, brothers, and priests, perhaps the heads of orders and parishes. I began to feel very small – I hadn’t seen so many priests since Catholic school.

I looked for protesters, but I couldn't see anyone with a sign or a T-shirt. I wondered for a few moments if anything was really going to happen. I had decided to go there strictly to watch, to check out how these people operated when they conducted these demonstrations. As for myself, I didn't know the first thing about protesting and I still wasn't sure about it. I certainly didn’t like the idea of getting arrested.

...Ratzinger took the podium and began to speak. As soon as he finished his first sentence, a group of about eight people to the left of the crowd leaped to their feet and began chanting "Stop the Inquisition!" They chanted feverishly and loudly, their voices echoing throughout the building. The entire room was fixated on them. Activists suddenly appeared in the back of the church and began giving out fliers explaining the action. Two men on the other side of the room jumped up and, pointing at Ratzinger, began to scream, "Antichrist!" another man jumped up, in one of the first few rows near the prelate, and yelled, "Nazi!" All over the church, angry people began to shout down the protestors who were near them; chaotic yelling matches broke out.

It was electrifying. Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protestors and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon, anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church -- everyone around me -- had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called "faggot" in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I'd endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid.

I looked at Cardinal O’Connor, who had buried his head in his hands, and I recognized the man sitting next to him. It was O’Connor’s spokesman and right-hand man, Father Finn, who had been the dean of students back at my high school, Monsignor Farrell. A vivid scene flashed in front of my eyes: The horrible day when I was in the principal’s office talking to the principal, the guidance counselor, and the dean, the day they threw me out because I was queer. I looked back at Ratzinger, my eyes burning; a powerful surge went through my body. The shouting had subsided a bit because some of the brothers had gotten in front of the room to calm the crowd. The police had arrived and were carting away protestors.

Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted: "He is no man of God!" The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: "He is no man of God -- he is the Devil!"

I had no idea where that came from. A horrible moan rippled across the room, and suddenly a pair of handcuffs was clamped on my wrists and I was pulled down….

…I was excited the see something in the New York Post the next day besides the gossip columns: a headline – Gays Rattle Pope’s Envoy – next to a photo of an anguished Cardinal Ratzinger.

I joined the ACT UP media committee.
http://www.signorile.com/articles/nyp140.html

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Called Courage, the group defines itself as an "apostolate of the Roman Catholic Church." On its Web site (http://couragerc.org/) it proudly touts the fact that it is "the only such organization in the Catholic Church approved by the Vatican." A quick reading of Courage's "member testimonials" and "eleven church teachings on homosexuality (i.e. "homosexuality is objectively disordered")," and it becomes clear that Courage, with its focus on "the gift of chastity," is as duplicitous and exploitative as any of the fundamentalist-based ex-gay groups that have been very high profile in recent years.

http://www.signorile.com/articles/gccccg.html

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Benedict's nephew is gay!
http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2007/10/benedict-xvi-nephew-is-gay.html

Benedict's PRIVATE Secretary is gay!
http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2007/06/benedict-xvis-handsome-private.html

Cardinal Egan is gay! Cardinal Spellman was notoriously gay!
http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/10/john-paul-ii-ego-monuments-worldwide.html

Pope Benedict XVI's first bite: the Jesuits

Pope Benedict XVI as God's Rotweiler is the biggest figure (like a dinosaur) in Christendom and therefore his bite is not only on one person but on a whole group of persons.

The first bite victims of Pope Benedict (were or) are the Jesuits particularly Fr. Thomas Reese, the editor of America Magazine http://www.americamagazine.org/.

The Jesuits are not new to Papal Suppression. John Paul II did it to them especially in favor of the Opus Dei (see who they are www.odan.org).


The The Suppression of the Jesuits in the 18th century was the worst suppression ever committed against a Catholic group by the Popes in Catholic Church history.


For the 21st century, the papal anarchy and the papal suppression on the Jesuits mutates on a different form and it starts with Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J.

Actually as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he has been mauling the Jesuits for a long time like Jose Maria Castillo, Roger Haight and Jacques Dupuis. But this time, Benedict XVI mauls an American Jesuit to show how desperate he wants to control America and silence the American Jesuits' freedom of speech.

http://www.companysj.com/sjusa/05-05-26.htm

Jesuit Officials Say America Editor Resigned After Vatican Complaints

Jesuit officials in Rome said Fr Thomas Reese resigned as editor in chief of America magazine after repeated complaints from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who objected to the magazine's treatment of sensitive Church issues.

Jesuit Fr Jose de Vera, spokesman for the Society of Jesus in Rome, said Fr Reese decided to resign after discussing the situation with his Jesuit superiors, following Cardinal Ratzinger's election as pope. Fr de Vera denied reports that Fr Reese was forced to resign but acknowledged that pressure had been coming from the Vatican for several years.

"He tendered his resignation. It was not imposed, contrary to what was written," Fr de Vera said.

"With Cardinal Ratzinger elected pope, I think [Fr Reese] thought it would be very difficult to continue his line of openness, without creating more problems. He had been at America magazine seven years and he improved it tremendously, so I think he understood it was time to go," the Jesuit spokesman said.

Fr Reese announced May 6 that at the end of the month he would leave America; in a statement, he did not mention problems with the Vatican.

He said he would be replaced by America's associate editor Jesuit Fr Drew Christiansen, known for his work on Catholic social teaching and international justice and peace issues.

Fr de Vera said that Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had expressed concern about America's articles on several occasions to Jesuit Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach.

Fr de Vera said the articles that drew complaints treated a relatively small number of issues: "Dominus Iesus," the doctrinal congregation's document on Christ as the unique savior; same-sex marriage; stem cell research; and the reception of Communion by Catholic politicians who support legal abortion.

On these and other questions, America often hosted commentary that represented a broad spectrum of opinions among Catholics, including those who disagreed with some of the Vatican's positions.

"The policy of [Fr Reese] was to present both sides of the discussion. ... He wanted to present both sides within the Catholic community. But that did not sit well with Vatican authorities," Fr de Vera said.

Fr de Vera said that because the articles touched on doctrinal issues the Vatican wanted the Jesuits to write articles "defending whatever position the Church has manifested, even if it is not infallible."

Fr de Vera also said he thought some of the complaints probably came from Catholics in the United States, and that Cardinal Ratzinger's congregation was reacting to them.

More than a year ago, Fr de Vera said, the tension had reached the point that Vatican officials threatened to impose a board of censors on the magazine unless changes were made.

At that time, he said, Fr Reese and the Jesuits agreed to set up an internal board that reviewed articles prior to publication. In this way, "the threat of outside censors was dispelled," Fr de Vera said. But even under that arrangement America articles continued to provoke complaints at the Vatican.

"The board has not produced what [the Vatican] expected -- a very strict line, very, very close to whatever was expressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Fr de Vera said.
Some Church sources said Cardinal Ratzinger's office was believed to have sent a letter in March requesting Fr Reese's dismissal. Fr de Vera said he was unaware of such a letter and could neither confirm nor deny its existence.

Fr de Vera said that after Fr Reese discussed the situation with Fr Kolvenbach in April he voluntarily decided to resign for the good of the order.

Source: Jesuit USA News

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This was the editorial of Commonweal Magazine as it protested the ousting of Fr. Thomas Reese
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php?id_article=1244
May 20, 2005 / Volume CXXXII, Number 10

Scandal at ’America’

The Editors

American Catholics, including most regular churchgoers, get their news about the church from the secular media, not from church spokespersons or official pronouncements. Most Catholics read about papal encyclicals in the papers; they don’t read encyclicals. It therefore behooves the hierarchy, if it wants to communicate with the faithful (or re-evangelize them), to act in a way that does not lend credence to the still-widespread impression that the Catholic Church is a backward-looking, essentially authoritarian, institution run by men who are afraid of open debate and intellectual inquiry. It is safe to say that the Vatican’s shocking dismissal of Rev. Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit magazine America has left precisely such an impression with millions of Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

It is hard to judge what is more appalling, the flimsy case made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)—apparently at the instigation of some American bishops—against Reese’s orthodoxy and stewardship of America, or the senselessness of silencing perhaps the most visible, and certainly one of the most knowledgeable, fair-minded, and intelligent public voices the church has in this country. As a political scientist who has written extensively on how the church’s hierarchy works, Reese has for years been a much-relied-on source for the mass media in its coverage of Catholic issues. During the recent conclave, his visibility increased exponentially, with millions of television viewers being introduced to him on PBS, CNN, and other networks. Not surprisingly, he showed himself to be lucid, succinct, and nonideological. In a church with a more confident and magnanimous hierarchy, Reese’s prominence would be seen as a great asset, not a threat. Instead, Reese’s dismissal, following so closely his increased exposure during the conclave, has become front-page news. As a consequence, the first thing many Americans are now likely to associate with Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy will be yet another act of Vatican repression. Does this mean that the zeal with which then-Cardinal Ratzinger harried theologians while head of the CDF will continue during his papacy?

For those who had hoped that the pastoral challenges of his new office might broaden Benedict’s sympathies, this is a time of indignation, disappointment, and increased apprehension. For those who know Reese and his work, the injustice of the CDF’s action is transparent. No intellectually honest person could possibly claim that Reese’s America has been in the business of undermining church teaching. If the moderate views expressed in America, views widely shared by the vast majority of lay Catholics, are judged suspect by the CDF, how is the average Catholic to assess his or her own relationship to the church?

It is even more troubling to learn that the CDF insisted on Reese’s removal despite his compliance with the congregation’s own demands that America publish articles of a more apologetic nature defending controverted magisterial teachings. In 2003, apparently, the CDF informed Reese that he had indeed corrected whatever imbalance it had detected in the magazine’s content. According to news stories, more recent articles in America questioning the church’s position on same-sex marriage and the status of prochoice U.S. Catholic politicians precipitated the latest CDF action. Both of the articles cited, however, were in response to other pieces in America defending magisterial teaching. Evidently, the CDF insists that any church-sponsored publication aimed at the educated faithful confine its activities to catechesis.

The reaction to the CDF’s removal of Reese has been widespread and impassioned among the Jesuits and in the Catholic academic world. Certainly the church’s reputation has been badly damaged, especially among those in the secular media who knew and had every reason to respect Reese. As a consequence, it will be even harder for the church’s views to get a fair hearing. Those who love and cherish the Catholic priesthood are equally appalled, seeing how callously someone like Reese, who has devoted his life and contributed his enormous talents to the church, is treated. It is possible to ascribe the incredibly maladroit timing and handling of this decision to Vatican incompetence, arrogance, or obliviousness. More worrisome, however, is the suspicion that Reese’s dismissal was carried out in precisely this way to send an unmistakable message. If that is the case, then the self-defeating demand for unwavering docility coming from those now in charge in Rome—and increasingly from members of the American episcopate—is only exceeded by their insensitivity and recklessness.

The audience for intellectually serious Catholic publications like America, where theological, ethical, political, and aesthetic questions are explored and debated, is shockingly small: some estimate not more than 200,000 potential readers among the nation’s 65 million Catholics. Why are Catholics so incurious about the intellectual challenges and satisfactions of their faith?

Certainly one reason is that the church has historically taken a dim view of the questioning intellect, and especially of the public expression of such questions. Another reason is because the demand of bishops for editorial control deprives much of the Catholic press of credibility. Forty years after the Second Vatican Council, which did so much to enfranchise lay Catholics and to encourage their engagement with the great intellectual resources of the church, it is inexcusable that the CDF would censor a magazine as respectful and responsive to the church’s tradition as America. At a time when elites are as polarized as they are now in the American church, Reese’s dismissal will embolden those eager to purge “dissenters,” while making it nearly impossible for a reasoned critique of the agenda of church reformers to be heard by those who need most to hear it.

Those calling for the strict regulation of Catholic discourse argue that public dissent from church doctrine creates scandal, confusing or misleading the “simple faithful.” What really gives scandal to people in the pews, however, is the arbitrary and self-serving exercise of ecclesiastical authority. What the CDF has done to Thomas Reese and America is the scandal. Is it possible that not one bishop has the courage to say so? That too is a scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI: Clone of John Paul II

Pope Benedict XVI reigned as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger under the papacy of Pope John Paul II. Together they led the "greatest sin" of Christendom in modern times - the sodomy by the JPIIPP John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army (see http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/10/john-paul-ii-ratzinger-led-cover-up-of.html)

This weblog is dedicated - with heartfelt solidarity to the thousands of victims of priest pedophilia, especially the 12,000 American little boys who continue to suffer the memories of the holocaust of their bodies and soul - burned under the John Paul II's Papal Altar of Sodomy (see http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/08/john-paul-ii-pedophile-priests-jpiipp.html)

The perpetuation of John Paul II's crimes is passed on in the capable hands of God's Rottweiler, Benedict XVI. This weblog will chronicle the John Paul II papal clone in action at the beginning of the 21st Century.

North American Martyrs, St. John Brebeuf and Companions, boiling water was poured on your head as symbol of your baptism, your heart was burchered out of your chest, was eaten and chewed up, protect us from God's Rottweiler who is capable of doing the same to us, not physically but mentally and spiritually......