You probably had no particular reason to pay attention to this story, but three weeks ago a former bishop of Fargo, North Dakota was outed as a child molester.
That is, His Excellency James Sullivan was “credibly accused” of inappropriately touching and carrying on sexual conversations with a boy in 1964, and one instance of inappropriate touching of another boy in 1966. Sullivan died in 2006 and obviously cannot rebut the charges. But then again, no one could defend himself against 55 year-old claims. This doesn’t matter. His name has been removed from a local middle school. (The diocese keeps the name of John Paul II associated with its schools, notwithstanding the fact that his culpable negligence undoubtedly enabled the rape of children. But John Paul is one of few marketable Catholic names of the past 50 years, so the name stays.)
Bishop Sullivan’s unpersoning was quick and surprising. He was, from what I can tell, a popular bishop, and was never accused of any untoward behavior in Fargo. He is buried alongside Fargo’s five other deceased bishops at Holy Cross Cemetery, men who helped establish an institution which is the true height of Western civilization in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Bishop Sullivan lived through the greatest collapse of that institution in history, but kept the diocese from the kinds of travesties which are legion in the neighboring dioceses.
Does he not deserve a defense to the charges of pedophilia? No, not in the modern (and modernist) Church. In the civil realm, “credible accusations” are where the juridical process begins, not ends. But in the 2021 Catholic Church, accusations are enough to unperson the bishop: All priests know that a single “credible accusation” can derail their careers, where all “credible” means is that the accusation is not a manifest lie on its face. The Church does not fight these accusations (I know of one orthodox priest whose criminal bishop has used a bogus “credible accusation” to keep him from practicing his vocation, and maybe you do too).
The institutional Church is happy to accept these allegations at face value because, well, the 1960s were a long time ago, there admittedly were a lot of pedophile priests back then, and the Church’s claim to have rooted them out in the present day is one of the few claims it has to progress. But more importantly, there is no reason for the Church to put up a defense. If you have ever served on a parish council, you probably know the extent to which insurance companies and government regulators decide how the Church does her business.
What is a fatal blow to Bishop Sullivan’s reputation is just an insurance write-off to his successors. A defense would fare even worse in the court of public opinion. “Church continues to defend child molesters” (even as part of basic due process) is not a headline any bishop wants to see. The good names of men like Bishop Sullivan can be tossed in the mire and literally no one in the institutional Church will defend them. The Church used to appoint devil’s advocates; now she cannot find anyone to advocate for its own bishops.
This is the state of the modernist Church, the one she chose for herself at Vatican II. The hierarchical Church still exists, but they do not enforce their own rules. They opened the windows of the Church and now find themselves governed by Attorneys General departments. They have no moral credibility, and cannot defend themselves against the most manifestly bogus claims, let alone defend a man accused of child molestation. The absolutely asinine stories about mass graves in Canada is an instance of this. No institution has ever done more to civilize the natives of Canada than the Catholic Church, but the Church cannot muster the courage to defend her apostolic mandate either now or in centuries past.
Is there any reflection from churchmen on this pathetic state of affairs? That black legends are leading to the torching of churches? That bishops can be besmirched as pedophiles without any possibility of defense? Do the current bishops know that their own names might one day be run through the mud, or their own parishes might soon be set up in flames? Do they care?
I suspect they do, the decent bishops at least. The problem is that the Catholics who would defend the names of bishops solely because they are bishops, who would stand armed around parishes and face down communist thugs–these people are often “trads” or “trad friendly.” They are men who question the benefits of the Vatican II revolution on the Church, who notice the bishops have abrogated their teaching and leadership responsibilities, who notice that everything in the Catholic world has fallen apart. These are men who would love to fight and perhaps die for the Church and her pastors—if only those pastors would act like the Church was something worth fighting for.
But now, the revolution is more important than the Church. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical proves this. Vatican II was a manifest failure back in the 70s, but the revolutionaries were in charge then and are in charge now. No one can long embrace Catholicism without admitting Vatican II was a failure, but the reformers keep repeating the mantra “the real Vatican II has never been tried.”
This idiotic and quixotic pride guarantees that the decline of the institutional Church will continue, if the Church does not fracture in actual schism. For the bishops, it all but guarantees their parishes will be shuttered, possibly torched in the future (maybe based on untested charges like those against Bishop Sullivan). These churchmen can turn their backs to the past all they want, but the future is stalking them, ready to wipe out all their work like a French Republic. But they have the mindsets of true revolutionaries: They must promote the revolution at the expense of even their own wellbeings, and certainly the expense of yours.
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The long march through the institutions began with the church. Marx is a jealous god, and will brook no others.
Well spoken Briggs. Vatican II was an international conspiracy to re-align the Church with the forces that wish to bring us the utopia of the New World Order. That re-align is now about complete with the emergence for anti-Pope Bergoglio. God and His Commandments have no place in the New World Order. Rather that god will be Man who carry out his plans to create a New World utopia. To that end any means necessary will be used to justify it, e.g., the Covid scamdemic and its variants, the Federal Reserve and other national banks, etc.
I do not understand how these memories of a child or two can be deemed accurate and truthful at this late date without further investigation which also is impossible. Reminds of the media hysteria over day care allegations years ago that ruined innocent adults’ reputations, careers, and businesses. Then there was the “me, too” movement. Mob mentality happens everywhere and the only “winners” seem to be lawyers.
Publicity always focuses in the priests being child molesters, but the underlying pathology is that they are homosexual. The Catholic Church is infested with homosexuality and it is from there that the pedophilia springs.
Cloudbuster, you have swallowed the propaganda whole. The accusations are 100% lies.
In other news: USCCB gen sec Burrill resigns after sexual misconduct allegations
Naturally, Bergoglian sodophile lapdog James Martin SJ is screeching at messengers.
If the modern “Church” is Modernist, and if Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies (per Pope St. Pius X), then the modern “Church” is not Catholic. This isn’t hard once one embraces logical thinking of the kind so enthusiastically jettisoned by the vaticantwoists. The idea of schism from the modern “Church” is thus irrelevant in any Catholic sense, the schism already having been effected by the promulgation of the documents of Vatican 2.
Once the red pill kicked in, I made my peace with the SSPX, which the gaslighters and their “conservative” tools, ever more desperate to legitimize the bastard Vatican 2 rupture, call “schismatic.” After Bergoglio’s latest outburst, that reflexive shriek isn’t going to resonate as well as it used to.
The 60s Synod opened itself to the world and the Prince of the world happily walked through the front door.
All sodomites are subversive and will try and undermine all prudent praxis, canons and institutional norms that treat their perversion as a perversion.
Sodomy is a sin crying to Heaven for vengeance and any institution that allows a sodomite to advance to a position of authority is suspect of a cavalier attitude towards that Gospel truth because any sane religious man knows that sodomites are subversive.
In is ineluctable (as any real Catholic man knows) that a queer cleric, even if celibate, is not a proper candidate to become an Alter Christus but the wonders in Rome know better, don’t they?
Feminism and Sodomy are the twin lashes flaying the Body of Christ in modernity but all the Hierarchy in Rome can do is bitch about the use of Air Conditioning and the refusal of some in Europe to welcome with open arms an ancient and permanent enemy – Mahoemtanism.
All queer clergy, even if celibate, ought be laicized yesterday but the Hierarchy (at best epicene ecclesiastics) can not act like men so the queers are granted Holy Orders and are set in the midst of the sheep gate to prey upon innocent adolescent males and the Bishops responsible for these mephitic machinations never go to prison do they?
No, once caught, they just escape into the wind and their replacements use the donations of the faithful to pay off the poor victims of the perverts they allowed to roam freely.
Maybe some day a Pope will be elected who will break the teeth of the sodomite serpent who has control of Holy Mother Church but that Pope will literally have to be a saint because the vast vast majority of nominal catholics are jake with queer clergy just so long as they are nice to the women and children (you know, the sort of catholics who think the Lil” Licit Liturgy is great) and the modern Popes are inclined to romanticism not truth.
They are Vicars of Christ who want absolutely nothing to do with any actions that would have them be treated the way Jesus was. Modern Popes court the world and its affection and approval.
When modern Popes refused to be crowned during their Coronation Rite why did so few Catholic men know that they were rejecting the duties of the Vicar of Christ?
Jesus allowed Himself to be crowned by His enemies whereas the modern Popes refuse to let their friends crown them because they are afraid at being rejected and laughed at by the modern world owing to the status of what a Pope is – He is above Kings, Princes, Potentates and Politicians.
C’est la vie
I noticed lately that Justin Trudeau, King of Canada, and a self-described Catholic (when it suits his political aspirations) demanded that the Catholic Church apologize for what happened at the residential schools (which taught native students) in Canada. A few days later, the Catholic Church did. And then the church burnings started.
A Pope with real balls would have excommunicated that pompous weasel on the spot, and then forced him to kneel in the snow up in the Alps for three days before hearing his apology. To bad we don’t have one of those.
per usual, follow the money $$$…. and, the lawyers (the rest is incidental)
The “Real Vatican II” is nothing other than bringing permanent revolution to the Church. I’m a 41 year old, cradle Catholic who grew up hearing how conservative churchmen like Karol Wojty?a (John Paul II), Joseph Ratzinger, and the likes of Bernard Law were. The truth is, they were, at best, neo-conservative. The true conservatives in the Church, men like Alfredo Ottaviani, and Marcel Lefebvre were routed at Vatican II. They were more or less “in power” in 1962, but by 1965 the usurpers didn’t even pay attention to them. Ottaviani, at the very beginning of the Council, famously had his mic shut off, to uproarious laughter, when he was pleading for the bishops to stick with the schema that had been drawn up for the synod to consider. The end result was that men like Wojty?a and Ratzinger, who had been considered left-of-center, were now considered to be right-wing reactionaries. The would come to power in the ensuing decades, but they still believed in the work they had done back in the ‘60s. Today, the “Caudillo of the Vatican” treats those who are attached to the Traditional Liturgy of the Church as though they are addicts who need rehab so they can come back into the fold. In truth, he just wants to keep the powers of this world happy, so that he can retain the nice tax advantages that the Church has had for centuries. Men like Bishop Sullivan have certainly been treated unfairly, but their ilk has treated the most committed Catholic laity (and priests!) with scorn and derision, and they are now receiving their “reward.” It is unjust, and thus lamentable, but they have alienated those who would come to their defense.
In heaven, Dr. Luther is laughing over his beer. He did warn ya’ll, you know.
@Hun
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/the-john-jay-report.html
Would we really know about the evils of the CCP if the Fulon Gong had caved to the communists? My shame at the behavior of The Church drives me that much harder to be a better Catholic.
It’s fine, they hate my King as well.
@hun, sorry. I didn’t realize the Catholic Bishops were actually purging their website of incriminating documents. Here is an actual copy of the report: http://www.catholicleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/John-Jay-Report-1-27-12-Update.pdf
https://faculty.uml.edu/jbyrne/44.624/JohnJayReport.pdf
Sorry for the noise. I should post when I don’t have time to properly vet things, but this subject makes me upset.
Erasmus of Rotterdham in the 1500s in commenting on the passages in Titus and Timothy where Paul gives rules about ordaining bishops, one bineg they must be “blameless” wrote something like (the quotation is from memory): “Nowdays they will not ordain a man a bishop unless he is guilty of all manner of crimes, including sodomy.” So anyone saying that Catholic clergy being honosexuals is “just propaganda” or is “new because of Vatican 2” is wrong. It was that way in the 1500s.
One way it fights these accusations is for its dioceses to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying compensation to victims. Very noble. And it certainly has fought these accusations in the past, being involved in a conspiracy to protect child abusers up to its highest levels.
Is this even serious? It’s getting increasingly difficult to tell. By “civilise”, you mean take children from their parents, destroy their culture, beat them for speaking their native languages, sexually abuse them and generally mistreat them so badly that they end up buried in unmarked graves? Yeah, that really is incredibly civilised.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-gen-sec
Nuff said.
Luther isn’t likely in heaven, Blase.
He committed suicide off his bedpost and busted a gut besides, not unlike Judas, except he was drunk. Maybe that gives him a pass, maybe not.
Bergoglio looks to be going the same route with the same rage.
Deep piece SS Briggs. You know the Council failed by 1980 if not earlier; it succeeded only in robbing the Faith from us in its wake. They won’t succeed in robbing us of the Old Mass now that we’ve found it, and found them out.v I hope you’re right and there are a few good men left among the swishops. But I doubt it.
As Vigano said in his uncontradicted Testimony of August 2018, the clerical Homosexual Network Strangling the Church is controlling the Church right now; put Bergoglio in, and he’s the head of that Network. As Pope Benedict warned in his apostolic letter/intervention of April 2019, homosexuality in the chanceries (that means the bishops and their headquarters) and the seminaries, which the bishops control and are often pink palaces, is the root of the problem, including the pederasty plague, among the clergy. Bergoglio rejected the document then ignored it when Benedict saw that it was published (in an obscure parochial newspaper in Bavaria).
Pope Benedict is more likely than not the last pope.
The apostasy in the Church is at the top, the highest levels. We see it every day intensifying for the past eight years.
This was foretold 104 years ago at Fatima. Cardinal Ciappi, who was there at John XXIII’s reading of the Third Secret given July 13, 1917, written down by Sr. Lucia DosSantos of Fatima in 1944, and opened and read for the first time in 1959, has testified that this is precisely what it said. Our Lady predicted “the apostasy in the Church” at the highest levels. Other eyewitnesses confirm it.
John XXIII (the Unsaint) declined to release it by 1960, or ever for that matter, despite the command by the Queen of Heaven to release it by then.
Now, Bergoglio has ordered the abrogation of the Mass of the Ages. This is arrogant disobedience and betrayal on a similar scale. It is the gravest apostasy and betrayal yet by Bergoglio of the One True Faith, and of the one true Pope, Pope Benedict, and of Christ Himself.
Holy Mother Church is on Her Via Dolorosa to Calvary, if She is not already there, and only Pope Benedict remains at Rome to stand by Her Cross. He is the katechon. That is why Pope Benedict said he remains within the enclosure of St Peter, to suffer and pray by the Cross.
He is surrounded now only by the Caiaphas’s and Annas’s of the new temple–the Vatican prelates who fill the halls of the secretariats–and by Pilate, the Roman soldiers (like minder/gaoler Gänswein) who spy, prod, and poke both him and Holy Mother Church, and last of all that Judas reincarnate in the person of Antipope Francis.
And of course SAP* Francis’s master, the lord of darkness, is also there…. He wouldn’t miss it for the world as it’s said he was driven off the first Calvary by a mere nod of dismissal by the Blessed Virgin. (St Catherine Ann Emmerich.)
C P B
* satanic antipope.
My compliments to Mr. Greenhorn. Misread the byline, Briggs.
We would fight but not for the fag and/or fem bishops. Seems like the only two breeds we have now. We’re against them as they are destroying the Church, along w SAP Francis the Destroyer. Traditionis Custodes has an exact anagram, a message to and from Bergoglio: “Ass! Idiot! Destruction!” (What are the odds of that, Briggs?)
For one like Vigano, no question. Where do I sign.
Council of Trent: Decree Concerning Reform
The same holy council, continuing the matter of reform, decrees that the following be ordained in the present session.
Chapter I
Norms Of Procedure In The Election Of Bishops And Cardinals
If in all ecclesiastical grades a prudent and enlightened attention is necessary in order that in the house of the Lord there be nothing disorderly and nothing unbecoming, much more ought we to strive that no error be committed in the election of him who is constituted above all grades. For the state and order of the entire household of the Lord will totter if what is required in the body be not found in the head. Hence, although the holy council has elsewhere decided to advantage a number of things concerning those to be promoted to cathedral and major churches, yet it considers this office to be of such a nature that if viewed in its greatness, there can never be caution enough taken concerning it. Wherefore it decrees that as soon as a church becomes vacant, public and private supplications and prayers be made and be ordered throughout the city and diocese by the chapter, that clergy and people may implore God for a good shepherd. It moreover exhorts and admonishes each and all who in any manner have a right from the Apostolic See to participate in the promotion of those to be placed in authority, or who otherwise render assistance (due to the circumstances of the present time no change being made herein), that they above all bear in mind that they can do nothing more serviceable to the glory of God and the salvation of the people than to exert themselves to the end that good and competent shepherds be promoted to the government of the Church, and that they become partakers in the sins of others and sin mortally unless they strive diligently that those be promoted whom they judge the more worthy and useful to the Church, not moved by entreaties or human affection, or the solicitations of rivals, but because their merits speak for them, whom they know to be persons of lawful wedlock, and whose life, age, learning and all other qualifications meet the requirements of the sacred canons and the decrees of this Council of Trent. But since the taking of the important and competent testimony of upright and learned men regarding the aforesaid qualifications cannot by reason of the diversity of nations, peoples and customs be everywhere uniformly followed, the holy council commands that in the provincial synod to be held by the metropolitan, there be prescribed for each place and province a special or proper form of the examination, investigation or instruction to be made, such as shall appear most useful and suitable for these places and which is to be submitted to the approval of the most holy Roman pontiff; so however, that after the completion of the examination or investigation of the person to be promoted, it shall, after having been put in the form of a public document, be transmitted as soon as possible, with all the attestations and with the profession of faith made by the one to be promoted, to the most holy Roman pontiff, in order that the Roman pontiff himself, with a complete knowledge of the whole matter and of the persons before him, may for the benefit of the Lord’s flock provide the churches more profitably if in the examination or investigation they have been found competent. All examinations, investigations, attestations and proofs of whatever kind and by whomever made, even though in the Roman Curia, concerning the qualifications of the one to be promoted and the condition of the church, shall be carefully examined by the cardinal, who shall report thereon to the consistory, and three other cardinals; and this report shall be authenticated by the signature of the cardinal making the report and of the three other cardinals, in which each of the four cardinals shall affirm that, after having given it his careful attention, he has found those to be promoted to possess the qualifications required by law and by this holy council and at the peril of his eternal salvation firmly believes that they are competent to be placed over churches; and the report having been made in one consistory, that the investigation may in the meantime receive more mature consideration, the decision shall be deferred to another consistory, unless the most blessed pontiff shall deem it expedient to act otherwise. Each and all of the particulars relative to the life, age, learning and the other qualifications of those who are to be appointed bishops, which have been determined elsewhere by this council, the same It decrees are to be required in the election of the cardinals of the holy Roman Church, even though they be deacons, whom the most holy Roman pontiff shall, in so far as it can be conveniently done, choose from all the nations of Christendom according as he finds them competent. Finally, the same holy council, moved by so many very grave afflictions of the Church, cannot but call to mind that nothing is more necessary to the Church of God than that the holy Roman pontiff apply that solicitude which by the duty of his office he owes the universal Church in a very special way by associating with himself as cardinals the most select persons only, and appoint to each church most eminently upright and competent shepherds; and this the more so, because our Lord Jesus Christ will require at his hands the blood of the sheep of Christ that perish through the evil government of shepherds who are negligent and forgetful of their office.
+++++++++++++++++++++++=
Or, a Pope can just slough off this critical duty and focus on inviting Gina Lollabrigida and Batman to Saint Peter’s Basilica for a chin wag (Paul VI), Create World Youth Days, permit chicks to be altar boys and endlessly apologise for the putative sins of dead Catholics – who can’t defend themselves (JP II), and write books saying that Jews have a legit reason to wait for the Messias and that the Catholic Church should not try and convert them, that the Lil’ Licit Liturgy is the same as The Real Mass and, in the meantime, ask a perfumer to make a special cologne for him.
Swordfish,
That is also true for Ireland…Almost cut and paste.
The money that must’ve gone into helping the cover up and the tendrils boggle the mind.
Whoever helps them to work their inequity is guilty of the same, in theses of the law of the land. Whoever makes excuses for people who cover up, appear not to know that God is watching. Another way you can tell they don’t really believe in the true presence of the Holy Spirit.
See Philomena Lee. The movie is no exaggeration and leaves out a lot of the very worst details regarding how some of the girls were actually treated and what was done to them and their babies, forced into adoption.
So much for the true presence. Some of those priests have given holy communion and made a mockery of all those who are forced to believe in the dogma of the ceremony, too. Clearly there’s a conflict of sprits right there.
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them”
If they gather for something else…