Tuesday 28th March 2023

Home » Our Catholic Faith » Currently Reading:

The Cleansing Of The Church: Coming Soon?

September 5, 2018 Our Catholic Faith No Comments

By GEORGE A. KENDALL

I have a strong premonition that a major historical crisis for the Church is now very near, one perhaps very comparable to the Protestant revolt and the corruption in the Renaissance Church that preceded it. Or perhaps even worse. Let me outline my thinking on this.
In the 1990s, Catholics were horrified to learn that we were suffering an epidemic of unworthy priests who sexually abused children and young adults (sometimes very young adults — adolescents, usually males). I must add that some of us had known about this for some time — for instance, the staff, the contributors, and the readers of The Wanderer, but we were dismissed as paranoid.
At that time, the hierarchy went through the motions of reform, but focused almost exclusively on the priests who committed these crimes, not on the bishops who in some cases joined in and in many more cases used the power of their office to cover up the crimes — for instance, by making substantial payments to the victims in return for their silence — using money donated by unwitting Catholics for other purposes.
In addition, they did not, in the great majority of cases, report the crimes to the civil authorities, thus engaging in obstruction of justice, for which they may well be prosecuted.
What has happened recently is that we have become aware of this, and of the enormous extent of the corruption involved. Learning that high-ranking members of the hierarchy, like the now ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, were involved both in sexual abuse and in covering it up, came as a great shock to many. We are also coming to be aware of the almost certain existence of a network of homosexual priests centered in the Vatican but with a worldwide presence, undermining the Church and her teachings, especially on chastity, and covering up one another’s crimes.
A grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania has uncovered a number of cases where there was criminal collusion by people in positions of authority within the Church to cover up crimes by priests and hide them from the authorities. The grand jury’s report suggests that these are most likely only the tip of the iceberg.
So what to do now? Clearly, some actions need to be taken that should have been taken twenty years ago, when the public first became aware of these abominations. First of all, as both Robert Royal and Fr. Gerald Murray said recently on EWTN, the whole thing needs to be investigated thoroughly and rigorously by people who are not clergy and do not work for the Church.
We know now that the bishops will not honestly investigate themselves or their priests. A generation ago, the bishops set up a national review board headed by ex-Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma, but did not give it the authority it needed and gave it at best their tepid cooperation. They ended up firing Gov. Keating after he referred to the hierarchy as a corrupt organization — that is, as one not capable of reforming itself — and things went downhill from there.
Today we have to do things differently. We cannot continue to suppress the truth. What we have here is a grave infection in the Body of Christ, one that has grievously wounded it. The abscess needs to be lanced and drained, no matter how disgusting or odiferous the process may be. When it comes to the suppression of truth, we all need to remember the words of John: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20).
When it comes to the relationship between the hierarchy and the Catholic people, the Church depends on trust, which is closely related to truth. If we find out people are lying to us, we stop trusting them. Lies beget loss of faith. If it gets to the point where people just stop believing anything their priests and bishops tell them, what becomes of the Church? In my grandparents’ generation, a priest was assumed, most of the time, to be a holy man. In my youth, that assumption was beginning to wear thin, but was still semi-intact? No one assumes that today.
The whole truth has to come out no matter what the consequences, because if we continue to suppress the truth, the Church will effectively collapse. And we can’t take refuge in the guarantee that the Church will last until the end of time because, for all we know, that could mean a Church with only a few members. “When the Son of Man comes, will there be faith left on the Earth?” Maybe very little.
So the whole truth has to come out, no matter what the consequences. And these could be horrific. When the full extent and depth of the corruption, the evil, involved becomes generally known, many may lose their faith. The Church could become a lot smaller (but those who love her will stay). The revelations could also become a pretext for governments to persecute the Church, something they are just itching to do.
Both of these could, of course, be an opportunity in the long run. We know from history that martyrdom strengthens the Church. When the Church is under pressure, those who are Catholic in name only will figure prominently among those who walk away. The Church has become much too obsessed with keeping membership high, and its leaders all too willing to compromise to keep it high.
A smaller Church, consisting mostly of those with a strong and intense enough faith to be able to remain faithful in such a situation, would have the courage to teach and uphold Christian truth without the endless watering down that has characterized so much of Catholic life since the 1960s.
In line with that, we need a new council, one whose work would parallel that of the Council of Trent. That council made a belated but still very necessary response to the corruption of the Renaissance Church. We need to cleanse our seminaries, our Catholic schools, and our parishes, so they can once again be the light of the world, and the salt of the earth. The abomination of desolation has stood long enough in the holy place of God and needs to be invited to leave.
The one hope here is maybe the revelations of profound corruption will force us to cleanse the Church after many years of procrastination.
The whole teaching of the Church on sexual morality will need to be restored, especially as it relates to homosexual perversion. The horror people used to feel in response to this perversion needs to be restored, as well as a sense of the disgusting nature of the behavior (what I like to call the “yuck factor”), and we need to do everything in our power to keep deviants out of the seminaries and the priesthood, not encouraging them, as we have been doing since the 1960s.
We also need to restore belief in the existence of the Devil. We could start by restoring the Prayer to St. Michael to the place Pope Leo XIII gave it at the end of the Mass (how interesting that we dropped this practice at just about the time Satan started to enjoy major successes in his efforts to take over the Church).
In that regard, I have another small suggestion: The concluding words of the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil,” really ought to be translated as “deliver us from the evil one.” The Jews of Jesus’ time and the early Christians had little interest in abstractions like “evil,” but saw evil as personal. They didn’t reduce Satan to an abstraction. And I am fairly certain that is the correct translation from the Greek.
Raymond Cardinal Burke, in recent remarks on EWTN, made it clear that he has no doubt at all that Satan is a major presence in the work of turning our beautiful Church into a moral sewer. By the power of God, let him be cast back into Hell.
Finally, we have to be very aware that the road we travel in trying to rebuild the Church will be the Way of the Cross. We are not better than our master. There will be many martyrs, both red and white.
A final note: As I get ready to send these remarks in to the editor, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, has just published an amazing open letter stating that Pope Francis has known about ex-Cardinal McCarrick’s crimes at least since 2013, when Viganò informed him of them. He ends by urging Pope Francis to resign. A few hundred words back, I mentioned my premonition that a terrible crisis was on the way. And here it is.
(© 2018 George A. Kendall)

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Twitter Feed

These are the authors of this horrendous bill to be voted on tomorrow in Minnesota. Write them, call them, we will not stand for this.

Biden administration pats itself on the back for shooting down China balloon - meanwhile southern border is wide open to the Chinese.

Load More...

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

A Call to Action for Parents . . . Minnesotans Wake UP! The Insanity in This State Continues!

">Cardinals Burke . . . SAME-SEX UNION BLESSINGS?

Longtime teacher fired after discussing God in classroom, challenging ‘evil’ LGBT school policy

(LifeSiteNews) — A longtime public school teacher in Idaho was let go earlier this month for being unafraid to mention God in the classroom and voicing his objections to a pro-LGBT policy designed to promote “transgender” ideologies among young people.  Ian O’Connell, a Catholic teacher who served as a substitute in the public institutions of Caldwell School District for over 20 years, spoke on February 13 about a proposed “gender identity and sexual orientation” policy that…Continue Reading

Murder investigation underway in shooting death of LA Auxiliary Bishop O’Connell

The shooting death of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell Saturday is being investigated as a homicide, authorities have confirmed. “This incident is being handled as a murder investigation,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) said in a statement Sunday. No additional details were released. “We learned early this morning from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office that they have determined that the d

FBI whistleblower releases docs showing agency is surveilling ‘Radical’ Latin Mass Catholics

RICHMOND, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — A document released by an FBI whistleblower indicates the agency plans to intensify its “assessment” and “mitigation” of “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” over the next 12 to 24 months due to alleged concerns that “white nationalists” are increasingly making common cause online with attendees of the Latin Mass.

DeSantis Team Releases Ad . . . Shows Brutal Reality Of Trans Surgeries In Response To Biden

By ASHLEY SADLER TALLAHASSEE (LifeSiteNews) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team released a powerful ad Tuesday, March 14 showing the horrific reality of mutilating transgender surgeries after U.S. President Joe Biden suggested on national television that Florida’s moves to protect minors from such interventions are “close to sinful.”In a minute-long video posted to social…Continue Reading

Abortion And The Ongoing Questions Surrounding It

By BARBARA SIMPSON “Abortion” — that word that raises the emotions and hackles of people on every level of life. It doesn’t matter what the occupation or the educational background of the individual bringing up the subject. It is bound to get a huge reaction and, for the most part, all kinds of disagreement.Is it…Continue Reading

In Fiscal 2022… More Caught Illegally Crossing Southern Border Than During Entire Trump Presidency

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY “Our top priority is to keep terrorists and their weapons from entering the United States.”So says the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.The same webpage that makes this declaration includes a table that provides some relevant data for the fiscal years from 2017 to 2023. It lists how many individuals…Continue Reading

Waves Of Attacks . . . Displace Catholic Natives In Central Nigeria

By DOUGLAS BURTON WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNA) — The controversial presidential election on February 25 still dominates Nigeria’s main news. Meanwhile, recent terrorist raids in Benue, a predominantly Catholic state in north-central Nigeria, are getting scant mention.Six counties in the Middle Belt state have seen deadly attacks by Fulani militants since the election, according to Mike…Continue Reading

Thousands Turn Out For Pro-Life March In Spain

By NICOLAS DE CARDENAS MADRID (ACI Prensa) — Thousands turned out for the Yes to Life march in Madrid, Spain, on Sunday, March 12 where the sponsoring organizations expressed their opposition to “all laws and practices that threaten life and human nature at any moment of its existence, as well as the businesses and ideologies…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Hosanna In The Highest

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Palm Sunday (YR A) Readings: Matt. 21:1-11Isaiah 50:4-7Phil. 2:6-11Matt. 26:14-27:66 In the first Gospel reading we hear the people crying out “Hosanna” as Jesus is making His way down theMount of Olives and into Jerusalem. The word hosanna means “Please save.” It is a call for salvation.This call is also connected to Jesus being the son…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: One of our readers is willing to donate to any person or institution the large theological library that belonged to her late husband. The collection includes a 20-volume series entitled Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. If anyone is interested, please contact us and we will put you in touch with the donor. Q. Since Ash Wednesday, I noticed…Continue Reading

Unity Is Truth And Truth Unity

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Throughout the year on Friday each week the Church commemorates the Passion of the Lord by means of abstention from the eating of flesh meat. The giving of His Flesh and Blood on the cross unto death for the salvation of the world is remembered thus by personal penance and self-denial. Not easy in a…Continue Reading

Just A Little Talk With Jesus Makes It Right

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this article on March 11 and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + As we examine the Gospel for the third weekend of Lent, we do well to understand that it is about human desires and how the Lord reaches us through them. Prior to examining the text in…Continue Reading

The Glory Of The Son Of God

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Fifth Sunday Of Lent (YR A) Readings: Ezek. 37:12-14Romans 8:8-11John 11:1-45 In the first reading today, God promises us through the Prophet Ezekiel that He will open the graves of His people and have them rise from their graves. This is the promise of the Resurrection. This needs to be made clear because in the Gospel…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)