By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
“. . . The situation that Christians have to face today has more in common with that described by the author of the Apocalypse than with the age of St. Augustine. The world is strong and has evil masters. But these masters are not vicious autocrats like Nero and Domitian. They are the engineers of the mechanism of world power: a mechanism that is more formidable than anything the ancient world knew, because it is not confined to external means, like the despotism of the past, but uses all the resources of modern psychology to make the human soul the motor of its dynamic purpose.”
Perhaps one example of Christopher Dawson’s above quote would be Catholics voting for Biden and afterward continuing to receive Communion just like nothing happened. No morality is immorality.
Indifference kills the souls of those who are indifferent as its first victims. Although, in the case of the legal murder of unborn children in abortion, Biden’s pact with the Devil, the casualties number in the millions — death counts which Roman tyrants and Hitler couldn’t imagine.
Filling out a black dot for the pro-life candidate in complete privacy is insurmountably difficult, we are to believe. Death has become so antiseptic as to be almost nonexistent. Lord Acton is proven right once again: Power corrupts.
Dawson explains that the persuasive power of the Roman despots enforced unwilling external compliance, at least through executions or the mere threat of such. Hence the many Roman martyrs that gloriously adorn our sanctoral cycle throughout the liturgical year.
On the modern scale, evil is more insidious because more invasive. Nero is no longer needed and could never compete in power with the millions of suggestions piped into millions of homes through media and the Internet. The Women’s March, BLM, Antifa: These are merely the latest manifestations of willing conformity with the goals and aims of the oligarchs. These roaming bands of programmed malevolent bots enforce through their violence and intimidation the manipulative social programs of their unseen masters. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” It could be Soros, perhaps not. In the end, does it matter?
Power corrupts in the Church as well. McCarrick is the prime example, though some evidence indicates he may have been in part morally corrupted as a fatherless young man by immoral men who later engineered his meteoric rise through the hierarchy.
Some aspects of his insidious connections with Biden and Obama are revealed in the eponymous Report uncovering what the Vatican thinks we should know about his rise to power as a homosexual and pedophile.
For years, to sate his lust, he abused others over whom he enjoyed ecclesial authority, wrecking lives and vocations through twisting power to his evil purposes. His corruption was a scandal which encouraged the others who joined him in his crimes and damaged or destroyed the faith of those who had the misfortune to cross his path, however unwilling in the face of his sexual assaults.
The question “How did this happen?” is the purported purpose of the over 400 tragic pages of the Report. Those who have suffered abuse themselves or those who might be scandalized by some of the graphic descriptions made necessary for the purpose of effective witness are warned to avoid them.
Much has already been written about the scapegoats who, in the Report, rise to the top of the list among those who might have known and did nothing to stop McCarrick’s predations. John Paul II, his longtime secretary Stanislaw Dziwisz, Benedict XVI, and Archbishop Viganò get top billing in that department.
The obvious pattern here is that those who are on the inside of the Vatican machinery are let off the hook. It is said, however, that Secretary of State Pietro Parolin didn’t know what was in the files of his own dicastery. Well, whose fault is that? He can’t point the finger on that one. He’s responsible for not knowing what he could easily have found out with a little digging. It sounds a bit as though this longtime Vatican diplomat is condescending here to a supposed credulity on the part of what he believes to be the “naive” lay readers of the Report.
This kind of condescension occurs in other places, such as indicting Viganò for his own public diplomatic remarks about McCarrick at dinners and other affairs. Those behind the Report know very well that a censure has no place in an evening toast. Viganò served in Washington precisely as a diplomat, after all. The Report testifies that Viganò did in fact warn Rome, whether late or not. As a result, Parolin and the Pope had a conversation about the rumored “past imprudent acts of McCarrick with adults,” after which Bergoglio incautiously reacts by saying, “Maybe McCarrick could still do something useful.”
The buck stops with the Pope. No curiosity about the souls a cardinal may be destroying? No demand for further information? Only the thought that he could be “useful”? This is the smoking gun. In what way “useful”? For selling out the faithful underground Chinese Church to the Communist Party?
After his election Francis met with McCarrick. Viganò testifies that in June 2013 he encountered McCarrick casually at the Vatican who told him, “The Pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.”
Dawson is proven right as we see the leaders of the Church themselves using every means at their disposal, fair or foul, to carry out the program of her sworn enemies. The cosmic battle between good and evil runs right through the human soul.
McCarrick is to blame for deceiving John Paul II, who restored his name to the terna for Archbishop of Washington, following receipt of a latter from McCarrick denying any sexual activity. Is John Paul at fault for lacking the imagination to believe that a man in such a position of authority in the Church would lie to the Vicar of Christ on Earth? There is only One who can judge that case.
John Paul II had a long reign at the helm of the Church and, partly as a result of that, was deceived by more than one con man, McCarrick among them. Yes, his experience at the hands of the Communists had a role to play in his tendency to reject accusations against the clergy. They were known for deploying rumors of immorality to take down uncooperative men of the Church.
It’s telling that John Paul II is made to take the fall when he can no longer speak for himself. Those who write history have the power to twist it to their purposes. History is written by those who rise to the top of the power heap. Power corrupts. And, Acton, added, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
Let’s continue the conversation on Parler, the new free speech social network, where you’ll find me @FatherKevinMCusick
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