Catholic Grief and Faithful Shepherds in Death and Exile

2023 began in sorrow with the death of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds. It ended in sorrow with the exile of two beloved and faithful Catholic shepherds.

December 27, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” King Henry II (1133-1189) referring to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who opposed the King’s effort to subject priests to trials under English law instead of Church law. Four of King Henry’s knights took the words as a directive. They murdered Thomas Becket as he offered Mass in the Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170.

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Of the 54 posts published here in 2023, fully half of them were consumed with the painful internal affairs of the Catholic Church — affairs in which both priests and faithful Catholics always seem to come out on the losing end of things. My second post of 2023 was “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”

Its title speaks for itself. The results of CUA’s broad study demonstrated a huge chasm between the perspective of bishops and that of priests in the trenches. The consensus among priests was that their bishops are largely oblivious and unresponsive to the pressures and challenges of their ministry. The consensus among bishops was the opposite, that they are right on top of things and are supportive of their priests in challenging times.

Perhaps the most glaring result of the study was the perception among priests that they can be “canceled” by their bishops for any reason or no reason at all. It is a grave irony, as we will explore later in this post, that the year began with an in-depth review of this study and ended with the removal of a faithful bishop from his ministry with no clear canonical crime or reason other than his fidelity.

Many Catholic laity also spent much of 2023 in a state of high anxiety about their lived experience of Catholic faith. As I began typing this post, I received a letter from a reader who revealed that she and her family have been spiritually enriched from weekly participation in the Traditional Latin Mass. “Please pray that this is not taken from us,” she pleaded. It gripped my heart to realize that the Catholic version of “cancel culture” is a source of torment for traditional Catholics.

This year began as the previous year ended — with breaking news of the December 31, 2022 death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, revealed that Benedict was alarmed and saddened by the new restrictions placed by decree on any celebration of the Latin Mass, a practice that Benedict himself had restored to the faithful by Motu Proprio, the same means by which Pope Francis restricted it. The “optics,” as politicians often say, were terrible.

Much of the last year of Benedict’s Earthly life was spent fending off the exploitation and unjust smearing of his good name while the liberal secular news media feasted on the spoils. Much of the mud thrown at him seemed to emanate from the heart of the German synodal path. I wrote of this story and its fallout in 2022 in “Benedict XVI Faces the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.”

The matter at hand was the elderly Benedict’s failure to instantly recall accurately, and without consulting notes, a meeting he attended forty years earlier in which an accused priest was discussed. Benedict was thus accused of obfuscating, minimizing, and covering up the truth. The real agenda, according to Archbishop Gänswein, was to undermine Benedict’s reputation as a bulwark of Catholic Truth and orthodoxy, and to drive a wedge between faithful Catholics and his papacy. I addressed this again in early 2023 in “Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell.”

George Cardinal Pell v. Vatican Corruption

Just ten days after the death of Benedict XVI, Cardinal George Pell died during routine surgery in a Rome hospital on January 10, 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, I wrote twelve posts about the plight of Cardinal Pell. I wrote them perhaps because I can most identify with all that he endured from explosive accusations and charges, a trial by media, exploitation by enemies of the Church from without and within, false imprisonment, and suspected corruption from both secular and ecclesiastical sources.

Among my posts about Cardinal Pell in 2023, one of them, the last one, drew a huge readership from around the globe. It was “Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod.”

In the trials of my own life, I have not yet been able to attain the reversal of injustice that ultimately set Cardinal Pell free, but only because U.S. courts function with a different standard than Australia’s courts. In the U.S., finality in a case is given more weight than other considerations and it is difficult to overcome. When I started this post, I found a letter written to me by Cardinal Pell in Rome after his exhoneration. He wrote that I had been on his mind since his release from prison. He spoke of his plan to raise my case during various meetings in and around Rome, but he never got that chance.

While Cardinal Pell was in prison, I wrote an article about something I had researched heavily. The article is entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Well, it turned out that he was. My article was sent to him in prison, and it became an entry in his celebrated Prison Journal, which was published after his release. He wrote the entry in his prison cell after reading my post.

Four of my dozen posts about the injustices that befell Cardinal Pell were written in 2023. One of them became recommended reading by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It tied together, though unintentionally, several stories that are now prominent in the news. That post was “Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell.”

Readers may have seen recent news of the trial and conviction of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu charged with embezzlement in a Vatican Court. Vatican magistrates alleged that Becciu had embezzled more than $100,000 through a non-profit group run by his brother. Cardinal Becciu has been on trial since 2020 and was the first cardinal in history to face trial in the Vatican criminal court. On December 13, 2023, just a few days before the verdict of guilty, The Wall Street Journal’s Vatican correspondent, Francis X. Rocca, ran an extended story analyzing the case in “A Cardinal Once Seen as Future Pope Now Faces Prison.” Here is an excerpt:

“The Secretariat of State managed around $700 million in financial assets, including the investment that later engulfed Becciu and other Vatican officials in scandal.... Around that time, Francis made Australian Cardinal George Pell his finance chief and gave him sweeping powers. Pell unveiled new financial guidelines for the Vatican. But he clashed with the secretariat, which opposed his plans for a financial audit by an external auditing firm. Pell considered Becciu his main opponent in the secretariat. Other Vatican officials also lobbied the Pope against Pell’s changes. The Pope curtailed Pell’s powers and the external audit was canceled.... Pell later returned to Australia to face child sex abuse charges. He was acquitted on appeal and died this year.”

In an October 15 commentary on this account in The Wall Street Journal, I added some further context to this story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of Pope Francis to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms after [the Pope] had empowered him to reform Vatican finances. Mr. Rocca does not speculate on the source of charges against Cardinal Pell in Australia — charges for which he was exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s High Court. This was after he wrongly spent 400 days in prison. There are many who believe that there may have been a connection between Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances and these false charges in Australia. Pell himself suspected this.”

While researching this, I discovered yet another similarity between the Pell case and my own. In both of our legal matters, police misconduct and government corruption played a substantial role. It is a little known fact in the Cardinal Pell case that a 2014 email reveals an exchange between a media assistant in the Victoria, Australia Police Department and the Deputy Commissioner of Police suggesting that promoting these charges in the media could deflect from public exposure of a burgeoning scandal within the Police Department.

Bishop Joseph Strickland and Raymond Cardinal Burke

Then, seemingly dwarfing all of the above in shock value, Pope Francis swiftly and mysteriously removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his role as shepherd of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas in November 2023. Then, in rapid succession he ordered Cardinal Raymond Burke to vacate his Vatican apartment and reportedly left this faithful shepherd without income or position. Lots of ink has been spilled over both stories, especially in the United States. I covered the Bishop Strickland story a week ago in the first segment of “Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World,” my Christmas post this year.

Both stories have been heavily covered by so many Catholic writers and commentators that there is nothing left for me to add except sorrow. These are faithful shepherds. Perhaps in time, the hidden truth of both matters will emerge. Absent that, I am sad to write, the buck stops only at the top.

In a stunning article in the January 2024 edition of Newsmax magazine (Pope Pushes Radical Agenda that Shocks Faithful) the National Catholic Register’s Vatican correspondent, Edward Pentin, commented on both stories:

“This past November, Francis removed [Bishop Joseph] Strickland from heading the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, citing his criticism of the Pope’s liberal social agenda and allowing the faithful to partake in the Latin Mass.... But the biggest surprise was his late November targeting of Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of Saint Louis and one of the Vatican’s most influential prelates.

“Burke has been an open critic of Francis for some time, alleging that the Holy Father has been discarding some of the most basic church teachings on communion, sexuality, and marriage. In a private meeting in Rome, Francis reportedly declared that Burke was ‘my enemy’ and he would strip him of his Vatican salary and even his apartment residence in Rome.”

Early in his pontificate, I wrote several posts in defense of Pope Francis. However, what Edward Pentin describes above seems more reminiscent of the court of Caligula than the Vicar of Christ.

Scandal and sorrow were not the only news items dominating this blog in 2023. There were other major events. We took a break from all the bad news of the Church to launch “A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls” in March. It was composed of most of our past special Holy Week posts and the invitation had many takers. In a Church wandering in the desert mired in political controversy it was encouraging to see this vast lay interest in the events of Holy Week.

In June, documentary film producer Frank X. Panico unveiled his project about my trial and imprisonment in a 45-minute video production, “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.”

As I marked the beginning of a 30th year in prison on the Feast of Saint Padre Pio in April, our friend Pornchai Moontri moved the world to tears with his deeply moving post that left me and many others speechless. It was, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Not wanting to leave justice dangling, Los Angeles documentary researcher, Claire Best, caused a New Hampshire earthquake with her bombshell post, “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

That led us finally into December with the much needed shining light of the year, “The Music of Eric Genuis Inspired Advent Hope.”

And on that note, this is where I leave you until 2024. Keep the faith. Keep it close to your heart. And may the Lord Bless you and keep you in the New Year ahead.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. You may like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod

Christ the Good Shepherd

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truth on the Synod

Book cover image courtesy of Connor Court Publishing; Red cardinal photo by RachidH (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)

In Pell Contra Mundum, Fr. Robert A. Sirico profiles the late Cardinal George Pell including some incisive reflections on the Synod he called ‘a toxic nightmare.’

November 15, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“This prison journal should never have been written. That it was written is a testament to the capacity of God’s grace to inspire insight, magnanimity, and goodness amidst wickedness, evil, and injustice. That it was written so beautifully bears witness to the Christian character that divine grace formed in its author.”

Such words could never describe anything that I have ever written or will write from within my impenetrable prison walls. The above quote is from George Weigel’s Introduction to the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell (Ignatius Press, 2020). As I undertook my own prison journal — writing one post at a time, week after week, half a world away from the prison Cardinal Pell innocently and gracefully endured — I had no idea that my own prison writing would have a presence in his.

I learned of it only after Cardinal Pell finally saw justice and became free after 400 days in solitary confinement in an Australia prison. Like much of the free and thinking world, I was angered and mortified that he had to endure those 400 days, and the humiliating trials that preceded them, for crimes that never took place. I had written a post from my own prison entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” It was sent to Cardinal Pell in prison by Sheryl Collmer of Tyler, Texas, a writer for Crisis Magazine. It brought a focused light to the prosecutorial fraud that, once exposed, may have helped to overturn his conviction.

Still, even today in Australia and beyond, there are some who claim to a biased and bigoted condemnation of this White Martyr, a condemnation devoid of all truth and justice. After his release and his return to Rome, Cardinal Pell wrote to thank me for the small role I played in writing about the fraud perpetrated against him. I don’t think anyone has ever gotten all the way to the bottom of that fraud.

After his release, Cardinal Pell also wrote to me of his desire to bring attention to my own plight, but that was not meant to be. It was nonetheless a great solace to me to be able to write in 2020, “From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”

On the day that I write this entry into my own less exalted prison journal, I mark 10,740 days and nights in prison also for crimes that never took place. I do not compare this to the abomination of humiliation endured by George Pell. It is just the opposite. I write it to convey the extent to which he inspired me, inspires me still, and gives me hope that justice eventually wins out whether here or in Thy Kingdom Come.

Cardinal Pell is gone from our sight now, but his words still inspire many. One of the many is Fr. Robert A. Sirico, cofounder of the Acton Institute and editor of the recent book, Pell Contra Mundum (Connor Court Publishing, 2023). Father Sirico described his subject matter for the book: “George Cardinal Pell, a White Martyr with insights into the Spirit of this age and the ongoing crisis in the Church.” In an interview with Edward Pentin in the National Catholic Register, Father Sirico spoke of the book:

“It really grew out of the sadness, the grief of Cardinal Pell’s death. I was with him the night of Pope Benedict’s funeral. We had dinner in his apartment. Cardinal Zen [another White Martyr] was there and a few others ... . I had known Pell for more than 25 years, and over these last few months we had been talking about the Synod and things happening in the Church. We knew he was going in for the surgery. I left Rome, and then that morning got up to the call that he had died in the hospital ... . And later that day or the next, his piece in the London Spectator came out.”

“Hostile to the Apostolic Tradition”

KABOOM! As 2023 was underway shortly after Cardinal Pell’s death, that is how I summed up his posthumously published article in The Spectator which Pell titled, “The Catholic Church Must Free Itself from this Toxic Nightmare.” Its focus was on the present Synod on Synodality that has rocked the Church and faithful Catholics. In that same edition of The Spectator (11 January 2023) associate editor Damian Thompson characterized Cardinal Pell’s explosive article:

“Shortly before he died ... Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plan for its upcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as ‘a toxic nightmare.’ The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome,’ says Pell. Not only is it ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon,’ but it is ‘hostile to the apostolic tradition,’ and ignores fundamental Christian tenets such as belief in divine judgment, heaven and hell.

“The Australian-born Cardinal, who endured the terrible ordeal of imprisonment in his home country on fake charges of sex abuse before being acquitted, was nothing if not courageous. He did not know that he was about to die when he wrote this piece; he was prepared to face the fury of Pope Francis and the organisers when it was published. As it is, his sudden death may add extra force to his words when the Synod meets this October.”

I commend with gratitude Father Robert Sirico, Damian Thompson at The Spectator, Edward Pentin at the National Catholic Register, and others who have posthumously amplified Cardinal Pell’s voice in service to the Church. On 11 January 2023 the day after Cardinal Pell’s death while undergoing surgery, Damian Thompson wrote for The Spectator, “Cardinal Pell’s righteous fury at the Vatican’s theological direction”:

“Cardinal Pell, a former head of Vatican finances does not criticise Pope Francis directly in the piece he has written for The Spectator. But it was the latter who instituted this ‘synodal way’ which, according to Pell, ‘has neglected, indeed downgraded the Transcendent, covered up the centrality of Christ with appeals to the Holy Spirit and encouraged resentment, especially among participants.’ Pell states quite plainly that the whole process — which began with a ‘consultation’ of the laity in which only a minuscule proportion of the world’s Catholics took part — is in the process of being rigged. The Synod’s participants will not be allowed to vote and the organising committee’s views will be passed on to Pope Francis ‘for him to do as he decides.’

“That phrase goes to the heart of the matter. Pell describes this arrangement as ‘an abuse of synodality, a sidelining of the bishops, which is unjustified by scripture or tradition’ and ‘liable to manipulation.’ ... This is the last public statement by a hugely influential cardinal who was once part of the Pope’s inner circle. Put simply, it expresses righteous fury at the theological direction of this pontificate, hinting that it is betraying Christ himself. And, by a sad coincidence, it appears in the same week as Archbishop Gänswein’s revelations that Benedict XVI in retirement was horrified by his successor’s suppression of the Latin Mass and also suggested that it was based on a bogus consultation.”

As Cardinal Pell thus wrote with candor and love for the Church: “The Catholic Church must free itself from this toxic nightmare.”

A Prequel: The German Inquisition of Benedict XVI

I cannot continue this post without placing it in its truthful context with an extended excerpt from my March 2, 2022 post, “Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.” Following vile accusations out of Germany that Benedict XVI was negligent in dealing with sexual abuse charges against a priest 40 years earlier, it did not take long for the true agenda to be unmasked. In the same week as this condemnation of Benedict, a meeting of Germany’s “Synodal Path” declared its support for same-sex unions, sweeping revisions in Church teaching on homosexuality and the practice of priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, lay involvement in the selection of bishops, and other signs of a Catholic “woke” agenda.

Several clergy from Germany anonymously shared that post with others, but only one under his own name on social media. On April 11, 2022, a group of 103 bold and faithful bishops from the United States, Canada, and around the world signed “A Fraternal Open Letter to Our Brother Bishops in Germany.” Here is an excerpt:

“Events in Germany compel us to express our growing concern about the nature of the entire German ‘Synodal Path’ process and the content of its various documents... . The urgency of our joint remarks is rooted in Romans 12, and especially in Saint Paul’s caution: ‘Do not be conformed to this world.’ And their seriousness flows from the confusion that the Synodal Path has already caused and continues to cause, and the potential for schism in the life of the Church that will inevitably result.”

In his weekly podcast carried by LifeSiteNews, Tyler, Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland explained why he was one of the signatories of that letter:

“It should be every bishop, in my opinion, and it’s because we are being bishops. Bishops are to guard the deposit of faith. It is a promise we made. And frankly, the Synodal Path of Germany is doing the opposite. It is eroding the deposit of faith, saying, ‘It’s all up for grabs.’”

It was encouraging for many that 103 brave and faithful bishops signed that letter in March of 2022. Ironically, and it is very painful for faithful Catholics in the United States, Bishop Joseph Strickland was removed as Shepherd of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas by Pope Francis on the very day that I am writing this post. Mainstream US media is only supposing the reason because no one really knows except Pope Francis. The secular media is attributing it to his disagreements with Pope Francis on the direction of the Synod.

From my limited perspective it is encouraging that 103 bishops signed that letter, and alarming that Bishop Strickland was removed for it. The bishops of Germany are failing to read and interpret the writing on the wall. Their agenda, which seems to have overwhelmed the direction of the Synod is barely distinguishable from the one being imposed on our culture by "woke" politicians. I wrote of that agenda in “The ‘Woke’ Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education.”

In Prison Journal Volume 2, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about his concern for the direction of the Church in Germany and the Synod. From his prison cell on August 9, 2019, he wrote of Edith Stein, now known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who like Saint Maximilian Kolbe one year earlier, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.

In his journal, Cardinal Pell wrote that Edith Stein was German by birth, and he asked readers to pray for her intercession for the Catholic Church in Germany. He quoted German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

“The Catholic Church in Germany is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. They are self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They do not speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the Sacraments, faith, hope, or love.”

— Prison Journal Volume 2, p. 75

It is a cause of deepest concern and confusion that Bishop Strickland is removed from office while the bishops of Germany remain in place with their apostasy barely challenged. Later in the book, Cardinal Pell wrote about Vatican concerns for the growing possibility of a German Catholic schism over the very issues identified by Cardinal Müller. If such a progressive schism were to occur, it would sweep much of Europe where — with the exception of Poland — Mass attendance is at a historically low point. Cardinal Pell cited a September 17, 2019 Catholic Culture article by Philip Lawler, “Who Benefits from all this talk of schism?”

Lawler argued in 2019 that the prospect of a schism is remote, but becoming less so. He cited that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect saying that he is not frightened by it, something that Lawler and Cardinal Pell found to be disconcerting in and of itself.

Cardinal Pell added that The New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a Catholic schism by the “John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States.” Cardinal Pell wrote that Lawler’s diagnosis is correct. The Cardinal added:

“The most aggressive online defenders of Pope Francis realize they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving progressives free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.”

— Prison Journal Volume 2, p.215 (emphasis added)

In light of this, it comes as no surprise that some progressive US bishops have pushed Pope Francis into divisive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass and other traditional expressions of the faith. These efforts, and German Catholic steps taken to marginalize the late Benedict XVI and Archbishop Gänswein, both stalwarts of Catholic orthodoxy, should be of grave concern to faithful Catholics everywhere. Embracing and promoting fidelity at this juncture has never been more minimized in Rome yet more urgently needed everywhere else.

Faithful Catholics must never accede to the desired end that German progressives and perhaps even the Synodal Path now seek. Handing the Church over to them would leave “Satan at the Last Supper” while Jesus is removed from the room. It is not the faithful, after all, who wander today into the desert to Azazel.

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An Important Message sent to us from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

November 17, 2023

To watch last night's episode of EWTN’s "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo," featuring Bishop Joseph Strickland, Fr. Gerald Murray, and Robert Royal, click here.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post in honor of the late Cardinal George Pell and those who have amplified his most important voice in the desert. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Vatican Today: Cardinal George Pell’s Last Gift to the Church

Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell

Fr Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell by Ryan A. MacDonald

Will Pope Francis Stand against Catholic Schism?

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition

Jesus was mocked by the devil in the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13). Before his death, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was mocked by a commission of progressive German Catholics.

March 2, 2022 by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

“Aaron shall lay his hands upon the goat and confer upon it all the sins of the people ... The scapegoat shall bear their iniquities upon him into the wilderness ... to Azazel.”

— Leviticus 10:10,22

In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent (Luke 4:1-13), Jesus is tested by a devil in the desert. I wrote of the significance of this Gospel passage on Ash Wednesday. That important post is “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.” Ironically, Pope Benedict XVI wrote of this same Gospel passage in his acclaimed book Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007). His analysis of the demonic testing of Jesus seems now to be an omen of Catholic division:

“[The Devil’s] temptations of Jesus ... address the question as to what really matters in human life. At the heart of all temptation is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material while setting God aside is an illusion.”

— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 28

In the Gospel account from St. Luke above, Jesus thwarts the devil at every turn. We cannot thwart the devil at all without Him. In the end, the devil departs to wait for a more “opportune time.” For some of the Catholic leadership of Germany, it seems that opportune time is now. Fifteen years after writing the above reflection on the testing of Jesus in the desert, Pope Emeritus Benedict became a target of the very forces he cautioned the Church against.

Built entirely on a political agenda with obvious bias and ideological goals, a commission of lawyers launched by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising where Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger served as Archbishop 43 years ago accused him of dishonesty and a cover-up. It was because he could not immediately recall being present at a meeting 42 years earlier in which a specific priest was reportedly discussed. The equally progressive and partisan news media capitalized on this to embarrass the elderly Benedict whose painful response spoke volumes about his effort to satisfy his pernicious detractors. Here is an excerpt of Benedict’s response:

“In addition to responding to the questions posed ... this also demanded reading and analyzing almost 8,000 pages of documents ... and almost 2,000 pages of expert opinion. Amid the massive work, an oversight occurred regarding my participation in the chancery meeting of 15 January 1980. This error was not intentionally willed ... To me it has proved deeply hurtful that this oversight was used to cast doubt on my truthfulness and even to label me a liar.”

— Excerpt of Statement of Benedict XVI, 8 February 2022

The Moral Authority of a German Inquisition

In another post, “Stones for Pope Benedict and the Rusty Wheels of Justice,” I raised what I know to be an important historical context in defense of Benedict. Even if the allegations had substance, which they do not, I can only conclude that this archeological expedition was one-sided and deeply unjust. In my post linked above, I raised a pair of highly relevant but controversial questions. Germany’s historical inquiry into the protection of minors, which had taken on the tone and substance of a witch hunt, ventured back more than forty years to demand answers entirely out of context for the sole apparent purpose of isolating and demeaning Pope Benedict.

This is by no means the first time that Germany has launched such a destructive moral panic. I wrote of a very similar inquisition in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.” Why should this inquisition go back only to 1980? Go back just another forty years and you will find yourself in the Germany of 1940 when the vast atrocities visited upon the Children of Yahweh were amply documented and globally known. With what moral authority did Germany point a finger of blame at Joseph Ratzinger for being unable to recall a 42-year-old meeting?

It turned out, however, that the claims were not even true, but they were nonetheless nefarious. Pope Benedict added to his letter quoted above, “I have come to increasingly appreciate the repugnance and fear that Christ felt on the Mount of Olives when he saw all the dreadful things that he would have to endure inwardly.” A follow-up statement from Archbishop Georg Gänswein, longtime personal secretary of Pope Benedict, addressed the political, moral and spiritual depravity of those pointing fingers of blame. Here is an excerpt of Edward Pentin’s blog report, “Archbishop Gänswein: Movement Wants to Destroy Benedict XVI’s Life and Work”:

“Benedict denied personally mishandling abuse cases, each detailed in an appendix to [his] letter compiled by four lawyers acting on Benedict’s behalf. The three canonists and one attorney said that all four charges made against him ... were false. Benedict’s enemies nevertheless used the error to launch attacks on the Pope Emeritus with theologians and others accusing him of lying and perjury.”

— Statement of Archbishop Georg Gänswein

In all of this shameful debacle, Benedict was the only one talking about Jesus. None of these purportedly Catholic accusers ever even mention God, or Jesus, or fidelity to the Church as they prop up their own progressive agenda. It did not take long for the real agenda to become unmasked. These attacks on Benedict coincided with a plenary meeting of Germany’s “Synodal Path” which voted in the same weekend as the condemnation of Benedict to call for same-sex unions and blessings, sweeping revisions of Church teaching on homosexuality and priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, and lay involvement in the nomination and selection of bishops.

Constructing a World by Our Own Lights

In other words, while reviling Benedict, the German Synod demanded a transformation of German Catholicism into the 21st Century Episcopal church which had long since been torn from the Anglican Communion by these same demands. This is exactly what Benedict XVI cautioned against in his citation from Jesus of Nazareth above:

“Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material while setting God aside is an illusion.”

— Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 28

True to form, on February 4, 2022, the German Synod participants voted 163 to 42 to call on Pope Francis to loosen Church rules on priestly celibacy and to permit the ordination of women deacons two years after Francis declined to do either. This is evidence of something that I have witnessed and cautioned against. Elements in and outside the Church use a climate of fear and revilement around the topic of sexual abuse, not to protect the vulnerable, but as a cudgel to force an entirely secular path toward moral relativism.

The synod participants in Germany argued that obligatory celibacy for priests has impacted the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. This blindly ignores the setting in which the crisis emerged, the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s which now impacts all of Western Culture. One of its tentacles has been a push far beyond mere societal acceptance of homosexuality to promote and normalize it as a societal good. This requires a denial of any connection between homosexuality and the sex abuse crisis in the Church.

As a result, the crisis is blamed on sexual repression and the practice of obligatory priestly celibacy. It is a testament to the power of reaction formation that an entire institution would come to prefer the term “pedophile scandal” to “homosexual scandal” even when the facts say otherwise. And the facts do say otherwise. This is not a political statement. It is a factual one, amply documented. I defended this point in “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.”

In the place where I live, there are over 1,200 men convicted of sexual offenses who must complete a sexual offender program to be considered for parole. In the wider state there are thousands already in the community on parole or as registered criminal sex offenders. Only one of them is a Catholic priest, and he is widely considered to be innocent. The vast majority were married men at the time of their offenses. None were driven to predation by the practice of celibacy, though most strive to practice it now.

The Schismatic Agenda

What is really going on in the German Catholic church is very different from its stated agenda of inclusiveness. Each step in this inquiry is a subtle effort to drag the Church away from the Gospel and into a politically correct arena of moral relativism. The next step in the sexual revolution will tear the Church apart.

I have come to appreciate the candor and spiritual integrity of prison writing from the ranks of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr. Walter Ciszek, Fr. Alfred Delp, and more recently, Cardinal George Pell. Writing from prison with very limited opportunities for dialog and in-depth research means writing almost entirely from one’s own mind, heart and soul. The Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell has been a goldmine of unfiltered candor and spiritual integrity.

While reading his Prison Journal Volume Two (in which, for full disclosure, my own writing occupies several pages) Cardinal Pell wrote candidly of his concerns for the direction of the Church in Germany. In an entry from his prison cell on August 9, 2019, he wrote of Edith Stein, now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who, like St. Maximilian Kolbe, was murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazi regime of 1940s Germany.

Cardinal Pell wrote that Edith Stein was German by birth, and he asked readers to pray for her intercession for the Catholic Church in Germany. He quoted German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

“The Catholic Church in Germany is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. They are self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They do not speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the Sacraments, faith, hope, or love.”

— Cardinal Gerhard Müller quoted in Prison Journal Vol. II, p. 75

It gets much worse. Later in Prison Journal Volume II, Cardinal Pell wrote of Vatican concerns about the growing possibility of a German Catholic schism over the very issues identified by Cardinal Müller. If such a progressive-driven schism were to occur, it would sweep much of the European Union where Catholic Mass attendance is at its historically lowest point. Cardinal Pell cited a September 17, 2019 Catholic Culture article by Phillip Lawler, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?”

Lawler argued that the prospect of a schism is remote, but becoming less so. He cited that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect saying that he is not frightened by it, something that Lawler found to be frightening in and of itself.

Cardinal Pell added that The New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a German Catholic schism by “the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics.” He observed that Lawler’s diagnosis is correct in pointing out that,

“The most aggressive online defenders of Pope Francis realize they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving progressives free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.”

— Prison Journal Vol. II. p. 214-215

In light of this, it comes as no surprise that progressive bishops have pushed Pope Francis into divisive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass and other suppression of traditional expressions of the faith. These efforts, and the German Catholic steps taken to demean the late Pope Benedict, a stalwart of Catholic orthodoxy, should come as no surprise to faithful Catholics. Embracing and promoting fidelity at this juncture has never been more urgent. Faithful Catholics must never accede to the desired end that German progressives seek.

Handing the Church over to them would leave “Satan at the Last Supper” while Jesus is removed from the room.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this most important post. You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic

To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert

Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light

Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times

New evidence unmasks a myth that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope:” and a shocking failure of The New York Times to tell the world of the Holocaust.

These Stone Walls might seem a strange place to be reading this story, but in a way it might make sense. Too many Catholic writers today seem to fear The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream news media. It’s a subtle fear that I laid out in “The Catholic Press Needs to Get Over Its Father Maciel Syndrome.” There are courageous exceptions, of course, and notable among them are Bill Donohue of The Catholic League and David F. Pierre of The Media Report. Both have repeatedly and forcefully called The New York Times to task for its distortions of news pertaining to the Catholic Church. Nowhere have these distortions been more evident than in the Catholic sex abuse scandal, a drama I have lived every day for the last 18 years. It’s also a drama that leads the late 20th Century litany of anti-Catholic agendas in the news. I gave several examples in a post entitled “Catholic Scandal and the News Media.”

Running a close second in that litany is the story of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. You have all read or heard the claims that Pope Pius XII was silent, at best, during the Holocaust, and at worst secured an accommodation with the Third Reich that saved the Catholic Church at the expense of the Jews. It’s not at all true, but the truth has had an uphill climb against the pervasive story, told again and again, that Pope Pius XII failed to confront Hitler during his systematic genocide of over six million European Jews and millions of others. You’ve heard the story of this supposed silence in a slanderous media sound bite that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope.” Next to the “pedophile priest” propaganda, it is probably the most often used and abused modern anti-Catholic slur. But simply put, it is a lie.

Newly emerging evidence reveals that the entire story was the result of an organized propaganda effort sponsored by the Soviet KGB to discredit Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church. It’s a shocking story, the stuff of Tom Clancy novels and wild conspiracy theories, but it’s also true, and I’ll unravel that truth in a few moments. It is truly bizarre, but not nearly as bizarre as another anti-Catholic Nazi plot I described in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.” It’s a very good background to this post.

When The Grey Lady Turned Yellow

Though falling at the end of my title, my story begins in the pages of The New York Times, and a context for the “Hitler’s Pope” story. I have long wondered what the Times and the rest of the American mainstream news media did to confront Hitler and the Holocaust. The American press was at its peak of global influence during World War II. Many U.S. newspapers, and most notably The New York Times, had foreign correspondents and news bureaus at their command. The Pope did not command a global news outlet with anything close to the power and impact of The New York Times.

So what exactly was the Times’ role in uncovering and reporting on the Third Reich’s extermination of twelve million people including over six million Jews? I found the answer in a 1999 book by Susan E. Tifft & Alex S. Jones entitled, “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times (Little, Brown). Susan E. Tifft is a former associate editor of Time Magazine. Her co-author (and husband), Alex S. Jones, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning media reporter for The New York Times from 1983 to 1992. At the time they published The Trust, they shared a chair in communications and journalism at Duke University.

The story of The New York Times’ reporting on news of the Holocaust begins with ad revenue. According to Tifft and Jones, the Times slashed its space devoted to news far more severely than its space devoted to advertising during World War II:

“In 1939, 60 percent of the paper had been taken up by news; in 1944 the figure had fallen to below 50 percent. That, coupled with an advertising rate hike . . . sent the Times ad revenue soaring to its highest level since 1931.”

— The Trust (p. 207)

During that period, the Times’ ad revenue had increased from $13 million to $15 million while what it spent on gathering and reporting news decreased from $3.9 million to $3.7 million. Still, at the height of World War II, The New York Times had 55 overseas correspondents, more than any other American newspaper. Owner, Arthur Sulzberger determined that these foreign ambassadors of the Times “should be ‘well-educated attractive Protestants,’ not Jews” (p. 209). This had implications for how and where in the Times the dismal news of Nazi activities throughout Europe was presented, especially in regard to Hitler’s persecutions of the Jews:

“Like his late father-in-law, [Arthur Sulzberger] did not want the Times to be viewed as a ‘Jewish paper.’ But in his single-minded effort to achieve that end, he missed an opportunity to use the considerable power of the paper to focus a spotlight on one of the greatest crimes the world has ever known. (p. 215)

“These personal and professional strains converged with increasing power during the Holocaust . . . [C]rucial news stories were frequently buried inside the paper rather than highlighted on page one. A July 2, 1944 dispatch citing ‘authoritative information’ that 400,000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported to their deaths and an additional 350,000 were to be killed in the next three weeks received only four column inches on page twelve, while that same day a story about Fourth of July holiday crowds ran on the front page.”

— The Trust (p.217)

The criticisms of Pope Pius XII and his supposed inaction have been widely exposed in the American news media among newspapers that had scores of correspondents reporting from Europe during World War II. And yet, most of their editors at home simply did not believe the accounts of atrocities coming out of Europe. News of Hitler’s Final Solution was downplayed in the American news media, and the reason for it was utterly scandalous. Susan Tifft and Alex Jones explained why:

“The Times was hardly alone in downplaying news of the Final Solution. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, other major dailies, including the New York Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, like the public at large, disbelieved reports of Jewish genocide in Europe or suspected they were exaggerated in order to attract relief funds.”

— The Trust (p. 218)

During World War II, The New York Times was considered a media flagship. It enjoyed unprecedented power on the global news stage as the preeminent American newspaper. The Times’ superior foreign reporting capabilities gave it the power to set the agenda for other newspapers, many of which took their cue from the Times’ front page. In a post entitled “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz,” I described what happened in Europe when the bishops of Holland, under the authority of Pope Pius XII, publicly challenged the Third Reich’s deportation of Jews to the death camps. This information was right at the fingertips of The New York Times and its teams reporting from Europe. The Times was in a unique position to inform the world of the horrors of the Holocaust, but it held back. Susan Tifft and Alex Jones concluded:

“Had the Times highlighted Nazi atrocities against Jews, or simply not buried certain stories, the nation might have awakened to the horror far sooner than it did.”

— The Trust (p. 218)

In the Spring of 1945, just before Germany’s surrender, General Dwight Eisenhower assembled an l8-member press delegation to inspect Dachau and Buchenwald. It included the owners of The New York Times with this result reported by Tifft and Jones:

“Despite the powerful effect of such experiences by the owners of The New York Times. readers detected no change in the coverage of Nazi barbarism. The front-page story on the liberation of Dachau never mentioned the word. ‘Jew.’ A week later, Cy Sulzberger’s story about Russian estimates of the death toll at Auschwitz appeared on page twelve, with no indication that most of the victims were Jews.”

— The Trust (p. 237)

The Pope and the KGB

In “The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: When the Wall Fell,” I wrote of a fictional story about the late great Pope from a terrific novel by Tom Clancy entitled Red Rabbit (G.P. Putnam, 2002). In typical Tom Clancy fashion, he told a riveting but wild tale of how the Soviet Union saw Pope John Paul II as an ominous threat to its leadership and legitimacy in the early 1980s. In Clancy’s tale, the Soviet Politburo gave a secret nod to a KGB plot to eliminate the Pope.

In the convoluted story — which defied rational belief — the KGB feared that the administration of President Ronald Reagan would not look kindly on their assassination of a Pope, so some plausible denial was needed. The KGB engaged the Bulgarian secret police to hire a Turkish mercenary to assassinate the Pope right before the world’s eyes in Saint Peter’s Square. The techno-thriller that emerged from this frame of a plot was Tom Clancy at his very best. Reviewers liked the book, but some dismissed its plot as revisionist history and Catholic paranoia.

It turned out that the story wasn’t fiction at all. In 2010, files released by the East German secret service confirmed that the KGB ordered the attack on the Pope and carried out the plot just as Tom Clancy described it. Though much of the mainstream media downplayed the story, the KGB recruited the Bulgarian secret police who in turn hired a Turkish mercenary, Mehmet Ali Agca, to shoot Pope John Paul, hitting him four times at point blank range. This Pope, however, was made of some tough material, and he survived, thwarting the KGB plan.

It turns out that this wasn’t the first time the KGB targeted a Pope for assassination, though in the first instance it was character assassination. All is not what it seems to be in the scandalous charge that Pope Pius XII was silent about the wartime atrocities of Adolf Hitler, The Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Edward Pentin, Rome Correspondent for the National Catholic Register had a fascinating two-part series in September revealing new evidence about how the myth of “Hitler’s Pope” actually began with Joseph Stalin.  Part 1 and Part 2

In Part 1 of the series, “Ex-KGB Chief: Pius XII Was Framed” (NC Register, Aug. 26 – Sept. 8, 2012), Edward Pentin reported that Rolf Hochhuth’s famous 1963 play, “The Deputy” was used by Soviet intelligence as part of a wider plot to frame the Pope. In 1968, the play was described as the “slander of the century” by famed British reporter, David Frost.

Part 1 of Pentin’s story begins with Ion Mihai Pacepa, former head of the Romanian intelligence service who described in detail how the Soviets framed Pope Pius XII as an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer in a propaganda campaign known as “Operation Seat 12.” The story is revealed in an upcoming book with famed Holocaust author, Ronald Rychlak entitled Disinformation. In his introduction to the book, former CIA director, James Woolsey wrote that the book, “will change forever the way you look at intelligence, foreign affairs, the press and much else.”

If Edward Pentin’s articles are accurate, it will also change forever the way you look at the mythical and scandalous accounts of Pope Pius XII during World War II. According to Part 2 of Edward Pentin’s series, entitled “Pope Pius and the Myth of ‘Hitler’s Pope”’:

“The Kremlin’s attempt to frame Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope was rejected by that contemporary generation that bad lived through the real history and knew who Pope Pius XII really was. The Kremlin tried again in the 1960s, with the next generation.”

The irony of the KGB propaganda war waged to assassinate the character of Pope Pius XII is this: If all contemporary agendas were put aside, and the verdict of Jews in the generation during and after the War ruled the day, then the true picture of Pope Pius XII emerges from the rubble of war. It is the picture of a courageous hero whose stand against Hitler directly saved the lives of 860,000 Jews, more than any other figure — religious or otherwise — in World War II Europe. Not least among many tributes to Pope Pius and his wartime advocacy for the Jews of Europe was this one by Rabbi Israel Zolli, Rome’s Chief Rabbi during World War II:

“There is no place of sorrow where the spirit of love of Pius XII has not reached . . . There are no barriers, no distinctions. All sufferers are children of God in the eyes of the Church . . . No hero in history has commanded such an army; none is more heroic than that conducted by Pius XII in the name of Christian charity.”

Now The Grey Lady Fades

It is no longer a mystery to me why The New York Times and other news media spread far and wide the myth of “Hitler’s Pope.” They eagerly embraced without question a Kremlin propaganda campaign to frame Pius XII as a scapegoat for silence in the face of the Holocaust. The Times had an opportunity during Hitler’s reign that the Pope never had — an opportunity to expose a horrible truth to the world. According to Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, other agendas — self-serving political agendas — controlled the news and buried that truth. If the Kremlin had its “Operation Seat 12” to defame the Pope, “Operation Page 12” seemed to be a parallel plan at The New York Times. It’s a moral legacy that cannot ever be erased as long as the Times and other news media scapegoat someone else for that silence.

Media slurs against priests and popes have helped to derail a Catholic moral voice in this increasingly secularized public square, but it’s time to stand against the lies. If you like this post, then send it to others. E-mail it, post it to your social networks, ping it, tweet it, and help further this truth — because it IS the truth.

And if you are feeling simply defeated from the electoral voice of America, that’s a luxury we may not have. Western Culture stands at a precipice, and will continue its descent until its imminent fall becomes clearer to all — perhaps in four more years or so. There remains future hope, so declaring defeat is not an option. Truth must always be cultivated in the face of lies, and no election results can stifle it. The truth belongs front and center, and has no “Operation Page 12.”