The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell

Credits: Left, CNS; Right, CNS/Paul Haring

In December 2023 Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the first prelate in history to face trial in a Vatican court, was convicted of embezzlement and money laundering.

January 10, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I recently explained to a friend concerned about the emergence of accounts of historic abuse by priests that mainstream media often save such stories to run them near Christmas and Easter. The motive of the left-leaning media in this seems obvious. It is to drive a wedge between Catholics and their Church. So it was doubly distressing when lurid stories of criminal behavior were generated from the highest levels of Church authority during the Advent and Christmas seasons this year.

“A Cardinal Once Seen as Future Pope Now Faces Prison.” That shocking headline was a front page story by Francis X. Rocca in the December 13, 2023 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, has stood accused by Vatican investigators of the crimes of embezzlement and money laundering since 2020. Trial for the then 75-year-old prelate commenced in 2021. In the weeks before Christmas in 2023, he was convicted of the charges and sentenced to a prison term of five-and-a-half years.

Cardinal Becciu is the first cardinal in Church history to face criminal charges in a Vatican court. According to the Rocca article, five others also faced criminal charges in the same case. They included other Vatican officials and outsiders. The case centered on a failed Vatican investment in a high-end London property and “the alleged theft of money intended to free a kidnapped nun but reportedly spent instead on resort vacations and luxury goods from Prada and Louis Vuitton,” according to Rocca. This story could not be worse.

The trial, which concluded near Christmas, included “accusations of Vatican vendettas as well as Becciu’s secretly recorded conversation with the pope.” Mr. Rocca reported that Pope Francis changed Church laws during the investigation in ways that defendants’ lawyers said favored the prosecution and violated the right to a fair trial — “including a broader authority to eavesdrop on suspects.”

Prior to his role as prefect for the Vatican office, Cardinal Becciu had been in the official role of “Substitute for General Affairs.” Mr. Rocca described this role as “effectively the pope’s chief of staff.” Becciu served in this capacity for the last two years of the pontificate of Benedict XVI and at least the first five years of the papacy of Francis. Becciu described this role, reported by journalist Francis X. Rocca, in 2018: “The substitute is, so to speak, the one who has no time for himself but must give it first to the Holy Father and therefore be willing to take any of his calls and favor any of his initiatives.”

It was Francis who elevated Becciu to the rank of cardinal and appointed him to his role overseeing the canonization of Saints. When the charges of money laundering and embezzlement emerged in 2020, Pope Francis asked him to resign.

Cardinal Becciu, Pope Francis, Cardinal Pell [Credits: CNS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters, CBCEW, Daniel Ibanez/CNA/EWTN]

Who’s Left on the Side of Right?

Several biographies of Pope Francis point to Vatican corruption as a primary impetus for his elevation to the papacy in the conclave of 2013. In my post, “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy,” I described the conditions under which Benedict XVI shocked the world with his decision to step down from the Chair of Peter. His final year was marred by Vatican corruption, especially revolving around Vatican finances. The betrayals and political machinations in Rome became legendary.

The word, “machination” refers to a crafty scheme or cunning design for the accomplishment of a sinister end. There were several such schemes at work in the background that caused Benedict XVI to conclude, as he did in his February 2013 announcement, that he must step down:

“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

In the years to follow the 2013 conclave, one scandal after another emerged from Rome. Writing for The New York Times in 2018, conservative Catholic columnist Ross Douthat wrote of the “latest bomb” to go off in “an already cratered Catholic landscape.” The bomb then was an 11-page “testimony” from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States, accusing Pope Francis of shielding and enabling a serial abuser, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, by releasing him from restrictions on his activities and travel.

The restrictions had been imposed by Benedict XVI in the wake of revelations that McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians for years. Cardinal McCarrick had been restricted by Benedict to a life of prayer and penance, but ignored it. According to columnist Robert George writing in The Washington Post in 2018, “Pope Francis ignored it as well.”

Ross Douthat attributed this decision of Francis to the fact that he “needed allies” in the ongoing struggle between conservative and liberal Catholics. This is a scandal of its own. Douthat reported that McCarrick “was sympathetic to the Pope’s planned liberalizing push.” The irony was that liberal Catholics, the very ones who championed full exposure of the sexual abuse crisis, were willing to look the other way when Francis promoted McCarrick, removed his disciplinary sanctions, and corralled his help for an obsessive agenda to thwart Catholic conservatives. Some have suggested that such obsessive concerns helped to keep rogue Vatican actors like Cardinal Becciu from scrutiny. When the spotlight of obsession is on sexual abuse alone, money flows freely in the surrounding darkness.

When Cardinal Pell Was Accused

The case against Cardinal George Pell was also influenced by nefarious machinations, including police and prosecutor corruption. This was at the heart of a curious incident related in Prison Journal (Volume 1, p. 329). At a pretrial hearing on Cardinal Pell’s false sexual abuse charges, among the most difficult charges to defend against, a Melbourne, Australia priest who was present in the court told Pell’s supporters that he prays that the prosecutor will “mess up his presentation.” When that actually happened, the priest reportedly said, “See, my prayers are working!” When Cardinal Pell was told of this he said, “I would have much preferred that he prayed for justice to be done.”

Those were the spontaneous words of an innocent man who believed that justice in this life is possible — even likely. The guilty on the other hand engage in any number of contrived machinations to do an end run around the law. When a defendant is innocent and there is no evidence supporting the charge, it is too often police and prosecutors who resort to machinations to do an end run around the law.

There is a vivid example of this on the same page of Pell’s Prison Journal cited above. Detective Sgt. Kevin Carson of the Ballarat, Australia Police Department produced a report claiming that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Victoria — where Pell was facing trial — was responsible for forty-three suicides. After the shocking story was leaked to tabloid media, a parliamentary inquiry into the Church’s handling of sexual abuse was launched. An inquiry is similar to a grand jury report in the United States.

The police set up an investigation, but were able to identify only twenty-five of the forty-three named by Detective Carson. Of those twenty-five names, only sixteen had committed suicide. But only one of the sixteen had been assaulted by a member of the clergy. As Pell himself pointed out, “One is one too many, but one is not forty-three.” This tendency to “heighten the hype” lends itself to unfair trials and wrongful convictions, but it also lends itself to career advancement, a shamefully strong force in many of the US grand jury reports on Catholic clergy.

In his analysis of the Cardinal Becciu trial in The Wall Street Journal cited above, Francis X. Rocca included the following paragraph:

“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.... 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” [on January 10, 2023].

In an October 15, 2023 published commentary on Mr. Rocca’s account in The Wall Street Journal, I added some further context to the story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of the Pope to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms even 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 these false charges and Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances. Pell himself suspected this.”

Book cover image courtesy of Ignatius Press; Red cardinal photo by RachidH (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)

Many Unanswered Questions

In Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal Volume 2, in an entry dated 2 August 2018, he devoted several pages to an article of mine, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” The article had been sent to him in prison by Sheryl Collmer, a columnist for Crisis magazine. (The full excerpt now appears at our “Voices from Beyond” feature. )

My article drew a parallel between an accuser’s testimony in the trial of Cardinal Pell and that of another accuser in an unrelated case reported in Rolling Stone magazine by a now disgraced reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. It turned out that there was indeed a connection, and the Erdely article was widely read in Australia before Pell was accused. As Francis X. Rocca observed in The Wall Street Journal excerpt above, “Pell considered Becciu his main opponent.” Is there something further to be deduced from this? Consider this 2020 entry from the Australia site Wrongful Convictions Report — “Cardinal Pell ... well, well, well”:

“Italian media have reported that Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, 72, is suspected of wiring 700,000 euros to recipients in Australia who helped to ensure hostile testimony in the trial of Cardinal George Pell, who was accused of molesting choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. Becciu, days after being sacked by the Pope, denies the truth of the reports.”

Consider also these further entries in Cardinal Pell’s Journal written from his prison cell:

• Friday, 2 August 2019: “The allegations behind the 2011 Rolling Stone article, published in Australia, have also been demolished as false by, among others, Ralph Cipriano’s ‘The Legacy of Billy Doe’ published in the Catalyst of the Catholic League in January-February 2019. No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations was also a fantasy or a fiction. I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause.”

• Sunday, 27 October 2019: “I finished reading a collection of articles from 23 October 2019 on the Vatican finance scandals ... [One] article mentioned Msgr Cesare Burgazzi, who worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State on the finances who became disillusioned by his discovery of a parallel bank, another IOR, and was then removed from his position through media accusations of sexual behavior which were later shown to be completely baseless. I had not heard of this.” [Emphasis added].

• Thursday, 14 November 2019: “So far, the Vatican financial scandals have not bitten as deeply, especially in Australia, but they are a scandal of incompetence exploited by criminals.... Becciu had given an interview to a journalist as he was under pressure, which is not surprising.”

• Thursday, 28 November 2019: “Cardinal Becciu furiously denounced as ‘another false article’ Ed Condon’s accurate account on the London property fiasco and of the accounting procedures which attempted to conceal it.” [Footnote: Ed Condon, “Vatican Officials: Swiss Bank Suspected of Money Laundering led to Pell Conflict,” Catholic World Report, 21 November 2019.]

• Saturday, 30 November 2019: “I am becoming more interested in trying to put together the early stages in the evolution of the charges against me. Why were the charges first ascribed to 1997 instead of 1996? When was Sunday Mass introduced as a setting for the crime? Who helped the complainant? When did the similarities with the [Rolling Stone’s] Billy Doe incidents in Philadelphia emerge?”

Cardinal Pell’s last question now haunts this story: “Is there a Rome connection?”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: I continue to feel an obligation to the late Cardinal Pell to uncover the truth of this story whenever and wherever possible. Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Excerpt: From the Prison Journal of Cardinal Pell, 2 August 2019

Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?

The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Rolling Stone

The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek

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.”

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.”

Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study

While some high-profile priests are maligned from both in and beyond the Church, The Catholic University of America published its National Study of Catholic Priests.

“You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?”

— Matthew 7:16

January 11, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

In 2005, Catholic League President Bill Donohue was interviewed on the NBC Today show about accusations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests — some sadly true, but some also sadly false. Citing the case against me as an example, he said, “There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.”

Catholic priests in the United States have long been under assault from the news media, from activist groups, and at times even from within the Church. As most readers know, I have been the subject of many published articles, but not because I have been accused. It is because I strenuously refute the accusations as false. Much evidence has amassed in support of that. For some reason, this poses a threat to some nefarious agendas built around the sex abuse crisis in the Church.

When accused priests defend themselves in online media, seeding articles with vile comments using fake screen names had long been a tactic of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an organization that sought not so much to support legitimate victims, but to maximize monetary awards and media condemnation. Its representatives terrorized Church officials with media manipulation whenever any accused priest is defended in the court of public opinion.

Despite all that, some standout news media have bravely produced articles and commentary against the tide of public vitriol about accused priests. The Wall Street Journal recently published its fourth such article about the case against me. The most recent was by Boston Attorney Harvey Silverglate entitled “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.” This generated some excellent analysis by David F. Pierre, Jr. moderator of The Media Report. Those and other articles appear in our featured section, The Wall Street Journal.

I have much gratitude for Dorothy Rabinowitz, Harvey Silverglate, Ryan MacDonald, Bill Donohue, and David F. Pierre, Jr. for their valiant efforts to correct the public record. Without their truthful courage, I was at the mercy of nefarious means driven mostly by progressive political agendas and litigious greed. Most recently, however, even some bold Catholic writers have taken up the subject of Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.

The National Study of Catholic Priests

When I was first accused, my bishop and diocese published a press release declaring, without evidence, that I victimized not only my accusers, but the entire Catholic Church. That bishop’s successor later went on record to state his informed belief that I am innocent and should never have been in prison. Then his successor chose only to shun me, and to release my name on a public list of the “credibly” accused. He did this, he stated, for “transparency,” but that transparency has been highly selective.

My own experience leaves me with no trust at all that my bishop could, or would even try, to discern guilt from false witness in defense of me or any accused priest. Trust and distrust as the fallout from the scandal are now central issues in a recently published survey of 10,000 U.S. priests sponsored by The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I highly recommend reviewing a report on the study results entitled, “The National Study of Catholic Priests: A Time of Crisis.” It was the largest study on the state of the priesthood in fifty years. Here is an overview of its parameters:

“Over the last two decades, the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has significantly eroded the trust between laity and clergy... Since the earliest days of the Dallas Charter there have been concerns that the bishops’ understandable eagerness to crack down on abusive priests was coming at the expense of due process protections for the accused: a de facto policy of ‘guilty until proven innocent.’ These concerns have been exacerbated by an expansion in the scope of the Church’s anti-abuse policies coupled with a perceived double standard in the way allegations against bishops have been handled in comparison to priests.”

Father Roger Landry, a columnist for the National Catholic Register, has an excellent analysis of The Catholic University of America study entitled, “Repairing the Relationship Between Priests and Bishops.”

The findings of the study are based on the responses of the thousands of U.S. priests who participated and submitted completed surveys. Given the difficult period of the last 20 years since the U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter was enacted, some of these responses are surprising, and point to the depth of commitment, spiritual life, optimism and resiliency of most priests. Most priests reported a high level of satisfaction in their ministry. A stunning 77% of priests self-reported that they are flourishing in their vocation.

Among the results, however, are some big red flags: 82% of priests report living with a fear of being falsely accused and left with no defense; 45% of priests report that they experience at least one symptom of ministry burnout, while 9% described their level of burnout as severe, and characterized by high levels of stress and emotional and physical exhaustion. Reports of high stress came particularly from younger priests. (I will get back to this later) .

The biggest concern among priests is related to the toll and fallout of the U.S. Bishops’ collective response to the sex abuse crisis in the Church. The sense of vulnerability among priests and their trust level for their bishops are the two most significant areas of negative fallout from the crisis.

In his NC Register column linked above, Father Roger Landry points to what I have called a disaster in the relationship between bishops and priests: the drafting and enactment of the 2002 “Dallas Charter” which imposed a draconian standard of “zero tolerance” and one-strike-and-you’re-out in response to any “credible” accusation against a priest. For an analysis of this standard of evidence, see my post, “The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests.”

Father Landry reports that the drafting of these policies in 2002 was done “hurriedly and under enormous pressure from the press, lawsuits and furious faithful.” Priests in the current study actually appreciated the efforts to respond to the crisis openly and with transparency. “But the priests surveyed gave stark testimony to the harms that have come from what the bishops in Dallas left out of balance.”

Guilty for Being Accused

The Vatican and Catholic hierarchy were unfairly maligned throughout publicity on “The Scandal.” At one point, SNAP partnered with the far-left, New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights to bring a crimes-against-humanity charge against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Some of the false claims against me were employed to shame Pope Benedict on a global scale. The scheme was nothing more than a publicity stunt to embarrass the Church into maximizing financial settlements. Many of its claims, including those against me were exposed as a fraud. Journalist Joann Wypijewski exposed this story in “Oscar Hangover Special: Why “Spotlight” Is a Terrible Film.”

Only in the Catholic Church is the highest echelon of governance blamed for the lowest level of misbehavior. Even in his later years, Benedict was demonized by German Catholics and others eager for any reason to blame him for the abuses of the past. Of interest, in the State of New Hampshire where I live more than 900 men between the ages of 20 and 50 have open lawsuits alleging systemic sexual abuse by State agents in the State’s juvenile detention facilities. Not one media outlet, not one victim group, not one of the victims themselves has blamed any of this on any present or former governor. This State carried out a witch-hunt in 2002 when the accused were Catholic priests. It is now confirmed that simultaneous to the witch-hunt was an active cover-up of the malfeasance of State agents.

As stated above, 82% of priests now report that they feel vulnerable to false accusations of sexual abuse that under existing policy will summarily end their ministry without due process. Compounding this fear, many report that they would be treated as guilty and left without support unless they could prove their innocence. Sixty-four percent said they would be left without support or resources to mount a defense, and almost half, 49%, think they would not be supported by their bishop. Father Landry added a sobering understanding of the reality:

“In most dioceses, when a priest is accused, he loses his home, his job, his good name — all within hours. He is removed immediately from his rectory and parish assignment, prevented from public ministry for the length of what is often an inexcusably glacial investigation, and required to dress like a layman. A press release is published in which the priest’s reputation is injured, if not ruined. He needs to exhaust his meager savings or beg and borrow money to hire a lawyer. Most excruciatingly, he has to linger for months or years under suspicion of being a sadistic pervert as well as a hypocrite to the faith for which he has given his life.”

Given the reality that most claims against priests are many years or decades old, establishing clear evidence is difficult if not impossible. So the bishops adopted what they called the “credible” standard. It means only that if a priest and an accuser lived in the same parish or community 20, 30, or 40 years ago, the accusation is “credible” on its face. No one in America but a Catholic priest could lose his livelihood, his reputation, sometimes even his freedom, under such a standard. I exposed one such case in “The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe.”

I am most appreciative to Father Roger Landry and the National Catholic Register for their bold and transparent analysis of what actually happens to an accused priest. By taking all the steps a diocese or bishop imposes above, such a priest is effectually silenced and unable to defend himself at all.

Stress along the fault lines between bishops and priests that these policies have caused is also clear in the survey. There is a wide disparity between how bishops view themselves and how they are viewed by their priests. Seventy-three percent of bishops reported viewing priests as their brothers. Only 28% of priests reported that their bishops treat them that way.

The disconnect revealed itself in several other ways as well: 70% of bishops reported that they are spiritual fathers to their priests while only 28% of priests thought the same. Father Landry reported that the biggest disconnect relates to a priest who is struggling. Ninety-percent of bishops reported that they would be present to and supportive of a struggling priest while only 36% of priests thought that this is true.

The Double Standard

Also evident in both the survey and Father Landry’s analysis of it is the double standard created when bishops failed to hold themselves accountable to the same standards imposed on their priests. In 2002, as the Charter was being debated during the U.S. Bishops Conference at Dallas, Cardinal Avery Dulles published a landmark article in America magazine entitled “The Rights of Accused Priests.”

The article was cheered by priests but largely ignored by bishops. Cardinal Dulles cited a 2000 pastoral initiative of the U.S. bishops entitled “Responsibility and Rehabilitation.” It criticized the U.S. justice system for the establishment of one-size-fits-all norms such as “zero tolerance” and “one strike and you’re out.” Then the same bishops, in a media panic, imposed those same standards on their priests.

But none of it ever applied to accusations against bishops, a reality that Father Landry described as “a double standard that profoundly affected their relationship [with priests].” While deliberating adoption of the Dallas Charter, the bishops removed the word “cleric,” which could have included bishops, and replaced it with “priests and deacons.” Now 51% of priests report that they do not have confidence in their bishop while 70% report a lack of confidence in bishops in general.

In a 2019 apostolic letter, Vos Estis Lux Mundi, Pope Francis addressed some of the disparities with mixed results. Father Landry points out that investigations of bishops, even in allegations of past sexual abuse, “seldom involve the draconian measures experienced by priests.”

I have written of a glaring example in my own diocese. Citing a desire for “transparency,” and with no one pressuring him to do so, my bishop proactively published in 2019 a list of the names and status of 73 priests of this diocese who had been “credibly” accused over fifty years. Most are deceased. Weeks later, a New Hampshire Superior Court judge barred publication of information from a grand jury investigation which was the source for most of the Bishop’s list. Ryan MacDonald wrote of the reasons for that in “Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm On the Priesthood.”

Months after publishing his list, my bishop was himself accused in a civil lawsuit in the Diocese of Rockville Center, New York. He was unjustly caught up in the political fallout of former New york Governor Andrew Cuomo who generated the claims when he signed into law an exemption window in which old time-barred accusations can be brought forward after the statute of limitations had run. I defended my bishop in a widely read post, “Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

Conservative Priests Face Greater Scrutiny

I mentioned above that I would revisit one finding of this report — that younger priests experience more stress than older priests. A separate research report on Catholic priests by the Austin Institute has documented that younger priests tend to be more conservative and traditional than older priests. That bears out from observations of our readers who find this distinction to be a positive development. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Vatican Correspondent Francis X. Rocca reported on this in “Catholic Ideological Split Widens” (Dec.19, 2022):

“U.S. Catholic bishops elected conservative leaders last month, continuing to resist a push from Pope Francis to put issues such as climate change and poverty on par with the bishops’ declared priority of opposing abortion.”

The bishops appointed by Pope Francis tend to mirror his priorities. His recent elevation of San Diego Archbishop Robert McElroy, a leading liberal among U.S. bishops, to the College of Cardinals is an example. There is thus a growing disparity in liberal vs. conservative views as newly appointed bishops are more liberal while priests newly emerging from U.S. seminaries are more conservative and traditional.

Since the 1980s, successive annual ordinations have grown more conservative. Each successive 10-year grouping in the ordained priesthood supports Church teaching on moral and theological issues more strongly than the one before it. Those ordained after 2010, as a whole, are most conservative. When seminarians and younger priests do not have their views of the Church and Catholic practice affirmed, stress develops and increases. Younger U.S. priests represent a generation disillusioned with ideas of progress and religious pluralism, and the abandonment of the Church’s prolife charism in favor of topics like climate change.

This leaves a widening chasm between Pope Francis, his Episcopal appointments, and younger priests in the United States. The Catholic Project study also reveals that almost 80% of priests ordained before 1980 approve strongly of Pope Francis while only 20% of those ordained after 2010 share that view. Is their priestly interest in respect for tradition a plague upon the Church?

Or is it the whispering of the Holy Spirit?

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This brief essay from American Thinker by Attorney Franklin Friday is perhaps the best commentary on the future Church after the death of Pope Benedict XVI, and not only because I am in it. Please read and share this timely article: No Easy Road for Men of God.

You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests

Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm On the Priesthood

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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend some some time before the Lord in a place that holds great spiritual meaning for us.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Pope Francis is suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass at the same time the Chinese Communist Party is suppressing Tibetan Buddhism, and for the same stated reason.

August 4, 2021

A lot of ink is now being spilled in Catholic circles about a new Motu Proprio — an Apostolic Letter — of Pope Francis announced on Friday, July 16, 2021, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Pope Francis has placed severe restrictions on celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Effective immediately, his restrictions include a mandate barring newly organized celebrations of the TLM and its celebration in any parish church. Further, newly ordained priests will need the written consent of their bishops who in turn must consult the Holy See before approval is granted to celebrate the Traditional (Extraordinary) Form of the Mass.

Pope Francis has imposed these restrictions without explanation in open contradiction of a 2014 Motu Proprio of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who permitted celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass without preconditions and without consent from a bishop. Some of the best early reaction to this new and draconian development has come from Father John Zuhlsdorf (Father Z’s Blog, “Reactions to Traditionis Custodes.”)

“Fathers ... change nothing, do nothing differently for now. It is not rational to leap around without mapping the mine field we are entering. Keep calm and carry on.

“Lay people ... be temperate. Set your faces like flint. When you are on fire, it avails you nothing to run around flapping your arms. Drop and roll and be calm.

“To those of you who have put your heart and goods and hopes into supporting and building the Traditional Latin Mass, thank you. Do not for a moment despair or wonder if what you did was worth the effort, time, cost and suffering. It was worth it. It still is.”

— Father John Zuhlsdorf, July 16, 2021

Father Z adds pointedly, “I am forced to remark that the vulgarity of this document is matched only by its cruelty.”

For my part, I cannot help but wonder what Pope Francis might have been thinking at Mass just two days later as he listened to the First Reading on the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Was he at all conscious that Catholics all over the world were hearing the same rebuke from the Prophet Jeremiah that he heard that Sunday?

“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but ... I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands and bring them back to their meadow ... I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 23:1-6

A Catholic Unraveling in Germany

I have been searching for a more panoramic map of the mine field Father Z says we are now entering, and I think I may have found some of its initial rumblings. While reading Volume Two of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell, I came upon his entry for 9 August 2019, the feast of Edith Stein, St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. I wrote about her once in "Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz."

Edith Stein was German by birth. In his book, Cardinal Pell advises readers to seek her intercession for the Church in Germany. Cardinal Pell quoted Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

“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 don’t speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the sacraments, and faith, hope, and love.”

— p. 75

It gets worse. Later in Prison Journal, in an entry dated 16 October 2019, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about the German Catholic Church fears of the possibility of schism that have been raised there. If allowed to happen, such a break would sweep much of Europe. Cardinal Pell referred to a Catholic Culture article by Philip Lawler entitled, “Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?” (September 17, 2019):

“Lawler argues that the prospect of a schism is remote, but Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect, saying he is not frightened by it, something Lawler believes is frightening in itself.”

— Prison Journal Volume Two, p. 214

Cardinal Pell spoke of earlier confidence about the unlikelihood of a schism, but acknowledged that “the odds against it have shortened.” He added, while again citing Philip Lawler:

“Not surprisingly, the New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a schism by the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States, the Gospel Catholics ... I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘recognize that 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 Two, p. 214-215

It was that final sentence that caught my attention after hearing these new restrictions imposed by Pope Francis on the Traditional Latin Mass. Are we now witnessing the opening salvo of such a manipulated agenda? Is there a move under way to antagonize conservative and traditional Catholics into breaking away?

The Pope and the Chinese Communist Party

I am certain this was not by design, but on the day after this announcement by Pope Francis, the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal carried a stunning pair of articles. If you are unable to view them without a subscription, I will summarize their major points here.

The first was entitled, “Beijing Targets Tibet for Assimilation” by Liza Lin, Eva Xaio, and Jonathan Cheng. The assimilation referred to is better described as suppression, and it needs a little historical background.

Twelve centuries had passed between the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in AD 747 and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gaining control of China in 1949. By 1950, the CCP came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.

As such, the Dalai Lama is spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the ex officio ruler of Tibet since the Eighth Century. In 1959, during the Chinese Communist oppression of Tibet, the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India where he has remained since. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading a nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese claims to rule Tibet.

Xi Jinping, President of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has as his national priority the forging of a single Chinese identity centered on unity and Party loyalty. His agenda has placed new restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism and has launched an effort to replace the traditional Tibetan language with Mandarin Chinese while insisting on courses designed for indoctrination in socialism and the CCP.

The Dalai Lama, in exile in India, is now 86 years old. His eventual death is expected to trigger a clash with the Chinese government over control of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the major points of Chinese suppression is a CCP claim that it has the right to identify and choose the Dalai Lama’s “reincarnation,” and thus obtain full control over the heart of Tibetan religion and identity. In late 2020, President Xi Jinping demanded an effort to make Tibetan Buddhism “compatible with a socialist identity.”

This affront to Tibet’s religious freedom actually has a strange sort of precedent. In 2019, Pope Francis signed a concordat — the tenets of which are still secret — in which he agreed to a Chinese Communist Party demand to choose Catholic bishops in the State-approved Chinese Catholic church. This has since translated into increased harassment and suppression of the underground Catholic Church for which many have suffered for their loyalty to Rome.

Pope Francis and the Threat of Schism

A second major article, this one by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca, appeared on the same day in The Wall Street Journal, again just two days after the announced suppression of the Latin Mass. Its title asks an ominous question: “Is Pope Francis Leading the Church to Schism?” The Pope has used some of the same reasoning and language in restricting the TLM that Xi Jinping uses while suppressing Tibetan Buddhism. Pope Francis cites “unity” as his principal reason and goal, but its effect seems the opposite.

Two years after Cardinal Pell wrote from his prison cell with dismal foreboding about the state of the Church in Germany, Francis X. Rocca quoted Cardinal Rainer Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne and leader of the conservative minority of German bishops. He warned that the current wave of dissent sweeping Germany could lead to schism and/or the formation of a German national church. Rocca reports that similar warnings have been echoed by cardinals and bishops of other European countries.

Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked for prayers for the universal Church and the bishops of Germany “that they step back from this radical rupture.” Schism is more a threat to the Catholic Church than any other because, as Rocca points out, its “core identity [of being Catholic] is inextricably tied to its global unity under the pope.”

In my recent post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul,” I wrote briefly about the 2014 Synod on the Family and the controversial document penned by Pope Francis, “Amoris Laetitia.” During the Synod, the Catholic Bishops of Africa emerged as a bloc opposed to the liberalizing views on sexuality and divorce proposed by the Germans. In an Easter sermon this year, African Cardinal Philippe Ouedraogo urged African Christians to “rebel against the imperialism of certain lobbies and associations [in the Church] which advocate and want to impose same-sex marriage, socio-sexual debauchery, and divorce.”

Francis X. Rocca writes that Pope Francis has played down these concerns of the African bishops who, in my view, are the future of the Church’s moral integrity. For a glimpse of the mindset at work in the German church, consider this statement by Joachim Frank, a German journalist who is taking part in the synod there. He described the work of the synod:

“There was this sense of movement, of change, another spirit, another type of church after these boring and very painful years of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”

In his 26-year papacy, Saint John Paul II is widely considered to have almost single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union and ended European communism. To dismiss his papacy and that of Benedict XVI as “boring and painful” is to break, not with Catholic tradition, but with reality.

The trending Catholic mindset of Germany and most of Europe should not steer the Barge of Peter and the moral authority and praxis of the Church. In Germany, before the 2019-2021 pandemic, only about nine-percent of Catholics attended Mass on a regular basis. Among African Catholics, regular Mass participation is the world’s highest. By 2050, there will be twice as many Catholics in Africa than in Europe.

Throughout Asia, Catholicism is relatively small, but growing, and even though small it has a large footprint. In Thailand, Catholics account for only about one-percent of the population, but they leave a large footprint on the culture because of their orthodox commitment to living their faith, often heroically.

Our friend, Pornchai Moontri, told me that in the five months he has lived in Thailand, he has heard Masses in Thai, Vietnamese, and even Lao, but beyond the visible familiarity of the Mass, he has understood little of what he hears. “If the Church had kept Latin,” he recently said, “this would not happen.” He pointed out rather wisely that in the mobile culture this world has become, a universal language promotes unity instead of detracting from it.

There is one hope still for proponents of the Traditional Latin Mass. It is found in Canon 87 of the Code of Canon Law:

“A diocesan bishop, whenever he judges that it contributes to their spiritual good, is able to dispense the faithful from universal and particular disciplinary laws issued for his territory on his subjects by the Supreme Authority of the Church.”

In other words, approval for continued celebrations of Mass in the Extraordinary Form now falls to individual bishops. However, I remain concerned about one major point raised by Cardinal George Pell citing Catholic Culture’ s Phil Lawler. I mentioned it above, but it must be emphasized:

“I believe Lawler’s diagnosis is correct when he points out that the topic of schism has been raised by the ‘busiest and most aggressive online defenders’ of Pope Francis who ‘’ecognize that 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 Two, p . 214 -215

Conservative and traditional Catholics must not concede to this by schism. You are the Church, and Her most faithful manifestation. It is a quandary why Pope Francis now points to you as “divisive” while remaining silent about the rampant heresies arising out of the progressive German church. I can only conclude with the last two lines of a famous poem by Dylan Thomas written in the year I was born:

"Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

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Please share this post. You may also like this recommended reading by Father Gordon MacRae:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz