“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
The Vatican Today: Cardinal George Pell’s Last Gift to the Church
In 2022 Vatican reporter Sandro Magister wrote of a memorandum by an anonymous author named Demos that circulated among cardinals who will elect a future pope. The identity of Demos is now revealed.
Jeff Grant | CNS
In 2022 Vatican reporter Sandro Magister wrote of a memorandum by an anonymous author named Demos that circulated among cardinals who will elect a future pope. The identity of Demos is now revealed.
February 15, 2023 by George Cardinal Pell with a Forward by Father Gordon MacRae
Forward: After publishing “Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell” one week ago, I received a letter from Sheryl C. Collmer, a writer for Crisis Magazine from Tyler, Texas. Readers may recall that Sheryl was my intermediary with Cardinal Pell during his unjust imprisonment as described in that post. The following is an excerpt from her recent letter:
“I know you were heartbroken, as was I, at the news of Cardinal Pell’s death. … I had also been disappointed that he had not published much after he was released from prison. I was expecting perhaps a gun-blazing, fire-spouting, verbal whirlwind of orthodoxy. I think I was hoping he would ‘rescue’ the Church from the downward spiral we are in. … But when I read the ‘Demos’ letter, BAM! There is the Pell I was hoping for! The reason I admired Cardinal Pell from the first was because he was a fighter for the truth.”
When I learned that the author of the “Demos” (Greek for “people”) letter was Cardinal Pell, I felt compelled to share this with our readers. What follows is Cardinal George Pell’s last gift to the faithful.
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The Vatican Today
Commentators of every school, if for different reasons … agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.
The Successor of St. Peter is the rock on which the Church is built, a major source and cause of worldwide unity. Historically (St. Irenaeus), the Pope and the Church of Rome have a unique role in preserving the apostolic tradition, the rule of faith, in ensuring that the Churches continue to teach what Christ and the apostles taught. Previously it was: “Roma locuta. Causa finita est.” Today it is: “Roma loquitur. Confusio augetur.”
(A) The German synod speaks on homosexuality, women priests, communion for the divorced. The Papacy is silent.
(B) Cardinal Hollerich rejects the Christian teaching on sexuality. The Papacy is silent. This is doubly significant because the Cardinal is explicitly heretical; he does not use code or hints. If the Cardinal were to continue without Roman correction, this would represent another deeper breakdown of discipline, with few (any?) precedents in history. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith must act and speak.
(C) The silence is emphasised when contrasted with the active persecution of the Traditionalists and the contemplative convents.
The Christo-centricity of teaching is being weakened; Christ is being moved from the centre. Sometimes Rome even seems to be confused about the importance of a strict monotheism, hinting at some wider concept of divinity; not quite pantheism, but like a Hindu panentheism variant.
(A) Pachamama is idolatrous; perhaps it was not intended as such initially.
(B) The contemplative nuns are being persecuted and attempts are being made to change the teachings of the charismatics.
(C) The Christo-centric legacy of St. John Paul II in faith and morals is under systematic attack. Many of the staff of the Roman Institute for the Family have been dismissed; most students have left. The Academy for Life is gravely damaged, e.g., some members recently supported assisted suicide. The Pontifical Academies have members and visiting speakers who support abortion.
The lack of respect for the law in the Vatican risks becoming an international scandal. These issues have been crystalized through the present Vatican trial of ten accused of financial malpractices, but the problem is older and wider.
(A) The Pope has changed the law four times during the trial to help the prosecution.
(B) Cardinal Becciu has not been treated justly because he was removed from his position and stripped of his cardinalatial dignities without any trial. He did not receive due process. Everyone has a right to due process.
(C) As the Pope is head of the Vatican state and the source of all legal authority, he has used this power to intervene in legal procedures.
(D) The Pope sometimes (often) rules by papal decrees (motu proprio) which eliminate the right to appeal of those affected.
(E) Many staff, often priests, have been summarily dismissed from the Vatican Curia, often without good reason.
(F) Phone tapping is regularly practised. I am not sure how often it is authorized.
(G) In the English case against Torzi, the judge criticised the Vatican prosecutors harshly. They are either incompetent and/or were nobbled, prevented from giving the full picture.
(H) The raid by the Vatican Gendarmeria, led by Dr. Giani in 2017 on the auditor’s (Libero Milone) office on Italian territory was probably illegal and certainly intimidating and violent. It is possible that evidence against Milone was fabricated.
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(A) The financial situation of the Vatican is grave. For the past ten years (at least), there have nearly always been financial deficits. Before COVID, these deficits ranged around €20 million annually. For the last three years, they have been around €30-35 million annually. The problems predate both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict.
(B) The Vatican is facing a large deficit in the Pensions Fund. Around 2014 the experts from COSEA estimated the deficit would be around €800 million in 2030. This was before COVID.
(C) It is estimated that the Vatican has lost €217 million on the Sloane Avenue property in London. In the 1980’s, the Vatican was forced to pay out $230 million after the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. Through inefficiency and corruption during the past 25-30 years, the Vatican has lost at least another €100 million, and it probably would be much higher (perhaps 150-200 million).
(D) Despite the Holy Father’s recent decision, the process of investing has not been centralized (as recommended by COSEA in 2014 and attempted by the Secretariat for the Economy in 2015-16) and remains immune to expert advice. For decades, the Vatican has dealt with disreputable financiers avoided by all respectable bankers in Italy.
(E) The return on the 5261 Vatican properties remains scandalously low. In 2019, the return (before COVID) was nearly $4,500 a year. In 2020, it was €2,900 per property.
(F) The changing role of Pope Francis in the financial reforms (incomplete but substantial progress as far as reducing crime is concerned, much less successful, except at IOR, in terms of profitability) is a mystery and an enigma.
Initially the Holy Father strongly backed the reforms. He then prevented the centralization of investments, opposed the reforms and most attempts to unveil corruption, and supported (then) Archbishop Becciu, at the centre of Vatican financial establishment. Then in 2020, the Pope turned on Becciu and eventually ten persons were placed on trial and charged. Over the years, few prosecutions were attempted from AIF reports of infringements.
The external auditors Price Waterhouse and Cooper were dismissed and the Auditor General Libero Milone was forced to resign on trumped up charges in 2017. They were coming too close to the corruption in the Secretariat of State.
The political influence of Pope Francis and the Vatican is negligible. Intellectually, Papal writings demonstrate a decline from the standard of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Decisions and policies are often “politically correct”, but there have been grave failures to support human rights in Venezuela, Hong Kong, mainland China, and now in the Russian invasion.
There has been no public support for the loyal Catholics in China who have been intermittently persecuted for their loyally to the Papacy for more than 70 years. No public Vatican support for the Catholic community in Ukraine, especially the Greek Catholics.
These issues should be revisited by the next Pope. The Vatican’s political prestige is now at a low ebb.
At a different, lower level, the situation of Tridentine traditionalists (Catholic) should be regularised.
At a further and lower level, the celebration of “individual” and small group Masses in the mornings in St. Peter’s Basilica should be permitted once again. At the moment, this great basilica is like a desert in the early morning.
The COVID crisis has covered up the large decline in the number of pilgrims attending Papal audiences and Masses.
The Holy Father has little support among seminarians and young priests and wide-spread disaffection exists in the Vatican Curia.
The Next Conclave
The College of Cardinals has been weakened by eccentric nominations and has not been reconvened after the rejection of Cardinal Kasper’s views in the 2014 consistory. Many Cardinals are unknown to one another, adding a new dimension of unpredictability to the next conclave.
After Vatican II, Catholic authorities often underestimated the hostile power of secularization, the world, flesh, and the devil, especially in the Western world and overestimated the influence and strength of the Catholic Church.
We are weaker than 50 years ago and many factors are beyond our control, in the short term at least, e.g. the decline in the number of believers, the frequency of Mass attendance, the demise or extinction of many religious orders.
The Pope does not need to be the world’s best evangelist, nor a political force. The successor of Peter, as head of the College of Bishops, also successors of the Apostles, has a foundational role for unity and doctrine. The new pope must understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ and Catholic practices. It does not come from adapting to the world or from money.
The first tasks of the new pope will be to restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition. Theological expertise and learning are an advantage, not a hinderance for all bishops and especially archbishops.
These are necessary foundations for living and preaching the Gospel.
If the synodal gatherings continue around the world, they will consume much time and money, probably distracting energy from evangelization and service rather than deepening these essential activities.
If the national or continental synods are given doctrinal authority, we will have a new danger to world-wide Church unity, whereby e.g., the German church holds doctrinal views not shared by other Churches and not compatible with the apostolic tradition.
If there was no Roman correction of such heresy, the Church would be reduced to a loose federation of local Churches, holding different views, probably closer to an Anglican or Protestant model, than an Orthodox model.
An early priority for the next pope must be to remove and prevent such a threatening development, by requiring unity in essentials and not permitting unacceptable doctrinal differences. The morality of homosexual activity will be one such flash point.
While the younger clergy and seminarians are almost completely orthodox, sometimes quite conservative, the new Pope will need to be aware of the substantial changes effected on the Church’s leadership since 2013, perhaps especially in South and Central America. There is a new spring in the step of the Protestant liberals in the Catholic Church.
Schism is not likely to occur from the left, who often sit lightly to doctrinal issues. Schism is more likely to come from the right and is always possible when liturgical tensions are inflamed and not dampened.
Unity in the essentials. Diversity in the non-essentials. Charity on all issues.
Despite the dangerous decline in the West and the inherent fragility and instability in many places, serious consideration should be given to the feasibility of a visitation on the Jesuit Order. They are in a situation of catastrophic numerical decline from 36,000 members during the Council to less than 16,000 in 2017 (with probably 20-25% above 75 years of age). In some places, there is catastrophic moral decline.
The order is highly centralized, susceptible to reform or damage from the top. The Jesuit charism and contribution have been and are so important to the Church that they should not be allowed to pass away into history undisturbed or become simply an Asian-African community.
The disastrous decline in Catholic numbers and Protestant expansion in South America should be addressed. It was scarcely mentioned in the Amazonian Synod.
Obviously, a lot of work is needed on the financial reforms in the Vatican, but this should not be the most important criterion in the selection of the next Pope.
The Vatican has no substantial debts but continuing annual deficits will eventually lead to bankruptcy. Obviously, steps will be taken to remedy this, to separate the Vatican from criminal accomplices and balance revenue and expenditure. The Vatican will need to demonstrate competence and integrity to attract substantial donations to help with this problem.
Despite the improved financial procedures and greater clarity, continuing financial pressures represent a major challenge, but they are much less important than the spiritual and doctrinal threats facing the Church, especially in the First World.
Demos
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Cardinal Pell had another final message for Catholics: “Be not afraid.” It was on his coat of arms. Please share this important post, which gives much hope to faithful Catholics concerned for the future of the Church. You may also like these related posts:
Paths I Crossed with Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell
Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study
One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanow. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend 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.”
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.
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
