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.”

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Covering unrelated stories of the trial of the late Cardinal George Pell and the notorious Hunter Biden laptop, Miranda Devine deserves a Pulitzer for journalistic integrity.

May 25, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I never imagined that I would be writing a post with Cardinal George Pell and Hunter Biden’s notorious “Laptop from Hell ” sharing the same title. The connections are circumstantial, but once I stumbled upon them, I knew I had my title for this post.

In both stories, the mainstream news media brought little light, but lots of heat, while exposing little truth beyond its own vile bias. In the case of Cardinal Pell’s unjust imprisonment, much of the news media in both Australia and America embraced a wildly imaginative narrative filled with holes to presume his guilt with no evidence. Being sent to prison is by no means an indication of guilt. In the case of Hunter Biden, both mainstream media and social media teamed up to cover up the explosive story before the 2020 presidential election. It was a true account that citizens of a free and open society had a right to know.

In both stories, one journalist distinguished herself as a champion of journalistic courage and integrity for pursuing and publishing the truth despite immense pressure to adhere to the media’s availability bias. That journalist is Miranda Devine who covered the Pell case in Australia while single-handedly exposing the Hunter Biden laptop story for the New York Post.

Back in October, 2021, Ryan MacDonald wrote a post in these pages entitled, “Fr. Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell.” Ryan included in that post several pages from Cardinal Pell’s book, Prison Journal Volume 2 which was widely read across the globe.

The paragraphs that Ryan reprinted from the book were about me. I read them repeatedly, not because I like to see my name in print, but because I had a subconscious nagging sense that I was missing something. Then, just weeks ago, it struck me. In one paragraph, my name appears along with that of Miranda Devine. Why would that be important? It wasn’t at first, but in subsequent readings it leapt out at me. Here’s the story:

From the Cardinal Pell Journal

On May 15, 2019, three years to the day before typing this post, I published a carefully researched article entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Sheryl Collmer, a reader of this blog from Texas who writes for American Thinker and Catholic World Report, mailed a copy of my article to Cardinal Pell, then still in an Australian prison having lost his first appeal. From half a world away, Cardinal Pell pondered my article and then wrote about it on August 2, 2019 in the journal he kept in his cell. Here are excerpts:

“By a coincidence, today I received from Sheryl [Collmer], a regular correspondent from Texas, a copy of the 15 May 2019 post on the blog These Stone Walls written by Fr Gordon MacRae. The article was entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 and sentenced to sixty-seven years in a New Hampshire prison for crimes allegedly committed around 15 to 20 years previously. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration.”

Cardinal Pell went on in his journal to analyze my article and why I believed his trial was scripted from another unrelated case in the United States. A sensational and distorted account of that case appeared in both the U.S. and Australia in Rolling Stone magazine by a now disgraced former journalist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. In several paragraphs, Cardinal Pell described my 2019 article:

“Fr MacRae recounts extraordinary similarities between the accusations I faced and accusations of Billy Doe in Philadelphia which were published in Australia in 2011 in the magazine Rolling Stone, pointing out that there are far too many similarities in the stories for them to be explained by coincidence. The author of the 2011 Rolling Stone article was Sabrina Rubin Erdely, no longer a journalist, disgraced and discredited.

“In 2014 she had written, and provoked a storm which reached Obama’s White House, about ‘Jackie’ at the University of Virginia who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012 by seven men. As Fr MacRae points out, ‘The story was accepted as gospel truth once it appeared in print.’ Jackie’s account turned out to be a massive lie. A civil trial followed; the seven students were awarded $7.5 million in damages by the jury and Rolling Stone was found guilty of negligence and defamation.

“No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations, or the innocent basis for the remarkable similarities, was also a fantasy or a fiction.”

Cardinal George Pell, Prison Journal Volume 2 : pp 57-60

Cardinal Pell did not know it at the time, but I had already posted articles on the story of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s dubious article about accusations against Philadelphia priests by the anonymous “Billy Doe” in 2011, and her equally dubious account of gang rape at the University of Virginia. The most recent of my articles was, “The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone.”

Now Comes Miranda Devine

After reading Cardinal Pell’s book, I set it aside happy to have been of some hope and encouragement during his unjust time of imprisonment. Cardinal Pell concluded in his journal:

“I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause, as I am to many others. These include in North America George Weigel and Fr Raymond de Souza and here in Australia Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Fr Frank Brennan, and others behind the scenes.”

Prison Journal Volume 2, p. 60

Many months after reading Cardinal Pell’s journal, I took up another book ordered for me by a friend. It was Laptop from Hell (Post Hill Press 2021), a now notorious account by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine. My friend told me that the first printing sold out within weeks at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble so it was placed on backorder for me. It arrived in early March, 2022 and I began to read its shocking pages.

I immediately recognized its author, Miranda Devine, as the now famous New York Post columnist who nearly upended the U.S. presidential election in 2020. But I also knew that I had seen her name somewhere else. It turned out that it was in that passage from Cardinal Pell above. I was surprised to see both my name and that of Miranda Devine in the same paragraph.

I had not known until then that Ms. Devine wrote boldly in defense of Cardinal Pell against a tidal wave of progressive criticism in both Australia and the United States. Among her several articles on the Pell case was her last one, “Finally, Justice for George Cardinal Pell” published in the New York Post on April 7, 2020. Three weeks later I published, “From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”

There were several articles in the left-leaning Australian news media deeply critical of Ms. Miranda Devine for her defense of Cardinal Pell. She thus became, in my view, a champion of journalistic integrity. Such champions are few and far between now, but they keep alive the notion that fair, just, and courageous journalism is all that stands between us and the demise of democracy.

In the Bill of Rights, Freedom of the Press has long been regarded as fundamental to individual rights. Without a free media, a free society and democratic self-government would not be possible. Nonetheless, in October 2020, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and almost all network news media and social media banded together with an unprecedented decision to keep the American people from learning the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the presidential election.

I was in shock by this at the time. It was the sort of thing that happens during elections in any number of banana republics, but here it was, in a full court press, shamefully happening in the United States. As a result, the New York Post’ s Facebook and Twitter accounts were blocked and any mention of the laptop or its contents by thousands of users (including me) was censored.

Laptop from Hell got its title from a Twitter message of then President Donald Trump who read of some of its contents in the New York Post, the sole U.S. media outlet with the integrity to publish the story. Then President Trump’s Twitter account was also suspended.

I followed this story closely in October, 2020 as it was shamelessly suppressed and censored by most U.S. news and social media. The more it was suppressed, the more alarmed I became. As a 19-year-old in 1972, I was riveted to the Watergate story and the heroism of the Washington Post coverage by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The story led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and criminal charges for some senior White House staff. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for it while the names “Woodward and Bernstein” became synonymous with journalistic courage and integrity.

Hunter Biden’s Laptop

Now, a half century later, the same Washington Post was actively suppressing a story of government corruption of equal importance solely for political bias. The pre-election weeks of October 2020 should have caused an uproar over the revelations by Miranda Devine in the New York Post about the explosive contents of a laptop abandoned in a repair shop by the Democratic presidential nominee’s son and never retrieved. The White House and Democratic Party went into circle-the-wagons mode, and most of the news media, setting aside their primary role to be a nonpartisan check and balance on government, joined them there.

Hunter Biden’s laptop was not the only thing abandoned. Its potential impact before a hotly contested election resulted in the abandonment of the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press as well. Polls about trust and confidence in the news media were off the charts after Watergate, but reached an all-time low even before “Huntergate” when they bottomed out completely. In the most recent Pew Research Center survey of news journalists, in which I was invited to take part, American trust and confidence in the news media is under six percent.

The story told by Miranda Devine in Laptop from Hell is both utterly painful and painfully necessary. A web of lies, cover-ups and corruption drove Richard Nixon from the White House in his second term in 1974, but by covering up the Hunter Biden story in 2020, the news media interfered in a presidential election and now leaves a stunned nation with a scandal of equal measure after just one year of the Biden administration. It was not patriotism that did this. It was the opposite of patriotism. It was partisanship.

The laptop consists of thousands of emails, video clips, and other material produced by Hunter Biden, son of then Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic Nominee. The contents reveal a shocking influence-peddling scheme by Hunter Biden who received millions of dollars for arranging influence from his then Vice President father with foreign entities in Ukraine, Russia, and China.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Legislative Judiciary Committee Member Adam Schiff, and seemingly every member on the Democratic sides of the House and Senate who were asked, including fifty former intelligence officers sworn to uphold the Constitution, all agreed to knowingly propagate a massive lie: that the laptop story “had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.”

That well-rehearsed lie was repeated to the American people by the Democratic nominee as he stared into the camera during the second Presidential Debate. It should be alarming that it was President Trump, and not the news media moderator, who brought it up in the first place.

I waded into this story a bit when I posted “A Soap Opera at CNN Amid the Winds of War” some months ago. It was posted just as Vladimir Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine was in its early stages. I wrote in that post that if the slowly published contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop are true, the President is compromised in foreign policy regarding Russia, Ukraine and China. I was certainly not the first or the last to raise this concern. The best coverage came from the least impaired news media, The Epoch Times, and a March 23, 2022 op-ed by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke, “The Foreign Policy Ramifications of Hunter’s Emails.”

We only know about this story at all today thanks to the dogged pursuit of it by Miranda Devine and the New York Post. And in U.S. news coverage of the wrongly convicted and imprisoned George Cardinal Pell, Miranda Devine and the New York Post were singular in their expression of journalistic skepticism about the flawed case against him. Mercifully, all seven members of Australia’s High Court agreed. If there is a Pulitzer for journalistic courage and integrity, it should have Miranda Devine’s name on it.

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Note from the Editor: Please share this post. Father Gordon MacRae will mark forty years of priesthood on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost. Please join us here next week on June 1st for a special post as he reflects on those years in the most extraordinary circumstances. You may also like these related posts:

The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone

From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell

Fr Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell

A Soap Opera at CNN Amid the Winds of War

The ‘Woke’ Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education

There are subtle and overt signs in our culture of a ‘woke’ agenda to revise our history, transform our values, and filter our ideas. Resistance is not yet futile.

October 20, 2021

There is a new feature on the menu of Beyond These Stone Walls called “Voices from Beyond.” The photo atop the new page is a radio astronomy telescope from the Very Large Array National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico. I chose the image because I spent some time studying there long ago. My adventure in radio astronomy was a happier time for me, but by “Voices from Beyond,” I didn’t mean quite that far beyond.

I meant the dozens of articles, editorials and other commentary about my situation and this blog that have been published in various other venues from the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell to The Wall Street Journal. We decided to collect some of them in one place, though it is a hefty task. We hope to add one or two examples each week. I hope you will check it out on occasion.

The “Voice” the new feature presents this week is that of Rod Dreher from The American Conservative for which he is an editor and major contributor. His commentary is about a “blood boiling” review of my trial by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal. We chose it even before I planned to write this post which also happens to feature the voice of Rod Dreher on a topic he calls “soft totalitarianism.” Coincidence is sometimes not very subtle.

Totalitarianism is an ideology in which all social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural and spiritual information is subordinated to a central authority. But before I get back to that and Rod Dreher, I must first explain what prompted this post. Even from behind these high walls, I see daily signs that our culture is being subtly molded to a radically revised agenda. It is chosen for us, and imposed on us, by an elitist few who require our conformity with it. Sometimes the nudge toward that agenda is so subtle that we barely notice and feel little pressure to resist.

“Woman, Behold Your Son.” (John 19:26)

Here’s a recent example that bows to the so-called “woke” cultural agenda to revise and impose new, and sometimes bizarre, language rules about gender. The American Civil Liberties Union has decided that the word “woman” no longer belongs in any reference to gender.

In a September 18, 2021 tweet about a pro-abortion quote from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the ACLU took it upon itself to edit out the word, “woman,” and replace it with “person” using editorial brackets. The ACLU, the guardian of civil liberties, also neutered the related pronoun from “her” to “their”:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity.”

Setting aside the fact that the ideology behind the Ginsburg quote disregards the “well-being and dignity” of the child’s life, the editing out of “woman” by the ACLU renders it ridiculous. Would any “person” other than a woman bear a child? Also, the gender neutral replacement pronoun, “their” instead of “her” adopts the rules of “wokeness” while discarding the rules of grammar. Is the denial of gender differences worth destroying the English language? Charles Cooke, writing at NationalReview.com, protested:

“[The ACLU] is an organization that once understood that even viewpoints widely considered odious deserved to be defeated in the marketplace of ideas, not with redaction tape. But it now seeks to retroactively alter the speech of public figures with whom it shares common cause to avoid offending those who deplore the idea that only women can have babies ... . This kind of thinking requires ‘the acceptance of the Soviet-esque idea’ that history ought to be revised to serve the current definition of ‘progress.’ ’’

The push now underway to eliminate gender distinctions is only just beginning, but the concerted effort to revise and replace the word “woman” only gets worse. The U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland (who was President Obama’s last minute, mercifully defeated, nominee to the Supreme Court) made a notation in a brief filed to combat a new Texas abortion law by substituting “women” with “any individuals who become pregnant.”

The White House budget proposal also replaced the word “mothers” with “birthing people.” In a September bill, House Democrats defended the use of “birthing people” by saying that it “reflects the majority of people” who might seek an abortion citing that ...

“... it is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy — cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender and others.”

It gets even worse. The distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, published an article on problems with menstruation by replacing the word, “women” with “bodies with vaginas.” After some people whose bodies fit that description objected, Richard Horton, The Lancet Editor-in-Chief, defended this as an attempt to reach “maximum inclusivity of all people.”

How far will we go to allow these substitutions for traditional terms that, for thousands of years, have described our identities and distinctions as human beings? Sacred Scripture has 4,976 references to man or men and 710 references to woman or women. In a very popular post awhile back, “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men,” I wrote that the word, “father” appears 1,932 times in the Bible while the word “mother” appears 354 times. “Father” is how God identifies Himself. The differential is only because Scripture has its own inclusivity: Human-kind = “mankind” which was never understood as a value statement about gender differences.

Caving in to this redesign of language about our identities and faith requires our abandonment of both. It also demands that we radically re-edit and reinterpret Sacred Scripture, the story of our lives in the Presence of God. Are we prepared for this divisive adventure in nihilism, the belief that the destruction of our existing political, social, and religious institutions and traditions is necessary for a just society?

Like a Colonization of the Mind

“Totalitarianism” as both an ideology and a system of government is unique to the 20th Century. In its practice, people become wholly dependent on and subjugated to the whims of a political party. Among its typical features are a monopoly of media and mass communication, a centrally controlled economy, and an enforcement arm in service of the ideology itself and the party it represents. Every totalitarian system has begun with re-education on acceptable language and thought. As for enforcement, consider the recent U.S. Justice Department decision to send the FBI to investigate dissent over mask and vaccine mandates in local school districts.

The ruling ideology assumes control of the news, social media, and publishing, as well as radio and television broadcasting. Social media especially lends itself to totalitarian controls dictated by a “woke” agenda. Recent examples are too many to fit into a single post:

An elected president’s Twitter account was permanently suspended while he was still in office; Twitter, Facebook and most print and broadcast news media removed or suppressed content about evidence of influence peddling by the ethically-challenged son of a presidential candidate during an election season; Amazon removed books from its catalog based upon conservative political views; An editor of The New York Times was forced to resign upon the demands of a “woke” newsroom when he allowed a conservative Republican senator to publish an op-ed. This list could go on for many pages.

I experienced a personal example recently. Catholic author Ryan A. MacDonald wrote about it in these pages a week ago in “Fr Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell.” When our editor published an article at the r/Catholicism page of Reddit, I was permanently banned by an unnamed Catholic moderator from future participation in the site. It was not because I am in prison nor was it because I am an accused priest. It was because the article called into question claims of victimhood that are considered sacrosanct for the far left, and never to be questioned.

In 2020, Rod Dreher responded to this not-so-brave new world by publishing a brave new book entitled, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. In a review in Chronicles magazine (“The Soft Revolution,” September 2021) C. Jay Engels wrote:

“Dreher maintains that our soft totalitarianism is ‘metaphysical’ in the sense that it spreads like a colonization of the mind, infecting our everyday language and behavior, in turn shaping governmental policy ... . If we are to effectively resist, we must understand the crucial importance of religion. A vague resistance unmoored from that bedrock is not only incapable of endurance under totalitarian conditions ... . To cultivate cultural memory as a method of resistance demands that we rediscover, and spiritually dwell within, our Christian historical reality.”

Rod Dreher warning of “a colonization of the mind” captures exactly what I have written above about imposed gender-related language. It is intriguing that resistance requires cultural memory and assent to the truth that Western Culture is a product of Christian religion. I believe this to be true, and its most direct evidence is the vehemence with which the socialist left seeks to marginalize and diminish Christianity and its role in society.

In light of this, it is troubling that Pope Francis imposed severe restrictions on more traditional forms of liturgy, a deeply felt suppression of a tradition cherished by many that I wrote of in “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Traditional Latin Mass.”

“Islam Would Never Stay Silent!”

No one should feel helpless to respond in the face of all this, but response is a long effort that requires commitment. Rod Dreher described the necessity of regaining and maintaining our religion. Historical and cultural awareness of Christian traditions is our best and only hope for “woke” resistance. In the 20th Century, Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan literally brought down history’s most oppressive totalitarian regime, the Soviet Union, through their teaching and promotion of Christian ideals.

I hope readers did not choose to skip over my recent post, “Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS-K, and Credibility.” It was a hefty dose of history, but only 30 years' worth. The catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would have gone quite differently with a better understanding of that culture’s historical and religious context. Our culture marginalizes religion to its peril.

Islam is currently the fastest growing religious faith on the planet. That is so only because it has its own “woke” extremists who demand totalitarian compliance. I have to give the last word to Jamil Malik. That is not his real name. Jamil was Coptic Christian university student when he began writing to me after the famous public ISIS beheading of Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya in 2011. Due to the grave danger he faced for “visiting the websites of the infidels” he adopted a screen name. I have not heard from him for a decade. His last message to me was this:

“Americans and American Catholics seem divided over many issues, but they are mostly the issues of the elite while most of the rest of the world’s people struggle to survive and preserve their lives and freedoms and basic human rights.

“My struggling Christian friends in Iran and Syria have something to say to American Catholics ready to leave their faith over the latest demands of popular culture. I have friends who have been killed for their faith in just the last few months.

“Over here, Catholic priests are sacrificed by radical Islamic fundamentalists seeking revenge over the 1,000 year old Crusades. In America, priests are sacrificed by lawyers, the news media, and Catholic bureaucrats. Most Catholics stay passively silent. Islam would NEVER stay silent.’ ”

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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