Bishop Vangheluwe of Bruges, Belgium, resigns

Another episcopal domino topples as public awareness of and outrage at the clergy sexual abuse problem increases in Europe. I wish this problem would evaporate quickly, like waking up from a nightmare, but my guess is that the more likely scenario will be a protracted agony of more dominoes falling for some time to come.

"When I was still just a priest, and for a certain period at the beginning of my episcopate, I sexually abused a minor from my immediate environment. The victim is still marked by what happened. Over the course of these decades I have repeatedly recognised my guilt towards him and his family, and I have asked forgiveness; but this did not pacify him, as it did not pacify me. The media storm of recent weeks has increased the trauma, and the situation is no longer tenable. I profoundly regret what I did and offer my most sincere apologies to the victim, to his family, to all the Catholic community and to society in general. I have presented my resignation as bishop of Bruges to Pope Benedict XVI. It was accepted on Friday and so I retire". . . . (continue reading -- more coverage here)

How the Nazis engineered a pedophile-priest scare in the 1930s

Italian Catholic intellectual Massimo Introvigne (whom I met on a couple of occasions when in Rome for speaking engagements), has contributed an important and eye-opening article about the phenomenon of priest scandals, as seen through the lens of history. Fairly recent history, to be more specific.

Introvigne provides an historical overview and analysis of a precursor to the current priest scandal — one that was concocted by minions of the Third Reich in the late 1930s as a gambit against the Catholic Church. They sought to incite a "moral panic" that would sway public opinion against the Church, which the Nazis rightly understood to be a formidable obstacle to their hegemonic designs.

As the present crop of Catholic moral scandals is relentlessly sifted and sieved by a media in search of even the most minute gleanings of priestly prurience, take note that this has happened before, as Introvigne points out, in Hitler-era Germany. The New York Times and like-minded organs of modern-day antipathy toward the Catholic Church have learned to exploit Marie Bashkirtseff's maxim, "The weak brood over the past; the strong take their revenge on it."

“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”

An editorial from a great secular newspaper in 2010? No: It’s a speech of May 28, 1937, by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. This speech, which had a large international echo, was the apex of a campaign launched by the Nazi regime to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests.

Two hundred and seventy-six religious and forty-nine diocesan priests were arrested in 1937. The arrests took place in all the German dioceses, in order to keep the scandals on the front pages of the newspapers. . . . (continue reading)

My dear friend was sexually molested by her father ...

I want her to read this powerful meditation — I am not really sure what else to call it — written by the very popular blogger Elizabeth Scalia, a brilliant writer known to First Things readers as "The Anchoress." She wrote this piece three and a half years ago, and somehow I never noticed it, until today, until just now.

If you suffered sexual abuse at the hands of your father or mother, please read this. If you know someone who else who suffered it, please encourage them to read this. And everyone else, read it. Read it and weep.

. . . There is a strange displacement that occurs within a child who has endured sexual abuse by a parent. There is the dissociative element, of course. A child overwhelmed by what is happening to him or her tends to find a safe spot somewhere inside herself, from which she can almost “watch” the abuse, as though it is happening to someone else.

And there are recurring images that become meaningful to such a child in ways that others would never consider. When I think back on that time in my life, I see images of doorways. The doorway through which I would interiorly pray someone – anyone – would enter, to stop the terrible chaos surrounding me…the doorway I watched while cringing beneath my sheets and blankets, hoping no shadows would be moving within the dim light and heading my way.

The corner moulding of a doorway means little to most people. To me, it holds out hope of rescue, or fear of ruin. . . . (continue reading)

MADE (sterile) IN CHINA

This is outrageous even by Communist Chinese standards of outrageous crimes against humanity.

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.

Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”

Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families. (continue reading)

Courtesy of New Advent.

Fr. Neil Buchlein and I discuss Medjugorje pros and cons on the Al Kresta Show

SSPX Bishop Williamson Convicted for Denying Holocaust

The news is just coming in about a ridiculous though widely anticipated judgment from the German court against an outspoken leader in the SSPX movement. I know that denying the Holocaust is illegal in that country, but it shouldn't be.

Of course I believe the Holocaust happened, but for the state to outlaw personal opinions, however odd we might think they are, is simply stupid. True, Bishop Williamson has caused plenty of headaches for his fellow members of the SSPX, not to mention for the Holy Father, but even though he may have been highly impolitic in some of his statements, he has a right to his opinion on a matter like this.

Personally, I would disagree with Bishop Williamson's opinions on a number of issues (the Holocaust being one of them), but that doesn't prevent me from recognizing that what's happening to him here is wrong, plain and simple. He is being victimized by an unjust law.

A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday of denying the Holocaust in a television interview.

A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.

The court ordered Williamson to pay a fine of euro10,000 ($13,544).

The Roman Catholic bishop was barred by his order from attending Friday's proceedings or making statements to the media.

His lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told The Associated Press after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide whether he would appeal.

Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany.

The court ordered a fine of euro12,000 for Williamson last year, without a trial. But the bishop appealed, forcing his case to be tried publicly.

Lossmann said that Williamson had explicitly asked the Swedish television crew conducting the interview not to broadcast it in Germany.

In issuing her ruling, Judge Karin Frahm said the bishop could not have expected that the clip would show up on YouTube and be seen directly in Germany, and that led her to reduce the fine, court spokesman Bernhard Schneider told the AP.

The journalists who conducted the interview ignored a court order to attend the trial, Lossmann said, leaving the judge to rely on written statements as testimony.

"That does not do a case like this justice," Lossmann said. . . (continue reading)

A death in the family

In your kindness, please pray for the repose of the soul of my sister-in-law, Tammy (married to my brother Andrew). I just learned that she died in her sleep last night of what appear to be natural causes. Tammy was only 30, and though she had had some illnesses in recent years, this was completely unexpected. As you can imagine, our family, especially Andrew, is in a state of shock. Thank you for your prayers .

The new atrocity: three-parent embryos

The headline reads: "UK scientists have created 'designer embryos' containing DNA from a man and TWO women."

As I read this bizarre and disturbing news item regarding how mad scientists have successfully performed a "3-person in vitro fertilization" ("eighty embryos were created but destroyed after eight days"), a warning from the Lord Jesus Christ came to my mind:

"Truly, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town" (Matt. 10:15).

Now, instead of a "town" in which evil and immorality is practiced on a wide scale, this blight has overcome an entire civilization. Woe to us if we don't turn away from this kind of nightmarish meddling with God's creation — and soon. And, to be candid, at times like this, I am inclined to think that it may already be too late.

A dark cloud with a silver lining

Last week on my "Open Line" radio show (Thursdays from 3-5 pm ET), I took a call from Mike, an Evangelical Protestant who wanted me to know that he had successfully convinced his Catholic wife to abandon her Faith and leave the Catholic Church to become Protestant. There's more to the story, and if you click here or on the image above, you can listen to what happened next.

Then, immediately after that exchange, I took a call from another Protestant named David. He told me something I think you will find interesting . . .

And that picture above? It's an apt visual description of the first caller, who led his poor wife directly into a dangerous storm, not away from one.

For info on that Catholic/Protestant debate on sola fide and sola scriptura, please click the image below:

The end of the world according to the ATARI Prophecy

Ecclesiastical Humor: Not everyone is happy about Archbishop Gomez's Appointment to LA

You know this would come out, sooner or later. It seems to be an axiomatic law of the universe that a Hitler diatribe video must be made as a comedic subtext for any significant event. Whoever put this one together has a razor-sharp sense of humor. It's an example of Steve Martin's dictum that "Comedy is not pretty." No, it surely isn't, especially when it comes to Church politics.

The coolest math teacher ever

Medjugorje and "The Maciel Effect"

Many adherents of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje to whom I have spoken personally have invoked the (also alleged) fondness and support of Pope John Paul II for it. "The Pope was in favor of Medjugorje," they reason, "and given what a good and holy pontiff he was, it's highly unlikely that Medjugorje could be anything other than an authentic Marian apparition. And, conversely, it's an even stronger reason for believing in Medjugorje."

This is a form of what's known as an a fortiori argument. For example, one might say, "If I think that Medjugorje is true, that's all well and good. But if even the pope thinks it's true, then the possibility that it is true is much stronger, much more likely."

Variations of this type of argument can be seen on sundry pro-Medjugorje websites, in which such-and-such a bishop or cardinal is touted as believing that the alleged apparitions are authentic, or such-and-such a theologian is extolled because he has declared that Medjugorje "has the ring of truth," etc., etc.

Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong at all with arguing for something along these lines. We make use of valid arguments like this all the time ("Grandma always said that eating apples would keep you healthy, but if even expert scientists confirm that belief, how much more so should we take Grandma's advice seriously," etc.). The problem, though, at least for those who follow Medjugorje, is that their commonly employed argument, based on the widely held belief that Pope John Paul II strongly favored Medjugorje, skates dangerously close to the edge of the logical fallacy of weak induction. I'll explain what I mean.

As those who follow this blog know, I am an open-minded skeptic when it comes to Medjugorje. I see too many problematic aspects of the alleged apparitions — some, seriously problematic, such as the incitements to disobedience from whoever or whatever is dispensing the messages (for more on that, read my comments beneath this post) — to be convinced that it is an authentic Marian apparition. I realize, of course, and freely admit, that I may in fact be wrong in my skepticism. I simply may not have properly understood or interpreted the data.

As I have said before, if I am wrong about this, and if the Medjugorje phenomena are truly the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then I will rejoice to have my error corrected. I mean that sincerely. But that's beside the point for the purpose of this post.

What I am driving at, as the title of this article suggests, is that those who attempt to bolster their own faith in Medjugorje, and that of others, by using the argument about Pope John Paul II accepting its authenticity (take note that many now seek to press Pope Benedict XVI into service using this same tactic, as well) are setting themselves up for a serious difficulty.

It is a well known fact that Pope John Paul II, of blessed memory, was a stalwart supporter of Fr. Marcial Maciel, the disgraced, recently deceased founder of the Legionaries of Christ religious order and its lay arm, Regnum Christi. I can only assume that John Paul was truly ignorant of the many frauds Fr. Maciel had perpetrated for decades. How it is that the pope did not know the truth about that dastardly man is beyond me, but I'm not focusing on that question here. It's sufficient to remind ourselves that the charism of papal infallibility does not extend to the pope's private, personal opinions about people and things.

As we now know, Pope John Paul II was utterly wrong about Fr. Maciel. He had completely misjudged him. Like a whole lot of other people, including a few popes who came before him, John Paul was conned by a consummate con-man. His approval of the vaunted Mexican priest was in complete error. The gestures of honor and confidence with which he generously betokened Fr. Maciel over many years were completely undeserved. His famous comment that Maciel was "an efficacious guide to youth" could not have been more hideously incorrect.

We know that now. We know now the sordid details of many bad things which Fr. Maciel perpetrated over his lifetime. Since his demise, they have continued to belch forth from the grave like a sulfurous semi-dormant volcano that will emit its noxious fumes for a long time to come.

Please note: I am not equating Medjugorje with Fr. Maciel. I am not suggesting any kind of similarity whatsoever between the two. Nor am I in any way impugning or disrespecting or trying to besmirch the memory of Pope John Paul II. I believe he was a good and holy man who was deceived by a duplicitous, wicked man.

And that's what I hope all Medjugorje supporters who tout the alleged approval of Pope John Paul II will see and understand.

All the stories I have heard from Medjugorje supporters about how Pope John Paul II favored or even personally believed in its authenticity have all been apocryphal. I am not aware of the Holy Father ever publicly commenting, one way or the other, whether verbally or in writing, on Medjugorje.

Sure, there are numerous instances of private comments alleged to have been made by JPII about Medjugorje, but none that I am aware of which have been verified with documentation, such as video or audio recordings. Peruse these comments, and you'll see they are all third-hand. He said he said he said, etc.

But even that is not the main point here. Let's say for the sake of discussion that every single last one of those alleged remarks made by John Paul II really did come from his lips. Let's assume that not only did he say those things, but that he was also convinced that Medjugorje is authentic. And, a fortiori, if even Pope John Paul II himself was a fervent believer in Medjugorje, how much more should we regard it to be true. Right?

Wrong. That's a bad argument to be using in this case. Why? Because even saintly popes can be seriously wrong in their personal opinions.

We might think of this as the "Maciel Effect," which applies to Medjugorje and can be expressed in the form of the following argument:

"If even a good and holy pope can be deceived and be utterly wrong in his sincere personal opinion about the character of Fr. Maciel, then how much more so is it possible that you could be sincerely wrong in your personal opinions about Medjugorje?"

Remember: Pope John Paul II was convinced that Fr. Maciel was a holy priest, an exemplary and faithful Catholic, and "an efficacious guide to youth."

He could not have been more wrong about that.

A little Easter bunny visited my house yesterday

You know him as Killian Patrick Madrid, my youngest grandson. Isn't he cute? Happy Easter, everyone!

How Poland (still) sees America

Interesting. Kind of funny, too. Rose-colored glasses must be big sellers in Poland.

America, the promised land for all Poles. For more than a century, thousands emigrated from Poland to the U.S. in search of their American dream and sent their hard-earned dollars back home.

The greenback seemed like god. Especially during the second half of the 20th century, one U.S. dollar bought an amazing lot in Poland where the average pay at times was a mere $20 per month.

Two or three decades ago, you could buy an apartment in Warsaw for $5,000 — roughly the amount a Manhattan cleaning lady from Poland can save within several months! (Today, you could buy no more than a square meter for it.)

Landline phones worked in the U.S., while in Poland you had to wait for 20 years to get installed. Cable television gave you dozens of channels to choose from, while in Poland two state-owned channels would only rarely show production from the First World. Blake Carrington even had a mobile phone in his limo! Wow, America was the paradise on earth indeed.

Notwithstanding that in 2010 you can get a mobile phone in Poland within minutes and it costs next to nothing, that there are hundreds of TV channels in Polish, and the U.S. dollar no longer buys all that much, some people still nurture the image of America that they created in their hearts some time during the last century.

Here’s the latest example, from conservative daily Rzeczpospolita, which writes on its blog today:

“What does a tourist see zipping through America over one week? He sees unlocked doors in suburbia, unlocked cars and bicycles left on the porch, not strapped to anything. He sees people who smile to each other on the street completely for no reason. He doesn’t see anyone littering. He sees that each and every car stops at the Stop sign that’s on every street corner instead of traffic lights. And no driver or almost no driver exceeds the speed limit and it won’t even occur to the driver not to stop before a pedestrian crossing even if the pedestrian is only getting ready to cross the street.”

(Continue reading)