Lux Lucet

Richard Malone, former Bishop of Buffalo, NY.

When writing about the follies of the Roman Church-State, the main challenge isn’t lack of material.  Not at all.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  It’s the lack of time to follow up all the stories.  Oh well.  It’s tough work, but someone has to do it.

All which brings me to the latest edition of Rome Watch.  There have been several big, recent stories about Rome, each of which deserves its very own Rome Watch edition.  But time being what it is, I’m going to have to squeeze them all into one thrill packed post.

So where shall I begin?  How about with this.

Another Pedo Priest Scandal

I have to admit, it’s hard to keep track of all the pedo priest scandals.  The latest, at least I think it’s the latest, pedo scandal to rock the Church is centered in Buffalo, New York.  This morning, I was greeted with a push alert headline on my cell phone from the Wall Street Journal that read “Buffalo Bishop Resigns After Accusations of Covering Up Abuse.”

As you may have guessed, the bishop’s resignation was tied to a pedo scandal cover up.  In this case, Bishop Richard Malone was outed by his own secretary, who last year went public “and accused him of covering up accusations of abuse against priests in the diocese.”

Here are a few other of the lowlights from the piece,

• “All eight Catholic dioceses in New York state have spent the last four months mired in problems related to the church’s sexual-abuse scandal.”
• “Collectively, the [New York] dioceses have been hit with more than 500 lawsuits since August…”
• “Faced with a flood of legal claims, the Diocese of Rochester filed for bankruptcy…”
• The Archdiocese of New York sued more than 30 insurance companies in June, anticipating that the firms would deny coverage for old sexual-abuse claims.”
• “The Brooklyn bishop has himself been accused of sexually abusing a child, which he denies.”

All  this makes me think of the words of Richard Bennett, who, writing about the sex scandals of Rome, noted, “There has come upon that Church an ‘evil…which you will not know how to charm away.’ A wound has come upon the Church of Rome that she just does not have the charisma to overcome.”

Pope Francis Goes Full Friedrich Nietzsche

In his essay “Christ and Civilization,” John Robbins quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, a man who, as Robbins noted, anticipated the neo-pagan environmental movement of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, saying, “Our whole attitude toward nature, the way we violate her with the aid of machines and the heedless inventiveness of our technicians and engineers, is hubris….”

Well, it seems that the seat of Antichrist is now echoing the environmentalism of the 19^th German atheist.  According to the National Catholic Reporter,  “Following through on a proposal made at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, Pope Francis said there are plans to include a definition of ecological sins in the church’s official teaching.” The Pope was quoted as saying, ‘We should be introducing – we were thinking – in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, ecological sin against the common home.”

Now the term “common home” as used by Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’” is simply another word for “Mother Earth.”  The logical implication here is that the Pope thinks that man can sin against the Earth.  Does the Pope mean to say that the Earth is a sort of goddess?  It would seem so. And if so, it would be just another example of Rome’s grossly idolatrous teaching.

And speaking of Romish idolatry…

The Pachamama Polemic

During the Amazon Synod in October of this year, there were displayed in a Catholic church in Rome several “identical carved images of a naked pregnant Amazonian woman.” These statues represented an Andean fertility goddess known to the locals as Pachamama.  According to the Pope, the statues were displayed “without idolatrous intentions.”  Nevertheless, as the Catholic Herald reports, the Pachamamas were carried from the church by a couple of zealous sons of Rome and unceremoniously pitched into the Tiber.

The indignity!

Well, the Pope thought it was an indignity at any rate, had the statues recovered from the river and issued an apology.

Here’s the thing, though.  Why is it that some Catholics become incensed at the appearance of a statue of Pachamama but willingly, even lovingly, embrace every sort of idolatry within the Church?

To some devout Romanists, this is gross idolatry:

Idolatrous image of Our Lady of Pachamama.

But to these same Romanists this, on the other hand, is the very essence of Christian piety:

Idolatrous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

See the difference?

Me neither.

The USCCB Elects a New President

In its November 12 press release, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) elected Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles as its new president.  Born in Mexico and a naturalized American citizen, Gomez is described by the New York Times as an “outspoken…advocate for immigrant’s rights.”  The Times goes on to note that Gomez supports DACA, those in the US with Temporary Protected Status and migrant workers.  The article also says that in September Gomez “celebrate Mass during a three-day, 60-mile walking pilgrimage in solidarity with families separated at the border.  He has created wallet-sized cards for undocumented immigrants with instructions for what to do if they are approached by immigration officers.”

Oddly absent from the Times article was any mention of the Bishop’s concern for the American people, who are will be the ones to bear the costs of Gomez’ international welfare giveaways. I’m quite sure this was an accidental omission.

Of course, I’m being sarcastic.  The USCCB could not care less about the American people.  The Treasonous Brood of Vipers is more than happy to flood the country with illegal immigrants, migrants, asylees, refugees and any other class of non-citizens, put them on the welfare roles, and, when Americans object to being forced to pay for their own dispossession, lecture them about what a bunch of deplorable bigots they are.

That’s just how the USCCB rolls.

Under the leadership of José Gomez, we expect more of the same from the USCCB.