THE NEXT CONCLAVE IS STACKED TO ELECT A CLONE OF FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL

ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

If Francis Should Resign, What Then?

William Kilpatrick

THE CATHOLIC THING

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2019

Note:The pope’s appointment of controversial Cardinal Kevin Farrell as the new camerlengo – the man responsible for administering the Vatican in the event of the pope’s death or resignation – raises questions about the future of the Church once Francis is no longer pope. The following article discusses some of the possibilities.

After providing evidence for the existence of widespread corruption in the hierarchy – corruption that, he claims, Pope Francis knew about and enabled – Archbishop Carlo MariaViganò called on Pope Francis to resign: “He must acknowledge his mistake and. . .must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”

Without getting into the thorny question of whether or not popes should resign, it’s worth…

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Father Z Writes ” The Hardest Post I Have Ever Written”

“Folks, I know that you are really angry. The depth of ugly you see in the news is often not nearly as deep as the ugly that some priest see.  You are surely and rightly angry.  Do you think that we priests are not?

I have to remind myself that when Our Lord cursed the fig tree before His Passion, that wasn’t the model that we priests should employ when it comes to homosexual predator priests.

And let’s be perfectly clear.  This scandal is about HOMOSEXUALITY.

Some of these homosexual predators are, I think, possessed.  Think about it.  If you know anything about demonic activity, and this is something that lay people should not get too involved with, then you know that certain demons specialize in certain kinds of sin.  They will attach themselves like spiritual lampreys to the souls of people who commit them and also to the places where the sins were committed.  Once a demon gets hold, they claim the right to be there, until the layers of their connection are broken one by one.  That’s what exorcism rites do:  they break the legalistic claims of the Enemy to be there.

Homosexual sins are particularly grave and their demonic force is concomitantly vile.  And these sins also involve the young or those who are subject to the authority or power of the predator.  Millstones are not enough.  If you wonder about the Lord and capital punishment, HE spoke of the millstone before the Church did.

That’s the supernatural side.  There is also the natural side.  It seems to me that men with these strong disordered inclinations don’t … how to put this … act like other men.  They think differently.  I know.  I know.  But that’s my sense of things.  It’s hard to articulate.

To explain another issue, I have a couple of anecdotes.

First, way back when, as a seminarian, I remember the pastor of my parish telling us young guys not to write our name in our breviaries or prayer books. He explained that were we to lose the book, someone could claim it was found in a “house of assignation.”  Some of the guys thought that was funny.

I didn’t.  My folks were cops.

I grew up hearing about and seeing photos of the ugliest human circumstances imaginable.  I figured out “blackmail” and co”compromise” waaaay back.  Also, if you talk to cops who have been on the job awhile, they will confirm that male on male “violence” is among the worst that they see.  Ask cops if you know any pretty well.  Ask ER docs and nurses what they see come in and how it was inflicted.

Here’s a not so little factoid for you:  In Italian, a derogatory term for a homosexual male is “froccio”, which etymologically comes from Latin ferox, “savage”.  Are all that way?  Of course not.  But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t those who are.

Next, still as a seminarian, over breakfast a then-auxiliary bishop told me that when he reported on something to the archbishop, he was shut down.  “If I know about it, I might have to do something about it!”  Then the auxiliary said, “Remember, John, there are old women of both sexes.”  That would be confirmed countless times in the next years.  When I went to the seminary rector to complain about the things I was hearing through the walls, their treatment of me only worsened and I got thrown out the second time.  That’s how I got to Rome.

In Rome, because I was in the unusual position of curial work and seminary, because of my youth, etc., I was subtly warned of certain well-placed people who would offer this or that, to open this door, to invite into that circle, to climb more quickly, to gain some favors, etc.

I was being warned, mainly, about two groups.

The Mafia and homosexuals.

Both groups-along with Masons … but I think they were both these other tribes … wanted insiders, and I was perceived at the time as having the potential to be advanced.  Sure enough, every once in a while I would get an invitation, a gift out of the blue, a strong suggestion that X might be a good choice to get ahead.  Years later I read of one of them, a gentiluomo di Sua Santita, found tied up with his head bashed in and homosexual porno video in the VCR.  I had met him at the Lateran University, where he for some reason was taking courses with the seminarians. My “gaydar” is strong, so this guy didn’t get far with me.  But some of my classmates ……

As a priest, I quickly figured out that, if you were on the wrong side of things, you would be subtly and not so subtly targeted for persecution, of course, but also for compromise, be it homosexual, heterosexual, money, drugs, ambition, whatever your weakness might be.  They would set honey traps for you

If you think about it, if you try to think like the Enemy, doesn’t that make sense?  If you can get someone to join you in your slime, but you suspect he has your number, you try to get something on him.  Many years ago now, a woman told me about a meeting she went to of some pro-choice feminist organization or other.  She said that one of the things they talked about, after the more public meeting was over, was figuring out which one of them could target for seduction certain priests in the diocese who were overtly preaching against contraception and abortion

One of them would do it or they could hire hookers and set honey traps.

It’s classic spycraft, really.  Compromise the guy to shut him up.

The problem is, most priests are compassionate guys who, when faced with a woman in distress, might let their guard down.  Face facts.  Women, who are wired in certain ways, think differently than men.  They can wrap guys around their lipstick case if they aren’t wary, and men often are not wary enough.  Some tears and a little GBH can work wonders on the naive.  That technique goes for the  “gay” predators as well.  This is one reason why I think that homosexual predators of young men think differently, apart from the help of the demons in their heads.

Also, as a priest, there are the truly sacrilegious ways that some of these agents of Hell will work to shut up priests who don’t and won’t putt from the ruff.  They use the Seal of the confessional against the solid non-queer priest confessor. They go to confession to a good confessor to bind him by the Seal.  Of course that is pretty underhanded, satanic even.

It is a horrible sacrilege.

A lot of good priests know that if they hear something in the confessional they must never ever talk about it.  They don’t know what to do, and, in prudence, they clam up about their brethren.  This one reason why the Church’s law discourages a superior of hearing the confessions of those under his authority.

I know guys who simply couldn’t take it anymore and quit.

There have been moments when I’ve thought about it myself.  But then my cold Prussian fury and stubbornness flares and, I’m sure, the grace to stick it out for whatever I am destined to do or endure.

Dear readers … this is all out war.  It is war on every level, human and supernatural.  The Enemy of the soul is a really good general, a relentless and malevolent tactician of destruction of souls and long view stragegist.  The Enemy preys on human weakness.  War is horrible, vicious and seriously ugly.  Spiritual war is worse than material.

Even now, I was texting with a friend about this new wave of dreck.  He wrote:

“These bastards have not only violated countless innocents and stained the Catholic name.  They have set in motion the process that will lead good ment to suffer greatly to defend celibacy and the seal of confession.  It would be so easy to feed a few certified perverts to the secular justice and gain time to ascertain the facts on all others.  Because, make no mistake, innocents will be accused and it will be IMPOSSIBLE to talk about burden of the proof without accusations of cover up.  Innocents will have again to pay the price of reform the hard way.

They will sho good will by targeting the good guys.  They’ll find a degenerate in an otherwise sound group and, there, fixed!

The media, and of course bishops, are downplaying the distinctive tract of all these stories, the vice of most offenders.  CNN even presents it with a pic of a woman crying.

It will be again a case of white hererosexual Christian men raping women and even when boys are involved it will be only because of 1)power 2)celibacy 3)culture of secrecy protecting power via seal of confession

Which is in fact what happened, only it’s the sodomite modus operandi to protect themselves and strengthen their grip over power positions with the Church

As I have written before, I do not buy the claims that a high number of priests are homosexual.  But I do indeed buy that a that percentage is higher than those who have power..  The Boys Club perpetuated itself by grooming with preferential treatment of certain likely fellows.  They made sure that they went to Rome, whoch could help a future career, or they got the chance at higher studies, the key role in the chancery, the roles that would be good on the CV when it was time to submit a terna. 

Mind you, that wasn’t all bishops or seminarians or priests.  Don’t look cross-eyed at a guy sent to Rome.  These days, I am sure that in the vast majority of cases, its better because the guy has potential to serve the Church well and that’s the best place to realize the potential.

Do no … do NOT … slip into the trap that I see in news stories and fuming posts with sloppy language:  “these bishops and priests!  They all failed us! ”  No.  They did not fail you.  Some did.

Their failures were galactic and all priests are suffering the fallout.

Don’t turn your wrath and blame on every priest and bishop.  That would surely make the devil grin.  That’s the objective, after all.

Through some, attack them all.

Tables are turning on Satan’s plans.  However, when you wonder about all this stuff going on, remember that the Enemy plays the long game.

Your calls for short term retribution or for instant action etc. will have their own repercussions down the road.  For example, even as many people call for the resignation and removal of this or that bishop, cardinal, etc., keep in mind that there is only one guy in the human sphere, who signs off on the new bishops and cardinals.  Try to picture the results over time if you get what you ask for.

Finally … please take this to heart.

This is primarily a spiritual battle that is being fought right now.  The bloody trenches and killing alleys are directly through the ranks of the Church’s priests, and they directly involve matters intimately tied into the very center of the Church’s core … priesthood and Sacraments like Penance.

No Priest.  No Eucharist.  No church

This war involves human weakness, identity perversion, and also demonic possession.  Hence, our response has to involve all of these dimensions:

Priests and bishops …                                                                                                                           Please start saying Masses and having devotions for reparation and for deliverance from the assaults of the Enemy.  We have tried and trued spiritual weapons, if only we would dust them off, polish them up, and use them.  Enough of this mealy-mouthed-excuse making and temporizing.  Enough of this rubbish about all the really important things that fill the clerical day …

like committees and meetings.

If you are going to have a meeting, meet about how we have to do reparation, who will be unlocking the church for Exposition and Rosaries and Novena and CONFESSIONS.

Priests and bishops, for the love of all that is Holy, use your mighty spiritual weapons given to you by Orders and Holy Church’s own authoritative, tried and true Tradition.

I’ll say it again and again and again … the Devil HATES LATIN.  Let’s stop fooling around.  Put the 22 long rifle away and start with the .50 cal already.  The time for the MaDeuce of our sacred liturgical worship is NOW.  Extraordinary Form, brothers.  Stop fooling around.  If you Latins out there don’t know and can’t use your whole Latin Rite, then … who the hell are you, anyway?  C’mon guys!

Meanwhile, I am implementing the personal plan I’ve been cobbling together from my convictions, experiences, resolves.  I have to be willing to stay on the Cross.  Please pray for me that I will stay up there.  In spite of my weakness, as a sinner among sinners, I will do my best to adapt, improvise and overcome the obstacles that I am sure will now hammer on me for this post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maine: Somali Muslim “Refugees” Roam Streets Randomly Attacking Americans…

Trigger Reset

Going out on a limb here, but perhaps importing hordes of third-world people with an average IQ of 68 who adhere to a violent, murderous “religion” into a civilized, Christian nation was, shall we say…stupid.

Governments are supposed to PROTECT their citizens, not INFECT them.

LEWISTON -In the early evening on the first day of summer, a large group of Somali boys approached a woman on the corner of Ash and Pierce streets.

According to police reports, they intimidated the woman and slapped her in the back of the head before scattering into the downtown.

Five days later, shortly after midnight, a man was accosted by a group of Somali boys outside the Big Apple on Main Street. Police reports say several members of the group punched the man and took money from him. They then fled in a car.

Later that night, a woman in her late 60s was…

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Swearing In On Thomas Jefferson’s Koran

Jefferson’s Quran, a 1734 translation by George Sale was intended to “to help Protestants understand the Quran so that they could argue against it. http://www.history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-quran-rashida-tlaib-keith-ellison

“Jefferson’s Quran  was a 1734 translation by a British lawyer named George Sale. It was the first direct translation of the Quran from Arabic to English (the only other English version was a translation of a French translation published in 1649), and would remain the definitive English translation of the Quran into the late 1800’s.  In his introduction, Sale wrote that the purpose of the book was to help Protestants understand the Quran so that they could argue against it.

“Whatever use an impartial version of the Koran may be of in other respects” he wrote, “it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared, have entertained too favorable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture.”

Yet although Sale’s translation was theoretically a tool for missionary conversion, that wasn’t what English-speakers in Britain and North America used it for in Jefferson’s d

Drawn From:                                                                                                                           Why the Quran was a Bestseller Among Christians in 18th Century America           Becky Little                                                                                                                                https://history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-quran-rashida-tlaib-keith-ellison

THE SAD REALITY IS THAT ELIZABETH WARREN, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez AND Bernie Sanders PROBABLY FLUNKED MATH IN SCHOOL YET THEY ARE TRYING TO WRITE TAX POLICY FOR THE NATION

ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

J

To soak the rich, keep tax rates low
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
February 10, 2019

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/22340/to-soak-the-rich-keep-tax-rates-low

        Left-wing Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders, are clamoring for steep tax hikes on the wealthy.SOAK-THE-RICH tax schemes are in vogue on the left these days.Democratic Party heartthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a splash last month when she went on “60 Minutes” and proposed a 70 percent marginal tax rate on incomes over $10 million. “People are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” she said.From Senator Elizabeth Warren comes a proposal to levy an annual wealth tax on the net worth of American households with more than $50 million in assets. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has drafted a proposal to sharply increase the federal estate tax, imposing a top rate of 77 percent on estates worth more than $1…

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The Unfair, Anti-Catholic Conviction of Cardinal George Pell in Trial No. 1 – Trial Number 2 Coming Up Soon

George Weigel New York Post 12/18 “No one with a sense of justice can fail to be outraged when, in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ a jury in Maycomb, Ala., bows to social pressure and convicts an innocent man of a crime he couldn’t have committed.

Something similar took place last month (Dec. 2018)  in real-world Melbourne, Australia, where Cardinal George Pell was falsely and perversely convicted on charges of “historical sexual abuse” dating to the 1960’s.

The facts have of the case have been hard to come by due to a media gag order issued by the trial judge.  A journalistic feeding frenzy had long surrounded Pell, the former Catholic archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney and later the Vatican’s chief financial officer.

The trial judge was rightly concerned that opening the proceedings would make it impossible for Pell to get a fair trial on charges he forcefully denies.  The media gag order has left Australians largely in the dark.

However certain facts are known, and others can be reasonably inferred.

The Cardinal’s first trial ended in a hung jury, with 10 of 12 jurors in favor of acquittal.

In the retrial, the defense again demonstrated that it was physically impossible for the alleged abuse of two choirboys (one now deceased) to have occurred, given the layout and security arrangements of Melbourne’s Catholic Cathedral, and, the fact that the choir and Pell were in two different places when the abuse was alleged to have occurred.

Pell, moreover, was always surrounded by others at the cathedral that day in 1996.  Why the Melbourne police never took the trouble to investigate these exculpatory facts is one of several mysteries in this sordid affair.

The retrial jury took days to reach a verdict, during which the jurors asked the trial judge for instructions on how evidence should be considered.  That an overwhelming vot for acquittal at the first trial was then flipped to a unanimous verdict for conviction invites the inference that the jury chose to ignore evidence that the alleged crimes couldn’t have happened.

Legal authorities can debate some of the curiosities of the criminal justice system in Melbourne.  Why, for example, can’t a defendant request a bench trial by a judge alone, when a prejudicial public atmosphere makes the selection of an impartial jury virtually impossible?

How can a crime alleged to have been committed 22 years ago be prosecuted without any corroborating evidence that it occurred?

How can charges be brought when the public authorities could have easily determined that the alleged abuse couldn’t have happened, because the victims and alleged perpetrator were never in close proximity, much less by themselves without witnesses?

Any judgment on the Pell verdict must also take full account of the atmosphere in which the cardinal’s case was heard. Anti Catholicism has been a staple of Australia’s culture for decades.  Local media long misrepresented Pell, a Church reformer, as a power hungry ecclesiastical politician, and that caricature made him a convenient scapegoat for the grave crimes of other priests and bishops.

Yet as archbishop of Melbourne, Pell set up Australia’s first process for investigating and compensating claims of clerical sexual abuse.  And as archbishop of Sydney, he applied strict protocols to himself, stepping aside until previous spurious abuse charges against him were thoroughly investigated -and dismissed-by a former Australian supreme court justice.

For partisans of various sorts, however, none of George Pell’s effective work in cleaning the Church of the horror of sexual abuse counted.

Aggressive secularists couldn’t forgive him for his robust Catholicism.  Most Catholic progressives couldn’t abide his orthodoxy.

Some of Pell’s enemies had the integrity to dismiss the charges against him as ludicrous, and a few said afterward that his conviction was a travesty.  But the foul atmosphere in Melbourne was reminiscent of rural Alabama in the 1030’s.

One other facet of this miscarriage of justice deserves investigation by enterprising reporters:   Pell was brought to Rome by Pope Francis to clean up Vatican finance, a Herculean task in which he was making progress.

When he was getting down to the really serious corruption, which involves hundreds of millions of euros, and the shadow worlds of global finance, these abuse charges were laid.  Pell had to return to Australia to defend himself.

Was that timing sheer accident?  Rome based supporters of Pell’s reforming efforts with whom I’ve spoken think not.

Something is rotten in this business.

And it isn’t the character of Cardinal George Pell.

 

 

Damian-Dignan-Cardinal-Pell-Lyndon-Monument-600x250.jpg 

The two altar boys of 1960 pictured on either side of Cardinal Pell today

 

George Weigel, John Paul II’s biographer, holds the William Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

 

The above trial was the first of two.  His lawyers and the public prosecutors had agreed to split the charges against him into two trials.  The first one, above, was known as the ‘Cathedral Trial’ as it allegedly took place in the Cathedral.  He was found guilty and is now released on bail.

The second trial, known as ‘The swimming pool trial, is to take place early in February 2019.

Any day now.

 

 

 

Midwife Delivers 3,000 Babies in Auschwitz: Cause for Canonization Introduced in Poland

Stanislawa Leszczyriska put her own life at risk to help women safely deliver their children.

The image we most closely associate with Auschwitz is one of death.  With over a million men, women, and children killed in the largest concentration camp in war-torn Poland, this is hardly surprising.  But other stories have emerged from the extermination center that demonstrate tremendous courage, defiance, hope, and even joy.

One such story is of a Polish midwife who disobeyed orders to ensure that over 3,000 babies were safely delivered, despite instructions to murder these newborns.

Stanislawa Leszczynska was born in 1896 in Lodz, a city in the center of Poland.  She was a wife, mother, and midwife.  When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Leszczynska decided she and her family had to help out by joining in the Polish resistance to help provide false documents and food for those in Jewish ghettos.

The family’s efforts were discovered by the gestapo and a few years later, Leszczynska and her daughter – a medical student – were sent to Auschwitz while her sons were sent to other labor camps to endure hard labor.  Her husband and eldest son escaped, but Leszczynska never saw her husband again;  he was killed fighting the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising a year later in 1944.

At Auschwitz, Leszczynska reported for duty as a midwife.  Although many pregnant women were normally executed on the spot, others continued their pregnancy until delivery.  The midwife was sent to work in the maternity ward, which History.com reports was a “set of filthy barracks that was less a place to care for pregnant women than a place to usher them into death.”  The women who managed the ward, “Sister” Klara and “sister” Pfani, had the duty of declaring newborns as stillborn on delivery, before drowning them in buckets in front of the new mothers.

When Leszczynska was told of her duty to ensure the babies were murdered, she categorically refused.  She was beaten by Klara but still she did her best to keep the babies and their mothers alive.  Before each delivery she would make the sign of the cross and pray.  She also provided moments of calm for the mothers with prayers and song – all done very quietly.

Despite her efforts, many babies were killed after their first few hours of life, and some mothers later died due to the abominable sanitary conditions inside the ward.  In her two years at Auschwitz, alongside her daughter, Leszczynska delivered 3,000 babies.  She even stood up to the infamous “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, when he ordered her to murder the infants.

Thankfully, not all the babies were killed.  Some were taken away to be adopted into German families and were considered “Aryan” babies.  So in a last-ditched bid to reunite mother with baby, Leszczynska tattoed the babies in the hope that they’d be identified later in life.  Some women were so desperate they even killed their babies, rather than see them suffer torture and death in the hands of the Nazis.  And some non-Jewish Mothers got to keep their babies, but with breast-feeding forbidden.  These babies perished from starvation.

Despite the horror, Leszczynska, called “Mother” baptized all the babies and did her utmost to look after the mothers.  Figures from medical historians Susan Benedict and Linda Shields found that half of these 3,000 babies were drowned, 1,000 died of starvation or hypothermia, 500 were sent to German families and 30 babies survived – just 1%.

The devoted midwife carried out her duties until the camp was liberated.  She then returned to her native town to continue her practice.  Her legacy lives on in her children who all became physicians.

Some of the patients, whom she had delivered, have spoken about her heroic acts.

Maria Saloman, who gave birth in Auschwitz said:  “To this day I do not know at what price she delivered my baby.  My Liz owes her life to Stanislawa Liszczynska.  I cannot think of her without tears coming to my eyes.”

Saloman also speaks of a time she was a godmother, in an account reported in the Seattle Catholic.  Leszczynska had asked her to do this.  Although the baby only lived for three weeks, she felt the joy of being a godmother and was truly devoted to her godchild, Adam.  He only lived for three weeks.

Like other great Catholics who experienced the horrors of the concentration camp, such as St. Maximillian Kolbe, Leszczynska’s faith kept her going with prayer and devotion.  She viewed each baby as a precious gift from God and she continued to pray for the children she had delivered later in life.

According to UK’s Catholic Herald, Leszczynska’s Cause for canonization has been introduced in the Diocese of Lodz, Poland.  https://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/01/19/ten-catholic-heroes-of-the-holocaust    

Aleteia   Cerith Gardiner  January 31, 2019

Philippine Bishops Break Silence: ” Time For Relearning Core Beliefs About Catholic Christianity”

filipinos are seen Jan. 10 in front of the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Manila (CNS/Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun)

Philippine Pres. Duterte calls on people to kill and rob bishops. The President is responsible for killing 20,000 people by extrajudicial killings (not legally authorized) in his war on narcotics. ucanews.com

Duterte has repeatedly accused Catholic priests and bishops of corruption and of sex abuse.”   https:// http://www.ncronline.org/news/quick-reads/despite-comments-against-bishops-duterte-open-talks-spokesman-says

The Catholic Free Press states on Feb. 1, 2019: “Catholic bishops in the Philippines broke what they described as their collective silence over many distressing issues that have confronted the country in recent months.

In a pastoral statement issued at the end of their meeting in Manila Jan. 28, the bishops asked forgiveness from the faithful “for the length of time it took us to find our collective voice”  reported ucanews.com

In their statement  Conquering Evil With Good”  the bishops admitted they have observed how the culture of violence has gradually prevailed in our land.

They said the Jan 27 bombing of the cathedral in Jolo was further evidence of the cycle of hate that is destroying the moral fabric of our country.”

This bombing occurred during Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the city of Jolo.  Islamic State issued a statement claiming two suicide bombers detonated explosive belts inside the church and near its entrance.  The first blast left bodies strewn on the floor amid destroyed pews.  A second explosion near the entrance shortly after killed at least five soldiers trying to help the wounded. One hundred people were injured and twenty killed. Islamic state  issued a statement  claiming responsibility.

The statement from the bishops went on to say that “since his election in 2016, Philippine President Duterte has repeatedly attacked Catholic leaders, even questioning church teachings and calling God stupid.

In recent weeks the president urged people to either rob or kill bishops.  We have silently noted these painful instances with deep sorrow and prayed over them.

“The bishops had taken their “cue about silence from Pope Francis but now say that freedom of expression does not include a license to insult other people’s faith, especially our core beliefs..”

The bishops admitted that when people do not understand the doctrines of the faith “we have ourselves to blame … perhaps we have not been effective in our catechesis.”

From some sectors had come a warning to church leaders not to criticize the governments fight against illegal drugs.  We are not against the governments’ efforts however.

We have long acknowledged that illegal drugs are a menace to society. We only began wondering about the direction of Duterte’s drug war when it was only poor people reportedly linked to the illegal drug trade who were killed.

As bishops, we have no intention in interfering in the conduct of state affairs, but neither do we intend to abdicate our sacred mandate as shepherds to whom the Lord has entrusted his flock.

No amount of intimidation or even threat to our lives will make us give up our prophetic role, especially that of giving voice to the voiceless.

We urge the faithful to be sober and alert despite the threats.

As members of God’s flock, we must learn to be brave, to stick together and look after one another.

Let this moment be a time to pray, to be strong, wise and committed.  Let this be also a teaching moment for us all, a moment for relearning our core beliefs, principles, and values … And what it means to be a Catholic Christian at this time.”  

 

Mary Mediatrix of All Grace Pray For Us !!