Pope lashes out at blogging ambassadors

Associated Press

ATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has demanded obedience from Vatican ambassadors and reminded them of their duties before him, God and the faithful after years of scandal have tarnished the reputation of the Holy See's diplomatic corps.

Francis told envoys they may have reservations about papal policy but they don't represent themselves and can't "criticize the pope behind his back, have blogs or join groups hostile to him."

The unusual dressing down came in a speech that was handed out but not spoken on Thursday. It followed several sex scandals among Vatican envoys and explosive claims by the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. that Francis ignored his 2013 warnings about a cardinal's sexual encounters with seminarians.

Francis defrocked ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in February and has said he doesn't remember receiving a warning.

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Cardinal Pell’s appeal begins...

In opening arguments, Cardinal Pell’s lawyers set out case for appeal

Catholic News Agency

5 June, 2019

Cardinal George Pell leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria on June 05, 2019 (Getty)

Pell's lawyers argued their client was treated unreasonably during the jury trial

The legal team for Cardinal George Pell set out its case for appeal at the Supreme Court of Victoria Wednesday morning. Judges heard the opening arguments for the defense as they sought leave to appeal.

Bret Walker SC, arguing on June 4, told the three-judge Court of Appeal, led by Chief Justice Anne Feguson, that Pell was seeking leave to appeal on the grounds that his conviction by a jury was “unsafe.”

In a controversial verdict, the cardinal was convicted in on December 11 of five counts of sexual abuse of minors.

Pell’s legal team is seeking appeal on three separate grounds, the first of which is that a guilty verdict was returned despite the lack of proof beyond reasonable doubt. If successful, an appeal on that ground would see Pell’s conviction overturned and the cardinal set free.

In March, Pell was sentenced to six years in prison.

The secondary appeals, made on more procedural grounds, could lead to a retrial if successful.

At the opening of the two-day hearing, Justice Ferguson noted that the judges had reviewed the evidence from the trial, visited Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and inspected the vestments Pell is alleged to have been wearing at the time of the supposed abuse.

Ferguson explained that the purpose of the hearing was not to re-litigate the trial, or for the defense or prosecution to present the whole of its argument, which had been submitted in writing.

Walker argued that the evidence used to convict Pell was clearly insufficient to allow the jury to reach a unanimous finding of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

“The main argument, ground one, is one of those challenges to verdicts that used to go by the expression ‘unsafe and unsatisfactory,’” he told the judges.

Focusing his argument intially on the first supposed assault, in which Pell is alleged to have committed acts of sexual assault on two choir boys simultaneously for five to six minutes, despite the busy time and place in which it was alleged to have happened, Walker highlighted what he called serious inconsistencies in the evidence.

“Nobody apart from the alleged victims and the alleged perpetrator were present in the room called the priest’s sacristy with which [the judges] are now familiar.”

The circumstances of the alleged assault, supposed to have taken place immediately following Sunday Mass, included, Walker noted for the judges, the full vestments Pell was supposed to have been wearing at the time.

Describing the circumstances of the alleged assault as “matters of physical improbability to the point of impossibility,” Pell’s lawyer also said the inconsistency in the dates of Pell’s alleged crimes points the weakness of his conviction.

Prosecutors initially charged that the assault might have happened sometime between Pell’s installation in August of 1996 and the end of December of the same year, but during the trial evidence left only two dates for the jury to consider: December 15 or 22, 1996, the first two occasions when Pell celebrated Sunday Mass in the cathedral.

Walker then drew the judges’ attention to prosecution attempts to introduce a third possible date during the appeal process, suggesting November 3 as a possibility, calling it an indication that prosecutors did not believe their own arguments.

“The notion that on appeal the unsafe and unsatisfactory nature of a verdict on a case put to the jury of either the 15 or 22 of December can or should be answered or rehabilitated by a distinctly new case [for] 3 November being advanced is in itself disturbing, should disturb this court.”

Walker argued that even though the prosecution had withdrawn the argument suggesting November 3 as a possibility, “it is an appropriate reflection, forensically manifested by the Crown, of the doubts to which I am going to speak, involved in the theory that this supposed first incident indeed took place on the 15 or 22 December – and if it didn’t take place on one of those two dates then the Crown case fails.”

“Date is important,” Walker said. “Pell was appointed in July, installed in August, but didn’t say his first Sunday high Mass at the cathedral until 15 December.”

The defence also argued that, on whatever Sunday the assault was supposed to have taken place, the circumstances of the allegations did not add up.

According to the narrative of the alleged victim and sole witness, the alleged abuse had to take place after Sunday Mass, at which Pell had presided and for which he was still fully vested.

Walker argued that witness accounts of Pell’s public visibility after Mass meant that for him to have assaulted the two teenagers for a period of 5-6 minutes alone in the sacristy was “literally and logically impossible according to the complainant’s account,” and that there was no other account offered of the alleged abuse.

The difficulty in establishing a possible date for the alleged offense, together with witnesses who testified to Pell’s visibility after Mass, meant, Walker said, that the prosecution case could not mount a credible claim to being beyond reasonable doubt.

“If you have to be, for the offending, in a particular place in a particular time, then credible evidence, never challenged, places the archbishop in a position carrying out an activity at a time rendering the offending, according to the complainant’s account impossible, or put more softly simply not a realistic possibility.”

Walker also presented several other lines of argumentation that he said showed the weakness of the prosecution’s case and the failure of investigators to call or interview material witnesses.

He specifically argued that the alleged date for a second offense by Pell was unsupported by even the alleged victim’s testimony and had been chosen simply as “the next time the prosecution could suggest that the Archbishop was at Sunday Mass in the cathedral.”

The defense also argued that the jury had been effectively invited to consider the alleged victim as credible, despite the defense being unable to test his credibility in court. It was, Walker said, impossible to raise a reasonable doubt about evidence which could not be properly subjected to in-person cross-examination.

Pell, who was present in court, turns 78 this week. The hearing is set to continue throughout Wednesday and Thursday. The judges could deliver their verdict at any point during the two days, or reserve their judgement to a later date.

Pontiff says selective abortion of the disabled is an ‘expression of an inhuman eugenics mentality’

Pontiff says selective abortion of the disabled is an ‘expression of an inhuman eugenics mentality’

Pope Francis: ‘Abortion is never the answer’

Pope Francis said Saturday that abortion is never the answer to difficult prenatal diagnoses, calling selective abortion of the disabled the “expression of an inhuman eugenics mentality.”

“Fear and hostility towards disability often lead to the choice of abortion, configuring it as a practice of ‘prevention,’” Pope Francis said May 25.

“But the Church’s teaching on this point is clear: human life is sacred and inviolable and the use of prenatal diagnosis for selective purposes must be strongly discouraged because it is the expression of an inhuman eugenics mentality, which removes the possibility for families to accept, embrace and love their weakest children,” he said.

The pope addressed a Vatican conference on perinatal hospice highlighting medical care and ministries that support families who have received a prenatal diagnosis indicating that their baby will likely die before or just after birth.

“Yes to Life: Caring for the precious gift of life in its frailness,” a conference organized by the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life May 23-25 brought together medical professionals, bioethicists, ministry providers, and families from 70 countries to discuss how best to provide medical, psychological, and emotional support for parents expecting a child with a life-limiting illness.

“Sometimes people ask me, what does perinatal hospice look like? And I answer, ‘It looks like love,’” author and mother Amy Kuebelbeck shared at the conference.

Kuelbeck was 25 weeks pregnant when she received the diagnosis that her unborn son had an incurable heart defect. She carried her pregnancy to term and had a little more than 2 hours with her son, Gabriel, before he died after birth.

“It was one of the most profound experiences of my life,” Kuelbeck said. She wrote a memoir of her experience of grief, loss, and love called “Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby’s Brief Life.”

“I know that some people assume that continuing a pregnancy with a baby who will die is all for nothing. But it isn’t all for nothing. Parents can wait with their baby, protect their baby, and love their baby for as long as that baby is able to live. They can give that baby a peaceful life – and a peaceful goodbye. That’s not nothing. That is a gift,” Kuelbeck wrote in “Waiting with Gabriel.”

Dr. Byron Calhoun, a medical professor of obstetrics and gynecology, who first coined the term “perinatal hospice” spoke at the conference. His research has found that allowing parents of newborns with a terminal prenatal diagnosis the chance to be parents can result in less distress for the mother than pregnancy termination.

Many families facing these diagnoses have to decide if they will seek extraordinary or disproportionate medical care for their child after birth.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted.”

Ministries like Alexandra’s House, a perinatal hospice in Kansas City, provide counsel and grief support to parents as they face these difficult medical decisions. They also connect families with a network of other parents who have had a terminal prenatal diagnosis. “Most of the families stay in contact indefinitely,” said MaryCarroll Sullivan, nurse and bioethics advisor for the ministry.

There are now more than 300 hospitals, hospices, and ministries providing perinatal palliative care around the world.

Sister Giustina Olha Holubets, a geneticist at the University of Lviv, helped to found “Imprint of Life” a perinatal palliative care center in Ukraine that offers grief accompaniment, individualized birth plans, the sacrament of baptism, and burial, as well as respectful photos, footprints, and memory books to help families cherish their brief moments with their child.

The motto of Imprint of Life is “I cannot give more days to your life, but I can give more life to your days.”

Pope Francis met with Sister Giustina and other perinatal hospice providers in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on the last day of the conference.

The pope thanked them for creating “networks of love” to which couples can turn to receive accompaniment with the undeniable practical, human, and spiritual difficulties they face.

“Your testimony of love is a gift to the world,” he said.

“Taking care of these children helps parents to mourn and to think of this not only as a loss, but as a step in a journey together. That child will stay in their life forever, and they will have been able to love him,” Pope Francis said.

“Those few hours in which a mother can lull her child can leave a mark on the heart of that woman that she will never forget,” he said.

Abolishing the priesthood would tear the heart out of the Church

Sohrab Ahmari

23 May, 2019       

Christ designated a class of people, all of them men, to commemorate his sacrifice (CNS)

The priesthood continues Christ’s work of sacrifice. Those calling for its abolition don’t understand Catholicism

A year ago, there appeared in the National Catholic Reporter an account of a Catholic men’s gathering at Cape Cod, which the periodical said offered “glimpses of a future church”. Blazing the path to this church of the future were the author, Bill Mitchell, and his buddies – “nine guys ranging in age from 57 to 69” (all of them white, judging by the accompanying photo).

They kicked things off with some hiking, they relaxed by a fireplace, they lunched. Then they read the Bible and “headed into the kitchen and gathered around a table, a processional provided with some liturgical oomph as Peter opened his mobile phone [and] played the ‘Glory Be’ he created by layering multiple recordings of his own voice”. But oops: “We forgot to plan a sign of peace. Vincent reminded us, and there followed 72 hugs.” Eventually, they performed a pseudo-consecration and took something like Communion. Then they went home.

As I read The Atlantic’s recent cover story calling for the abolition of the priesthood, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that earlier NCR essay. Here was James Carroll, another aging white American boomer, dreaming of a Catholicism that reverts to some mythical original Christianity, freed from priests and prelates and religious orders, from fusty structures and the cobwebbed accumulation of centuries of Roman tradition. A Catholicism, in other words, that might look and sound a lot like Bill Mitchell’s: just some guys, reading the Good Book, hugging it out, lunching and reflecting.

To be fair to the Cape Cod boys, they didn’t envision their home liturgy supplanting the Mass or their parish, to which they remained devoted. Carroll, a former priest, is much more radical – as radical, that is, as your average liberal Congregationalist. He thinks “the very priesthood is toxic”. It is a source of “theological misogyny” and “sexual repressiveness”, with its “hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife”.

All this rage is ostensibly directed against “clericalism”, which Carroll blames for the problem of sexual abuse, an admittedly grave crisis inside the Church – and outside it. Many faithful Catholics would no doubt agree that clericalism, in the pejorative sense of a privileged and unaccountable ecclesiastical class, bears some of the blame. But it doesn’t follow that Catholic priests should be “abolished”, any more than parents, teachers and the other population groups that include abusers.

It soon becomes clear, however, that Carroll’s whole argument rests on conflating clericalism with the Catholic priesthood as such. The result is that he treats of a church that has little to do with how the actual Catholic Church understands itself (he is welcome to critique this self-understanding, to be sure, but he doesn’t even approach the subject). The Catholic Church sees itself as Jesus Christ in corporate form, continuing his work until the second coming. And Jesus’s main business is sacrifice, giving up his body and shedding his blood on the Cross for the redemption of humankind.

Sacri-fice (literally, “sacred work”) by definition requires a priesthood. Pagan civilisations the world over, seeking divine favours and expiation of sins, designated priests to carry out this important work, often in unspeakably gruesome ways. The people of Israel, to whom the one God first made himself known, also performed sacrifices. All those rams and heifers and lambs and turtledoves of the Old Testaments didn’t offer themselves on the altar; someone had to do it, a class of people set aside for God, the descendants of Aaron and the tribe of Levi.

Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled all sacrifice by making of himself the everlasting offering. As St Paul puts it in the Letter to the Hebrews (2:17), “he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and high priest in service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people.”

Before making his expiation, Jesus Christ designated a class of people, all of them men, to commemorate his sacrifice and allow us to participate in it (Matthew 26:26-28). He also charged these men to teach and baptise all nations (Matthew 28:19) and granted them authority to forgive or retain sins (John 20:23; Matthew 16:19). A male priesthood, one that depended totally on the one high priesthood of Jesus, thus took form while he was still fulfilling his public ministry on earth.

It’s thus error bordering on dishonesty for Carroll to claim that the origins of “clericalism” – by which, again, he means the priesthood itself – “lie not in the Gospels but in the attitudes and organisational charts of the late Roman Empire”. Yes, the Catholic Church inherited some of the governance structures and forms of imperial Rome, but there is nothing inherently Roman about the celibate priesthood. And those Roman structures which the Church appropriated she transfigured and repurposed, as she always does, redirecting them to the salvation of souls.

Which raises the question: does Carroll care at all about things like souls, salvation and sacrifice – those things, in other words, that attract people to all religion, not just the Catholic faith?

Not that one can tell from the essay. Early on, he describes the Catholic Church the “largest non-governmental organisation on the planet”. Later he says: “On urgent problems ranging from climate change, to religious and ethnic conflict, to economic inequality, to catastrophic war, no non-governmental organisation has more power to promote change for the better, worldwide, than the Catholic Church.”

Yes, the Church should – and does – address these problems. But as Pope Francis has repeatedly said, she can’t be reduced to an NGO. Doctors Without Borders does some wonderful work. But it can’t celebrate the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life; it can’t absolve sins; it can’t proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ with apostolic authority. For these things, we need the Catholic Church.

That last point, authority, can’t be emphasised enough. Has it ever occurred to Carroll that Catholicism has remained stable doctrinally across two millennia – never taking one piece of Scripture out of context and running away with it to produce bizarre religions – thanks largely to priests, bishops and popes who, through their ministry of preaching, have fought off doctrinal error? That authority is the guarantor of the Catholic Church’s solidity and catholicity, as compared to the thousands of Protestant denominations and storefront churches that pop up one day and disappear the next? That not every schmuck should interpret the Bible by his own dim lights?

The rebels of 1968, of which Carroll is very much one, never appreciated how much suffering, confusion and tyranny were to be found on the far side of the collapse of authority. They were, and are, relentless. Even now, as they enter their twilight, the James Carrolls feel impelled to take parting potshots at authority. Allow me, then, to sum up bluntly: James, I don’t want to confess my sins to Bill Mitchell and the Cape Cod boys. I don’t want home liturgies and homemade recordings of the “Glory Be”. I don’t want an NGO church. And save your 72 hugs.

Sohrab Ahmari is the op-ed editor of the New York Post, a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald and author of the memoir From Fire, by Water (Ignatius Press)