Statue of St. Peter in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Vatican Media
National Catholic Register, Oct 2, 2023 / 02:34 am (CNA).
Five cardinals have sent a set of questions to Pope Francis to express their concerns and seek clarification on points of doctrine and discipline ahead of this week’s opening of the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican.
The cardinals said they submitted five questions, called “dubia,” on Aug. 21 requesting clarity on topics relating to doctrinal development, the blessing of same-sex unions, the authority of the Synod on Synodality, women’s ordination, and sacramental absolution.
Dubia are formal questions brought before the pope and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) aimed at eliciting a “yes” or “no” response, without theological argumentation. The word “dubia” is the plural form of “dubium,” which means “doubt” in Latin. They are typically raised by cardinals or other high-ranking members of the Church and are meant to seek clarification on matters of doctrine or Church teaching.
The dubia were signed by German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, 94, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences; American Cardinal Raymond Burke, 75, prefect emeritus of the Apostolic Signatura; Chinese Cardinal Zen Ze-Kiun, 90, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong; Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, 90, archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara; and Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, 78, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
The same group of senior prelates say they submitted a previous version of the dubia on these topics on July 10 and received a reply from Pope Francis the following day.
But they said that the pope responded in full answers rather than in the customary form of “yes” and “no” replies, which made it necessary to submit a revised request for clarification.
Pope Francis’ responses “have not resolved the doubts we had raised, but have, if anything, deepened them,” they said in a statement to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s partner news outlet. They therefore sent the reformulated dubia on Aug. 21, rephrasing them partly so they would elicit “yes” or “no” replies.
The cardinals declined the Register’s requests to review the pope’s July 11 response, as they say the response was addressed only to them and so not meant for the public.
They say they have not yet received a response to the reformulated dubia sent to the pope on Aug. 21.
The Register sought comment from the Vatican on Sept. 29 and again on Oct. 1 but had not received a response by publication time.
The cardinals explained in a “Notification to Christ’s Faithful” dated Oct. 2 that they decided to submit the dubia “in view of various declarations of highly placed prelates” made in relation to the upcoming synod that have been “openly contrary to the constant doctrine and discipline of the Church.”
Those declarations, they said, “have generated and continue to generate great confusion and the falling into error among the faithful and other persons of goodwill, have manifested our deepest concern to the Roman pontiff.”
The initiative, the cardinals added, was taken in line with canon 212 § 3, which states it is a duty of all the faithful “to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church.”
The practice of issuing dubia has come to the fore during this pontificate. In 2016, Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller along with late Cardinals Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner submitted a set of five dubium to Pope Francis seeking clarification on the interpretation of Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, particularly regarding the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to the sacraments. They did not receive a direct response to their questions.
In 2021, the DDF issued a “responsa ad dubium” giving a simple “no” to a dubium on whether the Church has “the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.” That same year, the Dicastery for Divine Worship issued a responsa ad dubia on various questions relating to the implementation of Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis’ motu proprio restricting the Traditional Latin Mass.
Then in January of this year, Jesuit Father James Martin directly sent Pope Francis a set of three dubium seeking clarification of comments the Holy Father had given the Associated Press on the issue of homosexuality. The pope replied to the questions with a handwritten letter two days later.
What both dubia contain
The first dubium (question) concerns development of doctrine and the claim made by some bishops that divine revelation “should be reinterpreted according to the cultural changes of our time and according to the new anthropological vision that these changes promote; or whether divine revelation is binding forever, immutable and therefore not to be contradicted.”
The cardinals said the pope responded July 11 by saying that the Church “can deepen her understanding of the deposit of faith,” which they agreed with, but that the response did “not capture our concern.” They reinstated their concern that many Christians today argue that “cultural and anthropological changes of our time should push the Church to teach the opposite of what it has always taught. This concerns essential, not secondary, questions for our salvation, like the confession of faith, subjective conditions for access to the sacraments, and observance of the moral law,” they said.
They therefore rephrased their dubium to say: “Is it possible for the Church today to teach doctrines contrary to those she has previously taught in matters of faith and morals, whether by the pope ex cathedra, or in the definitions of an Ecumenical Council, or in the ordinary universal magisterium of the bishops dispersed throughout the world (cf. Lumen Gentium, 25)?”
In the second dubium on blessing same-sex unions, they underscored the Church’s teaching based on divine revelation and Scripture that “God created man in his own image, male and female he created them and blessed them, that they might be fruitful” (Gen 1:27-28), and St. Paul’s teaching that to deny sexual difference is the consequence of the denial of the Creator (Rom 1:24-32). They then asked the pope if the Church can deviate from such teaching and accept “as a ‘possible good’ objectively sinful situations, such as same-sex unions, without betraying revealed doctrine?”
The pope responded July 11, the cardinals said, by saying that equating marriage to blessing same-sex couples would give rise to confusion and so should be avoided. But the cardinals said their concern is different, namely “that the blessing of same-sex couples might create confusion in any case, not only in that it might make them seem analogous to marriage, but also in that homosexual acts would be presented practically as a good, or at least as the possible good that God asks of people in their journey toward him.”
They therefore rephrased their dubium to ask if it were possible in “some circumstances” for a priest to bless same-sex unions “thus suggesting that homosexual behavior as such would not be contrary to God’s law and the person’s journey toward God?” Linked to that dubium, they asked if the Church’s teaching continues to be valid that “every sexual act outside of marriage, and in particular homosexual acts, constitutes an objectively grave sin against God’s law, regardless of the circumstances in which it takes place and the intention with which it is carried out.”
Question about synodality
In the third dubium, the cardinals asked whether synodality can be the highest criterion of Church governance without jeopardizing “her constitutive order willed by her Founder,” given that the Synod of Bishops does not represent the college of bishops but is “merely a consultative organ of the pope.” They stressed: “The supreme and full authority of the Church is exercised both by the pope by virtue of his office and by the college of bishops together with its head the Roman pontiff (Lumen Gentium, 22).”
The cardinals said Pope Francis responded by insisting on a “synodal dimension to the Church” that includes all the lay faithful, but the cardinals said they are concerned that “synodality” is being presented as if it “represents the supreme authority of the Church” in communion with the pope. They therefore sought clarity on whether the synod can act as the supreme authority on crucial issues. Their reformulated dubium asked: “Will the Synod of Bishops to be held in Rome, and which includes only a chosen representation of pastors and faithful, exercise, in the doctrinal or pastoral matters on which it will be called to express itself, the supreme authority of the Church, which belongs exclusively to the Roman pontiff and, una cum capite suo, to the college of bishops (cf. can. 336 C.I.C.)?”
Holy Orders and forgiveness
In the fourth dubium, the cardinals addressed statements from some prelates, again “neither corrected nor retracted,” which say that as the “theology of the Church has changed,” so therefore women can be ordained priests. They therefore asked the pope if the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which “definitively held the impossibility of conferring priestly ordination on women, is still valid.” They also sought clarification on whether or not this teaching “is no longer subject to change nor to the free discussion of pastors or theologians.”
In their reformulated dubium, the cardinals said the pope reiterated that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is to be held definitively and “that it is necessary to understand the priesthood, not in terms of power, but in terms of service, in order to understand correctly Our Lord’s decision to reserve holy orders to men only.” But they took issue with his response that said the question “can still be further explored.”
“We are concerned that some may interpret this statement to mean that the matter has not yet been decided in a definitive manner,” they said, adding that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis belongs to the deposit of faith. Their reformulated dubium therefore comprised: “Could the Church in the future have the faculty to confer priestly ordination on women, thus contradicting that the exclusive reservation of this sacrament to baptized males belongs to the very substance of the sacrament of orders, which the Church cannot change?”
Their final dubium concerned the Holy Father’s frequent insistence that there’s a duty to absolve everyone and always, so that repentance would not be a necessary condition for sacramental absolution. The cardinals asked whether the contrition of the penitent remains necessary for the validity of sacramental confession, “so that the priest must postpone absolution when it is clear that this condition is not fulfilled.”
In their reformulated dubium, they note that the pope confirmed the teaching of the Council of Trent on this issue, that absolution requires the sinner’s repentance, which includes the resolve not to sin again. “And you invited us not to doubt God’s infinite mercy,” they noted, but added: “We would like to reiterate that our question does not arise from doubting the greatness of God’s mercy, but, on the contrary, it arises from our awareness that this mercy is so great that we are able to convert to him, to confess our guilt, and to live as he has taught us. In turn, some might interpret your answer as meaning that merely approaching confession is a sufficient condition for receiving absolution, inasmuch as it could implicitly include confession of sins and repentance.” They therefore rephrased their dubium to read: “Can a penitent who, while admitting a sin, refuses to make, in any way, the intention not to commit it again, validly receive sacramental absolution?”
Vatican context
The public release of the documents, obtained by the Register and other news outlets, comes two days before the opening of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, a pivotal and highly controversial event in the Catholic Church.
The gathering in Rome marks a historic moment for the Church because for the first time in its history, laypeople, women, and other non-bishops will participate as full voting synod delegates, though the pope will ultimately decide whether to accept any of the assembly’s recommendations.
Pope Francis, either directly or through the Roman Curia, has previously addressed the topics brought up by the five cardinals and their dubia.
On the issue of the development of doctrine and possible contradictions, Pope Francis has frequently described a vision of doctrinal expansion grounded in a particular understanding of St. Vincent of Lerins’ maxim that Christian dogma “progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age.” The pope has said doctrine expands “upward” from the roots of the faith as “our understanding of the human person changes with time, and our consciousness deepens.”
For instance, the Holy Father has said that while the death penalty was accepted and even called for by previous Catholic doctrine, it is “now a sin.” “The other sciences and their evolution also help the Church in this growth of understanding,” the pope said. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis said that this kind of approach might be considered “imperfect” by those who “dream of a monolithic doctrine defended by all without nuance,” but “the reality is that such variety helps us to better manifest and develop the different aspects of the inexhaustible richness of the Gospel.”
On the topic of blessing same-sex unions, which have been pushed for in places like Germany, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal office, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, weighed in on the matter in 2021, clarifying that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.” However, some have speculated that, in spite of the DDF text referencing his approval, Pope Francis was displeased by the document. Relatedly, Antwerp’s Bishop Johan Bonny claimed in March that the pope did not disapprove of the Flemish-speaking Belgian bishops plan to introduce a related blessing, although this claim has not been substantiated and it is not clear that the Flemish blessing is, in fact, the kind explicitly disapproved by the DDF guidance.
Regarding the DDF text, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin cited it in his criticism of the German Synodal Way’s decision to move forward with attempted blessings of same-sex unions, but he also added that the topic would require further discussion at the upcoming universal synod. More significantly, new DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, a close confidant of Pope Francis, stated in July that while he was opposed to any blessing that would confuse same-sex unions with marriage, the 2021 DDF guidance “lacked the smell of Francisco” and could be revisited during his tenure.
Regarding the authority of the forthcoming synod, although Pope Francis has expanded voting rights in the Synod of Bishops beyond the episcopacy, he has also repeatedly emphasized that the synod “is not a parliament” but a consultative, spiritual gathering meant to advise the pope. The pope did adjust canon law in 2018 to allow for the final document approved by a Synod of Bishops to “participate in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter,” though only if “expressly approved by the Roman pontiff.”
On the possibility of the sacramental ordination of women, Pope Francis reaffirmed in 2016 that St. John Paul II’s clear “no” via Ordinato Sacederdotalis (1994) was the “final word” on the subject. In 2018, then-DDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria confirmed that the male-only priesthood is “definitive.” In a 2022 interview with America magazine, Pope Francis again affirmed that women cannot enter ordained ministry and said that this should not be seen as a “deprivation.”
The pope has established two separate commissions to consider the question of a female diaconate, but the first, historically-based commission did not come to any definitive consensus and the second, focusing on the issue from a theological perspective, seems similarly unlikely to offer univocal support for a female diaconate. However, the synod’s Instrumentum Laboris does ask if “it is possible to envisage” women’s inclusion in the diaconate “and in what way?”
Finally, regarding withholding absolution in the confessional, the pope has previously referred to priests who refrain from offering absolution for certain moral sins without the bishop’s permission as “criminals” and told the Congolese bishops in February that they must “always forgive in the sacrament of reconciliation,” going beyond the Code of Canon Law to “risk on the side of forgiveness.”
Jonathan Liedl, senior editor of the National Catholic Register, contributed to this story.
[…]
Point A. Benedict XVI was opposed by the homosexual cult organization of Danneels-Martini, self-called the Sanct Gallen Mafia, because he deposed and defrocked some 400 sex abusing priests, and dozens of Bishops for sex abuse snd or coverup; 80% or more of the cases we know were homosexual predators of teen boys.
B. When the sex abuse coverup Cardinals we’re fanning the flames when B16 abdicated, the coverup Cardinals obviously hatched a buzz-subversion-phrase not-so-curiously repeated in pulpits by homosexual promoting priests (as I heard in Spring Lake NJ), and obviously repeated by such from pulpits in some parishes in Maryland (when I heard Catholics there use the very same phrase). The exact words were this: He can’t handle the sex abuse crisis.
C. In 2010 the Catholic world learned that Cardinal Danneels was forced to retire in disgrace after being exposed in the Belgian Press (De Staandard and other papers) in Aug 2010 for denying justice to the Vanguelwhe family, who were reporting that their own uncle Bishop Roger Vanguelwhe had taped his little nephew, their brother. Danneels tried to intervene to protect his friend Bishop Vanguelwhe, and suspecting Danneels of betrayal, the Vanguelwhe family tape recorded his intervention against them, where (get this) he specifically refused the family’s request to report their uncle Bishop Vanguelwhe to Pope Benedict, preposterously telling the family that it was not possible for him (the primate of Belgium) to get in contact with B16.
D. When the same homosexual Sanct Gallen mafiosi Danneels published his biography, he bragged about getting Cardinal Bergoglio elected to the papacy, and reminded audiences that he and his mafiosi tried to do the same in 2005, but failed on the first try.
E. And while Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aries and President of the Argentine Bishops Conference, he directed a multi-million dollar defense and victim smear campaign defending the notorious sex predator Rev. Julio Grassi, which is reported by more candid Catholic sources, including Damian Thompson of the Spectator (UK). Bergoglio even dared to try to intervene and influence judges on the Argentine Supreme Court, who repulsed him and sentenced Grassi to 15 years in prison. This may explain why The Pontiff Bergoglio/Francis prefers not to return to Argentina, even though he managed to visit Chile when he was trying to protect Bishop Barros in the Osorno sex abuse case.
F. And when in 2013, after diligent years subverting B16, Danneels and his like-minded fiendish-sex abusers and coverup artists, including McCarrick and Mahoney of the US, managed to get Cardinal Bergoglio, the great Argentinian sex abuse coverup artist, elected as Pontiff, who was the man standing on the balcony with the new Pontiff Francis? You guessed it: sex abuse coverup Cardinal Danneels, resurrected by the Pontiff Francis, and rewarded for his electioneering by being placed on the guiding committee for “The Family Synod.” (That’s what “The Family” is really all about in the Buenos Aries Pontificate.)
And so now we hear from CNA reiterating this German Catholic Church establishments little smear attempt against B16, all narrative, and no facts, while at the same time not-so-curiously for nine long years having managed never to write an article about the Argentine Julio Grassi sex predator case, the biggest sex abuse case in Argentine history, involving then Cardinal Bergoglio defending Grassi.
Pardon me if, given the known behavior of the sitting Pontiff and his Cardinal electors and friends, that I perceive this whole article to be nothing other than a carefully calibrated way of the Church’s McCarrick-Danneels establishment damning B16 with faint praise, in order to pave the way for the German-Katholik-Sex-Revolution-Synod, while the Pontiff Francis grins, and pretends he is against it.
(I will be post links to articles and podcasts by Damian Thompson etc.)
I would suggest stepping back a bit and considering the impression these continual rants are making of you and how they reflect on your integrity and character. The common theme of your many posts is some issue related to McCarrick and the church’s response to clergy abuse, whether or not the posted article speaks to those topics.
It’s pretty clear that there is some unresolved personal issue going on here. If that is the case, it is not appropriate to use this forum as an outlet for your personal axe grinding. Personal issues should be addressed with professionals in the context of therapy, not in a comments section on a website.
What is the basis for the diagnosis of as clear “unresolved personal issue”? By what credential are we to judge an “appropriate…use [of] this forum as an outlet for …personal axe grinding”?
Could we not lay the same claim to many comments by many posters? Chris and you both usually have viewpoints from which others may profit.
The article IS about clerical sex abuse and Benedict’s handling of same. Chris’ comment relates to the OP. Germany’s secular report on clerical abuse was released this past week. The secular authorities implicated Benedict in mismanagement and cover-up of legitimate claims of abuse against clergy under his oversight. The comment is relevant, timely, of general interest, and fact-based.
Thank you Meiron, I appreciate what you wrote, mainly because I sense that candor and truth-telling are completely out of fashion in our “contemporary” Church.
I relay these horrible truths (which are very ugly) because I love Christ’s Church, and I am fighting, with ehat little means are in my power, for truthfulness and justice in our Church, and at this moment in history, I believe the Church is largely controlled by those Bishops and Cardinals who are Saduccees: they have no supernatural faith, they have contempt for the truth, contempt for law, and contempt for justice.
Here, here. I am in total agreement with you. Chris in Maryland (where I also happen to reside) brings up many valid points about the historical “sweeping under the rug” of the sexual abuse scandal and how many of those now in positions of power are at the root of that scandal. We have long since passed the point of “polite discussion” concerning this and several other related issue. In our secular “Heinz 57” gender society, those of us who believe God created man and woman, and nothing more, had better wake up and see that there is a dedicated war being waged against us, and the “enemy” is “inside the wire”. If you are still in “negotiation mode”, you are losing. The time to fight has arrived.
As a coda, wrt to the title, I might suggest an alternative:
“Who is Cardinal Filoni?”
Apparently, he is a card-carrying member of the Secretariat of State. Given the Secretariat of State’s history of covering up sex abuse cases, to the point where Cardinal Ratzinger finally persuaded Pope JP2 to take sex abuse investigations away from the Secretariat of State (under the then-corrupt head Cardinal Sodano, accused in print by Editor of First Things Jody Bottum), it is not serious for The Church faithful to be served a “defense” of B16 by a member of the organization that helped resurrect McCarrick (despite knowing that he had been confronted and discreetly ordered to cease his “activities” by B16, because of the allegations of abusing seminarians), and having McCarrick help the Secretariat of State complete its long-desired treacherous Secret China Accord, completed by the likewise corrupt Secretary of State Parolin.
I think Benedict was too discrete in dealing with McCarrick.
I agree with that.
An investigation should have been opened.
But frankly, given the adulation heaped on McCarrick before he was exposed by James Grein, I doubt that most Bishops or Cardinals or in fact laity would have supported B16 in putting McCarrick under investigation.
What are you, Chris – a sedevacantist or a sedeprivationist?
No, and no.
While I am neither, I do agree with Jesus that some people are on their way to the abyss, and I agree with Dante that some of them will be Popes, and I have the distinct impression that the sitting Pontiff, and many of his Cardinal electors and assorted sycophants in our contemporary Church, may be joining company with Alexander VI.
Papa Ben is a hero of the Faith. Any attack on him can only originate in someone’s envy or resentment or jealousy, perhaps from anti-German stereotypes, or from – I dare say it – Satan.
Agree.
Damian Thompson on Pontiff Francis corruption in 2018.
Damian Thompson in Sep 2018, on the repulsive sex coverup artist Danneels, and the legacy-media covering for the Pontiff Francis:
https://www.complicitclergy.com/2018/09/01/how-the-media-are-covering-up-for-pope-francis/
And we had the fanatical pro-fornication and pro-abort Cardinal Martini come and go in the modern history of the Church and his scandal hardly caused a stir of embarrassment let alone condemnation. If you’re a prelate with seniority, you apparently get a free pass even by the “good” prelates.
I’m a nobody and I am grateful to have this important and verified information made available. Thank You and God Bless You.
Thank you Bill…from one nobody to another.
The problem with BXVI was his unhealthy almost singular focus on doctrinal matters over pastoral concerns. This horrific imbalance resulted in deeper damage to the Church. A number of comments above mention the case of Ted McCarrick. Long known by Ratzinger to be a homosexual predator, Uncle Ted was never punished by Papa Ben. However, Ratzinger was quick to remove doctrinally challenged bishops, like for example, William Morris of Toowoomba, Australia.
To sum up. The sorry state of the Church is such, even our faithful and holy prelates do not have many they can trust to assist them in all matters necessary to carry out pastoral and doctrinal matters. JPII, for example, is often faulted for those he elevated to the episcopate when he essentially rubber stamped those, whom he did not know, that were presented to him.
Yes, what you say is very true. Remember Benedict saying that his authority stopped at his office door? His resignation in light of having few to trust is reasonable. Continually confronted by betrayals, immoralities, and brazen acts of disobedience (e.g., McCarrick’s exemplar), subjectively he must have mourned the objective fact of his inability to function. Our giving him the benefit of the doubt allows his resignation within
Benedict understanding of God’s Divine Will, and justifiably acting upon that understanding.
In this regard, BXVI’s resignation is forgivable. God does allow good to follow confusing and sorrowful events (e.g., Crucifixion followed by Resurrection). The faithful now have no excuse to deny or overlook sins of the fathers; such sins have been over-exposed to light, and we can no longer easily explain them away. Remember Benedict’s saying the boat was seriously listing and his saying that the church would become a remnant? We cannot deny that we’ve all been witness to that.
“never punished,” I mean, “not defrocked….”
I would argue that Benedict’s emphasis on sound doctrine and theology was not a “horrific imbalance” at all. It was a necessary and long-overdue course correction. A God-honoring life is built from the ground up, and its foundation is rooted in sound doctrine. Good theology produces God-honoring behavior, and theological distortions and ambiguities create the spiritual swamp that is the current state of affairs in the church. The fact that many “leaders” have drifted away from basic and essential Catholic teaching is the real horror here.
From Filoni we read: “In those years, the issue of pedophilia emerged with virulence in the Church. It was not known in the terms with which it has since gradually emerged. But it was always clear to me that Benedict XVI was willing to face it with determination.”
This assertion is thoroughly documented in Peter Seewald’s second volume: “Benedict XVI: A Life—Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966-The Present”, 2021.
After setting the record straight, Seewald then supplies the media-suppressed Big Picture (pp. 226-228…):
-Abusing priests are 0.2 to 1.7 percent of total clerics, while the ratio is 2.0 to 3.0 for Protestant clergy (Philip Jenkins, and Evangelical press agency Christian Ministry Resources, 20020;
-In Germany in the past 15 years, out of 29,058 abusers, 30 had been employed by the Catholic Church (0.1 percent compared to 99.9 percent other, Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute);
-Of 62,000 paedophile cases in the U.S. in 2008, 18 were priests (0.03 percent, U.S. Government report);
-UNICEF reports that in the early twenty-first century, 220 million children are forced into sex each year;
-Hundreds of thousands of non-celibate (!) men download child porn every year;
-In the U.S. 12,250 children have been sexually abused in the Boy Scouts of America [and yet, efforts to exclude homosexual leaders were repulsed by the courts];
-In the U.S. armed forces in the 2010s about 100,000 men and 13,000 women soldiers were victims of sexual attacks (U.S. ministry of defense [sic]; in Europe, six out of ten women were victims of sexism (according to the Brussels Foundation for European Progressive Studies);
-In Nov. 2017 a ‘sex pest list’ naming 40 Tory MPs was leaked, including secretaries of state and ministers. In the same month, in Sweden, “in answer to a phone call, on a single day 1,100 people reported sexual attacks in the country’s entertainment industry;”
-In Austria, 99.7 percent of all abusers are not church people (court-appointed expert Reinhard Haller).
And, to fix this historic, cultural and civilizational collapse, victimization and crime pandemic, we can be sure that, within the targeted Church, the poster-child Fr. James Martin will ensure that his tribe will be available at the synods in the United States, for example, to leave their mark on the synodal flip charts.
This, while the “facilitator” bishops sit on their hands as instructed in the Vademecum, possibly assuming naively that the later synodal “synthesis” reports (local, continental, and Vatican under the tutelage of Cardinal Hollerich) will set things straight, so to speak.
Now Peter I can better appreciate President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue’s frequent complaint that media focus on the Church is comparatively out of proportion.