Vatican City, Sep 12, 2018 / 04:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Attachment to sin and vice are a form of interior slavery which inhibit the ability to love, but true freedom is always found in God’s mercy, Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednes… […]
Rome, Italy, Sep 11, 2018 / 03:58 pm (CNA).- While the current sex abuse crisis is tantamount to the Church’s own ‘9/11,’ Catholics can maintain hope if they remain focused on seeking God above all else, said Archbishop Georg Gänswein, personal secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
“I perceive this time of great crisis, which today is no longer hidden from anyone, above all as a time of Grace, because in the end it will not be any special effort that will free us, but only ‘the Truth,’ as the Lord has assured us,” the archbishop said.
Gänswein, who is prefect of the Papal Household, spoke at a Sept. 11 presentation of the German edition of Rod Dreher’s recent book, “The Benedict Option.”
In that book, he said, Dreher notes “that the eclipse of God does not mean that God no longer exists. Rather, it means that many no longer recognize God, because shadows have been cast before the Lord.”
Today, Ganswein reflected, “it is the shadows of sins and of transgressions and crimes from within the Church that for many darken His brilliant presence.”
The archbishop noted the timing of the presentation, which fell on the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
He drew attention to “the report of the Grand Jury of Pennsylvania, on which now the Catholic Church too must cast a horrified glance at what constitutes its own ‘9/11,’ even if this catastrophe unfortunately is not only occurred on a single day, but over many days and years, and affecting countless victims.”
Ganswein clarified that he was “neither comparing the victims nor the numbers of abuse cases in the Catholic Church with those 2,996 innocent people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 9, 2001.”
However, he said, the reality of the souls damaged by the actions of Catholic priests in the U.S. is catastrophically grave.
Benedict XVI had warned in vain about this damage to souls when he lamented to the U.S. bishops in 2008 “the enormous pain that your congregations have suffered as clergy have betrayed their priestly duties and responsibilities through such gravely immoral behavior,” Ganswein said.
He reflected on other words from Pope Benedict XVI that shed light on the current crisis in the Church. Speaking to journalists onboard a flight to Fatima in 2010, Benedict had cautioned, “The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world… attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church.”
Five years earlier, as a cardinal reflecting on the Stations of the Cross, Benedict – then Josef Ratzinger – had observed, “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!”
Even before the recent revelations of sex abuse and cover-up, people have been leaving the Church in drastic numbers in some countries, Ganswein said, pointing to recent statistics indicating that “of the Catholics who have not yet left the Church in Germany, only 9.8 percent still meet on Sunday” for Mass.
In his book, Dreher highlights the monasteries founded by St. Benedict in the 500s as a template for preserving culture amid social turmoil.
But in implementing this model, Gänswein said, it is important to note Pope Benedict’s observation that “it was not [the monks’] intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past.” Rather, their motivation was simply to seek God.
This is the task for those today who hope to contribute to the rebuilding of the Church, the archbishop said.
“If the Church does not know how to renew itself again this time with God’s help, then the whole project of our civilization is at stake again. For many it looks as if the Church of Jesus Christ will never be able to recover from the catastrophe of its sin – it almost seems about to be devoured by it.”
But ultimately, Catholics have hope in the promise of the Christ, that sin will never prevail over the Church, he said.
Pope Benedict recognized this truth as well, in the first Mass of his papacy, when he said, “[T]he Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future… The Church is alive – she is alive because Christ is alive, because he is truly risen.”
With this reality in mind, Catholics can face the future with hope, Archbishop Ganswein said, praying that the present crisis may be transformed a time of purification and renewal.
“Even the satanic ‘9/11’ of the Universal Catholic Church cannot weaken or destroy this truth, the origin of its foundation by the Risen Lord and Victor.”
Translations from German by Anian Christoph Wimmer
Washington D.C., Sep 11, 2018 / 12:33 pm (CNA).- The director of the Vatican’s press office has confirmed that Pope Francis will meet with the president of the U.S. bishops’ conference Thursday, along with the conference’s vice-presid… […]
Vatican City, Sep 11, 2018 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- It has been more than two weeks since the former papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, released his 11-page “testimony” concerning what he called the “he… […]
Vatican City, Sep 11, 2018 / 10:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ group of cardinal advisors have issued a statement saying the Holy See is preparing an answer to current debates, presumably referencing questions raised following allegations … […]
Vatican City, Sep 10, 2018 / 03:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In an interview with Vatican News on Sunday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston said Church leaders must listen to abuse survivors’ experiences to respond properly to the sexual abuse cr… […]
Vatican City, Sep 9, 2018 / 05:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Sunday that Jesus teaches when doing good deeds, they should be performed discretely and without trying to draw attention to one’s self.
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Vatican City, Sep 7, 2018 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- Catholic News Service on Friday published a redacted version of a letter sent in 2006 from a high-ranking official of the Secretariat of State, which implicitly acknowledges receipt of allegations made against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The Oct. 11, 2006 letter is from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, who was Substitute of the Secretariat of State, to Fr. Boniface Ramsey, who had been on the faculty of Immaculate Conception Seminary in South Orange, N.J., from 1986 to 1996.
Sandri’s letter refers “to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo.”
Fr. Ramsey has said that when McCarrick was appointed Archbishop of Washington in 2000, he contacted Archbishop Montalvo to report allegations of McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians he had heard from his own seminary students.
At the nuncio’s request, he said, he put his concerns in writing.
Fr. Ramsey told CNS that in his letter, “I complained about McCarrick’s relationships with seminarians and the whole business with sleeping with seminarians.”
“My letter [of] November 22, 2000, was about McCarrick and it wasn’t accusing seminarians of anything; it was accusing McCarrick,” he said.
CNS reported that though Fr. Ramsey has said he did not receive a formal response to his letter of Nov. 22, 2000, “he was certain the letter had been received because of the note he got from then-Archbishop Sandri in 2006 acknowledging the allegations he had raised in 2000.”
The immediate purpose of Sandri’s 2006 letter was to inquire about a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark who had studied at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University. The priest was being considered for a post at the Vatican.
Sandri is now prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, and a cardinal.
Fr. Ramsey’s account accords with details of that offered by the testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was apostolic nuncio to the US from 2011 to 2016.
Archbishop Viganò had written that Montalvo (and his successor, Archbishop Pietro Sambi) “did not fail to inform the Holy See immediately, as soon as they learned of Archbishop McCarrick’s gravely immoral behavior with seminarians and priests. Indeed, according to what Nuncio Pietro Sambi wrote, Father Boniface Ramsey, O.P.’s letter, dated November 22, 2000, was written at the request of the late Nuncio Montalvo. In the letter, Father Ramsey, who had been a professor at the diocesan seminary in Newark from the end of the ’80s until 1996, affirms that there was a recurring rumor in the seminary that the Archbishop ‘shared his bed with seminarians,’ inviting five at a time to spend the weekend with him at his beach house. And he added that he knew a certain number of seminarians, some of whom were later ordained priests for the Archdiocese of Newark, who had been invited to this beach house and had shared a bed with the Archbishop.”
Viganò also stated that on Dec. 6, 2006, he wrote and delivered to Sandri a memo which detailed accusations of sexual abuse against McCarrick by Gregory Littleton, a laicized priest, which included “absolution of the accomplices in these depraved acts.” The former nuncio said he proposed in that letter that “an exemplary measure be taken against the Cardinal that could have a medicinal function, to prevent future abuses against innocent victims and alleviate the very serious scandal for the faithful.”
Vatican City, Sep 7, 2018 / 04:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God needs Christians to be his hands and feet on earth, and to speak out about injustice wherever it happens, especially when hidden by silence, the pope said in an interview published Friday.
Spe… […]
Everything having to do with the current politics of “sexual minorities” revolves around the lie that homosexuality is completely normal and only “unhealthy” if it’s […]
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