Courage From a Boy and a Priest

Father Peter Shaba

America sent many missionaries to Africa. Now Africa is sending them to us because the Catholic faith is growing there but has atrophied here. One such is Father Peter Shaba from Nigeria who said 10:30 mass last Sunday at Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Fryeburg, Maine. His homily on abortion was only the third I’ve heard in thirty years of attending mass nearly every week all over New England.

“If the mission of Jesus is to save life,” said Father Shaba in reference to Sunday’s mass readings, “for us his followers, our mission is to save and protect life as well. Yes, to save and protect life no matter how young or old that life is, especially the most vulnerable, the unborn. But is that the world mission today? Especially [for] those [who] call themselves Christians — good Catholics? Brothers and sisters, good Catholics don’t support the killing of innocent children — never.”

“We [all]watched what just happened in New York — the passing of the abortion law legalizing abortion up until birth, the Reproductive Health Act which was called ‘a historic victory for New Yorkers and for our progressive values…’ Are we progressing as humans in matters of life or are we retrogressing?” asked Father Shaba. “When we can kill babies who are very vulnerable, who should be cared for and protected since they cannot do that for themselves — but instead of doing that, we are happy and joyous that a law signing their death warrant has just been passed?”

He was referring to all the Catholic legislators who celebrated as Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law on the 46th anniversary of Roe V Wade. As Fox News reported it: “Cuomo directed the 408-foot spire on the One World Trade Center, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the Alfred E. Smith Building in Albany to be lit pink to ‘celebrate this achievement and shine a bright light forward for the rest of the nation to follow.’” 

Father Shaba continued: “I watched with sadness the man who signed this law [and] the women who were with him, other men and women present there especially those close to him — how happy they were, cheering him on, the grandmother who sat close to him, happy, laughing, cheering evil and thinking that all is well? These people should be crying and wailing. Brothers and sisters, I am telling you today: all is not well. We need to pray for our nation.”

Catholics, including lay people, priests, and a few American bishops are calling on their fellow bishops to censure Governor Cuomo — either excommunicate him or at least to deny him the Eucharist in his home parish. Is anything stirring? On Saturday, Bishop of Albany Edward Scharfenberger wrote to Governor Cuomo, according to according to Fox News: “Your advocacy of extreme abortion legislation is completely contrary to the teachings of our pope and our Church.”

Cuomo knows what he’s doing: making an ass of his bishop. So what now Bishop Scharfenberger? Another strong letter to follow? Only days before signing this sinful bill, Governor Cuomo “touted his Catholic faith during the State of the State address,” according to Fox News. Ordinary Catholics want their bishops to do something and we’re gravely disappointed with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for refusing to uphold, or even practice Catholic teachings. How can they now allow Cuomo to peddle his Catholicism for political purposes and days later publicly defy the church to which he claims to belong? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of Canon Law: “The diocesan bishop governs with legislative, executive, and judicial powers according to the norms of law.” Do your job, bishop!

Nick Sandmann, Bishop Foy

And speaking of cowardly bishops, what did Covington, Kentucky Bishop do last week after a Covington Catholic High School boy was pilloried in the pro-abortion media for marching against abortion? Did he defend the boy? No. The bishop threatened him with expulsion! As LifeSiteNews reported: “Bishop Roger Joseph Foy of Covington, Kentucky, along with the Covington Catholic High School administration succumbed to the mainstream media's leftist spin of the Friday, January 19 altercation.”

When our bishops lack the courage of a sixteen-year-old high school junior in the face of political and media pressure, what are we to think? Do they really believe in the teachings of the church they pretend to lead? It’s no wonder pews are emptying and churches are closing in America and Europe. Too few priests and bishops believe strongly enough in church teachings to champion them.

It takes a boy and a priest from Africa to show us what courage looks like, to shine the light on what America has become when “progressive” Catholics celebrate the slaughtering of our unborn children while calling it “Reproductive Health Care.”

The Dogma Lives Loudly Within

If someone were to have told me a year ago that many if not most American Catholic bishops disagreed with Church teachings enumerated in the Catechism of The Catholic Church, I wouldn’t have believed it. After the revelations of 2018 regarding Cardinal McCarrick, the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and the Archbishop Vigano testimony, however, there can be no doubt. And I’m sad to say that even more sickening revelations will likely come in 2019 since several other state attorneys general are investigating many dozens of bishops— and so is the US Justice Department.

Archbishop Vigano

After being born Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat in 1951, I remained a Democrat until 1993 when I dropped out during the first year of the Clinton Administration after realizing that pro-abortion and pro-homosexual biases had been so closely woven into the fabric of the party that I could not in good conscience remain. In 2002, The Boston Globe, which I read every day at the time, broke the homosexual priest scandal and I nearly dropped out of the Catholic Church as well. I didn’t, however, because, to paraphrase Senator Diane Feinstein: The dogma lives loudly within me.

The Globe didn’t call it a homosexual priest scandal. That’s what I called it then and still do while the Globe consistently calls it a pedophile priest scandal. The USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) calls it that too — even after 2004 when the study it commissioned, The John Jay Report, returned overwhelming evidence that it was indeed a homosexual priest scandal. Officially called The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, the study concluded that 80% of the sexual abuse victims were post-pubescent males. The perpetrators were clearly homosexual priests but the USCCB would not admit that. They still don’t, but some bishops and other clergy are finally breaking ranks after the sordid revelations of 2018.

Divisions within my Church will widen in the coming year as lay people in the pews are forced to choose sides. One or more of several possible scenarios will unfold: A dozen or more state attorneys general in New York, Michigan and elsewhere may call press conferences detailing hundreds, even thousands of sexual assaults by priests and bishops. What if the press conferences come weekly? What if they coincide with still another Supreme Court confirmation battle over a Catholic nominee? Fence-sitting will become increasingly uncomfortable for parishioners.

Many expect liberal Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to announce retirement after her most recent cancer surgery. If she does, President Trump will likely appoint US Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace her. It was at Barrett’s Circuit Court confirmation hearing that Diane Feinstein said: “the [Catholic] dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern.” Democrat Senator Dick Durbin asked her: “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” Barrett’s confirmation will make the raucous Kavanaugh hearings of last year seem tame by comparison.

At the Kavanaugh hearings

We haven’t seen this level of anti-Catholic bigotry since John Kennedy ran for president in 1960. I was in the fourth grade then at St. William’s School in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and I remember wondering — what was wrong with being a Catholic? For the next four decades or so, anti-Catholicism subsided but now it’s back, among Democrat senators at least. It’s okay to be a Catholic in government as long as you support abortion like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin, Susan Collins, Sonia Sotomayor, and several others do, but if you live by Catholic teachings you’re an “extremist.”

Left-wing Democrat Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono last week accused Brian Buescher, another Catholic Trump nominee for district court judge in Nebraska, of belonging to an organization that held “extreme positions.” That organization, the Knights of Columbus, supports marriage only between a man and a woman and is against abortion. Though I’m not active beyond monthly monetary contributions, my name is on K of C roles which makes me an “extremist” too. The “extreme positions” in question are basic teachings of the Catholic Church which bishops are responsible to uphold, but most don’t.

A few like Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix warn pro-abortion Catholic politicians not to approach the communion rail to receive the Eucharist. Catholics in the pews can only assume that most bishops don’t take Catholic Church teachings on abortion or homosexuality seriously. As I wrote in a previous column, I’ve heard only two homilies on abortion at weekly masses in Maine New Hampshire, and Massachusetts over the past thirty years. How many have I heard about homosexuality? Despite the enormous media attention given to the issue over that time, I’ve heard only one — and that, ironically, from former Portland, Maine Bishop Richard Malone whose present flock in Buffalo, New York is clamoring for his resignation. He’s under investigation there for protecting homosexual priest abusers. Federal investigators have been asking questions about him here in Maine as well.

Getting Harder To Be Catholic

When secular American culture unraveled after the 1960s, I took comfort that the Catholic Church seemed to anchor traditional morality. Now, however, I’m cheering the secular authorities investigating corruption in the Catholic Church because the Lavender Mafia controlling both the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) continues to bury it. Attorneys general in more than a dozen states have begun investigations into cover-ups of sexual predation and coverup by Catholic bishops similar to the one reported out by the  Pennsylvania AG last summer. In just the past month, two federal investigations began and two lawsuits were filed in federal court as well.

Under this cloud, the USCCB met in Baltimore last week. Its president, Cardinal Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Texas wanted that body to vote on a measure that would do two things: form a lay Catholic commission to investigate the Cardinal McCarrick scandal, and petition the Vatican to release documents on McCarrick's case. DiNardo knows how angry ordinary Catholics are that the pope and the Vatican hierarchy continue to cover for homosexual predators in their midst and that US bishops have either cooperated in this or remained silent. He knows grassroots Catholics want action now.

Cardinal DiNardo

But it was not to be. Pope Francis pulled the rug out from under DiNardo as the conference began when he brazenly ordered that no vote be taken! The pope’s toadies in the USCCB like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago and others cheered this move and suggested the USCCB vote should be taken next spring instead — after still another “conference” with the pope in Rome. They want to kick the can of corruption down the road yet again.

Written under Henry Sire's pen name

Humiliated by this action from The Dictator Pope (the title of Henry Sire’s devastating book on Pope Francis I just finished reading), Cardinal DiNardo moderated a debate over an obsequious motion that would only suggest the pope do these things. Unbelievably, even that vote failed 137-83. That means there are still 137 American bishops who think they can just drift along as they always have and ordinary Catholics in the pews will sit back and let them.

They’re wrong. Millions left the church after the 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight Series exposed widespread corruption. Many who remained have been further sickened by the revelations this past summer that hierarchical corruption was only covered up yet again. Worse, Archbishop Vigano, the former papal ambassador to the United States, has testified that the corruption extends to the Chair of Peter itself and calls on Pope Francis to resign! Vigano also accused US Cardinals Cupich and Wuerl of lying about it all. Another resolution in support of Vigano’s testimony was debated at last week’s USCCB Conference. Although it too failed, at least 43 bishops voted in favor.

Does that mean nearly a quarter of US Bishops believe Pope Francis should resign? Do they also believe many of their fellow bishops and cardinals are lying? It appears that way. What does this say about the spiritual condition of the Catholic Church in the United States and around the world? Locally, Maine’s Bishop Robert Deeley and Manchester, New Hampshire’s Bishop Peter Libaski were among the 83 voting for an investigation, but sadly, neither voted in support of the Vigano testimony.

Foreign Affairs Magazine calls this is the worst crisis in Catholic Church since Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” in 1517 and precipitated the Protestant Reformation. Others claim it’s the worst since 1054 AD when the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches split.

Whether it’s the worst in five centuries or the worst in a millennium, it’s getting harder to be a traditional Roman Catholic these days. I understand those who have been steadily leaving since 2002, but I choose to stay and fight. However, if last week’s USCCB meeting was a battle, traditionalists like me appear to be losing. Polarization in the Catholic Church is widening and there are many suggestions about how to participate in the struggle for its soul.

According to Market Watch, some of us protest with our wallets. We don’t put money in the collection box or have severely cut back on what we used to contribute. When attending mass in nearby New Hampshire, I’d be sickened seeing a photo of former Manchester Bishop John McCormack on the wall of the narthex and I wasn’t about to put anything over $5 in the collection box if he was going to get any of it. I know I was not alone.

My wife and I attend mass at several different parishes depending on where we are on any given Sunday. Given the performance at last week’s bishops’ conference in Baltimore, I’m not inclined to raise my contribution anywhere in New England. Instead of money, some Catholics have begun putting a signed note in the box protesting both the pope and the USCCB. Maybe that will shake things up enough for real reform. Nothing else has worked.

No More Pious Platitudes

How old is the Catholic Church? Well, what year are we in? It’s 2018 years old, the oldest, continually-functioning institution on earth. Along the way it’s been corrupted and reformed more than once and we’re overdue for another purge. When now-former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was credibly accused earlier this month of having molested young men and boys for decades, I was shaken. When the sexual abuse scandal first broke in 2002, McCarrick had been a prominent spokesperson assuring us all that he and other bishops would straighten everything out. Now we see he’d been a predator himself the entire time.

Then came the grand jury report in Pennsylvania earlier last week documenting that a thousand young people, mostly adolescent boys, were systematically molested by over three hundred priests. How many more were there who never came forth? Even worse, it was covered up for decades by other priests and bishops just like McCarrick. Those bishops live in mansions, but they belong in prison cells. How many clergy knew what was going on but lacked the courage to speak up? They should resign immediately. The time for pious platitudes is over.

Pittsburgh bishop's mansion

I was born a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat in 1951 and went to mass every Sunday. I attended Catholic schools from second grade through high school. After eighteen, my attendance declined. After going out on my own I had stopped attending altogether. Only when I had children who asked me about God did I go back.

Some years later The Boston Globe published its 2002 Spotlight Series on the huge scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. Priests had been raping altar boys by the hundreds across eastern Massachusetts for decades — all covered up by bishops, Cardinal Bernard Law, and others until the Globe blew it wide open. The Globe had done us all a service but they were wrong about one thing. They spun it as a “Pedophile Priest Scandal,” and yes, there were a few pedophile priests who molested children, but the vast majority of assaults were by homosexual priests preying on pubescent boys and young men. It was most definitely a homosexual priest scandal, but Cardinal McCarrick and others the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) carefully painted it as something else. Now we know why. 

Several of their advisors, however, disagreed. According to a 2011 article in the Linacre Quarterly: “Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the first USCCB National Review Board and former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, stated in an interview about the crisis: “I’m amazed that this fundamental bombshell [of the homosexual predation of American adolescent males] has not been the subject of greater interest and discussion. . . . I’m astonished that people throughout America are not . . . wondering about what the mechanisms were that set this alight.” 

A more recent article in US News and World Report cites research concluding that a majority of Catholic priests are homosexual. The Catholic Church has long taught that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” but it’s obvious now that many American and European priests, bishops, cardinals, and maybe Pope Francis, don’t believe it. Many, maybe most people in the pews don’t believe it either. How many Catholic readers here have heard homilies about homosexual sex at mass? I’ve heard only one in the past thirty years.

The Church also teaches that abortion is wrong, but how many homilies have you heard about that? Again, I’ve heard only two in thirty years. As many as half the people in the pews don’t believe homosexual sex or abortion are wrong and live accordingly. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen put it best: “If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.”

Such are the consequences of the last century’s sexual revolution. If the Catholic Church is to be saved, bishops and priests who don’t believe its teachings must leave. Those remaining must return to preaching that the only proper place for sexual behavior is in a marriage between one man and one woman that welcomes children. They must preach that abortion is always wrong except to save the life of the mother, which is hardly ever necessary. Most people calling themselves Catholics today think it okay to live lives in violation of Catholic teachings, and it’s increasingly clear that many in the clergy, too, think it’s okay to wink at the rules. This cannot continue.

To preach on church teachings, one must believe them and those homilies will very likely drive down both attendance at mass and revenue from the collection box. Many parishioners and clergy will join Episcopal, Unitarian, and other churches where rules are easier, or you can make your own.

We used to see the Catholic Church as holding fast to basic Christian principles against enormous world pressure to relax them. It’s harder to see it that way now.

Bishops Buck Up

America’s Catholic bishops have drawn a line in the sand. They aren’t going obsequiously to Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services trying negotiate a broader definition of Obamacare’s conscience clause. Instead, they’re calling for open defiance - civil disobedience. They're refusing to pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. They’re invoking the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King and encouraging American Catholics to disobey their government in this matter. As their letter says: “It cannot be obeyed and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal.”

This will damage for President Obama’s reelection chances, but I don’t think he understands yet how bad it is going to be for him. Did his reelection campaign pick this fight? Did they tell George Stephanopoulos to ask Mitt Romney that contraception question out of the blue during the presidential debates to begin orchestrating the alleged Republican “war on women”? Was this a calculated threat meant to solidify the female vote in November? If so, it’s going to backfire, bigtime.

Warning the president two months ago that he had the gauntlet in hand and was about to throw it down, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York invoked another Democrat president: “President Johnson said, as an American, I look to the church — I look to religion as a beehive. If you leave them alone, they’re going to give you tons of their honey. But if you stick your head in there, you’re going to get stung bad.”

“I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me,” said Ronald Reagan and the same applies to this writer. I left shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president, but Reagan left back in the fifties. When meeting new people and exchanging information, I sometimes say I’m a “Boston-Irish-Catholic-former Democrat.” Usually there’s a slight pause, then maybe a small chuckle, and sometimes a turning away. Some say, “Ah. A former Democrat,” and grin comprehendingly. They know I’ve separated myself from the party of my forebears and that helps them begin to understand my world view and my spiritual view.

My ancestors going back three generations were all Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrats, members of the clan. In order of priority, the men were Irish-Catholic-Democrats from Boston. The women were Catholic-Irish-Democrats from Boston. Catholicism was first for the women, but not usually the men. The women were not as interested in politics as the men, but politicians were interested in them. Ward bosses pressed them to vote Democrat in every election and they did. Their husbands’ and sons’ jobs often depended on them turning out every vote in their family, even some who may have died already. As the quintessential Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat politician’s slogan went: “Vote early and often for Curley.” That would be himself: James Michael Curley - former mayor, congressman, and governor of Massachusetts. Once, he was reelected as a “guest of the state” in his jail cell.

My education was in Catholic schools in Greater Boston from the second grade through high school. I was thoroughly trained in the conservative Roman Catholicism of the age. My local diocese was headed by Richard Cardinal Cushing, great friend of the Kennedy family whose scion, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected congressman, then senator, then president in 1960. Those were exciting times for a member of the clan growing up. My ilk didn’t just run Boston; they ran the whole state. Democrats were pro-union, pro-life, and anti-communist. They believed homosexuality was a perversion and that government at all levels should help the poor. They didn’t change, but the Democrat Party did, not on the issues of unions and welfare - not at first - but on all the rest they just flipped.

They became the party of abortion. No Democrat president will appoint a justice to any federal court who isn’t dedicated to Roe V Wade. While not overtly pro-communist, they’re so consistently socialist in their wealth-redistribution and regulatory bureaucracies, that there are virtually no more conservatives in the party. They’re coming to resembling Sweden and Greece more than the Democrat party of my youth.

Many conservatives abandoned the Democrat Party in the 1980s and became “Reagan Democrats.” Hardcore union types, however, didn’t. They stayed on, but how many will continue now that the USCCB has thrown down that gauntlet?

Less than three years ago, Obamacare was rammed through Congress with the open support of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Now, however, the USCCB is preaches open defiance of Obama’s contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drug mandate that is part of the bill. The veil of political naivete has fallen away from the bishops’ eyes. How is this going to play out for the president?

We’ll know late into the evening of the first Tuesday in November.