Manafort, Cohen, Mollie Tibbits: We Live in a World Where Morality is Secondary to "Message," "Agenda" and "Identity"

MANAFORT AND COHEN GUILTY; MOLLIE TIBBITS DEAD. Those were the breaking stories that filled the evening news on Tuesday. Each in its own way was a horrific end to a long vigil. • Mollie Tibbits, so young and talented and obviously loved by her friends and family and community. Mollie Tibbits, who wasn't "meant" to use her gifts into maturity. I have always believed, as many Christians do, that God takes us from this life to eternity when our job on Earth is done. So, we must accept that Mollie had fulfilled her God-given role and He called her home. Perhaps it is the ache in the hearts and the tears in the eyes of millions of us who never even met Mollie that explain the role inherent in her life and death -- that cry from the depths of our beings that asks why anything so horrible should happen to someone so innocent. But, what will our grief create in us that will honor her life and atone for our indifference to her murderer's presence among us. Her murderer -- that is another mystery. Was this young man so evil that he just struck out at her becasue she was there? Did he try to resist but succombed to his lower self? Above all, why was he -- an illegal immigrant -- able to live in a rural farmland area of Iowa for "4 to 7 years" without being arrested and deported? Is there a community sense of shame that he was allowed the time and freedom to finally kill an innocent young woman. Where is our national sense of shame that he was in our midst at all. Where are the religious leaders who can help us understand these haunting questions without rising to the bait of partisan political claptrap? I have heard no word of comfort thus far. • And we have Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Two men who had been given everything in life and somehow couldn't figure out what to do with their gifts. We Christians believe that each person can use his or her God-given talents and opportunities for good or bad. That these two men used their talents and opportunities to illegally hide money, to find sleazy answers to feed their greed, and to betray the trust of the man who called them friend is a display of moral hollowness -- "The Hollow Men" T. S. Eliot called them : "We are the hollow men, We are the stuffed men, Leaning together, Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless, As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar....This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper." The choice was there for them, as the choice is there for all of us. And so we leave Manafort and Cohen to their soulless agony, as we wait for a word of comfort and guidance from a religious leader. • As we wait for that word, we are, I am, still trying to come to terms with the depravity of a Church hierarchy that hid pedophile priests, exposing children and vulnerable young men to their assaults. I blame the Chruch for falling into the current secularism of "message" and "agenda," instead of preaching the word of Christ to a Christless world. That is its grave error. It has slipped effortlessly onto the Progressive fascist side in an Armageddon-like war for the souls of its flock. It has placed "message" and "identity" above its role as the voice of Christianity in the modern world. Pope Francis is the leader of that secularist "message" and so he cannot comfort us, let alone heal the wounds of the Church. Francis cannot, as Billy Graham would have, speak lovingly to a world steeped in sin, calling it to repentance, because Francis belongs to the world, not to the Church. We Catholics -- I was born and raised a Presbyterian, so calvinist self-responsibility and the daily fight against personal sinfulness are deep within my being, but I became a Catholic as young adult out of conviction, and I still hold that conviction -- we Catholics are face-to-face with a Church as corrupt as it was in the Renaissance when it became the prize in a political fight over its wealth and worldly power. We feel no leadership from Pope Francis because there is none. There is only "message" and secularist "agenda." • • • POPE FRANCIS AND THE PENNSYLVANIA SEX ABUSE SCANDAL. Consider the letter Pope Francis sent to Catholics worldwide Monday following the shocking revelations of sexual abuse by over 300 priests and cover-ups by bishops in a Pennsylvania grand jury report. Referencing the grand jury report, Pope Francis writes “with shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated." • An existential cry has been raised by devout Catholics at the suggestion in the Pope's letter that "we abandoned them." WE did not abandon them. HE and the Popes and Cardinals and Bishops reaching back 70 years abandoned them. Catholics in the US and around the world are calling for the Vatican to answer questions about how widespread sexual abuse by the clergy actually is, or was, and who among the bishops are responsible for covering up the abuses. It is still unclear whether Pope Francis’s letter will translate to active measures to remove abusers and the Bishops who covered up for them from active ministry. • The New York Times wrote about the Pope's letter on Tuesday, reminding us that it was published as Pope Francis prepares to visit Ireland, a predominantly Catholic nation where abuse scandals and other gross mistreatments of rank-and-file Catholics have contributed to a revolt over issues like abortion that would have been unthinkable just years ago. The recent Irish acceptance of legalizing abortion is attributed by many analysts to the seeming inaction and indifference of Pope Francis and the Vatican to the earlier Irish sex abuse scandal. The Times noted that : "Early on, in 2013, Francis directed the Vatican to act decisively on sexual abuse cases. He instituted a Vatican commission that included victims among its members to propose 'best practice initiatives for protecting minors and vulnerable adults' from delinquent clerics, and proposed a tribunal to prosecute remiss bishops. The initiatives, however, disappointed. The commission, whose term expired in December 2017, gradually lost several members, who quit citing frustration at the resistance they had met from some church officials as well as reluctance in the Vatican to implement recommended changes. The Vatican tribunal to try bishops was never set up. Then came the Pope’s serious mishandling of the Chilean situation. Outrage followed and the Pope took note. In February, Francis sent the Vatican’s top investigator to Chile, and that led to the Pope’s convening of the country’s bishops at the Vatican for a collective scolding. All of the country’s bishops eventually tendered their resignations. In February, too, the Pope instated a new commission for the protection of minors. In May, Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s finance minister, became the highest-ranking Vatican official to stand trial on charges of 'historical sexual offenses.' Last month, a leading figure in the United States church, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, resigned after allegations that the cardinal had sexually abused minors and adult seminarians." • The Pennsylvania grand jury report followed credible allegations against former Washington archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In his letter issued Monday, Francis addressed to “the People of God,” saying sorry was not enough. “Efforts to beg pardon” would never be sufficient, the Pope wrote. The deep wounds of the victims “never go away,” he said, specifically citing the grand jury report. While most of those cases, “belong to the past,” he wrote, “we have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death.” The letter, issued in seven languages, also makes clear that the Pope believes that at least in part, the Church got itself into its current trouble because of what is termed “clericalism” -- the great sin of clergy, putting themselves first, putting themselves on a pedestal, rather than acknowledging that they are the servants of the faithful. That mind-set, the Pope wrote, “helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say ‘no’ to abuse is to say an emphatic ‘no’ to all forms of clericalism.” • And so we have yet another scapegoat -- clericalism. That is not good enough, coming from a Pope who should be dressed in ashes and sackcloth climbing the steps of the great altar of St. Peter's on his knees. • • • THE LAVENDAR MAFIA. On Tuesday, American Thinker published a disturbing article by Frank Friday. He says : "Follow the money. That's the first thing to keep in mind when looking at the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on abusive priests. As Bill Donohue has pointed out, the two-year investigation accusing 300 priests goes back to the 1930s, including many non-priests, and while it is lurid, it likely contains many false accusations. Most importantly, no current priests are being charged with anything. In a backhanded way, the report confirms that the so-called Dallas Charter, the zero tolerance policy the American bishops instituted in 2002, has basically worked. Credible charges of sex with minors and child pornography are now being dealt with appropriately....What's really important in this story is that it has magnified the recent ouster of one of the great villains in the American Church, Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick was long the go-to guy for Democrat Catholics who wanted a pass on the abortion issue. Now McCarrick is the face of the "lavender mafia," the network of high-ranking gay men throughout the worldwide Catholic Church. (His misdeeds with seminarians were uncovered not by the legal authorities, but as part of a long-term investigation by a New York diocese.) These men are all the more insidious because they are usually smart enough to lay off sexual victims under the age of consent. All the while, they have built up a powerful faction that goes deep into the College of Cardinals and the Vatican bureaucracy. Pope Benedict got a start on suppressing these men, appointing reliable bishops in America to begin fighting their influence, and bringing Raymond Burke to the Vatican to lead the main effort. Unfortunately, Benedict resigned just as this push was really getting going, and his successor, Pope Francis, was elected with the help of the lavender faction. That's why Cardinal Burke was sidelined into a meaningless position as soon as Francis took over. Even Pope Francis has been admitting in private that seminaries have to screen out gay men. He's not stupid. He knows what a mess this is, but he made a deal with the devil to get elected Pope, and now he is constrained to act against all his lavender allies. My guess is, being 82, he bumbles along a few more years and then retires, citing the good example of his predecessor, saying the modern papacy requires younger, healthier men. In the meantime, Bishop Morlino of Madison, at least, was emboldened to speak out against homosexuality among the clergy. For those of us remaining faithful Catholics, the fight is now on to make sure Wuerl, Cupich, and the rest of the gang are no longer in the College of Cardinals when the time comes to choose Francis's successor." • American Thinker's Monica Showalter wrote, also on Tuesday, that : "Actually, not 'us.' We never liked this stuff, just some bad priests did. What happened was something a bunch of bad priests did, people who've separated themselves from both their mission, and from their flock, all in the name of power and what they perversely consider pleasure. It was the doing of particular individual people, not the collective flock, who caused this problem. The rest of us are just suffering....and we suffer as fewer people want to come to the Church, and we suffer as we get to listen to all the catcalls about the Church from the left, making us unjustly feel bad about being members of the Church, and we suffer as our church collection donations get drained in legal payouts to victims, leaving less for church upkeep, missionary work, pensions, and service to the poor. Thanxalot. No, actually, we're not the guilty ones in a collective guilt. We are the victims. The problem was Them. And while the left yells about people who say 'them,' 'them' in this case is the best way to put it. So calling on us to pray and fast to atone comes off as a little rich, a little spread-the-blame-y. After all, when everyone is guilty, no one is guilty. Speaking as one member, I'll be glad to help out with the prayer and fasting since he asked. I'll do it out of the goodness of my heart. But cripes, to mush the whole monstrous thing over as collective guilt, when the time calls for bony fingers to be pointed at individual miscreants, is where the Pope's message comes off as falling short. Unfortunately, he's a collectivist, not an individualist, so that seems to affect even a problem like this one. And that connects to how the Pope is being criticized by victims and others for not paying that much attention to getting these bad guys punished. In the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, he had the guy come on over to the Vatican to engage in a life of prayer and penitence. This is baloney, this is a guy who belongs in jail, atoning alongside the other convicts, mug shots, prison-stripes, breaking rocks in the hot sun, body cavity searches, top bunk, prison yard, mackerel currency, the hole, and all, here in the states. That's what the other perverts get here, and McCarrick should be no different....While we always have to discount for the Pope's Argentinian background, as Americans, we do see some better responses among the US bishops. Believe it or not, lefty Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, came up with a far better response that resonates better with Americans in this letter here: He pointed to the problem of it being one of priests, whose job is to represent Christ, and points out that the bad ones didn't. That works. He also outlined the work the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has been doing a lot of work to ensure that no child is ever harmed in connection with his or her experience with the Church. Since I worked on those committees when I lived in Los Angeles, I can tell you they were thorough, and they were well policed by the diocese to make sure stuff was getting done. Protection of safe spaces for little ones, research from the best practices of lawmen who catch miscreants, forcing even unwilling people who have minimal contact with kids to take certified child protection training and learn how to be on the lookout for perverts, is very effective, and that is what has been going on in Los Angeles for several years. Concrete action, and harsh words for the bad guys is what resonates. The big weakness in the Pope's statement was a failure to point a finger and call for righteous punishment for bad guys. Instead, we get pablumy stuff about all of us being guilty and needing to atone. No, throwing bad guys in jail and holding them up to shame works better. I know he tries, but his approach so far does leaves me a little cold." • • • WHAT DOES THE POPE HAVE TO DO WITH MANAFORT OR COHEN OR MOLLIE? My answer, as I try to make some sense of a jarring and painful day, is that the Pope, the Church, and Christianity have a lot to do with Manafort and Cohen and Mollie Tibbits. Cohen’s plea is a remarkable reversal for a man who was once Trump's closest confidants, and who said last September he would “take a bullet” for the President. Shooting a bullet at the President is a better description of Cohen's capitulation to the threats of a rabidly anti-Trump special counsel. At least, Paul Manafort committed his crimes before he knew Trump. Too bad he didn't consider that and refuse the campaign manager job. And, Mollie Tibbetts' murder suspect is Cristhian Rivera, 24, living in US illegally. Police say 24- year-old Cristhian B. Rivera confessed to chasing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts; he led authorities to her body. Authorities say Rivera, who lived in the rural Poweshiek County area, is being held on a federal immigration detainer. He's believed to have been in the area for 4 to 7 years. Vice President Mike Pence said he's "heartbroken" about Tibbetts' death, and called the college student an "amazing young woman." He tweeted that "justice will be served" against the murder suspect. "We will never forget Mollie Tibbetts," the vice president added. Shakespeare's Cleopatra said "He words me" -- do something. Step up and step out of the claptrap to actually provide the Christian leadership that is so fundamentally lacking. If Vice President Pence wants to be that leader, now is the time for him to take charge. Manafort and Cohen and Mollie are cries in the wilderness for moral leadership. • • • THE POPE AND THE CHURCH IN CHINA. The Pope is a dangerous man at the head of the Church, and not just on the issue of criminal priests. He is surely going to give China the right to pick Chinese Church bishops unless somebody stops him. The South China Morning Post wrote last Saturday that : "After Pope Francis voiced optimism over improving ties in June, a top official writes in a party journal that China must remain in charge on religious matters....Religious matters in China cannot be controlled by foreigners, Beijing’s most senior official for religion wrote in a Communist Party journal, amid talks with the Vatican to resolve a dispute over the appointment of Catholic bishops. Pope Francis had voiced optimism in June that ties between the Vatican and China were improving, as the two sides were in advanced talks to settle one of the biggest obstacles to resuming diplomatic ties that were cut almost 70 years ago. Catholics in China are split between those in 'underground' communities that recognize the Pope and those belonging to a state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association where bishops are appointed by the government in collaboration with local church communities." The SCMP spells out the "agenda" of Pope Francis : "While restoring diplomatic relations were not part of the ongoing talks, full relations would give the church a legal framework to look after all of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics and move on to focus on Catholic growth in a country where Protestant churches are already growing fast. The Vatican currently maintains full diplomatic ties with Taiwan, not Beijing, which views the self-ruled island as a wayward province." And, it explained with clarity the "agenda" of the Communist Chinese regime : "Writing in the latest issue of the bi-monthly party theoretical journal Qiushi, or 'Seeking Truth,' Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, said China had to remain in charge on religious matters. 'There is no affiliate relationship between our country’s religions and foreign religions. Our country’s religious groups and religious matters do not accept domination by foreign forces,' Wang wrote, without making direct reference to any religion or the talks with the Vatican. Religion in China has to follow the principle of 'Sinification' under the guidance of the party, he added." The SCMP also noted that China’s constitution proclaims freedom of belief, but in reality the officially atheist ruling Communist Party keeps a tight rein over all religious groups, an area of frequent concern for Western governments and rights groups." • On Tuesday, the Irish Times wrote aboutthe Church in China : "The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Beijing, China’s oldest Catholic church, has been at the burning heart of struggles between religious conviction and political zealotry during five centuries of upheaval....Established by the Jesuits in 1601 during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), this run-down but elegant house of God has been wrecked by fire and earthquakes and sacked during the Boxer Uprising and the Cultural Revolution. Famous churchmen include the leading Jesuit missionaries to China, such as Matteo Ricci in the late 16th century, who expanded what was a chapel into a church. Ricci’s 1602 map of the world in Chinese, printed at the request of the Wanli emperor, shared European geographic knowledge with China, including the first reference to America. Ricci and Francis Xavier are commemorated in bronze statues outside the church. These days the relationship between the powers that be and the church is more fraught. The challenge is to bring together the unofficial or underground wing, whose first loyalty is to the Vatican, and the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CCPA). It’s difficult to quantify how many Catholics there are in China, largely because the underground church is by its very nature secret. The Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong puts the total number of Catholics in China at 12 million, but other estimates say it could be as high as 30 million." • The Irish Times says the power struggle between the Communist Party and the Catholic Church is focused on the ordination of bishops. Every bishop recognized by Beijing must be a member of the CCPA. There are seven bishops appointed by the CCPA but not recognized by the Vatican, then 20 bishop candidates who have been appointed by the Holy See, and in some cases already secretly ordained. Then there are another 40 “underground” bishops whose legitimacy is accepted only by the Vatican and who live in constant danger of arrest. About 60 bishops are recognized by both the Holy See and the CCPA. The archbishop of Beijing is Joseph Li Shan, who is one of the few Catholic bishops recognized by both the CCPA and the Vatican. There is talk of rapprochement, of the Holy See switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, but it ebbs and flows. Both the Vatican and the Communist Party are masters at biding their time, at taking the long view." • • • DEAR READERS, why would Pope Francis or anyone in the Vatican want ot turn over to an avowed atheist Communist Chinese regime the power to appoint Catholic -- Christian -- bishops? Why? The unavoidable answer is that it is part of the "message" of being modern; it is part of the "agenda" of being able to count more heads as Catholics, even though those heads will be bowed in submission to the Chinese Communist regime. • It may seem strange to talk about faith and religious leadership as part and parcel of the Manafort and Cohen betrayals of their President and of conservatism. It may seem strange to talk about faith and religious leadership as part and parcel of the tragically avoidable murder of Mollie Tibbits. BUT, until we as Christians and conservatives face up to the fact that we are the targets of a fascist cabal determined to destroy not only conservatism but also Christianity, until we take up our faith as a shield and sword and do battle with these atheists who want us gone, we are merely fodder to be chewed up and spit out. We cannot look to Pope Francis for leadership because he -- like so many Christian Protestant leaders and churches -- has effectively abandoned us to become part of the secular immorality of the fascists. My heart aches for the Church and for all Christian churches that seem to have abandoned their faith in order to appease Progressive fascists whose goal is our destruction. My heart aches for a world in which morality is secondary to "message" and "agenda" and "identity." The Church is no more immune to the poison of secularism and the Armageddon-like war of fascism against Christian morality than we individuals are. It has been trapped in the "agenda" of trying to present itself as a modern organization instead of as the voice of Christ in today's Christless world. • Where is the Christian leader we lack? President Trump is thoroughly equiped to lead us politically, but if he is to lead Christians in this over-arching war, he will have to acknowledge his sins and don the sackcloth of repentance. If our leader-in-waiting is Pope Francis, he will need to do the same, for his burden greater. Listen to St. Paul. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 : "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." And again in Ephesians 1:7-8 : "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence." And yet again in Colossians 1:13-14 : "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." • In 1 John 2:1-2, we hear the sweetness of the promise : "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world." • Let us remember that we are not fighting for any secular "agenda" or "message." We are fighting the Good Fight for God.