As the elderly Francis is set in his ways, he is unlikely to get his Damascene moment this side of the Pearly Gates or, for that matter, Davy Jones’ locker.
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Stephen Karganovic’s recent article explains that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has “to answer accusations of committing three canonical offences: fomenting schism, questioning the legitimacy of the current Pope, and rejecting the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church which was held sixty years ago and whose controversial reforms have been agitating traditionalist Catholics”, many of whom rallied around the late Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicated, despite his decades of Trojan work for the Church.
As Marlon Brando helpfully asks the other Mafia bosses in The Godfather, how did things ever get this far? The first clue is, like the Mafia, the Catholic Church is also a gerontocracy, where old men rule and old men are, almost definitionally, resistant to change.
The biggest cosmetic change, which Karganovic cites, is the Second Vatican Council, which traded the certainties of the Old Mass for the circus that goes on today, where almost anything, bar the Mass of our ancestors, is allowed.
In my earlier piece defending Russian culture against the swine of North London, I wrote how I loved the majesty of High Masses. Though there is really nothing as sublime as it, Popes John XX111 and Paul V1 felt they had to get nearer to their great unwashed by throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I see their point as, in my day, we had to study Latin at school for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was to join in all those wonderful hymns that have stood the test of time.
Though Lefebvre and others, who attended the Council, went along with the changes, their reservations grew, when their cathedrals and churches were stripped of their finery to more resemble stark Protestant Pentecostal halls rather than Houses of God.
The Vatican excommunicated Marcel Lefebvre when he appointed his own bishops, something, as copious examples from Luther’s Reformation right down to our own times with Bishop Sinéad O’Connor show, that can and should only be done with the authority of the Pope.
Although the great Cardinal Ratzinger, God’s rottweiler as he was called, tried to patch things up with Lefebvre’s lot when he, as Pope Benedict, got the top job, Ratzinger resigned the papacy for reasons very relevant to the Viganò affair. The homosexual orgies and the corruption that went with them were just too much for that gentle,German soul.
Although Viganò had been a Vatican heavy hitter, he was particularly irked at being side lined to the vipers’ nest of Washington, where gay orgies and enough lines of coke to choke an elephant still seem to be all the rage.
Without putting too fine a point on it, it would be impossible not to be shocked to the marrow by the carry on of the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland, England, France and, as evidenced by the cavortings I already alluded to with Jesuit big wig Fr Bill Currie, elsewhere as well; Sodom and Gomorrah are not in the race.
Though many of the “faithful” gave up on the Church as a bad job because of all that, Viganò and others, who had invested heavily in it, asked much-needed questions as regards what was happening above deck on the bridge. Although the never ending rosaries of apologies the Vatican has issued over these scandals are fine as far as empty shibboleths go, there has been no systematic examination as to why such abuses proliferated not only against vulnerable children but against everyone and everything from animals to seminarians and priests as well.
But, given that Christ’s Vicar on Earth is 87 and wheelchair bound, you can’t really expect him and his cronies to steer away their giant Titanic from the icebergs, big and small, that regularly crash into it. As the elderly Francis is set in his ways, he is unlikely to get his Damascene moment this side of the Pearly Gates or, for that matter, Davy Jones’ locker.
The Latin Mass, that the Pope and his cronies are determined to obliterate, is an obvious case in point. If “conservative” Catholics want the Mass said in the way it has been said for nigh on 2,000 years, why does the Vaticannot let them get on with it and invest their own time more productively elsewhere, in cleaning up the Vatican of all its numerous toadies and lecherous homosexuals, for example? And, as regards the claims of cultural or religious snobbery, give me a break. The New World’s great churches were paid for not only by the pennies of the poor but by getting the better off to pay more in exchange for better seats at the circus. Pope Francis and his cronies should take note of the anger they are needlessly stoking by penalising straight laced Catholics on the one hand and, on the other, by protecting vicious sexual predators like the notorious Fr Marco Rupnik, Pope Francis’ fellow Jesuit, who should be doing some very serious porridge for his outrages against Slovenian nuns.
Rupnik aside, if Viganò had his way, the first toady to walk the plank would be Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, nicknamed Cardinal Tucho after Norberto Méndez, the famous Argentinian football legend. Though we all love Tucho the player, what are we to make of Tucho, the Cardinal, who has written a book, titled Heal me with your mouth: the art of kissing, which he claims is a theological discussion on the art of kissing; this screed would sit easier with the Kama Sutra than with the Office of the Inquisition, which Tucho now holds, and which was recently more appropriately graced by having then Cardinal Ratzinger at its head?
Tucho, his critics say, is a Pope Francis lapdog, who is determined to reshape the Church in the image of his decrepit Jesuit master who, they would argue, resembles the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. Not a straight shooter, especially regarding investigating child sex abuse, they say.
Although the increasingly vitriolic tone of Viganò’s attacks have lost him important Catholic conservative allies, none of that changes the fact that the Vatican is in a state of chassis and Viganò is to be applauded for being the gadfly in the Pope’s ointment. And though Viganò is in the hot seat for threatening Catholic unity, that raises the question as to what kind of unity is desirable and how that unity accords with the mission statement of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
Although Viganò has always been a turbulent priest, the Church has always been built on the sweat, guts and martyred blood of such folk, as well as by the good nuns of Burgos, who are also in schism, or indeed of (excommunicated) Australian nun Mary MacKillop, the first Ossie to be declared a saint.
Although such schisms are only hairline fractures when compared to the greater losses of the past or even to the loss of the Lefebvre crew, they are schisms the Church can ill afford if it wishes to stay true to its mission.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus! Outside the Church, there is no salvation. But, if the Church cannot be saved, how are those within it to be saved? Viganò, no matter whether he gets the red card of excommunication rather than the red hat of a cardinal less deserving souls have got, has asked some serious questions and I have asked others regarding the Pope cavorting with Ukrainian Nazis here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Although Karganovic has concerns that the Orthodox Church might get tainted by Vatican overtures,even Der Spiegel and the New York Times long ago proclaimed that the Vatican must first put its own disreputable house in order before it gives as much as an Eastwards side glance to her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Geriatrics of Pope Francis’ vintage must be put out to pasture, the moles of the West’s intelligence services must be expunged, genuine concerns and suggestions by Viganò, by the nuns of Burgos and by the rest of the faithful must be listened to, and business consulting firms must be called in to see how the Vatican, in conjunction with police child protection branches and other relevant secular bodies can, in the words of that wonderful English Catholic hymn, salvage the faith of our fathers’ holy faith (to which, in more sociologically stable times, we vowed) we will be true to death.
