CARDINAL DOLAN IS NOT YET ARMING FOR BATTLE

If the tyranny that is swiftly emerging from the slime in Washington is to have an effective adversary, that adversary must keep his own house in order. By entering into battle with an enemy, especially one as vicious as the puppet in the White House, without preparing his troops for said battle, is to forge ahead with a blunted sword. The new Cardinal-Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, is walking into a battle without sharpening his weapons first.

Like many this writer was surprised that such a typical "politician" as Dolan has found the courage to apparently stand up to the establishment's contraception "mandate". Surprised, because hitherto no such courage was ever much in evidence in the man. He was, if anything, the perfect "go along to get along" type Churchman, soft-pedaling the hard truths of the Faith so as not to offend non-Catholics, performing the ritual toadying to non-Catholic, even anti-Catholic, interests, etc. It is the tragic reality of today's bleeding Catholic Church that such nauseating obsequiousness is more or less expected in the ranks of the clergy, high and low. But this attitude will not help him in his battle with The Creeps. It is an Achilles Heel. It is his blunted sword.

For at least a century, and most likely more, Catholics have been softened, punched and kneaded by forces both outside and inside the Church into something quite different from the men they once were in the Ages of Faith. An Innocent III would look upon today's Church with shock and horror, at least in the manner in which it is teaching and leading (two things it is most definitely not doing to any great extent). Our typical Catholic today is suffering from Americanism, that heresy so brilliantly defined by Leo XII in his great encyclical on the subject, Testem Benevolentiae.

...For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or to so soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. Now, Beloved Son, few words are needed to show how reprehensible is the plan that is thus conceived, if we but consider the character and origin of the doctrine which the Church hands down to us.

We can of course go on with quotations from this great document but that short section should drive home the essential point. But to see just how lunatic deviations from that teaching can become, we need look no further than Cardinal Dolan's own diocese where at the church of St Francis Xavier the Archbishop finds nothing amiss with a parish that caters to - indeed celebrates - the unspeakable crime of homosexuality. Archbishop now Cardinal Dolan is perfectly aware of what is going on there (he has been aware of it since he went to New York two years ago) yet has not seen fit to intervene. And by his silence on the matter he is, whether he realizes this or not, giving consent to a toleration of buggery. This has a profound effect upon his efforts to deal with the homosexual problem in the priesthood, which problem has brought shame, misery, financial ruin and unutterable scandal to the Church, the faithful and the world. If His Eminence is serious about putting to an end the homosexual rape of adolescent boys that has been going on here and there in the Church and in his own diocese he is going to have to apply some of that courage he is now belatedly showing and deal with the outrage at St Francis Xavier.

If he does not do this he will be giving the edge to the enemies of the Catholic Church who are now ready to pounce. This will show weakness and accommodation; it will show cowardice. And it will be used by all the forces that are now congealing to turn the Church into government toadies, very much like what the Russian Orthodox became under the Communist rule, or what the so-called "Patriotic Church" in China is right now. If the Cardinal does not get his own house in order before the battle he will be fighting with one arm only. It is, perhaps, too much to ask that Dolan and the other Bishops put aside their Americanism. Breaking a habit two hundred years in the making will not be easy. But it is not too much to ask - is it? - that something as simple and basic as removing sexual perverts from parish churches be done immediately. Your Eminence, hear me: we are talking about sexual miscreants who delight in the molestation of adolescent boys and who are enjoying adulation and praise in a Catholic Church. Is it really too much to ask that you correct such an outrage?

Let us commend those Bishops who are standing up to the floppy-eared tool of International Finance who now rules the roost (or so he thinks) in our nation's capitol. Help them, encourage them, pray for them. Hold their feet to the fire if they show the slightest tendency to waver. And if this growing evil spewing out of Washington begins to help the growth of Episcopal backbones then some good may come of it.