the trials of the catholic church

 

A court in the Vatican has this month declared Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano guilty of schism (splitting the church) and pronunced on him a sentence of excommunication.

Excommunication is a verdict we Catholics tend to leave to God,

In previous eras the pronouncement was intended to condemn the person found guilty of it, to eternity in hell.

Such a condemnation was given to Joan of Arc back in the 1400s. She's now considered a saint of the church.

Nowadays excommunication really just means that as far as the official Catholic Church is concerned a particular person is not Catholic.

So excommunication is still possible.

But we tend to think a person more or less must excommunicate themeselves.

Popes rarely do it.

Bishops a bit more often.

Often the sentence is rescinded.

Let me lay my cards on the table.

My own assessment of the present Pope is that he is not genuinely the Pope and will be remembered as Bergoglio the Apostate.

I submit my assessment for the consideration of the faithful and of Pope Francis himself.

But I would also be cautious about Archbishop Vigano.

He may not be a hero.

His flight from the Vatican and reinvention of himself as a critic of Pope Francis comes at a time when Pope Francis had apparently been trying to introduce financial oversight at the Vatican bank.

Cardinal George Pell was appointed by Pope Francis in 2014 to oversee the introduction of proper accounting procedures which would have made it much more difficult for nefarious entities to subvert the bank.

Various Italian mafias which have grown accustomed to leeching billions of dollars from the Vatican bank in illegal loans, viewed Cardinal Pell as an existential threat to their cash cow and had their person of influence Cardinal Angelo Becciu frame him for child abuse.

(Note the Cosa Nostra mafia methodology for robbing the Vatican bank is identical to the one used by New York's mafia families to rob banks with Donald Trump as a front for their multiple billion dollar asset stripping loans, none repaid as Mr Trump repeatedly declared bankruptcy before moving on to the next billion dollar hand out from banks mysteriously willing to keep giving him free money after every business failure, and is also identical to the methods used in Ireland where the drug dealing, people trafficking, child abusing IRA terrorist mafia subverted Anglo Irish bank by purchasing the bank, subborning the management and giving themselves illegal billion dollar loans with 'businessman' Sean Quinn and his odious family acting as fronts and launderers for the loans.)

Cardinal Pell was convicted of child abuse charges in Australia, served more than a year in jail, and was then exonerated in an appeal court.

Cardinal Becciu who framed him was convicted at a Vatican court in December last year of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars form the Vatican bank.

In January this year Cardinal Pell took an ill advised decision to have a routine hip operation at an Italian hospital and died purportedly of cardiac arrest after the surgery.

I suggest that the mafia murdered Cardinal Pell twice, first through Angelo Becciu's framing him for child abuse, and then through the more direct method of having their agents induce his heart attack at the Salvator Mundi hospital in Rome.

 My reservations about Archbishop Vigano stem from the possibility however remote, that he, like Becciu, has been a mafia person of influence within the Vatican.

The waters are murky.

For the rest, my own criticisms of Pope Francis notwithstanding, I do not believe the man I call Bergoglio the Apostate is wrong about everything.

The commentator John Henry Westen recently spoke against Pope Francis for praying with Jewish Rabbis and for associating the Catholic Church with the Dubai declaration, a document stating that the diversity of religions was willed by God,

In my view Pope Francis is correct in both these matters,

God has not changed his mind about the Jews. They are still the holy people and they are our fathers and mothers in faith.

I view the Dubai declaration as merely reiterating Catholic understanding through twenty centuries that anyone who is not against us is for us and that God's providence can bring great things from our most intractable human quarrels, disagreements, philosophical differences and so on.

Moreover Pope Francis' recent approval of a more cautious approach to claims of supernatural apparitions is also absolutely in keeping with Catholic tradition.

Our Church and the human race have been blessed with some marvellous whap, bam, thud apparitions.

I commend your attention to Lourdes and to Fatima,

But at no point has the Catholic Church insisted that believers must believe in any apparition.

The articles of faith insisted on by the Catholic Church are repentance for sins, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, Christ has been crucified, he is risen from the dead, and he will come again in glory.