Canon Law determines precisely what Bishops can do with donated funds

Some years ago I was at a parish that had a “capital campaign” to raise money to build a new multi-million dollar education building.

The faithful were shown the survey of the land to be purchased and drawings of the new building.

Once the money was raised, I was told that there was a directive from powers beyond the parish level that the parish must use the money to build a new church, not an education building.

I raised the issue that the money had been collected for an education building. I said that my family and others had been defrauded. Promptly, a representative of the parish finance council contacted me and said that, if I wanted, our donated money would be refunded.

I found out that, under canon law, money collected for one purpose cannot then be used for another purpose. (As an aside, the new church building was built, and, some years later, God flooded it, completely). I was then asked by the pastor personally, to leave the parish. Since it was not his, I stayed.

Canon law – the Church’s own law – says this:

“Canon 1267, §3: Offerings given by the faithful for a specified purpose may be used only for that purpose.”

“Canon 1300: The intentions of the faithful who give or leave goods to pious causes . . . are to be most carefully observed, even in the manner of the administration and the expending of the goods  . . . “

I am unaware of any “Capital Campaign To Raise Money To Pay Off Sexual Assault Victims Of Priests & Bishops” in any parish or diocese in America; of a “Pay For Priest & Prelate Predators Campaign,” or of a fundraiser “For The Pastoral Malpractice Of Bishops Who Enabled, Fostered , And Shuttled Abusers & Criminals.”

In short, I am aware of no Catholic in the USA who donated money for the bishops to use to pay off claims against the Church and against them. It would be very surprising if, court-sealed, secret settlement documents do not include the provisions that all claims against the bishops personally are also settled, and ended, by the agreements.

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Editor’s note: Carefully check your parish’s annual financial accounting summary and pay special attention to any and all insurance costs listed therein, especially for health care, disability, workmen’s compensation and similar items. It’s very likely that you will find these costs to be anywhere from thirty to fifty percent higher than they should be, since many parishes are forced to pay a silent “tax” in order to refill the coffers of the dioceses’ “secret abuse insurance fund” used to help pay off past settlements or to prepare for future settlements.   

…the more the culture tried to paint the Catholic Church as full of sinful people, the more convinced I became of its truth.

I didn’t believe that ordinary people could come up with a set of teachings that contained unparalleled wisdom; maintain them consistently across all times and places, even despite tremendous pressure to recant; and then keep it all going for two thousand years.

And even if the media had been right that the priesthood and episcopate were full of corrupt and immoral people, that would have only made the situation more inexplicable in purely human terms—corrupt and immoral people are always the first to sell out and preach whatever message the culture wants to hear in order to get more power for themselves.

In short, I saw something divine at work here.

Read more

The worst of both worlds: Weak Catholic Bishops and corrupt Catholic politicians.

Publicly, the Kennedys patronized the Church, but privately they helped create a shadow church of religious laymen and clergy who helped them rationalize their own version of Catholicism.

The Catholic pro-abortion movement, for instance, was hatched at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. In the summer of 1964, Bobby and Ted Kennedy met at the Cape with some leading dissident priests – Robert Drinan, Richard McCormick, Joseph Fuchs, and Charles Curran – to figure out how Catholic politicians could pander to the growing abortion movement without upsetting their Catholic constituencies.

According to one witness, the theologians “concurred on certain basics: that a Catholic politician could in good conscience, vote in favor of abortion.”

The action plan that was developed that week in Hyannis Port, in sociologist Anne Hendershott’s judgment, contributed to effectively neutralizing the Catholic laity and “helped build the foundation for the [Democratic] party’s reincarnation as the party of abortion.”

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An open letter to “ex” Catholics – wherever they might be

by Doug Lawrence

Dear “Ex”,

There’s no such thing as an “ex” Catholic. When you were baptized you became an adopted child of God, a living temple of the Holy Spirit, a citizen of Heaven, co-heir with Jesus Christ, and a member of the church.

Your immortal soul received a special, indelible mark, identifying you as one of God’s very own. You also received a number of unique rights and privileges, the most important of which is the right to expect God to freely accept all your prayers and petitions.

None of this was merely temporary, or subject to revocation.

The corruption and hypocrisy of some who lead the church is shameful and scandalous, yet such things should no more keep you from being authentically Catholic than corrupt politicians and congressmen should keep you from being authentically American.

The most important thing at stake is the eternal salvation of your own personal soul, and for that you need to fully and faithfully participate in all of the work, worship, sacraments and devotions of the Catholic Church … the only church that Jesus Christ ever founded … for that express purpose.

If you’re old enough and intelligent enough to post opinion pieces on the internet, you’re old enough and intelligent enough to satisfactorily work through adult questions of faith, without merely throwing up your hands and walking away.

In any case, God loves you, and God will provide … but things begin to look much, much better once you take the time to discern your proper place in the whole scheme of things, stand up for God’s honest truth, and begin to properly pursue the high purpose for which you were created.

Of course, none of that really matters if you remain estranged and/or separated from Christ and his church.

There has always been a direct relationship between corruption in the church and the need for authentic, faithful Catholicity. The more corrupt the church evidently appears … the more good, faithful, well informed, mature Catholics are needed … in order to help turn things around.

I suspect the problem you have with the Catholic church is actually rooted some intractable, personal moral issue … and not something that is specific to any of the current public scandals. If that’s true, then you’re in denial and the only real barrier to effective reconciliation is your own personal pride.

When dealing with things of God, its typically left up to us mortals to first apologize and then ask forgiveness. Catholics … including voluntarily separated ones … typically accomplish that by going to confession, after which the subject will never be brought up again.

I speak from personal experience.

God is good. His Catholic Church is troubled, but still quite capable of saving souls and ministering to all the needs of the faithful, and Jesus Christ specifically set things up that way, just for you.

Why not give it one more try?

If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart. (Psalms 95:8) (Hebrews 4:7)

Love,

Doug

Covid-19 and the Scandalous Church: Complicit with “tinpot Caesars”

…The biggest and most significant default however, has been that of America’s Christian churches—all of them—from their hierarchs to their priests, pastors, and ministers.

Their complaisance with the lockdowns set aside a truth far more important to human dignity than anything having to do with any physical ailment—the one truth that puts all human power in proper perspective, the truth on which our civilization itself rests: that no human power can manufacture true and false, right and wrong, any more than we can make ourselves, and that, therefore, we are obliged to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Jewish congregations have been similarly craven.

The churches’ agreement to suspend public worship and the distribution of sacraments also contradicted their duty.

Until 2020, Christian clergy felt obliged not just to offer public worship to whomever, but also to search out the sick, to offer sacraments to the dying, especially in places where victims of plagues lay between life and death—regardless of consequences.

Because surrendering to secular dictates concerning how congregants should behave, even in church cannot be justified in Christian terms it would not have crossed previous generations of churchmen’s minds. Had this generation of church leaders simply practiced their faith, even by merely keeping silent about the ruling class’s claims about the COVID-19 rather than ignorantly, submissively endorsing them, they would have preserved their intellectual and moral credit to help the general population to deal with the growing realization that they had been duped. Instead, they chose to be complicit with tinpot Caesars.

Hence, as Americans face the bitter fact that we have been hurt worse than for nought, the churches have largely disqualified themselves as arbiters of truth.

Truth and clarity about what history will record as the 2020 COVID coup is the necessary condition for the American people to overcome its effects. Overcoming those effects must begin with discrediting those pretenses and the reputations of those who made them.

Read the entire article (PDF File): The COVID Coup – The American Mind

Seen at Ann Barnhardt’s Site

In light of all the scandals oppressing today’s Catholics, a query that needs to be addressed…

Q: Often, we hear about what’s bad within the Catholic church and its history. Tell us of the good you’ve seen within the Catholic church.

A: Peace beyond all understanding and freedom from the fear of death, along with genuine faith, hope and charity, writ large and long, the world over, courtesy of our Savior Jesus Christ, who remains the head of the Catholic Church, the Holy Spirit, who remains its constant Advocate/Spirit of Truth and God the Father, whose inestimable power, love and grace makes it all possible, in spite of rampant, human corruption and sin.

(Posted today on Yahoo Answers)

Canon Law – Legal Bishops’ Use of The Faithful’s Money

Some years ago I was at a parish that had a “capital campaign” to raise money to build a new multi-million dollar education building. The faithful were shown the survey of the land to be purchased onand drawings of the new building. Once the money was raised, I was told that there was a directive from powers beyond the parish level that the parish must use the money to build a new church, not an education building. I raised the issue that the money had been collected for an education building. I said that my family and others had been defrauded. Promptly a representative of the parish finance council contacted me and said that, if I wanted, our donated money would be refunded. I found out that, under canon law, money collected for one purpose cannot then be used for another purpose. (As an aside, the new church building was built, and, some years later, God flooded it, completely). I was then asked by the pastor personally to leave the parish. Since it was not his, I stayed.

Canon law – the Church’s own law – says this:

“Canon 1267, §3: Offerings given by the faithful for a specified purpose may be used only for that purpose.”

“Canon 1300: The intentions of the faithful who give or leave goods to pious causes . . . are to be most carefully observed, even in the manner of the administration and the expending of the goods . . . . “

I am unaware of any “Capital Campaign To Raise Money To Pay Off Sexual Assault Victims Of Priests & Bishops” in any parish or diocese in America; of a “Pay For Priest & Prelate Predators Campaign,” or of a fundraiser “For The Pastoral Malpractice Of Bishops Who Enabled, Fostered , And Shuttled Abusers & Criminals.” In short, I am aware of no Catholic in the USA who donated money for the bishops to use to pay off claims against the Church and against them. It would be very surprising if, court-sealed, secret settlement documents do not include the provisions that all claims against the bishops personally are also settled, and ended, by the agreements.

Read more

Editor’s note: Carefully check your parish’s annual financial accounting summary and pay special attention to any and all insurance costs listed therein, especially for health care, disability, workmen’s compensation and similar items. It’s very likely that you will find these costs to be anywhere from thirty to fifty percent higher than they should be, since many parishes are forced to pay a silent “tax” in order to refill the coffers of the dioceses’ “secret insurance fund” used to help pay off past settlements or to prepare for future settlements.   

There was a time, not long after the Second Vatican Council, when the bishops who wanted to suppress the Church’s ancient liturgy or desecrate her traditions could do so with impunity.

That time is over. This is an age of accountability. When something sacred is treated as disposable, when communities of believers are punished with forced allegiance to Modernist changes they have legitimately and prudently chosen to avoid, that’s a place where the light should shine.

I don’t know about you, but I want my Catholicism back. I want a Church I can be proud of, a Church that remembers what it believes in. A Church that doesn’t scandalize so deeply that it damages or even destroys the faith of its own members and makes no effort to appeal to those outside her bosom except when creating the false appearance that non-negotiable things have become negotiable.

If this isn’t the foretold time of apostasy, it must be the precursor.

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PBS continuously recycling rotten, low-hanging fruit

Know-Nothingism was a widespread bias against Catholicism in this country, stemming from the suspicion that Catholics were not sufficiently patriotic or trustworthy, as they were controlled by the Pope and a secret Vatican cabal.

Now courtesy of your tax dollars, Know-Nothingism has made a 21st century comeback on PBS’s flagship Frontline investigative program.

Last week, in a documentary entitled “Secrets of the Vatican,” Frontline managed a remarkable feat: to haul out every old anti-Catholic canard that would make a Klansman beam. It was a 90-minute orgy of bigotry indulging every stereotype about the Church: criminal cover-ups, monetary corruption, gay clergy, and, of course, the ever-favorite and never-ending sex abuse storyline.

Link to story

PBS/Frontline “Secrets of the Vatican” show indicts Milwaukee Archdiocese and Cardinal Dolan, but never mentions corrupt homosexual Archbishop Rembert Weakland

Liberals never indict other liberals.

Never!

Even though Arbp.Weakland caused
and presided over virtually the entire,
scandalous mess.

See for yourself.

Editor’s note: I’m no fan of Cardinal Dolan, but he got stuck cleaning up Weakland’s mess and deserved better treatment from Frontline.

Pa. court reverses conviction of Catholic church official jailed in clergy abuse scandal

PHILADELPHIA –  A Pennsylvania appeals court has ruled that a Roman Catholic church official was wrongly convicted for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints.

Link

Appealing to “the base”: Los Angeles Archbishop celebrates along side a host of pro abortion, pro homosexual politicians.

Archbishop Gomez could have helped pass AB 60 and celebrated its passage without giving honor and credibility and obvious “vote-for-these-good pro-abortion and pro-homosexual Democrats” coverage on the front cover of his own weekly newspaper.

See what all the fuss is about

Editor’s note: I’m sure the archbishop engaged in very extensive dialog before appearing on the dais with all those glad-handed, morally bankrupt  political hacks. Perhaps Pope Francis will warn the Archbishop about the type of company he keeps.  But I doubt it!

I believe the old saying goes, “You lie down with dogs – you wake up with fleas.”  Or some variation thereof …

Seen on the web: Spiritual enrichment through Mass attendance

POsted by Anonymous October 16, 2013 at 6:17 PM

I go to the Novus Ordo every day and truly am very much enriched. I go to the EF once a week as well. It is the Body of Christ that enriches us, and that you get at any Mass. To say one is not enriched at the Novus Ordo seems to me blasphemous.

Link

Editor’s note: Excellent point! The accompanying article is also worth reading.

Video: “Catholic” Charities promoting abortion, birth control, homosexual activism and other abominations

Watch the video

JPII Canonization: Love the saintly pope – hate the saintly pope’s sins?

There are many reasons why Pope John Paul II was so loved by the modern world. The core reason, in my opinion, is because of a central aspect of his New Evangelization — a new approach that cut him loose from the one hard truth that made all pre-Vatican II popes unpopular. Unburdened by this fundamental truth, he could easily mix with men of all religions, and of no religion, with little fear of invoking their displeasure.

The New Approach

On the day of Pope John Paul II’s death, I received a phone call from a young lady in New Zealand, a friend of the family. She presently works in a situation where she interacts with Muslims and Hindus. When she tells these non-Catholics, with gentleness and charity, they must convert to the one true Catholic Church to save their souls, the Muslims and Hindus laugh at her. “Your Pope doesn’t believe that”, they cackle, referring to John Paul II, “Your Pope doesn’t teach that. Your Pope’s interfaith actions don’t convey that. Your Pope prays with the Dalai Lama and with Hindus. Your Pope visits mosques and kisses the Koran. You are out-of-step with your own Pope. Why should we listen to you?”

Two Catholic young men of my acquaintance, debating with a Protestant Minister, were likewise laughed to scorn when they in-formed the Protestant he must become Catholic to be saved. “What?”, said the Protestant, “You obviously don’t read the writings of your own Pope. He prays with Protestants. He praises Martin Luther as a man of ‘deep religiousness’. He calls Protestants ‘disciples of Christ’. He never says it is necessary to become Catholic for salvation.”

More

Here they go again …

How Can One Tell When It’s CCHD Collection Time?

One answer to that question is “when the CCHD and their supporters start their preemptive screeds against faithful Catholics concerned about their left-wing leanings“.

For example, David Gibson of Religion News Service starts his piece by claiming that “conservative activists are threatening the social mission of the Catholic Church… by attacking the Church’s flagship anti-poverty program with 21st-century style Catholic McCarthyism.”

Of course he refers to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.  Obviously Mr. Gibson is unaware that the CCHD, by policy, gives no money to organizations that directly perform the Corporal Works of Mercy.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson knows that and he doesn’t give a hoot.  At any rate, CCHD has traditionally given grants – collected from Catholics during the in-pew collections – to organizations that seek to “change social structures and policies”.  That quote is taken from one of their flyers.

More often than not, these organizations are socialist in nature, along the lines of Saul Alinsky.

Indeed, the CCHD was originated by Msgr Jack Egan, an associate (and disciple) of Saul Alinsky for the express purpose of syphoning Catholic resources to fund these community-organizing endeavors (Barack Obama cut his political teeth while working with the Gamaliel Foundation, one such group).  But this blog’s previous posts have delved in detail into CCHD’s sordid past – no need to rehash that here.

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…the more the culture tried to paint the Catholic Church as full of sinful people, the more convinced I became of its truth.

I didn’t believe that ordinary people could come up with a set of teachings that contained unparalleled wisdom; maintain them consistently across all times and places, even despite tremendous pressure to recant; and then keep it all going for two thousand years. And even if the media had been right that the priesthood and episcopate were full of corrupt and immoral people, that would have only made the situation more inexplicable in purely human terms—corrupt and immoral people are always the first to sell out and preach whatever message the culture wants to hear in order to get more power for themselves.

In short, I saw something divine at work here.

Read more

Quiz: When is a Catholic Cardinal like a “bad penny”?

Stripped of public duties by Archbishop Jose Gomez
over mishandling of clergy sex abuse cases, Cardinal Mahony
has begun what some call a rehabilitation tour.

Link

Editor’s note: To put it very simply – Cardinals “outrank” Archbishops, every time. So long as Cardinal Mahony is still around, Archbishop Gomez is going to have B-I-G problems with him.

What to do about the problem of homosexual priests and bishops

In terms of action, Fr. Oko suggests:

• The homosexual mafia in the Church must be dealt with in a very professional way . We must act like a prosecutor or an officer in the battlefield;
• It is important that we find a large group of people of goodwill to protect us and support what we do. That group should include clergymen, as high in the hierarchy as possible, experts in various fields, archive records specialists, lawyers, policemen, journalists, and as many believers as possible;
• It is good to exchange information, documents, and evidence. The global network of homolobbies and homomafias must be counterbalanced by a network of honest people;
• The Internet is an excellent tool, which makes it possible to create a global community of people concerned about the fate of the Church;
• The more we know, the more we can do. We need to remember that in these matters we are like “sheep sent among wolves,” and so we must be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (St. Matthew 10:16). We must have the courage to stand up against evildoers, as Christ had the courage to stand up against the Pharisees of his times;
• We cannot build our lives on sweet illusions, for only “the truth will set you free” (St. John 8:32), and that is why “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7); and
• All interventions should be made with utmost respect and love for every person, including the abuser.

He concludes that, remembering to “recognize them by their fruit” (cf. St. Matthew 7:16) – and with the publicly known events of the last quarter-century, the reaction of the Holy See, and the documents it issued – we must clearly and explicitly admit: yes, there is a strong homosexual underground in the Church.

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The worst of both worlds: Weak Catholic prelates and corrupt Catholic politicians.

Publicly, the Kennedys patronized the Church, but privately they helped create a shadow church of religious laymen and clergy who helped them rationalize their own version of Catholicism.

The Catholic pro-abortion movement, for instance, was hatched at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. In the summer of 1964, Bobby and Ted Kennedy met at the Cape with some leading dissident priests – Robert Drinan, Richard McCormick, Joseph Fuchs, and Charles Curran – to figure out how Catholic politicians could pander to the growing abortion movement without upsetting their Catholic constituencies.

According to one witness, the theologians “concurred on certain basics. . .that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.” The action plan developed that week in Hyannis Port, in sociologist Anne Hendershott’s judgment, contributed to effectively neutralizing the Catholic laity and “helped build the foundation for the [Democratic] party’s reincarnation as the party of abortion.”

Read more