Willing Servants of Antichrist

Although many people permit themselves to be caught up in the theatre of the absurd that is partisan politics in a world awash with sentimentality, a world where the killing of some lion brings more people to tears than the series of undercover videos about the barbaric practices of Planned Barrenhood that have been released by the Center for Medical Progress, it is nevertheless true that efforts on the part of some within the false oppose of the naturalist “right” to oppose sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are being undercut at every turn by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his “bishops,” men who are very willing and able servants of Antichrist.

The currently reigning universal public face of apostasy’s naked support for the lords of the world who want to “save the planet” and provide “income equality” by increasing the size, the scope and the power of the governments of countries as a preparation for Antichrist’s own system of one world governance, to which the One World Ecumenical Church will be subordinate, represents a complete triumph for the social agenda that was advanced with such ready abandon by the late, morally corrupt Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin (who was a true bishop, believe it or not), who was the conciliar “archbishop” of Chicago, Illinois, from July 8, 1982, until the time of his death on November 14, 1996.

Then again, Bernardin was simply carrying on the revolutionary work in the Archdiocese of Chicago that had been done for nearly thirty years before he was transferred by a friend from the “Second” Vatican Council, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II by the likes of Samuel Cardinal Stritch and Albert Cardinal Mayer, whose interventions at the “Second” Vatican Council on September 30, 1964, and October 5, 1964, greatly influenced none other than Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger in determining "what is doctrine to be preserved and what is historically conditioned. (Father Gerald Fogarty, S.J., Theology of Tradition in the American Church as quoted in Puzzled?):

All this was probably only to be expected. But when Alinsky began his career in the 1930s as an urban agitator in the Chicago stockyards neighborhoods known as “back of the yards,” he also managed to strike an alliance with the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, which helped him found the community organizing operation, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) which to this day holds training workshop for aspiring radical activists.

Influential Catholics embraced Alinsky’s politics of personal destruction. Then Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Bernard J. Sheil, called Reveille for Radicals “a life-saving handbook for the salvation of democracy” and the great French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain called it “epoch making.”

In the 1950s, Father John Egan of the Cana Conference, who met Alinsky through Maritain, was so impressed with Alinsky’s hands-on experience and confrontational style, that he convinced Chicago’s Samuel Cardinal Stritch to hire IAF to advance social projects. According to Church historian Steven Avella, Cardinal Stritch and his successor Albert Cardinal Meyer funded Alinsky community organizing operations for years because he persuaded them that the “Church could be a very powerful social force in…Chicago if it could only mobilize itself for action.”

Alinsky trained scores of young priests who later took on major responsibilities within the Church bureaucracy including the U.S. Catholic Conference. Thomas Pauken, a former Director of Vista, a federal agency that gives grants to activist groups, believes that “the radicalization of elements of the Catholic clergy turned out to be one of Saul Alinsky’s most significant accomplishments.”

The “Great Society” war on poverty legislation codified Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” by calling for “maximum feasible participation” of public agencies and non-profits in poor neighborhoods. This opened the flood gate for taxpayer, corporate, and charity-funded community organizations, like ACORN, dedicated to implementing the Alinsky rule, “to rub the sores of discontent.”

Sadly, one “Great Society” inspired non-profit is the Church-sponsored Campaign for Human Development (CHD). Funded with millions of dollars dropped into American Catholic parish collection baskets, CHD donated over $100 million between 1972 and 1995 to Alinsky-type organizations. The largest recipient was IAF. One-time CHD director, Father Marvin Mottet, had worked as an ACORN organizer. In the Fall of 2008, Campaign for Human Development suspended all donations to ACORN after allegations that over $1 million had been embezzled from that organization. According to the Catholic News Service, in the previous decade, CHD had given approximately $7.3 million to ACORN.

Saul Alinksy’s goal was to create “a backyard revolution in cities across America.” Little did he know that his revolution would advance far beyond Chicago’s neighborhoods and bring corruption to the front steps of the White House – and the Catholic Church. (ACORN's Problems – and the Church.)

Although the author of this article, George Marlin, who ran for Mayor of the City of New York on the Conservative Party line in 1993 against then Mayor David Dinkins and former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph William Giuliani, accepts the conciliar “popes” as legitimate Successors of Saint Peter, his facts about the infiltration of the likes of Saul Alinsky, supported as he was in the 1950s by then Archbishop of Milan Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Mario Montini and Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (see Alinsky's Sheen), are irrefutable. Indeed, many others, particularly researcher and Catholic writer Stephanie Block, have specialized in the intricacies of the Industrial Areas Foundation and the formation, development and operation of what has become known as the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

The Alinskyites in the Archdiocese of Chicago had their wings clipped during the time that the morally corrupt John “Cardinal” Cody, a true bishop, was the conciliar ordinary between August 24, 1965, and the time of his death on April 25, 1982. Although he was a thief who stole money from the Archdiocese of Chicago and from the then-named National Conference of Catholic Bishops to support and shower a step-cousin, Helen Wilson, who went with him from one see to another, with gifts and even a house in Florida, Cody was opposed to what he saw as the ultra-progressivism of the “apostolic delegate,” “Archbishop” Jean Jadot, and the “social action” wing of his own clergy who were allied with Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (see Chicago Archdiocese--Center of Strife Under John Cody.)  Jadot, known as the "Belgian Destroyer" who served as the conciliar apostolic delegate to this country from May 23, 1973, to June 27, 1980,  helped to shepherd the names of numerous ultra-conciliar, sodomite-friendly revolutionaries into the conciliar hierarchy in the United States of America.

Among those personally "consecrated" by Jadot was "Archbishop" Robert Sanchez, who had to resign from the conciliar ordinary of Sante Fe, New Mexico, on April 6, 1993, after it was revealed on 60 Minutes that he engaged in natural vice with five different women, and none other than the notorious, self-professed "gay" (but celibate, of course) Rembert George Weakland,  a direct acolyte on the Consilium of Bugnini himself, who persecuted faithful Catholic priests and the laity during his terroristic reign as "Archbishop" of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from September 20, 1977, to the time of his own scandal-prompted "retirement" on May 24, 2002 (see Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In Faith and Just A Matter of Forgiveness?). Gee, who was that who succeeded Weakland in 2002? Yes, yes, a chap from Saint Louis, Missouri, a fellow named Timothy Michael Dolan.

Among the men advanced or promoted within the ranks of the American conciliar "hierarchy," including "auxiliary bishops," during the time of Jean Jadot, were men such as Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York, Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan, Bernard Francis Law of Cape Giradeau, Missouri, Peter Rosazza, an auxiliary of Hartford, Connecticut, known for this Marxist views, Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia, the infamous Thomas Gumbleton, another self-confessed "gay" bishop," an acolyte of Call to Action's own John Cardinal Dearden from Detroit, Joseph Imesch of Joliet, Illinois, Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston and, among so many others, Robert Sanchez and Rembert Weakland themselves. Weakland was good enough to admit that the type of men favored by Jadot were "pastoral," "open-minded" and "independent thinkers" (see A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop - Rembert G. Weakland, Rembert Weakland--this link will take you directly to Weakland's discussion of Jadot begins near the bottom of the page).

Mind you, Montini's pre-Jadot selections for bishops in the United States of America included the likes of Joseph Louis Bernardin, who served as the conciliar ordinary of Chicago from August 25, 1982, to the time of his death on November 14, 1996. Bernardin was consecrated on April 26, 1966, at the age of thirty-eight, making him the youngest conciliar bishop in the United States of America at the time, and he came ready with an agenda to be faithful to the Montinian revolution.

Bernardin cut his revolutionary eyeteeth as the general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he worked closely with his fellow revolutionaries who promoted the lavender agenda and the sort of “social justice” that they had learned from Saul Alinsky, by then deceased, and those who had learned the ways of “community organizing” from him. Bernardin even made sure that the “Wind City Gay Men’s Chorus” sang at his wake nearly nineteen years ago now.

As one committed to the Alinsky agenda of “social justice,” which was and remains entirely Judeo-Masonic in its nature and goals, Joseph Louis Bernardin asserted a moral equivalence between the direct, intentional taking of innocent human life in the womb and opposition to capital punishment and to then President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s efforts to place Pershing II cruise missiles in Europe. Indeed, Bernardin was in favor of the unilateral nuclear disarmament of the United States of America.

Moreover, Berardin equated opposition to the surgical execution of innocent babies with support for all manner of statist programs considered “necessary” for the improvement of the “quality” of life for the poor and to provide “rights” to those who had entered this country illegally. In other words, one could be “pro-life” unless he supported the entire social agenda of Saul Alinsky, which had been anticipated decades before by The Sillon in France. It is no accident that the first conciliar “pope,” Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, remained a supporter of The Sillon even after its false, Judeo-Masonic principles had been condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.

Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin gave voice to his moral equivalence in an address he delivered at Fordham University, which was the first Catholic university to accept “Bundy” money from the State of New York, resulting in the secularization of this Jesuit institution and the voluntary removal of all crucifixes from classroom walls.

The following excerpt from an article written by the late Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D., is very important to understand why the revolutionary Bernardin chose to speak in 1983 at what had become the bastion of Jesuit revolutionaries, Fordham University:

One of the simplest ways to examine what happens after alienation — after a Catholic educational institution abandons its binding and formal commitment to the magisterium of the Church — is to relate an oft-told story about Fordham University once it accepted “Bundy Money” from New York State. Governor Nelson Rockefeller used a 1968 “Bundy Report” to push through legislation making tax monies directly available to private colleges for the first time. There was one hitch: the grants could go only to non-denominational colleges. Under the State Constitution religious colleges were barred from public assistance. At the time there were twenty well- established Catholic colleges in New York (ten junior and/or community colleges) all facing some financial stress, all still turning out upwardly mobile and reasonably practicing Catholics. Fordham University was one of the first to apply for Bundy money and, in order to qualify, elected to change its affiliation from “Catholic” to “non-denominational.” Fordham (fronted now by a new “lay” Board) assured State Education Commissioner Ewald Nyquist that it would no longer favor Catholic doctrine or practice. After Fordham’s application (and simultaneously those of two other schools) had been approved, Rockefeller’s Lieutenant Governor, Malcolm Wilson, telephoned Nyquist. As the story goes, Wilson, an outstanding protector of Catholic interests in Albany, congratulated the Education official. “Ewald, I want to thank you for making State money available to Fordham and the two other Catholic colleges.” To which Nyquist replied, “Malcolm, you’ve got it wrong. Fordham is no longer a Catholic college.”

Fordham received about $1,000,000. With the passage of time one Catholic college after another abandoned its institutional relationship with the Church until today in New York State only Molloy College and St. John’s University have the freedom to maintain or reinforce the Catholic connection.

The Fordham case is not unique, of course, because in those years Jesuit academics elsewhere and other Religious in states without a Blaine amendment, were also breaking the ties that bound their colleges to the Church. In those cases the pursuit of government money was only one excuse, academic approval from secular professional agencies being what they truly desired.

The more serious cause, however, was the movement in high Jesuit circles to modernize the understanding of the magisterium by enlarging the freedom of Catholics, especially scholars, to dispute its claims and assertions. Jesuit scholars had already made up their minds that the Catholic creeds and moral norms needed nuance and correction. It was for this incipient dissent that the late Pius XII chastised the Jesuits’ 30th General Congregation one year before he died (1957). What concerned Pius XII most in that admonition was the doctrinal orthodoxy of Jesuits. Information had reached him that the Society’s academics (in France and Germany) were bootlegging heterodox ideas. He had long been aware of contemporary theologians who tried “to withdraw themselves from the Sacred Teaching authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them in error” (Humani generis).

In view of what has gone on recently in Catholic higher education, Pius XII’s warnings to Jesuits have a prophetic ring to them. He spoke then of a “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one”; he demanded that Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.” He continued, “It should be necessary to cut off as soon as possible from the body of your Society” such “unworthy and unfaithful sons.” Pius obviously was alarmed at the rise of heterodox thinking, worldly living, and just plain disobedience in Jesuit ranks, especially at attempts to place Jesuits on a par with their Superiors in those matters which pertained to Faith or Church order (The Pope Speaks, Spring 1958, pp. 447-453). (Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D.,The Catholic College: Death, Judgment, Resurrection. See also the full Latin text of Pope Pius XII's address to the thirtieth general congregation of the Society of Jesus at page 806 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis for 1957: AAS 49 [1957]. One will have to scroll down to page 806.)

Although the late Monsignor Kelly, whom I knew and consulted on occasion in the 1980s and 1990s, tried to “save” that which was beyond saving because it was in the hands of apostates, the history he provided should illustrate the fact that not all was well in the 1950s, the supposed “golden era” of Catholicism in the United States of America. All manner of revolutionaries, including those within the Society of Jesus, got imprimaturs from like-minded Americanist bishops, men such as John Dearden, Francis Spellman, Richard Cushing, Albert Meyer, et al,, to push the envelope, especially in the field of bioethics, as far as they could during the waning years of the pontificate of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII.

Pope Pius XII, however, knew of the “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one.” His demand that the Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done” applied to those who formed the likes of the late Joseph Louis Bernardin in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Georgia, and a certain man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina. The stage for the conciliar revolution was pretty well set by the time of the death of Pope Pius XII, who demanded that the likes of those “educating” Bergoglio “be cut off as soon as possible from the body of” the Society of Jesus as they were “unworthy sons.”

The “Second” Vatican Council and the “magisterium” of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul the Sick, merely gave free rein to the bevy of not-so-clandestine Modernists who were simply waiting for the “liberal” “pope” to be elected so as to institutionalize all of their false beliefs, starting with ecumenism and a praxis-based concept of morality that was and remains nothing other than the old “situation ethics” that had been popularized by some of the “mainstream” Protestant sects and by supposed “philosophers” who were ardent champions of secularism, and Joseph Bernardin replaced John “Cardinal” Dearden, the conciliar archbishop  of Detroit, Michigan, from December 15, 1988, to July 15, 1980 (he had been consecrated in 1948 to serve as a coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), as the lightning rod of what was termed “Catholic progressivism.”

Dearden had spearheaded efforts to develop “open” attitudes about contraception and perversity and a way to readmit divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who had not followed the conciliar rules by obtaining a decree of nullity from a conciliar marriage tribunal (each of which was devoid of the authority of the Catholic Church, of course) to the Sacraments. This lavender-friendly bishop’s efforts culminated in a revolutionary gathering called “Call to Action” in Detroit in of October of 1976, and his opening address could have been given by Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself:

The journey to this day and this place has been long. You have come to Detroit in October of the bicentennial year, 10 years after Pope Paul VI issued his "Call to Action" urging us to take up the cause of justice in the world, and two years after our own bishops summoned us to consider our responsibilities for the preservation and extension of the national promise of "liberty and justice for all." We are here to participate in an extraordinary assembly of the American Catholic community. This assembly has been convened to respond to the needs of our people as these have been revealed through two years of discussions, hearings and reflection. All of us are here to assist the American Catholic community to translate its sincere commitment to liberty and justice into concrete programs of action designed to make those ideals a living reality in Church and society. We will do all this in a setting of prayerful reflection on the call of the Holy Spirit. Our central preoccupation here should be how we can more authentically as a Christian community live our faith in God and His Son, bearing witness to our confidence in Him and our awareness of His image in every person, and, together as a Church and individually as workers, citizens and Church members, serve the cause of justice and human development.

Never before has there been an attempt to bring together in this way representatives of the whole ecclesial community of the United States: bishops, priests, religious, and laity. Yet, this extraordinary assembly is not a radical departure from our traditions. Our first bishop, John Carroll, initiated a policy of practical collegiality among the American hierarchy which resulted in seven provincial and three plenary councils of Baltimore between 1829 and 1884. In these meetings, the bishops and archbishops of the country, working closely with the Roman authorities, legislated for the Church in America. The hierarchy cooperated to insure that, despite the rapid expansion of the nation across the continent and the even more rapid growth of the Catholic people from the polyglot nationalities of Europe, the American Church would remain one in spirit, practice and discipline. In the latter part of the century, in 1889 and 1893, national assemblies of the laity met to discuss what role the lay people of the Church could play in spreading the Gospel and providing a fuller and freer life for all Americans. The enthusiasm spurred by these meetings did not last. Later efforts to bring about unity through federal of hundreds of lay organizations met with only modest success. Yet, there was a tradition of fostering regional, sectional, and ethnic diversity, and out of it to form a unified Church which could communicate among the groups and regions, and lead to mutual enrichment and provide a basis for united action.

Our efforts at renewal require both an affirmation of our rich pluralism and a strong national organization, and both must take account of the pressing needs of our own people and the people of our country and our world. To forward these objectives, the American Catholic bishops decided to dedicate the Church's bicentennial celebration to the theme of justice. With the help of many people, we formulated a unique plan: we would hold a series of regional hearings, where teams of bishops would sit and listen to the concerns of our people on issues of justice in the Church and in the world. These hearings were a marvelous experience. At each of the hearings -- held in six different cities: Washington, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Sacramento and Newark -- we heard clearly the cries of people for a chance to raise their families in peace and dignity, pass on their distinctive cultural traditions to their children, find a responsible government and a responsive Church. Later, in a special hearing at Maryknoll, New York, we heard a number of invited guests from around the world tell us of the issues of human rights, economic justice and human survival in nations struggling for development and liberation. The hearings were an exhilarating and challenging experience for all who took part. People today, rich and poor, are often studied by scholars and pollsters; their needs, hopes and concerns are defined by questionnaires or by computers. Only rarely are they asked directly to speak up and be heard; so rarely, in fact, that many greet the invitation with understandable skepticism. Yet, that is what we have tried to do, in our perhaps inefficient way. We are left with an enormous sense of responsibility and an equally strong feeling that there is great power in the spirit and faith of the people who appeared before us. The human resources of our Church and our nation are vast; our task is to carry forward, today, together, the work that has been begun -- to unlock the structures of Church and world so that the spirit and energy of our people can flourish and contribute to renewing our communities. No one who sat through those 21 days of hearings could doubt that it can be done and that it must be done.

The regional hearings presented a model of a listening, learning, and caring Church. We hoped that the model would be reproduced in parishes and dioceses around the country. And we were right. More than half the nation's dioceses sponsored parish discussions. These and other dioceses held their own regional and diocesan-wide meetings to hear the voice of the people and, in some cases, to begin formulating new goals and objectives for the local churches. From parishes around the country came over three-quarters of a million responses, listing the people's own perception of the major issues before us and their recommendations to deal with those issues. Of course, it was not a scientific sample; many sections of the country held no program; even where there was a program, the level of participation depended upon many factors. Together with the testimony of the regional hearings, this massive body of material represents the hopes and fears, the anxieties and the aspirations of many of our people.

Today it rests in the cold form of "feedback sheets" and computer printouts; yet, it is far more than that, for each document represents the personal investment of the people who took part. They deserve our full attention, and our measured, responsible, serious and sincere consideration.

Since the end of the consultation, teams of bishops, scholars, and people active in the ministry of the Church have been examining the results, trying to piece together from the complex fabric of testimony and parish reports some sense of the major concerns that emerge, some summary of the issues of most pressing importance to the Catholic people. On the basis of their reading of this mass of material they have framed some proposals for our consideration. Though a very full agenda for action, these recommendations do not cover all the hundreds of issues raised or the thousands of actions proposed. Instead they suggest some priorities, and begin the process of moving all of us towards a compassionate, realistic and effective response to the voices of our people. It is our task to consider these proposals, to accept them, reject them, revise them, frame our response to the problems on the basis of our experience, our considered judgment and, most of all, in the light of the Gospel.

I will not try to evaluate any or all of these proposals here. Yet a few comments are in order. For one thing, there appears to be an overwhelming acceptance of this process. Throughout America, wherever Catholics were asked, they expressed their desire to share responsibility for the Church and the nation. They like parish and diocesan pastoral councils; they criticize their shortcomings, but they want these new structures. They want to work closely with their priests and bishops, and they want their leaders to trust them and be accountable to them for the use of Church resources. Everywhere this program took place the participants were respectful, even deferential, towards Church leaders, modest in their demands, wary of quick judgment on questions they perceive as theological or doctrinal. They spoke of the existence of injustice in the Church, but they did not fix blame. They urged all Catholics to work together to make the Church a more fitting witness to the truths that it proclaims. Anyone who attended these programs at any level knows that they were conducted not in a spirit of complaining or faultfinding, but with a strong affirmation by our people of their Church, of Vatican II, and of one another. The agenda that emerges is the agenda of a hopeful, energetic, self-confident people, determined to keep trying.

But there are problems. We have as a people made less progress than we all had hoped in learning and making our own the teaching of our Church during and since Vatican II. There are many who do not yet know what the Council taught, even more, perhaps, who have little understanding of the social message of the Church as it has developed in recent years. Perhaps because of the pressures arising from life in our advanced industrial society, many of our people are not certain that their Church should even be discussing issues of justice and liberty. We Catholics are always prepared to respond with warmth, generosity and compassion to people in need. WE are not always so quick to seek out those responsible for suffering or those abuses of society which cause those needs to arise. While the bishops have often spoken clearly on matters of social justice, the hearings and parish discussions indicate that not only have we not often been heard, but that we have not always convinced our people that we take our words with complete seriousness ourselves. As pastors, we bishops must be alarmed at the failures of our community to share more fully the works of justice; as Catholics, all of us must be dismayed at our common failure to make our tradition of social action a living reality at all levels of our community. To remain a vital resource for the Church, our tradition must be studied and applied to ever-changing situations, which themselves must be analyzed with the help of the social sciences and with respect for personal experience. And study and reflection must lead to action; that is the hardest part.

In addition, many Catholics have become skeptical of the ability of Church leaders to take them seriously. Again and again the listener heard people say that while they would speak up, they were doubtful anyone would really listen and would really try to respond. Many have had the experience of failure, and they are becoming more and more convinced that their leaders in the Church, like their leaders in the community, really don't care what they think. Perhaps it is the ambiguities that have surrounded the development of parish councils; perhaps expectations of laity and religious have outstripped the ability of priests and bishops to deliver; perhaps the Church simply cannot carry all the hopes which people place in it. In any event the same deepening fatalism which grips American culture generally affects the Church; if we fail to respond to the needs expressed, fail even to demonstrate convincingly that, while we cannot solve all the problems, we do care, then we will reinforce the conviction that it simply can't be done, that we can't really become a community of faith and friendship as Vatican II said we should.

The needs, anxieties and hopes expressed throughout the last two years are addressed to the bishops, but through the bishops they are addressed to all the Catholic people, to the nation and the world. They challenge all of us to respond by becoming a more caring, a more faithful, and more responsible community of men and women. Our response must come in our hearts, and then back home in our local communities. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to consider the results of this meeting. I would hope that their response will be full and candid, continuing the process of dialogue, joining their voice with those who have already spoken, seeking to incorporate what has happened during the last two years into the ongoing life of the Church. All of us will try, as best we can, to join in the tasks that will be outlined at this conference; all of us will try, where we disagree, to express clearly the reasons for our disagreement and provide mechanisms for ongoing communication. If we do this job assigned to us by our Church, I am certain that not only will the bishops respond, but we still have made significant progress toward the renewal of our Church and the restoration of confidence in the American promise of liberty and justice for all.

Some may be surprised that a program designed to focus our attention on the concrete responsibilities of American Catholics in response to the "call to action" for justice of Pope Paul and the Synod of Bishops should end up giving a great deal of attention to such matters as pastoral renewal, accountability and responsibility within the Church, and personal growth and development. Yet, this surely could not have been unanticipated. In opening the initial hearing in Washington in February of last year, I stated that the "integrity of our work will depend upon our willingness to make our ecclesial life a witness to liberty and justice and to the possibilities of love, friendship and service which liberty and justice create." To renew the Church and to participate in the transformation of the world are not separate and distinct tasks; every major document of the renewal makes that clear. Rather, they are two sides of the same coin of clarifying our faith and the demands which it makes upon us.

Even more practically, we must see that these tasks go together. We cannot preach a justice to the world that we do not practice ourselves; we cannot demand recognition of the dignity and worth of every human person by governments in combating war and torture and hunger while even one person in our own community is homeless or hungry or mistreated. Of course, none of us can expect to attain an individual perfection before doing our best to live the Christian life in the community; but, neither can be expect others to respond to our prescriptions and challenges if we are not trying with all that is in us to practice what we preach. Nor is it out of place to suggest that only as we building our urban neighborhoods, in our rural communities, in our homes and places of work a way of life which is a source of joy and happiness for ourselves will we be able to be something more in the nation than moralistic prophets of doom. One guesses that the ancient world knew that Christians loved one another by the fact that they seemed at least relatively happy and content with their lives and with one another. In our own country the friendship and support our immigrant forebears found in their parishes and religious associations certainly had something to do with their success in building new lives for themselves, sharing in the building of this great nation. We are, in a very real sense, the heirs of their common endeavors. The record of our hearings and discussions demonstrates that our people possess a degree of fairness, compassion and commitment which would stand well against any comparative test. Much pain and anguish was expressed, to be sure, but the people who attended and testified and talked with one another were not hopeless or joyless or lacking in energy, talent or friendly faces. They were, on the contrary, welcoming and sharing and caring people. And they, and we, are that way because we have learned in our families and Church that no matter what the world may say of us, we are, in fact, of infinite worth and value because our Creator cares for us and we have through our Church the gift of His Spirit.

The trap, of course, is to conclude that our experience of faith and God and sacrament and friendship is sufficient, that our task is accomplished. Let us remember that we do all this, engage in the often discouraging tasks of building parish and diocesan pastoral councils, revising the forms of sacrament and worship, spending endless hours in meetings on parish finances and educational policy, and organizing to bring about justice, not simply because we want to create a community of peace and energy and care, but so that we may all be better prepared to do the Lord's will in our times. It is in order to be more fit instruments of His will that we do these things; we must carry what we receive in and from the Church into the marketplace, there to redeem all of human life by participating and sharing in the struggles of humankind for dignity, justice, peace and liberation. And what we learn there, in the midst of struggle and work, we carry back to the community, to share the experience, to reflect upon it, to make our Christian life in the world a source of enrichment for the ecclesia, the community called out from the world, while the experience of the ecclesia si the center from which we must always return to renew the face of the earth.

For myself, I can say only one thing with full assurance, and that is that there are no clear, ready-made answers to the problems of Church and society. If by chance some day we should reverse the process we have been through, and send teams of lay people, priests, and religious around the country to listen to the testimony of bishops, I suspect that what wold be heard would differ only in specific details from what we have heard during the last two years. We, too, remain excited and challenged by the renewal of the Church initiate by the Second Vatican Council and chastened by the experience of having tried, as best we could, to implement that spirit in our own local churches. We have been frustrated and angry with ourselves, with our priests and people; we have made some mistakes, had some moments of heroism and some moments of weakness. We have tried to learn from the experience, have tried to keep moving forward in spite of the setbacks. Like most people of our generation, we bishops have had to try to grasp and make our own the new visions and hopes excited by renewal while remaining faithful to the beliefs and customs of our childhood and our families. Like them, too, we have probably sometimes wished things would just slow down a bit, that something -- the family, the parish, the liturgy -- would just regain some of the strength we think it had not too long ago. Most of all, I think we have all wished there were some way we could relate more directly and intimately with our people, share their burdens and have them share ours, know their anguish and let them know our own. If nothing else has happened to those of us who took part in this process, we at least learned this: that when we take the risk of listening and being open to our people, they demonstrate almost without exception a sensitivity to our feelings and a willingness to share our problems with us, if we will only let them.

So, in the next few days, we are going to deliberate about the response we should make to the issues before us. We will discuss and debate; we will have considerable controversy within this hall and will probably generate some controversy outside it. We are a fairly representative gathering of the American Catholic community; as such, we contain within ourselves many, if not most, of the ethnic, racial, cultural, economic, sociological, and theological differences which characterize our diverse people and country. If we could meet and easily agree on policy for the Church and nation, we probably would not have wrestled with any problem of serious consequence. All of us in this hall are against racism and war and hypocrisy and violence; all of us are committed to the Gospel of Jesus, a Gospel of peace and justice and love and brotherhood and sisterhood; the tough part is translating all that into action. Translating it into a community of faith which conducts worship and prayer and education and works of charity and social service. Translating it into a moral position on questions of public significance, impacting on the processes by which legislation and public policy are made, because it is there that the basic work of justice is done in modern society. Both the pastoral task of building the Church, and the political task of building the world, involve choices, concrete and specific choices of how to spend our money, make our decisions, allocate our resources, direct our personal and collective allocation of time, treasure and talent. None of us knows for sure how best to do these things, none of us can be certain that our program of reform is exactly what the Lord intends for us today. So we have no choice, if we are to be a community of both faith and freedom, except to meet, debate, and make some decisions. That is what we are trying to do here. We are trying to begin a new way of doing the work of the Church in America. We may fail, but let us try and let people in the nation say of us that they cared enough to try.

In conclusion, one more thought should be expressed. We meet here as Church. Penetrated by the Spirit of Christ, we seek His will, not our own. We are conscious of our identity as the Church in the United States. At the same time, we are well aware of our bond in Christ with the Church throughout the world. We are one in our common concerns, in our traditions and in our faith. No one of us could fail to see and appreciate the profound significance of our Holy Father addressing us as we open this conference. What we do is meaningful for the entire Church. Let us begin our work, prayerfully, reflectively, conscientiously. With due accommodation, I voice the hope stated by Paul in his letter to the Church in Philippi: "It is my wish that you may be found rich in the harvest of justice which Jesus Christ has ripened in you to the glory and praise of God." (Phil. 1:11). (John Dearden, Opening Address of John Cardinal Dearden to the Call to Action Conference.)

As those familiar with this website should know by now, Dearden’s speech was merely a continuation of the revolutionary “reconciliation” with pluralism that Archbishop John Carroll began here in the United States of America in the late-Eighteenth Century and was brought to maturation by his more noteworthy Americanist successors such as Archbishop John Ireland of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and James Cardinal Gibbons of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The universal reconciliation with pluralist principles took place, of course, at the “Second” Vatican Council, especially in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965. See, for example, Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics (Volume 1.)

Although Joseph Louis Bernardin, serving at the time as the president of the “National Conference of Catholic Bishops,” equivocated on the results of “Call to Action,” much to the dismay of the editors of National Catholic Reporter and to the lay organizers of Dearden’s hootenanny that was time to coincide with the American bicentennial, he said later that he was trying to steer a course of “mediation” so that conciliar authorities in Rome would not reject those results out-of-hand:

Following the Call to Action conference, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, president of the NCCB, criticized it before the press saying: ―First, in retrospect, too much was attempted…the result was haste and a determination to formulate recommendations on complex matters without adequate reflection, discussion and consideration of different points of view. Undoubtedly, many good recommendations emerged which will provide the groundwork for a constructive reflection and action in the future; but to be realistic, others must be considered problematical at best ([7], p. 324).‖

Msgr. George Higgins, a long-time NCCB staff member said this action reflected Bernardin‘s prudence. (He knew) ―The church was not ready for confrontation over those issues…Bernardin was not politically astute for his own good, but he was politically smart. He knew these resolutions (liberalizing contraception, ordaining married men and women) would never be adopted (by Rome)‖ [8]. Any appearance of his supporting them would have ended a promising ecclesiastical career.

After President Bernardin distanced the NCCB from Call to Action and the conflict that ensued, it created a program to gracefully bring about closure. In May 1978, the NCCB in collaboration with U.S. dioceses committed itself to a five-year plan for the social mission of the church in the U.S ([9], pp. 12–16). Two years later, in spring 1980, a survey was conducted by the ad hoc committee for the Bishops‘ Call to Action Plan to inquire what the dioceses of the U.S. were doing to implement the plan which had been renamed ―To Do the Work of Justice.‖ Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Francis, S.V.D. of Newark, New Jersey, chairman of the committee reported some ―encouraging results‖ such as the existence of specific agencies for justice education in two thirds of U.S. dioceses. He also said that some of the survey data ―gives us cause for concern.‖ Francis reported that bishops felt that the NCCB Call to Action follow-up ―has not been well received locally by laity and clergy and that the overall impact will be quite small‖ ([10], p. 378). The U.S. bishops fulfilled their commitment to support a Call to Action follow-up plan for five years. It was terminated in 1983 and no longer listed among NCCB-sponsored programs in the Official Catholic Directory [11]. As a body, the NCCB never made another official statement about Call to Action.

Lay groups attempted to continue Call to Action through social movement activities independent of the bishops. Chicago‘s independent movement was the only one with the resources to sustain itself and adopted the name and logo of Call to Action. As a Chicago based SMO, CTA‘s relationship with the hierarchy was focused around its relationship with the archbishop of Chicago. The relationship between CTA and Cardinal John Cody was one of strong opposition and remained so until his death on April 25, 1982. In the summer of that year, the Vatican appointed former NCCB president Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin as the new archbishop of Chicago. The man who squelched Call to Action in its first phase, was now in a position to deal with it as an independent social movement.

3. Development of a Cooperative Relationship

The relationship between Bernardin and CTA was by and large cooperative. Several factors contributed to this: (1) he was not Cody; (2) he had achieved the pinnacle of success as a diocesan bishop and had greater latitude in making pastoral decisions; (3) Bernardin and CTA were able to find common ground on social justice issues.

It is not uncommon for the Vatican to use episcopal appointments to correct the course of a diocese or trends in the church. By appointing Bernardin to Chicago, the Vatican was attempting to reverse some of what Cody had done. Reese quotes Archbishop Jadot, apostolic delegate to the United States from 1973–1980 on this matter:

A bishop is appointed to balance what went before. If the diocese is well managed, but the bishop did not have contact with the people, if he was authoritarian, or a weak administrator then the opposite would be appointed…Sometimes a bishop might be only concerned with schools and not social programs. There might be diocesan problems hanging around unresolved. The diocese might have to be divided and the bishop has been opposing it or procrastinating—―after my time. Certainly in Chicago the way of operating as bishop was a factor in the choice of Bernardin ([12], pp. 21–22).

According to Reese:

Every archbishop is compared to his immediate predecessor. The style of his predecessor creates expectations on the part of people in his archdiocese…Cardinal Bernardin was greeted in Chicago with a sigh of relief by his clergy and people after their negative experiences with Cardinal John Cody ([12], p. 73).

Sheila Daley, co-executive director of CTA, reflected on the end of the Cody era. Religions 2012, 3 905

The first (phase of Chicago CTA) was the era of Cody. Even though we had a committee to work against racism and for justice the thing that was fueling us was church reform. We focused on decision-making and financial accountability and even just getting clarity. Financial reports from the archdiocese were rather obscure. That ended rather abruptly when Cody died‘ [13].

Relief that the Cody era had ended, and Bernardin‘s reputation as a centrist who engaged in dialogue and built consensus made him appealing to CTA and Chicago Catholics in general.

In contrast to his predecessor, who would never directly engage Call to Action, Archbishop Bernardin responded directly to CTA‘s letter of congratulations. He also stated that he wanted to collaborate with groups ―who sincerely want to promote the mission of the church‖ but that his values required him to ―always work within the framework of the Church‘s teaching and discipline‖ ([14], p. 5). The appointment of Joseph L. Bernardin to Chicago gave CTA a sense that someone at the highest level of the church shared its values. It also satisfied their interests because they thought that Bernardin would stand in the tradition of the Chicago archbishops who preceded Cody and work collaboratively with the priests and laity of Chicago. Sheila Daley said of Bernardin‘s appointment: ―When Bernardin came we had a positive sense. As reformers, we thought we could sit back; we did not have to be on top all these [internal church] issues right now‖ [13]. Because of Bernardin‘s reputation, CTA believed Chicago now had an archbishop who held common values with it in regard to shared responsibility and social justice.

Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin‘s qualifications and experience made him a prime choice for a see like Chicago that was large, diverse and filled with contention from the Cody years. Archbishop John Quinn, one of Bernardin‘s successors as president of the NCCB described him as ―a great conciliator. He has a great gift for keeping peace and keeping people together and of course he is a man who has a great sensitivity to issues and tried to keep a balanced approach to weigh all sides‖ ([15], p. 48. (Anthony J. Pogoelrc, Allies Advancing Justice: Cooperation Between U.S. Bishops and Call to Action to Promote the Peace and Economic Pastoral Letters, 1982-1987.)

Bernardin certainly shared a “common ground” with much of the Call to Action agenda, including “reconciling” the divorced and civilly remarried without a conciliar degree of nullity to the Sacraments, telling The New York Times magazine in December of 1994 that he could never deny Holy Communion to those he knew to be divorced and civilly remarried.

As noted earlier in this commentary, the lavender-friendly Bernardin was very “open” to sodomite behavior, including having the “Windy City Gay Men’s Chorus” sing at his wake in the sanctuary of Holy Name Cathedral in November of 1996:

In Paul Likoudis’s book Amchurch Comes Out: The U.S. Bishops, Pedophile Scandals and the Homosexual Agenda, Likoudis fingers Cardinal Bernardin as the “bishop-maker who…gave the American hierarchy its pronounced pro-gay orientation.…Bernardin acquired power rapidly. As his friends back in Charleston continued buggering little boys, Bernardin used his influence, starting in 1968, as General Secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference, to select bishops (many of whom are still ordinaries) who would, to put it charitably, condone and promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and tolerate the sexual abuse of children by priests.”

A telling aside: James Hitchcock reported that “the Windy City Gay Men’s Chorus was asked [by Bernardin, who knew he was dying] to sing at his wake in the Cathedral. The chorus’s director said that they regarded the invitation as a sign of approval by the Church…” (The Catholic World Report, Feb, 1997). Approval indeed! At least by Bernardin. The Gay Chorus performed six songs – in the sanctuary tot he right of the altar. (Bernardin and his "orientation". See also my review of The Rite of Sodomy, Understanding A Cesspool of Corruption and a review that I have read of a new book, written by sedeplenists who support "religious liberty," about Bernardin: Conciliar Church Paid for Obama to Take Alinsky Training).  

Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin was also on the cutting edge of those who believed that the source of "anti-Semitism" was none other than Saint John the Evangelist, the only Apostle to stand at the foot of the Holy Cross as the care of Our Lady was given unto him by the Divine Redeemer Who also gave Saint John--and hence each one of us--to be Our Lady's own adopted sons and daughters. Yes, Saint John the Evangelist, Who wrote his Gospel and his three epistles under the direct inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost.

Here is the evidence once again in the event that you do not believe me or have forgotten having read what follows:

In the interim, as we await a scholarly resolution of the question of antisemitism in the New Testament, I would strongly urge that the Church adopt a pastoral approach. Father Raymond Brown, a renowned Catholic scholar on the Gospel of St. John, has suggested that the basis of a pastoral approach, at least with with respect to the Fourth Gospel, which is generally considered among the most problematic of all New Testament books in its outlook towards Jews and Judaism. In commenting on John's use of the term, "the Jews," Brown expresses his conviction that, by deliberately using this generic term (where other gospel writers refer to the Jewish authorities or the various Sacred Temple Jewish parties), John meant to extend to the synagogue of his own day blame that an earlier tradition had attributed to the Jewish authorities. Although John was not the first to engage in such extension, he is the most insistent New Testament author in this regard. Brown attributes this process in John to the persecution that Christians were experiencing during that time at the hands of the synagogue authorities. Jews who professed Jesus to be the Messiah had been officially expelled from Judaism, thus making them vulnerable to Roman investigation and punishment. Jews were tolerated by Rome, but who were these Christians whom the Jews disclaimed?

Father Brown maintains that this This is a key pastoral point. Christians today must come to see that such teaching, which an acknowledged part of their biblical heritage, can no longer be regarded as definitive teaching in light of our improved understanding of developments in the relationship between early Christianity and the Jewish community of the time. As Brown says in his book, The Community of the Beloved Disciple, "It would be incredible for a twentieth-century Christian to share or justify the Johannine contention that 'the Jews' are the children of the Devil, an affirmation which is placed on the lips of Jesus (John 8: 44)."

Negative passages such as these must be re-evaluated in light of the Second Vatican Council's strong affirmation in its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Relations (Nostra Aetate) that Jews remain a covenanted people, revered by God. The teaching of recent Popes has also emphasized this. Pope John Paul II, in particular, has often highlighted the intimate bond that exists between Jews and Christians who are united in one ongoing covenant. ("Antisemitism: The Historical Legacy and the Continuing Challenge for Christians".) 

How was this not blasphemy against the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, and Saint John the Evangelist?

As you can see, however, Joseph Bernardin's bias against words inspired by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity and written by the beloved disciple who stood faithfully at the foot of the Cross as the Divine Redeemer shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem us and as His Most Blessed Mother suffered the Fifth Sword of Sorrow being plunged into her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart is a distinguishing characteristic of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's relationship with the adherents of the Talmud. Great pains must be undertaken to avoid even the appearance of offending Talmudic Jews while tremendous offenses to God are planned for months, if not years, in advance. Meaning no disrespect to anyone who does not accept the fact that heretics cannot hold ecclesiastical office legitimately, such an inversion and perversion of truth should be a cause to consider the simple fact that the Catholic Church has never given the appearance of such infidelity and that she is incapable of giving such an appearance of infidelity as she enjoys a complete and perpetual immunity from error and heresy.)

Bernardin’s apostasy was not something merely esoteric, however, as his support for the previously referenced “consistent ethic life” (seamless garment) was a poorly-disguised effort to provide someone such as then Governor Mario Matthew Cuomo official “Catholic cover” to run for the presidency in 1984 even though he supported and funded baby-killing under cover of the civil law. Cuomo never ran for the presidency, of course. Another Catholic, then United States Representative Geraldine Anne Ferraro-Zacarro was nominated to run as vice president with former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984, and she had the full support of the “social justice” wing of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the United States of America, especially from “Bishop” Francis Mugavero and one of his leftist “auxiliaries,” “Bishop” Joseph Sullivan, in her home Diocese of Brooklyn, New York.

The following excerpt from Bernardin’s December 6, 1983, address at Fordham University shows that Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s choice of Blase Cupich, a presbyter of the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska, and former conciliar ordinary of the Diocese of Rapid City and the Diocese of Spokane, to replace Francis “Cardinal” George, who died on April 17, 2015, at the age of seventy-eight after having served as Bernardin’s successor from May 7, 1987, to November 18, 2014, represents a complete “papal” endorsement of the so-called “consistent ethic of life” that seeks to find moral equivalence between one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, willful murder, and other matters, such as the death penalty, which is simply a Natural Right of the civil state to impose in cases where it is adjudged after due process of law a criminal found guilty of committing a capital crime can be put to death:

The substance of a Catholic position on a consistent ethic of life is rooted in a religious vision. But the citizenry of the United States is radically pluralistic in moral and religious conviction. So we face the challenge of stating our case, which is shaped in terms of our faith and our religious convictions, in non-religious terms which others of different faith convictions might find morally persuasive. . . . As we seek to shape and share the vision of a consistent ethic of life, I suggest a style governed by the following rule: We should maintain and clearly communicate our religious convictions but also maintain our civil courtesy. We should be vigorous in stating a case and attentive in hearing another's case; we should test everyone's logic but not question his or her motives. ("A Consistent Ethic of Life: An American-Catholic Dialogue".).

 

To what must a Catholic listen on the issue of the taking of innocent human life? Those who support the chemical and/or surgical taking of innocent human life in the womb do not have a "case." They have lies. Such people, if they are non-Catholics, must be converted to the Catholic Faith. Those who are Catholics must be told that they excommunicate themselves from the Church's maternal bosom by supporting willful murder, one the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

The Bernardin approach to "life issues" contrasts, of course, very sharply with that of the true popes of the Catholic Church, who taught clearly and unequivocally that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. We do not speak in "non-religious" terms. We make proper Catholic distinctions when speaking about moral issues, remembering always to speak as Catholics at all times without ever dissenting from anything contained within the Deposit of Faith at any time for any reason, something that Pope Leo XIII made clear Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

The very reason that contraception and abortion are part of our culture and protected by civil law is because the Protestant Revolution overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King in the Sixteenth Century in many parts of Europe and the revolutions and movements inspired by the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry finished the job in the rest while creating entirely new nations elsewhere, such as in the United States of America, whose people were to celebrate religious "diversity" as a "protection" against tyranny and a "guarantee"of individual liberties rather than as the means by which the devil can propagate and then institutionalize Every Error Imaginable.

Always eager to find “common ground” between truth and error, Joseph Louis Bernardin even started what he called the “Common Ground Initiative” to produce “dialogue” between those who support unrestricted baby-killing on demand in all circumstances as a matter of “human rights” and a woman’s supposed “right to choose” (to kill a baby, of course!) and those who oppose such killing in all circumstances without exception. There is no “common ground” between truth and error. None. Truth must be proclaimed. Those in error must be corrected. Civil law that defies the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law has no binding force over men and must be opposed and defied, not accepted as “settled law” or made subject to “discussions.” The truths of the moral law are non-negotiable. Then again, the conciliar revolutionaries believe that everything contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith is subject to “discussion,” “reflection” and “adaptation” according to alleged “pastoral needs” that, to recall the words uttered by Pope Pius XII to the Jesuits fifty-eight years ago, “would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.”

None other than Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro praised Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin effusively when he, Obama/Soetoro gave his infamous commencement address at the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Notre Dame, Indiana, on Sunday, May 17, 2009, explaining the personal debt that he owed to Bernardin while praising the latter’s “common ground” initiative: 

Thus is that “Archbishop” Blase Cupich’s recent effort to find a moral equivalence between the butchering of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs with joblessness is simply a continuation of the themes developed by Joseph Louis Bernardin and the entire “social justice” crowd of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that includes the Argentine Apostate himself as its chief propagandist at this time of apostasy and betrayal:

This tradition of cooperation and understanding is one that I learned in my own life many years ago -- also with the help of the Catholic Church.

You see, I was not raised in a particularly religious household, but my mother instilled in me a sense of service and empathy that eventually led me to become a community organizer after I graduated college. And a group of Catholic churches in Chicago helped fund an organization known as the Developing Communities Project, and we worked to lift up South Side neighborhoods that had been devastated when the local steel plant closed.

And it was quite an eclectic crew -- Catholic and Protestant churches, Jewish and African American organizers, working-class black, white, and Hispanic residents -- all of us with different experiences, all of us with different beliefs. But all of us learned to work side by side because all of us saw in these neighborhoods other human beings who needed our help -- to find jobs and improve schools. We were bound together in the service of others.

And something else happened during the time I spent in these neighborhoods -- perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I was really broke and they fed me. (Laughter.) Perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn not just to the work with the church; I was drawn to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.

And at the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the Archbishop of Chicago. (Applause.) For those of you too young to have known him or known of him, he was a kind and good and wise man. A saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads -- unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty and AIDS and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together, always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, "You can't really get on with preaching the Gospel until you've touched hearts and minds."

My heart and mind were touched by him. They were touched by the words and deeds of the men and women I worked alongside in parishes across Chicago. And I'd like to think that we touched the hearts and minds of the neighborhood families whose lives we helped change. For this, I believe, is our highest calling. (Obama's Commencement Address at Notre Dame.)

Thus is that “Archbishop” Blase Cupich’s recent effort to find a moral equivalence between the butchering of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs with joblessness is simply a continuation of the themes developed by Joseph Louis Bernardin and the entire “social justice” crowd of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that includes the Argentine Apostate himself as its chief propagandist at this time of apostasy and betrayal:

The release of videos of Planned Parenthood physicians discussing the market for tissue harvested in abortions has produced varied and strong reactions, and has, ironically, given us a reason for hope and an opportunity as a nation.  

The tapes have generated a visceral reaction independent of how they were made or whether Planned Parenthood was making a profit. Rather, the widespread revulsion over the tapes arose because they unmasked the fact that, in our public conversation about abortion, we have so muted the humanity of the unborn child that some consider it quite acceptable to speak freely of crushing a child's skull to preserve valuable body parts and to have that discussion over lunch.

Yet, the outrage expressed by many at the physicians' callous and flippant attitude toward trafficking in human body parts is evidence that American hearts have not been irreparably hardened by the steady devaluing of human dignity in our society. This awakening of our conscience gives hope that deep within the hearts and souls of Americans there still resides the truth that an unborn child manifestly is a human being, entitled to rights and respect.

This newest evidence about the disregard for the value of human life also offers the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment as a nation to a consistent ethic of life. While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

The open and generous nature of the American people has the capacity to astonish and push boundaries. We crowdfund, sign petitions, dump buckets of ice on ourselves and embrace new ways of relating to our environment. Can we use our shared outrage at all these affronts to human dignity to unite us and begin a national dialogue on the worth of human life? (Blase Cupich op-ed: Planned Parenthood and the humanity of the unborn child.)

To equate the direct, intentional killing of the preborn with the “rights” of those who enter this country illegally or with joblessness (and it is because I taught as a Catholic and would not remain “neutral” on baby-killing and perversity and refused to use a highly biased textbook that I found what might have been somewhat reliable part-time academic employment terminated ten months ago in the middle of a semester) or with access to medical care is indecent. There are four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance: willful murder, the sin of Sodom, withholding the day laborer’s wages and defrauding a widow. These sins are more heinous than other evils save for those that directly attacking the honor and majesty and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity (such as the sins of the apostates in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who promulgate falsehoods about God and His Sacred Deposit of Faith while staging a “liturgy” that is both Protestant and Judeo-Masonic, if not pagan in an increasing number of instances).

As noted above, there is no kind of “national conversation” that supposed Catholic “bishops” are to have concerning matters of supernatural and moral truth. Truth must be proclaimed. Sinners must be exhorted to convert. Laws that are “settled” wrongly must be unsettled. It is that simple.

There is no need for any kind of “hermeneutic of continuity” with respect to these remarks as there is no kind of rupture, apparent or otherwise, between what was taught by Joseph Louis Bernardin at Fordham University nearly thirty-two years ago now and what is being preached at present by Jorge Mario Bergoglio with such manic devotion. Blase Cupich is a clone of Joseph Louis Bernardin, who was following a “tradition” of “social action” in Chicago that had been blazed as a result of the alliances formed by Samuel Cardinal Stritch and Albert “Cardinal” Meyer and that continued under his, Cupich’s, immediate predecessor, Francis “Cardinal” George, O.M.I.:

As the third largest archdiocese in the country, the Catholic Church in Chicagoland has been a major player in social reform in the United States for decades. This was no different under George’s leadership. As his former director of the Office for Peace and Justice for seven years, I believe one of George’s most notable legacies will be his consistent promotion and support of the Catholic social tradition. While his predecessor, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, was portrayed as a peacebuilder, Cardinal George would forge his own way on questions of social injustice, guided by his missionary charism. George stands as a bridge to the socially conscious Cupich, with his empirical development of social justice infrastructure, just as Pope Emeritus Benedict was a continuum of the Catholic social doctrine between Saint John Paul II and Pope Francis with social encyclicals such as “Caritas in Veritate.” Their personal styles may have differed, but more surprising is the continuity of social doctrine pastorally applied.

I was in college during the halcyon days of the economics and peace pastorals of the U.S. bishops. I took social ministry positions in the Archdiocese of Washington and then the Campaign for Human Development (before the Catholic was added, CCHD) at the U.S. Catholic Conference. Cardinal Bernardin and the Archdiocese of Chicago provided a model for engagement in social action that was well deserved. The image is ingrained in my mind of a cancer-ridden Joseph Bernardin rising from his wheelchair to give an impassioned plea for human dignity and solidarity at the 25th anniversary of Catholic Campaign for Human Development in downtown Chicago. (Social Justice Ministry in Chicago: From Bernardin to Cupich.)

The author of the words above, although wrong about his praise for Joseph Louis Bernardin’s proselytizing in behalf of Sillonistic-Judeo-Masonic notion of “social teaching” that has nothing to do with the teaching of the Catholic Church, is certainly correct when noting the continuum or “bridge” that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was between Karol Josef Wojtyla and Jorge Mario Bergoglio. By the way, there is a book dealing with this continuum. Gee, what’s the name of the book? Ah, yes, I’ve got it: No Space Between Ratzinger and Bergoglio: So Close in Apostasy, So Far From Catholic Truth.

The daily slaughter of the preborn, both by chemical and surgical means, continues in this country precisely because of the “reconciliation” that the counterfeit church of conciliarism has made with the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religious indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles that made possible the rise of the Judeo-Masonic state of Modernity. It is impossible to fight moral evils with doctrinal errors. Impossible.

Those such as Blase Cupich and others, including Bergoglio himself, who want to find “common ground” between the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment that prohibit the direct, intentional taking of innocent human life and those who believe in a “woman’s right to choose” (to kill a baby) in order to pursue the path of a Saul Alinsky-inspired version of “social justice” must reckon with these words of Pope Pius XII contained in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Such is not the language of conciliar “dialogue.” Such is the language of Catholic truth spoken prophetically by a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter.

A false church with false doctrines, false and sacramentally barren liturgical rites and false pastoral practices has helped to devastate one formerly Catholic country after another. These devastation was long in the planning by the adversary, and it has taken over fifty years of careful propagation to prepare the way for what is only the logical public manifestation of what was intended all along: the overthrow of the Catholic Faith in favor of a naturalistic “religion of man.”

Blase Cupich is merely a product of what has gone on before him and a mirror image of what Jorge Mario Bergoglio intends to do with the time that the adversary has given him to lead the false church of universal apostasy that most people in the world believe is the Catholic Church. Jorge has made it impossible for believing Catholics who are still attached to the structures of their false church to "appeal to Rome" about such men as Cupich as he is doing precisely what his "pope" wants done. This is simply the convergence of the forces of Modernity in the world and of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Part two of this commentary will focus on Sean “Cardinal” O’Malley’s reaction to the Planned Barrenhood videos and to the remarks made in July by Donald “Cardinal Wuerl about the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, is “the law of the land.”

Our Lady promised Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos that her Immaculate Heart would triumph in the end. We must do our part to bring this about by praying for a restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter as we seek to console the good God, Who is so grieved by our sins and those of the world, by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits and by making more sacrifices for the conversion of sinners, offering up the tribulations of the moment to Him as the consecrated slaves of His Co-Eternal, Co-Equal Divine Son, Christ the King, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Romanus, pray for us.

Here is a news flash for you, "Bishop" Stephen Edward Blaire: every Catholic must be opposed to the policies of President Barack Hussein Obama as he is an enemy of Christ the King and thus of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to to redeem. God will not be mocked "Bishop" Blaire. God will not stand the likes of Barack Hussein Obama or those who enable, apologize or make excuses for him at the moment they are face-to-face with Him at their Particular Judgment?

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

This applies to Barack Hussein Obama and Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, the Governor of the State of California, Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., United States Senate Minority Leader Richard Durbin, New York Governor Andrew Mark Cuomo, former New York Governor and current (believe it or not) Republican presidential candidate George Elmer Pataki, et al. It is the solemn duty of every Catholic to oppose the likes of these people and anyone else in public life, Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or Socialist or any other political affiliation, who support the killing, whether by chemical or surgical means, of a single, solitary child in his mother's womb as anyone and everyone who does so is disqualified from holding any position of public trust, whether elected or appointed. Period. What is so difficult or complex? What?

It is impossible for men or for their nations to pursue the common temporal good while at the same time promoting under cover of the civil law and celebrating in the midst of popular culture evils that repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

As the third largest archdiocese in the country, the Catholic Church in Chicagoland has been a major player in social reform in the United States for decades. This was no different under George’s leadership. As his former director of the Office for Peace and Justice for seven years, I believe one of George’s most notable legacies will be his consistent promotion and support of the Catholic social tradition. While his predecessor, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, was portrayed as a peacebuilder, Cardinal George would forge his own way on questions of social injustice, guided by his missionary charism. George stands as a bridge to the socially conscious Cupich, with his empirical development of social justice infrastructure, just as Pope Emeritus Benedict was a continuum of the Catholic social doctrine between Saint John Paul II and Pope Francis with social encyclicals such as “Caritas in Veritate.” Their personal styles may have differed, but more surprising is the continuity of social doctrine pastorally applied.

I was in college during the halcyon days of the economics and peace pastorals of the U.S. bishops. I took social ministry positions in the Archdiocese of Washington and then the Campaign for Human Development (before the Catholic was added, CCHD) at the U.S. Catholic Conference. Cardinal Bernardin and the Archdiocese of Chicago provided a model for engagement in social action that was well deserved. The image is ingrained in my mind of a cancer-ridden Joseph Bernardin rising from his wheelchair to give an impassioned plea for human dignity and solidarity at the 25th anniversary of Catholic Campaign for Human Development in downtown Chicago. (Social Justice Ministry in Chicago: From Bernardin to Cupich.)

It is impossible for men or for their nations to pursue the common temporal good while at the same time promoting under cover of the civil law and celebrating in the midst of popular culture evils that repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

 

Is baby-killing under cover of law, whether by surgical or chemical means, repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity, "Cardinal" Mahony? Is it? Tell us, please. Repeat after me, Roger Mahony: Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden believe in that which makes it impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquility because he supports evils that are opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. Can't repeat this, Roger Mahony? Then you have expelled yourself from the Catholic Church because you believe that it is possible to produce true temporal peace and tranquility in spite of open support for the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of preborn human beings.

The release of videos of Planned Parenthood physicians discussing the market for tissue harvested in abortions has produced varied and strong reactions, and has, ironically, given us a reason for hope and an opportunity as a nation.  

The tapes have generated a visceral reaction independent of how they were made or whether Planned Parenthood was making a profit. Rather, the widespread revulsion over the tapes arose because they unmasked the fact that, in our public conversation about abortion, we have so muted the humanity of the unborn child that some consider it quite acceptable to speak freely of crushing a child's skull to preserve valuable body parts and to have that discussion over lunch.

Yet, the outrage expressed by many at the physicians' callous and flippant attitude toward trafficking in human body parts is evidence that American hearts have not been irreparably hardened by the steady devaluing of human dignity in our society. This awakening of our conscience gives hope that deep within the hearts and souls of Americans there still resides the truth that an unborn child manifestly is a human being, entitled to rights and respect.

This newest evidence about the disregard for the value of human life also offers the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment as a nation to a consistent ethic of life. While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

The open and generous nature of the American people has the capacity to astonish and push boundaries. We crowdfund, sign petitions, dump buckets of ice on ourselves and embrace new ways of relating to our environment. Can we use our shared outrage at all these affronts to human dignity to unite us and begin a national dialogue on the worth of human life? (Blase Cupich op-ed: Planned Parenthood and the humanity of the unborn child.)

Thus is that “Archbishop” Blase Cupich’s recent effort to find a moral equivalence between the butchering of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs with joblessness is simply a continuation of the themes developed by Joseph Louis Bernardin and the entire “social justice” crowd of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that includes the Argentine Apostate himself as its chief propagandist at this time of apostasy and betrayal: