A Law Unto Himself

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The incredibly bold appointment by Pope John Paul II of the disgraced Bernard Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston from March of 1984 until December of 2002, as the Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome says so much about the current occupant of the Throne of Saint Peter. Indeed, not much time needs to be spent to belabor points that are really rather obvious even at a cursory glance of the situation.

Many who continue to defend the novelties promoted by Pope John Paul II and who defend his lack of governance of the Church contradict themselves over and over again when attempting to do what I had done for far too long: defend the indefensible. Pope John Paul II believes that he is a law unto himself, that there are no limits to the powers he has as the Successor of Saint Peter to disparage defined teachings of the Church by ignoring them altogether or by deconstructing them of the meaning they have had until the beginning of the conciliarist era with the pontificate of Pope John XXIII in 1958. This has been the subject of numerous commentaries by many scholarly commentators. One of the best is, as I have mentioned repeatedly in recent articles, The Great Facade, by Christopher Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Pope John Paul II does not believe he is bound by solemn papal pronouncements or by the pronouncements and decisions of dogmatic councils. He has dared to go where not even Pope Paul VI went insofar as defining almost everything in terms of the conciliarist religion. One manifestation of this is the continued rejection of all but a handful of preconciliar sources as references for the official pronouncements of Vatican dicasteries and/or Papal encyclical letters and allocutions. The fact that the novelties of the new religion continue to lead inevitably to a constant string of contradictory statements and inconsistencies is lost on the Pope's reflexive defenders, believing that they must continue to praise the emperor's new clothes when they know that the emperor is naked and that his reign has been a series of unmitigated disasters for the life of the Catholic Church and thus for the good of the world, which must be subordinated in all things to the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. This was all the subject of "More Than a Matter of Governance," which was posted on this website recently.

What I would like to point out at this juncture, therefore, is that those who defend everything the Pope or some Vatican functionary says and does, including the sacrilege that took place in the Chapel of the Apparitions in the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal on May 5, 2004, insist quite solemnly that the Pope cannot discipline or remove wayward bishops as this would be "too divisive" for the Church. The Pope's defenders say also that the Pope cannot micromanage the Church and that it would be terribly divisive for him to create an Apostolic Administration to afford the Traditional Latin Mass the recognition in contemporary canon law that is its due as a result of Pope Saint Pius V's Quo Primum. Indeed, Vatican officials have fallen all over themselves to provide contradictory reasons why such an Apostolic Administration cannot be created, although a common thread is that such an entity would be "divisive" in that it would be a de facto admission that there are two different rites in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Thus, we have heard some utter the nonsensical view that there is only one Roman Rite, but one that has two forms. Where does that leave the "Anglican Use" form of the Roman Rite? A third but forgotten form of the one Roman Rite? It is good to recognize positivism for what it is and thus not try to make any sense of the statements made by revolutionaries who know that logic and history and tradition are simply lined up against them quite solidly and cannot be rebutted with anything other than smoke and mirrors.

How very interesting that the Pope who does not want to "divide" the Church is willing to incur the wrath of Catholics who have been disaffected and abused as a result of the systematic cover-up of the scandals caused by the perverted behavior of sodomite priests in the Archdiocese of Boston under the episcopate of Bernard Cardinal Law by rewarding him with a prominent Roman post. Law, who succeeded the late Humberto Cardinal Medeiros on March 25, 1984, began his career in Boston by caving into the demands of feminists to have nuns administer Holy Communion at his Mass of Installation in Holy Cross Cathedral even though there were scores of cardinals and bishops and priests, the ordinary ministers of Holy Communion, present and able to do so. He protected and reassigned sodomite perverts within the priesthood, even going so far as to write a letter of recommendation for Father Paul Shanley, the co-founder of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, even after Father Shanley's public support for this sickest of all perversities had become known to him. Cardinal Law and his chancery staff in Boston, which included the current Bishop of Rockville Centre, New York, the Most Reverend William Murphy, and the retired Bishop of Brooklyn, New York, the Most Reverend Thomas Daily, betrayed the trust of the victims of perverted priests over and over again. The tangled legal mess created by Cardinal Law has cost the Archdiocese of Boston millions of dollars and has scandalized countless numbers of souls in Boston and elsewhere across the United States of America. Yes, how very interesting that the Pope is willing to divide and demoralize Catholics by showing that he can reward a disgraced prelate when he should have removed his red hat and denied him a vote in the next conclave for his reprehensible defense of sodomites in Our Lord's Holy Priesthood.

Pope John Paul II is all too willing to flex his governing muscle and to incur the wrath of those who will oppose him on decisions he wants to make because he wants to make them. This should put the lie once and for all to the indefensible claim made by the Pope's defenders that the Holy Father is paralyzed by forces beyond his control. The appointment of Bernard Cardinal Law as the Archpriest of one of the four major Roman basilicas shows that the Holy Father's angst over the scandals that came to light in the secular media (but had been reported for the better part of fifteen years in The Wanderer and The Remnant and had been documented to Roman authorities by Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc.) was so much public relations. No man who understood the depth of the alienation that was caused so needlessly by the blithe treatment of sodomites in the priesthood and the callous treatment of their victims by bishops and their chancery factotums would choose so visible and identifiable a symbol as Bernard Cardinal Law to be the archpriest of any church. Cardinal Law should have had the humility to refuse the appointment and to have spent the rest of his life in humble prayer in a monastery, having voluntarily turned in his cardinal's red hat in disgrace. That the Holy Father still trusts Cardinal Law and that the latter does not have the sense of shame that he should, demonstrates that both men are laws unto themselves who do not care what their actions signify to the faithful who have been so bewildered by the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of the past forty years and who are scandalized when their shepherds protect sodomites who have demeaned the priesthood instituted by the God-Man for their sanctification and salvation.

Make no mistake about it. Bernard Cardinal Law has many friends in Rome apart from the Holy Father himself. These curial officials sit around in the Borga, the little community of shops and bistros that surround the Vatican, eating their bowls full of pasta and drinking the choicest of wines while they belittle the scandals caused by sodomite priests and their bishop-protectors as having been blown out of proportion by an anti-Catholic secular media. To them, you see, Cardinal Law is a victim of circumstances. These curial officials care not one whit for the good of anything other than their own clerical careers and the creature comforts afforded them by the perquisites of their Vatican passports and access to the corridors of power in and around Vatican Hill and the offices located on the Via della Concilazione and in the Trastevere district. So what if Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York, said in the mid-1990s that the Church had to find a way to "bless homosexual unions"? So what if Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, looked the other way as Catholic Charities officials under his direct control pioneered the adoption of children by a lesbian "couple"? So what if Roger Cardinal Mahony spends $200 million on a monstrosity that is an affront to everything Catholic and opens his arms to those who want to demonstrate solidarity with practicing homosexuals and lesbians? So what if one bishop after another either supports or does nothing when confronted with the reality of sex instruction programs that undermine the innocence and purity of the young or the simple fact that most of those who teach in Catholic "educational" institutions do not believe in the Deposit of Faith and actually dissent quite actively from the Ten Commandments as explicated by the Church herself from time immemorial? So what if traditional Catholics are deemed to be schismatic and heretical and divisive for demanding their rights under Quo Primum for both the honor and glory of God and the good of the Church herself? Oh, no, if everything is fine with the pasta and the wine in the Borga, all is well in the Church at large. These are the sort of men who enable the enabler of sodomites named Cardinal Law, who is also beloved of the priests and the laity of Opus Dei.

We must remember that the Church is divinely founded. She was brought to birth on Pentecost Sunday by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles and our dear Blessed Mother. She will last until the end of time despite all of the bad example and scandals and sins of her members, including each one of us. Indeed, scandals such as the appointment of Cardinal Law as the Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore only prove the divine foundations of the Church: nothing merely humanly organized could survive for nearly two millennia in the face of such outrages. The Church must be of God. It is God's true Church, outside of which there is no salvation. Nevertheless, this particular scandal and outrage should show to dispassionate observers that Pope John Paul II is not unwilling to divide the Church when he is of a mind to use his incontestably strong, strong will to make a particular point. How sad it is for those who have come to realize the importance of restoring the patrimony of the Church's tradition, including the Traditional Latin Mass, that the Holy Father is unwilling to restore our Tradition but all too willing to further alienate already disaffected Catholics by defending a man who has been, much like himself, a law unto himself.

Our Lady, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, pray for us.