Surely He Jests

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Several articles (Generating Controversy and Negative Press and Rescind the Appointment at Once were written my "resist and recognize days in 2005; Anathematized by His Own Words, No Need to be in Limbo Any Longer, Piracy, Conciliar Style, Red Carpet For A Modernist, Words Really Do Matter and Short And To The Catholic Point since that time) in the past few years have focused on the Modernist who is the prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William "Cardinal" Levada, a seminary schoolmate of the likes of Roger "Cardinal" Mahony, the conciliar "archbishop" of Los Angeles, California, George Niederauer, the conciliar "archbishop of San Francisco, California, and Tod Brown, the conciliar "bishop" of Orange, California. Levada co-owned a beach house with Mahony and Niederauer in Manhattan Beach, California, for many years.

Levada is indeed a Modernist whose evolutionary conception of dogmatic truth is identical to that of the false "pontiff" he serves, a man who has been bold enough to publish a document daring to assert that the souls of unbaptized infants might indeed go directly to Heaven, a man who has asserted untruths about the "continuity" between the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, a man who is hailing the "reception" of Anglo-Catholics into the conciliar structures even though they are being permitted to retain liturgical rites deemed heretical by Pope Saint Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570. Levada once suspended the late Father Eugene Heidt for his commitment to the truths of the Holy Faith, responding as follows to Father Heidt's complaint about the omission of the word Transubstantiation in a pastoral letter that Levada, then the conciliar "archbishop" of Portland, Oregon, had issued on the Holy Eucharist:

Archbishop Levada, while Ordinary of Oregon, also had run-ins with Father Eugene Heidt, a feisty traditional priest. Levada eventually illicitly “suspended” Father Heidt for his no-compromise adherence to Tradition. Before the “suspension”, during a meeting with the Archbishop, Father Heidt complained that the Archbishop’s Pastoral Letter on the Eucharist contained no mention of Transubstantiation. Levada replied that Transubstantiation is a “long and difficult term” and that “we don’t use it any more”.[27]

This is a mockery to the infallible Council of Trent, that committed the Church to this precise scholastic definition, hallowed by long usage. Even Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Mysterium Fidei reiterated that the parish priest is duty-bound to speak of “Transubstantiation.” (#54) Levada’s approach is also an insult to “modern man” to whom post-Conciliar churchmen constantly claim to be appealing. It implies that modern man is too stupid to comprehend a term that 2nd grade Catholic school children grasped only fifty years ago. (John Vennari, Invincible or Inculpable, Catholic Family News, June, 2005.)

 

Mr. Vennari, who does, of course, accept the canonical legitimacy of the conciliar "popes" and  the sacramental validity of the conciliar "bishops" and thus rejects sedevacantism completely, concluded his typically well-researched and documented article of five years ago with the following few telling passages:

Regarding devices for protection against AIDS, Archbishop Levada said, “Certainly if someone has decided not to follow the path of abstinence, and engage in extramarital sexual relations, that already is something that is not in accord with God’s plan. It could be the better part of their choice to use the protections that are available.”

This response is a variation on Martin Luther, “Sin strong, but protect yourself stronger.” Mind you, Levada is saying this to a secular newspaper read by millions, and in San Francisco, no less.

Levada goes on to say that the Church does not believe there should be a widespread campaign to promote the use of these devices, and that the “better policy” is one that “corresponds to God’s plan, to refrain from sex until you marry and are faithful to one person.”[28]

Better policy? Why are men like Levada afraid to speak the simple truth: that the human acts under discussion are mortal sins that send a soul to hell for eternity? Why use the delicate phrase “not in accord with God’s plan”, with no mention of the horrifying eternal consequences for discarding God’s plan? How can a Catholic Archbishop possibly advance the falsehood that for those who will deliberately sin anyway, “it could be a better part of their choice to use the protections that are available”? Does he not know that use of these “protections” is intrinsically evil? That no set of circumstances can justify employing them? Even for the sake of AIDS prevention, has he forgotten Saint Paul’s warning that we may not do evil that good may come from it? Is he not aware that the lesser of two evils is still an evil? And that evil can never be the direct object of our will? Levada’s moral theology appears to be as wobbly as his ecumenical theology.[29]

All of what has been said reveals Archbishop Levada to be a child of Vatican II, a creature of the age, a prelate who side-stepped hot issues in his diocese, a churchman who covered-up clerical abuse and transferred known abusers to active parishes, a man whom no right-thinking Catholic would allow to teach religion to his children.

Yet out of all the bishops on the planet, Archbishop Levada is the man chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to be the alleged “watchdog of orthodoxy”, and to occupy the second most influential position in the Catholic Church worldwide. (John Vennari, Invincible or Inculpable, Catholic Family News, June, 2005.)

 

Yes, indeed, William Levada, the Modernist who defies the Catholic Church's anathemas on believing that her dogmatic statements may be understood in different ways at different times, William Levada, the arch-ecumenist who has no understanding that each and every false religion, including each Protestant sect, is of the devil and has nothing to "contribute" to the "betterment" of the world, yes, this William Levada, the prefect of the conciliar Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, has weighed in with a Statement (the full text of which you can read for yourselves by using the link just provided) about the articles that have appeared in The New York Times in recent weeks about the culpability of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for the covering up of moral crimes committed by "bishops" and priests and presbyters in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth commandments.

As has been noted on this site in at least two recent articles, it is certainly the case that publishers and editors and writers of The New York Times have a bias against the Catholic Faith. And, as Levada notes in his own statement, it is certainly the case that it is a stretch for anyone associated with The New York Times to lay the blame on the shoulders of the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger for the protection afforded the late Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who committed moral crimes against more than two hundred deaf boys over the course of twenty years. The responsibility for protecting the late Father Murphy was the work of officials in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and, as Levada points out in his own statement, with law enforcement officials in Wisconsin who knew about Murphy's crimes and were convinced by clerical officials not to pursue them.

This is what I wrote ten days ago in Swinging Clubs To Protect The Club:

That the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger did not act to reduce Father Lawrence Murphy to the lay state is not the real issue in this particular story, although it is telling that he did not even send a response to "Archbishop" Weakland about the matter, prompting this apologist for perverse "love" to write, presumably, to Dario "Cardinal" Castrillon Hoyos at the Congregation for the Clergy to get the matter resolved. The real issue in the Father Lawrence Murphy case is the same one as in each of the other cases that have been reported in the past decade now: a desire for good press and a refusal to accept the fact that sodomites have been permitted to run amok in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The story has been the same in archdiocese after archdiocese, diocese after diocese, religious community after religious community.

 

It is thus a fair assessment for "Cardinal" Levada to conclude that The New York Times has been unjust to his conciliar "pontiff" by attempting to blame him for the protection afforded the late Father Murphy, although it is legitimate to point out that the then "Cardinal" Ratzinger's failure to respond to the letter sent to him about Father Murphy in 1996 by the disgraced, morally, theologically and liturgically corrupt villain named Rembert G. Weakland, the conciliar "archbishop" of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1977 and 2002, a time during which he lowered the boom on "conservatives" and traditionalists who sought to oppose his revolutionary agenda against Faith and Worship that was but a perfect expression of the mind of the man who appointed him, Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, and the man under whom he worked at the Consilium, Annibale Bugnini, is itself very telling of Ratzinger/Benedict's casual, blase attitude about the horror of personal sin.

No fair reading of the facts of the Father Murphy could fault the then "Cardinal" Ratzinger for suspending the proceedings begun against him in 1998 for his laicization because the abuser was near dying. One can, however, criticize "Cardinal" Ratzinger for failing to respond with alacrity to Weakland's 1996 letter as the then prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had an obligation, at the very least, of expressing his profound concern that a priest such as Father Murphy had been able to retain his canonical good standing in the conciliar structures for over twenty-two years after he had been transferred from the position he held at Saint John's School for the Deaf in Saint Francis, Wisconsin, when conciliar officials knew of the extent of his moral crimes. Father Murphy should have been shamed publicly by his suspension and then sent to a monastery for the rest of his life. Then again, Ratzinger/Benedict has maintained the "good standing" of "Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the president of the conciliar "bishops'" conference in the Federal Republic of Germany, for the past three hundred fifty-nine days despite his having said on Holy Saturday last year, April 11, 2009, that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did not die on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins.

One must keep the Zollitsch case in mind as it makes a total shambles of those who are trying to defend Ratzinger/Benedict's role in the case of Father Peter Hullermann, a priest of the Diocese of Essen, Germany, who was transferred to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising when Ratzinger was the conciliar "archbishop" there in 1980 on the grounds that he was too concerned about "doctrinal" issues to pay close attention to personnel matters. No man can claim to have a concern for doctrinal issues when he refuses to correct a major heresy committed by an "archbishop" who is under his direct supervision, leaving aside the doctrinal defections of this particular man, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, as they have been well-documented on this site. It is the height of absurdity to claim that a man who is himself a defector in many areas from the Catholic Faith and who indemnifies others who so defect has a "concern" for doctrinal issues.

Moreover, one who purports to be the ordinary of a diocese or archdiocese of the Catholic Church is derelict in his duty as a shepherd of souls if he does not personally supervise major decisions concerning the transfer of personnel, especially in instances represented by a moral criminal such as Father Peter Hullermann. It is thus once again the case that Ratzinger/Benedict, who presided at a meeting on January 15, 1980, in which the transfer of Father Hullermann to a parish in his own archdiocese was on the agenda for discussion, demonstrated his abject refusal to understand the gravity of the horror of perverse sins against Sixth and Ninth Commandments, which, of course, is understandable as a man who can violated the First and Second Commandments with the utter impunity and public boldness as himself can certainly take a casual attitude with respect to the reassignment of a priest who had no business being placed in any kind of pastoral assignment ever again.

In this regard, therefore, Ratzinger/Benedict's administrative indifference, if it was only that, to the case of Father Peter Hullermann was no different at all than that exhibited by conciliar "bishops" worldwide even right up this present day. Ratzinger/Benedict and his defenders, including William "Cardinal" Levada, simply refuse to come to public grips with the simple truth that sodomy and its promotion is at the root of the cases of corrupt clergymen, which is why Levada's efforts to praise the American "bishops" for their handling of these cases is truly beneath contempt. The American "bishops" were only forced to deal with this crisis because of financially crippling lawsuits and the revelations disclosed in legal depositions concerning the widespread, systematic efforts to protect perverted clergy and to seek to intimidate those who had complained about them. Levada's view of "history" in this regard is revisionist and completely self-serving.

Additionally, Levada had the unmitigated gall to refer favorably to his own handling of clerical abuse cases!

As I look back on my own personal history as a priest and bishop, I can say that in 1980 I had never heard of any accusation of such sexual abuse by a priest. It was only in 1985, as an Auxiliary Bishop attending a meeting of our U.S. Bishops’ Conference where data on this matter was presented, that I became aware of some of the issues. In 1986, when I was appointed Archbishop in Portland, I began to deal personally with accusations of the crime of sexual abuse, and although my “learning curve” was rapid, it was also limited by the particular cases called to my attention.

Here are a few things I have learned since that time: many child victims are reluctant to report incidents of sexual abuse by clergy. When they come forward as adults, the most frequent reason they give is not to ask for punishment of the priest, but to make the bishop and personnel director aware so that other children can be spared the trauma that they have experienced.

In dealing with priests, I learned that many priests, when confronted with accusations from the past, spontaneously admitted their guilt. On the other hand, I also learned that denial is not uncommon. I have found that even programs of residential therapy have not succeeded in breaking through such denial in some cases. Even professional therapists did not arrive at a clear diagnosis in some of these cases; often their recommendations were too vague to be helpful. On the other hand, therapists have been very helpful to victims in dealing with the long-range effects of their childhood abuse. In both Portland and San Francisco where I dealt with issues of sexual abuse, the dioceses always made funds available (often through diocesan insurance coverage) for therapy to victims of sexual abuse.(Statement by William "Cardinal" Levada)

 

One certainly has to hand it to the conciliarists. They are a very bold lot of men. Modernists usually are, of course, as they "reinterpret" and misrepresent and distort the very teaching that Our Crucified and Risen Saviour, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Levada's attempt to revise and "reimagine" his own history is criminal.

Although several articles detailing Levada's own efforts to protect his conciliar clergy in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California, are included in appendices to this commentary, an excerpt from one such article will suffice for the time being:

Two lawyers representing Oregon molestation victims have raised questions about the role San Francisco Archbishop William Levada played in a priestly sex abuse scandal that led to this week's unprecedented bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Portland.

Levada, who served as the archbishop of Portland from 1986 to 1995, oversaw church disciplinary proceedings against two Oregon priests accused of child molestation, including one who was put back in regular parish ministry in 1994, following a brief period of "rehabilitation," the attorneys say.

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On Tuesday, the Portland Archdiocese -- which has spent more than $53 million to settle more than 130 claims of priest abuse -- became the first Catholic diocese in the nation to file for bankruptcy.

That bankruptcy filing also suspended a potentially embarrassing and costly trial against the archdiocese and the late Rev. Maurice Grammond, who has been accused of molesting dozens of boys in the Portland area. It had been scheduled to begin Tuesday

Jeffrey Anderson, one of the lawyers suing the Portland archdiocese, said Levada "is one of a long line of bishops that has given sanctuary to Grammond -- a known predator."

"Levada inherited a secret and kept it the nine years he was there," Anderson said in an interview.

Maurice Healy, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, said Levada had no comment on the Portland bankruptcy.

But in a lengthy deposition given in San Francisco on April 7, Levada denied that his predecessor, the late Portland Archbishop Cornelius Power, had given him any warnings about Grammond's sexual history when Levada took over in 1986.

Church officials in Portland insist that Levada's actions did not violate church regulations or state law in place between 1986 and 1995.

But lay leaders and abuse victims in the church say Levada and his successors had a moral obligation to warn parishioners that they had accused child molesters in their midst.

"Not only Levada, but all these bishops continued to cover up (for abusing priests) into the 1990s," said Ed Gleason, the Northern California director of Voice of the Faithful, a national organization of Catholic laity. "They disregarded evidence that questioned whether these priests could really be rehabilitated."

"We lay the financial crisis at the feet of bishops going back 30 years, " said Gayle Bacsh, the co-chair of the western Oregon chapter of Voice of the Faithful. "Until we see the institutional church adopt fundamental principals of financial transparency, it will be hard for the bishops to regain the trust they have squandered."

In the Archdiocese of Portland, the costliest and most notorious pedophile priest has been Grammond, who spent 15 years at Our Lady of Victory in Seaside, Ore., and served at two orphanages and several rural parishes.

Grammond has been accused of molesting more than 50 boys from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s.

Levada said in his deposition that he remembered Grammond as "a guy who was nervous, was a hypochondriac, was unhappy where he was."

In 1988, Levada gave Grammond a medical retirement. Three years later, the archbishop said, he learned that a former altar boy had accused Grammond of molesting him.

At that time, Levada said, he told the priest "not to engage in public ministry."

That action was required because retired priests often celebrate Mass, attend parish functions and perform other church functions after retirement.

"First, I think I asked him to go for an evaluation, (but) it seemed that he was a difficult person to get a full psychological profile on," Levada said in his deposition.

Grammond died in 2002.

During his time in Portland, Archbishop Levada was also involved in the case of another priest accused of molesting two men when they were students at Central Catholic High School in the 1970s.

That priest, the Rev. Joseph Baccellieri, was accused of molestation in a lawsuit filed in February by two anonymous plaintiffs.

Their attorney, David Slader, said Levada had sent Baccellieri to a treatment program for molesters in 1992 but allowed him to return to parish ministry in 1994.

Baccellieri served at several parishes before the current Portland archbishop, John Vlazny, removed him from ministry in July of 2002.

That was right after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Dallas and adopted a "zero tolerance" policy toward priests facing credible allegations of sexually abusing minors.

Bill Crane, the Oregon director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said he was shocked that Levada had allowed Baccellieri back into parish ministry in 1994.

"These child molesters should have been turned over to the police," Crane said.

Crane accused the current church leadership in Portland of using the bankruptcy courts to "sidestep justice."

"The hierarchy of the Catholic Church takes the path most advantageous to itself," he said.

While sexual molestation in the Catholic Church resurfaced as a national scandal in Boston in 2002, the bishops have been getting warnings for more than two decades.

In 1982, the bishops' national staff issued the first warnings about costly lawsuits. Three years later, the bishops were given a detailed, confidential report warning that sex abuse litigation could cost the church "many millions of dollars" and "devastating injury to its image."

Ten years later, the scandal continued. In June 1992, the entire U.S. bishops conference discussed clergy sexual misconduct in sessions closed to the press and public.

In 1993, they announced the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse, which issued a set of guidelines.

During the 1980s and 1990s, sex abuse scandals involving priests, children and teenagers erupted in dioceses across the United States and Canada -- including San Francisco, Santa Rosa and Stockton.

However, said Bud Bunce, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Portland, church law in 1994 did not require Levada to remove Baccellieri from ministry, and the age of the victims did not require the church to turn the priest over for criminal prosecution.

"Those allegations were about abuse back in the 1970s," Bunce said. "We've had no accusations of abuse (by any priest) occurring after 1984."

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an authority on the American Catholic hierarchy, also warned against judging Levada by rules that were adopted after he left Portland to become the archbishop of San Francisco.

"It makes a big difference when a bishop did something," said Reese, the editor of America magazine, a Jesuit-run weekly. "There was total ignorance until 1984 or 1985. But after 1993, bishops that made mistakes have more explaining to do."

In his April 7 deposition, Levada was briefly asked about Baccellieri -- the priest put back into parish ministry in 1994 -- and said, "I believe there was some allegation that occurred while I was there."

But attorneys for the San Francisco archbishop objected to that line of questioning, so Levada did not elaborate.

By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the archdiocese halts all legal action against it and allows the federal courts to preside over a financial plan to pay off creditors while the church continues to function.

In filing its bankruptcy Tuesday, the archdiocese said it faced more than $340 million in additional claims from 20 lawsuits.

Legal experts say the action raises new questions about how much control the state can assume over the operations of the Catholic Church and exactly what church property can be used to pay off creditors -- including abuse victims.  (CATHOLIC CHURCH / Levada's Oregon history surfaces.)

 

Levada certainly has some nerve, as when say in New York, to cite his own history of dealing with priest-abusers. He was one of the biggest protectors of such moral criminals in the conciliar hierarchy in the United States of America. Surely he jests.

Levada's boldness in making this assertion evokes those warm, fuzzy memories of Tarcisio "Cardinal" Bertone's insultingly dishonest defense of the conciliar hierarchy of the United States of America when he spoke in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 9, 2007:

 

Nashville, Tenn., Aug 9, 2007 / 11:21 am (CNA).-  A particularly candid Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone spoke yesterday afternoon about the situation surrounding the sex abuse scandal in the United States. The Church’s second in command praised the Church’s response and reserved some critical words for those who have seized on the scandal as an opportunity for profit.

“The Church in the US has suffered deeply, has responded with dignity, and invites everyone to truly commit to a reversal of this situation,” said Bertone.

“While I was still at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then as the Archbishop of Genoa, I accompanied the American Church through this trial, this period, and I repeat that they faced this trial with dignity and courage.”

However, the Cardinal was particularly upset with those who have turned the situation into a means of making a profit. “The business aspect, the financial aspect, has nothing to do with cleaning up the reality of the situation. It is an unbearable business that has been created here in the United States…it’s unbearable and also disgraceful.”

The Cardinal also seemed to speak with some indignation about the way that the Church has been singled out as a target. He said that, “the proportion of priests who are involved in this scandal is very small given that there are 44,000 priests in the United States.”

“I could only hope that the other social agencies would have the same courage to face this problem as the Roman Catholic Church did.”

The Secretary of State also showed that he was concerned that a comprehensive solution is provided to the sex abuse problem and continued to point out how the most analysis of the Church’s response is slanted.

“I ask if the other organizations have provided financial compensation for the victims…have they taken care of the victims and those who have been guilty?  We cannot abandon the victims or dismiss the guilty as lost.” (Ratzinger's right-hand man addresses sex abuse scandal in the US)

 

This despicable, reprehensible view of the crisis caused by the systematic recruitment, retention and promotion of sodomites into every nook and cranny of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is the view that prevails yet today in the conciliar Vatican. What I wrote nearly three years ago is relevant yet again:

These comments are beneath contempt, representing the height of arrogance and absolute, rank insensitivity for the harm that has been visited upon countless thousands upon thousands of souls by the corrupt and malicious behavior of the American "bishops" and their chancery factotums and their attorneys and the representatives of their insurance companies, each of whom lied to the victims of the sordid behavior of various "bishops" and priests and then sought to intimidate them into silence when these victims refused to accept these lies. The claim that the "Church in the US" has "responded with dignity" to the scandals that have exploded into full public view is a contemptible lie. There is no other word to describe such an outrageous distortion of the truth.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to Frank Bergen, a one-time male prostitute who was used by the corrupt former "bishop" of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, Daniel Leo Ryan, a product of the corrupt machine of perversity that emanated from the Archdiocese of Detroit and ran through his own home diocese, Joliet, Illinois, a bastion of feminism and heterodoxy and one liturgical outrage after another under the sordid "episcopal" reign of the now retired Joseph Imesch, a product of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Imesch was consecrated by the progenitor of the revolutionary "Call to Action" movement, John Cardinal Dearden, Archbishop of Detroit from 1958 to 1990, and co-consecrated by that notorious supporter of the Homosexual Collective, "Bishop" Thomas Gumbleton, Dearden's prized protege.

Ryan's corruption was brought to light by Mr. Stephen G. Brady, the courageous founder of Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., in early-1997 after private efforts to demand Ryan's resignation remained unanswered. Frank Bergen was one of Ryan's many victims, two of which included conciliar "priests," one of whom was taken to Rome in 1998 by the late Father John A. Hardon, S.J. and presented his case personally before Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then the Prefect of the Conciliar Congregation for the Clergy. No one in the conciliar hierarchy cared for Frank Bergen's immortal soul as he spent time in prison in Jacksonville, Illinois, where I interviewed him in early-1998.

Stephen Brady was stonewalled by the conciliar hierarchy in the United States, denounced in the most vicious terms by Ryan's paid flack, Mrs. Kathleen Sass, who has never once offered a public apology for her bitter denunciations of Mr. Brady's statement of the actual truth about her corrupt, perverted former employer, and he was stonewalled by officials in the conciliar Vatican, which did not take any action against Ryan for over two one-half years, doing so only after a lawsuit had been filed (which lawsuit would have required depositions to be taken under oath). And it took over three years after that for the Diocese of Springfield to actually admit what Stephen G. Brady had been documenting since his first communication with Daniel Ryan in November of 1996: that this unrepentant pervert, who has never once apologized for his wanton behavior, was indeed guilty as charged.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the the scores of people in the Archdiocese of Boston who were browbeaten as one perverted priest after another, some of whom had been ordained before 1968 and were thus true priests, was protected by Bernard Cardinal Law and Thomas Daily and William F. Murphy and Robert Banks and Richard Lennon and John McCormack, including Father Paul Shanley, a co-founder of an organization whose title is so repugnant that it will not be mentioned here.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the scores of people in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange who were stonewalled for years by Roger Mahony and Tod Brown, neither of whom are noted to be, shall we say, friends of the authentic Tradition of the Catholic Church.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the scores of people molested and then victimized by the legal teams of the Dioceses of Spokane and Tucson and San Diego and Davenport, each of which went into bankruptcy so as to avoid the deposition process.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the victims of Father Rudy Kos in the Diocese of Dallas.

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the way in which the late John Cardinal O'Connor and other conciliar "bishops" transferred perverted priests to the service of the Military Ordinariate in order to get them out of the way of legal jeopardy, playing the old "shell game" as they enabled men steeped unrepentantly in the ravages of one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance?

Responded with dignity? Go tell that to the way in which the conciliar Vatican, which has its own nest of perverts, to be sure, protected and promoted "bishops" who were themselves perverted and about whose perversion its officials had been informed most fully (Daniel Ryan, Thomas Dupre, Patrick Ziemann, Keith Symons, Andrew O'Connell, Rembert Weakland, Kendrick Williams, among others).

Those who have turned the situation into a means of making profit? Excuse me? What other recourse did victims have except to take the conciliar "bishops" to court after years of seeking redress through their corrupt chancery offices caused them to be victimized and humiliated yet again and again and again? A means of profit? What price can be put on the harm done to souls by "bishops" and "priests" who reject articles contained in the Deposit of Faith and who subject the children in the educational institutions under their control to the insidious harm of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and the Ninth Commandments?

Tarcisio Bertone's attempt to defend the actions of the reprobate conciliar "bishops" in the United States of America by claiming that other "institutions" have had similar problems is amazingly bold. We are not judged when we die on the basis of how good or bad we were in life in comparison to others. We are judged solely on the objective state of our souls at the moment of our deaths. The state of the souls of others is completely irrelevant to the responsibility we bear for our own sins, each of which must be confessed to and absolved by a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance so as to be the beneficiaries of the treasures of the infinite, inestimable riches of the Mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in this life and at the hour of our deaths, at which hour we pray that Our Lady, the Queen and the Mother of Mercy, will be interceding for us with our Divine Judge. We are responsible for our own sinful actions and can never seek to minimize their gravity by claiming others are just as--if not more--guilty than ourselves.

Moreover, Bertone's rhetorical question about whether other organizations "have provided financial compensation for the victims…have they taken care of the victims and those who have been guilty" represents the same sort of hubris as that contained in the apocryphal story of the man who killed his parents and then claimed for mercy from a judge because he was an orphan. With a very few exceptions, usually involving efforts to preempt lawsuits and the public disclosure of the next of perversity in the ranks of the conciliar structures, almost every instance of a Catholic diocese currently in conciliar captivity paying out any amount of money to any victim of its perverted "bishops" and "priests" has been the result of public pressure brought by news stories in the secular media and by threat, if not the actual filing, of lawsuits and the discovery process and the resultant disclosures therefrom. The Archdioceses of Boston and Los Angeles stonewalled victims and their families for years, trying every legal machination possible. Bertone's assertion in this regard is repulsive.

Remember, however, for all of your Motu Mass flag-wavers out there, Tarcisio Bertone has the full support of Joseph Ratzinger, who, it appears, will do nothing to remove Roger Mahony from his position of conciliar power in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, enabling him to continue his assault upon the worship of God and upon the perennial teaching He has entrusted to His Catholic Church. Like his predecessor, Karol Wojtyla, who promoted and protected the conciliar "bishops" caught up in their own perverse scandals and/or involved in the protection of priests tainted thereby despite evidence being presented to him personally over the years, Joseph Ratzinger will continue to enable those who pervert doctrine and worship. Men such as William Levada and George Niederauer have been promoted under his watch. Souls continue to be malformed in so-called "Catholic" schools. None of this matters to the conciliar revolutionaries, intent on protecting their institutional "integrity" in a manner reminiscent of the late Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev and his band of apparatchiks at the height of the Cold War.

Then again, why should the conciliar revolutionaries care about how souls have been abused, both physically and spiritually? They preside over the liturgical offense given to God Himself every day in the form of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. They preside over the abomination of inter-religious "prayer meetings" that are held in full violation of the precepts of the First Commandment. They have presided over the destruction of church sanctuaries and the removal of statues in order to conform Catholic church buildings to the new theology underlining the new order of "worship." They preside over the constant dissemination of lies concerning "religious liberty" and the "separation of Church and State" and the new ecclesiology. With very few exceptions, they are inert and passive when presented with evidence of "bishops" and "priests" and consecrated religious and lay teachers denying articles contained in the Deposit of Faith, transcending even the errors of conciliarism itself. The conciliar revolutionaries demonstrate themselves over and over again to the the enemies of souls universally. (Enemies of Souls Universally)

 

William Levada is thus far, far alone in the conciliar structures of seeking to turn what has been an unmitigated disaster for souls and for the Catholic Church, whom all but a very, very small handful of people in the world believe is headed by Benedict XVI and represented by the likes of William Levada and Tarcisio Bertone and Bernard Law and Roger Mahony and Tod Brown and Robert Brom and Patrick McGrath and Richard Lennon and Rembert Weakland and Francis George, et al., into an occasion of collective victimhood on the part of the conciliar officials. Talk about hubris! Who has protected these men who have shielded moral criminals? Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II  and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, that's who?

Moreover, despite Ratzinger/Benedict's recent injunction to the conciliar "bishops" of Ireland to report clerical abusers to the civil authorities, a "bishop" in India is refusing to turn over one of his own priests to the civil authorities in the State of Minnesota in the United States of America who want to try the man on charges of assaulting a fourteen year old-girl, coercing into an act of immorality by threatening to kill her family if she did not do so. The conciliar "bishop" of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota at the time the accusation surfaced in 206, the old-line conciliar revolutionary named Victor Balke, although he reported the matter to William Levada himself, told the Indian priest not to return to the diocese lest he be prosecuted for his crime (see Priest Accused of Abuse Still Working and Vatican Declined to Pursue Accused Priest. Ah, yes, just more "petty gossip." Who cares about the souls who have been devastated? Who cares that many souls have lost the Faith as a result of these scandals. Just petty gossip, huh?

Not to be outdone in this spectacle of revisionist history is Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M., Cap., the preacher to the "papal" household, who played the victimhood card three days ago in his annual Good Friday sermon in the Basilica of Saint Peter in the presence of the false "pontiff" himself. Father Cantalamessa, who said in his Good Friday sermon on Friday, March 29, 2002, that Protestant sects exist because God has positively willed them into being, going on to say that it is not important to know the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in order to be saved:

"It is more important that men and women become holy,” Cantalamessa said, standing in the center of a magnificent basilica erected to celebrate the earthly might of Catholicism and the papacy, “than that they know the name of the one Savior.” (National Catholic Reporter)

 

Cantalamessa, seeking to jump on the "let's defend Benedict" bandwagon, compared the criticism of the conciliar church's handling of the clerical abuse cases in general and of Ratzinger/Benedict's handling of them in particular to the exercise of anti-Semitism, something has adherents of the Talmud howling with loud cries of indignation and protest and forcing "papal" spokesflack Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., to distance the "pontiff" for Cantalamessa's thoroughly absurd remarks, which prompted the chief rabbi of Rome, Ricardo di Segni, to respond as follow:

Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who hosted Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.” (At Vatican Service, Persecution of Jews Is Invoked.)

 

The ancient enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Talmudic Judaism are given every opportunity to mock and revile what they think is the Catholic Church as one of their own best friends, Father Raniero Cantalamessa (who said in 2005 that although his false church is not opposed to the conversion of individual Jews, the "church" has "lost the right to do so because of how it was done in the past" (Appropriate Attitude Toward the Jewish People), invokes anti-Semitism, which even the conciliarists consider to be worse than the Deicide that our sins imposed on the God-Man three days ago, Good Friday, to compare the suffering of the conciliar church and of Ratzinger/Benedict as a result of the news stories over the behavior perverted clergymen in the conciliar structures.

Cantalamessa's reference to "anti-Semitism," which is the subject of Conciliar Confusion, Catholic Zeal For Souls, which was also published today, has caused him to backtrack considerably as the last thing in the world that a conciliarist ever wants to do is to publicly offend the "senior partner" in "ecumenical relations" with non-Christians:

“If, against every intention, I hurt the feelings of Jews and victims of pedophilia, I am truly sorry and apologize, reaffirming my solidarity with both,” he said. Rather than showing hostility toward the Jews, he said his intention was to make a friendly gesture. Father Cantalamessa went on to say that the pope had nothing to do with the speech, but pointed out that someone in the Vatican had asked to see the text beforehand. (Catholic Hierarchy Rallies Around Pope on Easter)

 

No writer for the late Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops motion pictures could have conjured up such a comedy of errors as the conciliarists trip all over themselves to please the Jews only to find themselves insulting them time and time and again, this time doing so in order to indemnify themselves from justified criticism over their repeated protection of sodomites who have abused bodies and souls. Raniero Cantalamessa has undone in just one "homily" what Ratzinger/Benedict tried to do when he violated the Canon Law of the Catholic Church by entering into the Talmudic synagogue in Rome, Italy, on Sunday, January 17, 2010 (see Saint Peter and Anti-Peter). You can't make this stuff up. It's incredible. And such is the incredible price of apostasy, betrayal, sacrilege and appeasement of the enemies of Christ the King, men who will never be satisfied until His Sacred Divinity is denied outright from pulpit of the Basilica of Saint Peter.

Although we are now in the Easter season of rejoicing, it is always appropriate to reflect on the sufferings that our sins imposed upon Our Lord in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death that has made this very season possible. The following passages from the Venerable Mary of Agreda's The Mystical City of God have particular relevance to the betrayals shown Our Crucified and Risen King by the conciliarists themselves:

 

614. Procula was filled with great fear and terror at these visions, and as soon as she heard what was passing between the Jews and her husband, she sent him the message mentioned by saint Matthew, not to meddle with this Man nor condemn One to death, whom she held to be just. The demon also injected similar misgivings into the mind of Pilate and these warnings of his wife only increased them. Yet, as all his considerations rested upon worldly policy, and as he had not co-operated with the true helps given him by the Savior, all these fears retarded his unjust proceedings only so long as no other more powerful consideration arose, as will be seen in effect. But just now he began for the third time to argue (as saint Luke tells us), insisting upon the innocence of Christ our Lord and that he found no crime in Him nor any guilt worthy of death, and therefore he would punish and then dismiss Him (Luke 23, 22). As we shall see in the next chapter, he did really punish Christ in order to see whether the Jews would be satisfied. But the Jews, on the contrary, demanded that Christ be crucified. Thereupon Pilate asked for water and released Barabbas. Then he washed his hands in the presence of all the people, saying: "I have no share in the death of this just Man, whom you condemn. Look to yourselves in what you are doing, for I wash my hands in order that you may understand they are not sullied in the blood of the Innocent"; Pilate thought that by this ceremony he could excuse himself entirely and that he thereby could put its blame upon the princes of the Jews and upon the people who demanded it. The wrath of the Jews was so blind and foolish that for the satisfaction of seeing Jesus crucified, they entered upon this agreement with Pilate and took upon themselves and upon their children the responsibility for this crime. Loudly proclaiming this terrible sentence and curse, they exclaimed : "His blood come upon us and upon our children"; (Matth. 27, 25).

615. O most foolish and cruel blindness! O inconceivable rashness! The unjust condemnation of the Just and the blood of the Innocent, whom the judge himself is forced to proclaim guiltless, you wish to take upon yourselves and upon your children, in order that his blood may call out against you to the end of the world! O perfidious and sacrilegious Jews ! So lightly then weighs the blood of the Lamb, who bears the sins of the world, and the life of a Man, who is at the same time God! How is it possible you wish to load with it yourselves and your children? If He had been only your brother, your benefactor and master, your audacity would have been tremendous and your malice execrable. Justly in deed do you merit the punishment which you meet; and that the burden, which you have put upon yourselves and your children, allows you no rest or relief in all the world: it is just that this burden should rest upon you heavier than heaven and earth. But, alas ! Though this divine Blood was intended to wash and cleanse all the children of Adam, and though it was in effect poured out upon all the children of the holy Church, yet there are many belonging to it who make themselves guilty of this blood by their works in the same manner as the Jews charged themselves with it, both by word and deed. They did not know or believe that it was the blood of the Savior, while Catholics both know and confess that it is their Redeemer's.

616. The sins and depraved lives of the Christians proclaim louder than tongues their abuse of the blood of Christ and their consent to the guilt in his death which they load upon themselves. Let Christ be affronted, spit upon, buffeted, stretched upon a cross, despised, let Him yield to Barabbas and die; let Him be tormented, scourged and crowned with thorns for our sins: let his blood interest us no more than that it flow copiously and be imputed to us for all eternity: let the incarnate God suffer and die; if only we are left free to enjoy the apparent goods of this world, to seize the pleasing hour, to use creatures for our comfort, to be crowned with roses, live in joy; let our power be unrefrained, let no one seek preference before us; be we permitted to despise humility, abhor poverty, hoard up riches, engage in all deceits, forgive no injuries, entertain the delights of carnal pleasures, let our eyes see nothing that they shall not covet. Such be our rule in life without regard for aught else. And if by all this we crucify Christ, let his blood come upon us and upon our children.

617. Ask the damned in hell, whether these were not the sentiments expressed in their works as described by Solomon, and whether it was not because they spoke thus foolishly in their hearts, that they were called impious, and were so in reality. What else except damnation can they expect, who abuse the blood of Christ and waste it upon themselves, not as such who are seeking a remedy? Where do we find, among the children of the Church, any one that would willingly permit a thief and malefactor to be preferred to him? So little is this doctrine of humility practiced, that one excites surprise if he allows another just as good and honorable as himself, or even more honorable, to take precedence. Though it is certain that no one can be found as good as Christ or as bad as Barabbas, yet there are innumerable men who, in spite of this example, are offended and judge them selves disgraced, if they are not preferred and exalted by honors, riches and dignities, and in whatever pertains to the ostentation and applause of the world. These are sought after, contended for and solicited ; in such things are consumed the thoughts and all the exertions and powers of men, almost from the time in which they can use their faculties until they lose them. The most lamentable misfortune is, that even those who, by their profession and their state, have renounced and turned their backs upon such things, do not free themselves. While the Savior has commanded them to forget their people and the house of their parents (Ps. 44, 11), they devote to them the best part of their human existence, by giving them their attention and solicitude in the direction of their affairs, their best wishes and care in the augmentation of their worldly goods. It seems but a small matter to them to engage themselves in these vanities. Instead of forgetting the house of their father they forget the house of their God in which they live, and where they are divinely assisted to gain a salvation, an honor and esteem never possible in the world, and where they receive their sustenance without any anxiety or worry. They show themselves ungrateful for all these benefits by drifting away from the humility due to their state. Thus the humility of Christ our Savior, his patience, his injuries, the dishonor of the cross, the imitation of Christ's works, the following of his doctrines ; all is left to the poor, to the lonely ones, to the weak and humble of this world; while the ways of Sion are deserted and full of wailing, because there are so few who will come to the solemn feast of the imitation of Christ our Lord (Thren. 1, 4). (The Venerable Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, Volume III: The Transfixion, pp. 592-596.)

 

There are malefactors and thieves aplenty in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, men who steal the name Catholic to apply it to their false church as their hide the reprehensible moral conduct of their confreres until souls are scandalized and possibly even lost to the Faith for the rest of their lives. The conciliarists have only themselves to blame for the worldly opprobrium that is coming down on their heads at this time. That worldly opprobrium, however, is nothing in comparison to the wrath of God for the many ways His Holy Truths and the true Worship that is His due have been perverted and distorted by the men who claim to represent him as the officials of the Catholic Church but who are in fact apostates who are more concerned about offending men than they are about offending Him.

We must remember that this time of Easter rejoicing over Christ the King's victory over the power of sin and eternal death on the wood of the Holy Cross will be reflected one day in the very life of the Church Militant on earth as she is resurrected from her current state of burial, which, according to the late Father Vincent Bowes, O.C.D., occurred after then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger said that Jews did not after to convert to the true Faith following the controversy surrounding the issuance of Dominus Iesus on August 6, 2000 (see Bookended From Birth to Birth). The seeds we continue to plant for that Resurrection of the Church Militant on earth, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, will bear fruit in God's Holy Providence if we plant them with sincere and contrite hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We are on the cusp of Easter joy. May we never forget the the road on which we must walk to Easter joy is the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross, on which trod Our Divine Redeemer once in time and on which each of us must persevere until the very end of our lives in this passing, mortal vale of tears in order to know an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Pieta, 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.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

 

Appendix A:

From The San Francisco Weekly: "See No Evil"

At a momentous gathering of U.S. Catholic bishops last June -- the first such conclave after the clergy sex-abuse scandal erupted in Boston and spread across the nation -- San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada advanced an idea that set him apart from many of his cassocked brethren. Amid multiple proposals to crack down on pedophile priests, Levada challenged the bishops assembled in Dallas to examine their own conduct in handling sex-abuse cases involving the clergy.

He called on fellow hierarchs to do everything they could to root out offending priests and to vigorously monitor their own progress in order to restore the badly shaken confidence of rank-and-file Catholics. Levada had hit on the same theme earlier in San Francisco in unusually blunt remarks during a special Mass. "We are suffering for the mistakes of bishops and administrators who did not place the future protection of children above their desire to protect the reputation and service of priests who had proven themselves unfaithful to their duties," the archbishop told an audience of some 400 priests and 2,000 parishioners. His Dallas proposal -- offered at a time when media attention to clergy sex abuse was at its zenith -- helped catapult him to the front ranks of the American hierarchy on the issue. Pope John Paul II later chose Levada as one of four U.S. church leaders to work with the Vatican in crafting a compromise sex-abuse plan that His Holiness could accept. The pope signed off on the watered-down "zero tolerance" policy in December.

But if he has distinguished himself by demanding that church leaders be open in dealing with the worst crisis to afflict the church in more than a century, Levada has a record as leader of 425,000 Roman Catholics in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties that suggests he has not practiced what he preaches. Advocates for abuse victims express frustration that more than a year after the clergy sex-abuse scandal burst into the headlines, Levada's archdiocese has dragged its feet in response to victims' pleas for help. And while Levada has drawn praise for his accommodating public statements on the issue, critics say he and his top aides have worked to keep complaints about accused priestly abusers shrouded in secrecy. (Levada declined to be interviewed for this article.)

"[Levada's] method is to string you along in hopes that you will eventually tire out and go away," says Terrie Light, the Northern California coordinator for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, which has members nationwide.

In March, the frustrated Light called for abuse victims to boycott meetings with archdiocese officials that were instituted last May, saying the monthly gatherings were fruitless "and nothing more than an attempt by the archbishop to co-opt the survivor community for his own purposes." Only a few victims were attending the meetings, held in a third-floor conference room at archdiocese headquarters adorned by a bigger-than-life portrait of the archbishop. Levada rarely attended. Other than helping to plan a June 14 "ceremony of apology" for victims -- an event over which Levada is to preside -- participants in the talks have accomplished little, critics say.

"They're throwing us crumbs," says Patrick Wilkes, who belongs to a loose-knit group of abuse survivors known as No More Secrets, whose members have kept up the dialogue with local church officials. "The archdiocese is doing nothing of substance to respond to abuse victims."

Victim advocates say the lack of candor on the part of Levada and his subordinates has discouraged victims from coming forward. Take whistle-blower priest Father John Conley, for example. In 1997, Conley unexpectedly walked in on a fellow priest, Father James Aylward, engaging in what he suspected was inappropriate contact with an altar boy in a darkened Burlingame church. Conley subsequently reported what he had observed to his superiors, including Levada. But it was Conley who was soon forced out of active ministry -- for reasons archdiocese officials insist were unrelated to his whistle-blowing.

After Aylward later admitted touching boys for sexual gratification, the archdiocese shelled out $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the altar boy's parents, while requiring that details of the settlement be kept secret. Conley then sued the archdiocese, contending that his priestly career had been unfairly cut short because of his whistle-blowing. In November, Levada authorized an extraordinary secret settlement with Conley just before the suit was to go to trial.

In another case, San Francisco preschool teacher Sylvia Chavez contends that local church officials stonewalled her after she sought their help in tracking down a priest in Mexico who she says molested her as a child while he served in the San Francisco parish where she grew up. Chavez spent much time last year communicating her concerns to Auxiliary Bishop John Wester, Levada's point man on sex-abuse issues. Wester insists he personally informed the accused priest's supervising archbishop in Mexico about her allegations in December. But the Mexican prelate says he was unaware of her charges until informed of them later by an attorney Chavez turned to for help.

Few cases have rankled Levada's critics more than that of Father Daniel Carter, whom Levada yanked as pastor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Belmont in August and recently reinstated despite a pending lawsuit by a woman who contends that Carter sexually fondled her as a child. Carter has loudly proclaimed his innocence. But his restoration to the pulpit upset victim advocates who question the thoroughness and objectivity of an investigation conducted by a secretive panel Levada created in 2001 to look into abuse complaints.

Local church officials heralded the Archdiocesan Independent Review Board as evidence of Levada's determination to get to the bottom of the clerical abuse problem. Critics, however, say the archbishop's handling of the Carter case was deceptive at best. Although the review panel found the allegations by San Francisco social worker Danielle Lacampagne to be "inconclusive," that is not what the archbishop told his priest. In a March letter to Carter announcing the decision to reinstate him, a copy of which was obtained by SF Weekly, Levada asserts instead that the review panel declared the charges "unfounded." Besides prompting criticism that the archbishop is trying to have it both ways in dealing with Carter, the case raises questions about the role of the review panel, whose members operate in anonymity and about which the archdiocese has chosen to reveal practically nothing.

"The whole idea of a review panel should be to instill credibility that you're actually doing something," says victim advocate Paul Hessinger, who is among those who've pressed the archdiocese for information to no avail. "The secrecy around the review board just reinforces the perception that it's a rubber stamp for the archbishop.

As SF Weekly reported in March ("Bishop Bad Boy," March 19), a similar pattern of secrecy marks Levada's overseeing the cleanup of twin sex and financial scandals he inherited in the Santa Rosa Diocese in 1999. The archbishop's longtime friend, Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann, had been forced to surrender his post after being caught shaking down a subordinate priest for sex. Following Ziemann's departure -- he now lives in church exile at an Arizona monastery -- it was revealed that the diocese was more than $16 million in debt. Levada authorized a secret $532,000 settlement to Ziemann's accuser, Father Jorge Hume Salas.

Church officials sought to vilify Hume, who nonetheless managed to retain his priestly faculties as part of the settlement. After Levada stepped in to govern the diocese, a criminal investigation into alleged financial irregularities hit a roadblock when diocesan officials refused to fully cooperate. Yet through it all, including his most recent actions related to the Carter matter, Levada has managed to avoid the kind of media scrutiny that has dogged other Catholic hierarchs, including his close friend, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.

Besides Carter, Levada has taken action against at least six other priests, including some prominent ones, since the clergy abuse mess erupted on a national scale. They include Monsignor John O'Connor, who oversaw the landmark St. Mary's Cathedral on the edge of Chinatown, and who took a leave of absence in August after being accused of having improperly touched a boy more than 30 years ago. Monsignor John Heaney, the longtime former chaplain of the San Francisco Police Department, has been accused by two brothers of molesting them more than 40 years ago. Father Miles O'Brien Riley, an author, actor, and former spokesman for the church who was well-known for his radio ministry and as a fixture on the old God Squad TV show, was the target of a complaint by a female parishioner who accused him of having consensual contact short of intercourse with her in the early 1970s. And a teenage Marin County boy accused Monsignor Peter Armstrong, former chaplain of the San Francisco 49ers, of having improper contact with him.

Each of the clerics has proclaimed his innocence. Except for Armstrong, who had already retired, each was allowed to go quietly, with Levada either suspending them with pay, placing them on personal leave, or allowing them to retire.

Citing Levada's vigilance, church officials have declared the archdiocese free of child-molesting clerics. But Levada's purges may have been triggered in part by a demand by San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan. In April 2002, Hallinan ordered the archdiocese to surrender records pertaining to potential cases of priestly child abuse that occurred as long as 75 years ago. The unprecedented -- some called it nutty -- request elicited grumbles from various quarters, including the Chronicle, which took Hallinan to task in an editorial for engaging in a fishing expedition. The archdiocese since has turned over many, although not all, of the records the DA wants, says Elliot Beckelman, the assistant district attorney charged with investigating clerical crimes.

Levada jettisoned a few of his problem priests within a couple of months of the DA's edict. To victim advocate Hessinger, who has agitated for more openness from the archdiocese for years, the timing of the exodus was revealing.

"Despite all the talk about how concerned [Levada] is that everyone is above reproach," Hessinger says, "it just told me that he doesn't do anything until he has to."

In settling the Conley case out of court, Levada managed to avoid a public airing of an episode that could have been deeply embarrassing to the archbishop and some of his top lieutenants. A jury was set to hear the priest's suit at an especially delicate time, just as Levada and the other papal appointees had finished work on the blueprint for the American church's new Vatican-approved sexual-abuse policy.

Conley had sued after informing Levada and top archdiocese officials about something he had seen inside St. Catherine Church in Burlingame on a night when he had returned earlier than expected after teaching a class.

Although he was an associate priest answerable to Father Aylward as his pastor, Conley was no shrinking violet. A former federal prosecutor, the Detroit native had come to the priesthood after a stint as chief of the criminal division for the eastern district of Michigan. He had also served as a top legal adviser for the Michigan Racing Commission, which regulates thoroughbred racing.

After moving to the Bay Area in the early 1980s, he worked in federal bankruptcy courts for several years before realizing his lifelong dream of entering the priesthood. Conley graduated from St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park in 1993 and began the first of a string of parish assignments that resulted in his ultimately landing at St. Catherine in the summer of 1997.

His life -- as well as Aylward's -- changed dramatically as a result of the encounter in the church on the evening of Nov. 6, 1997. Neither Conley nor anyone else associated with the case would discuss it, citing confidentiality constraints. But Conley's detailed recollection of the incident and its aftermath, contained in court documents, provides a glimpse of the inner workings of the San Francisco Archdiocese that is less than flattering to Levada and some of his subordinates, including one -- Patrick J. McGrath -- who has since gone on to be San Jose's bishop.

According to his sworn testimony in a deposition, Conley arrived back at the church at about 8 p.m. He unlocked the door and went inside, hearing a noise in a nearby hallway. He pushed open a door and, he says, spotted a 15-year-old boy, one of several youths Aylward had recruited as volunteers to answer phones and greet people entering the church. In his deposition, Conley says the boy, kneeling in the dark and facing away from him, was "panting" and out of breath.

"I said, 'Hey, what's going on? What's happening? Are you wrestling?'" Conley testified.

"Yeah, yeah, wrestling," the boy replied, according to Conley.

"I said, 'Who is that in there with you?'"

The boy said nothing. Conley says he repeated the question and the boy responded, "Father Aylward."

Even before hearing the answer, Conley says he saw a hand reach up from the floor and turn a doorknob on the other side of the hall. Aylward, he says, crawled away.

Conley later placed two significant phone calls: one to the San Francisco chancery office to request a meeting with Levada (Conley didn't state his purpose) and the other to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office. Levada was out of town the day of the appointment, and Conley was directed to McGrath, then an auxiliary bishop to Levada.

Conley says the first words McGrath uttered after inviting him into his office were, "John, these goddamn guys can't keep it in their pants." Conley says the bishop handed him a copy of a state law requiring priests and other religious workers to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement authorities. (The measure, which took effect on Jan. 1, 1997, had been strongly opposed by the state's Roman Catholic bishops.) After reading it, Conley says he replied: "My God. This law went into effect 11 months ago. How come we haven't heard about this? Why haven't the parishes been briefed?"

McGrath, he says, responded: "We are still studying it."

McGrath then said, "We better get the lawyers up here," according to Conley. The priest says McGrath expressed reservations about getting involved in the Aylward matter, suggesting that John Wester, then the archdiocese's vicar for clergy, handle it. (Wester was elevated to the additional role of auxiliary bishop in 1998.) Conley says McGrath also wanted to call Aylward to inform him that he was being discussed. Conley says he told McGrath, "Bishop, I had a background as a prosecutor. I can't give you advice, but ... I would strongly recommend against that."

As they waited for an archdiocesan lawyer to arrive, Conley says McGrath turned to him and said, "Now, are you sure you want to do this?"

"I said, 'Do what?'"

"He said, 'Report this.'"

"And I said, 'Well, I already have an appointment with the district attorney.' And I said, "From what you just read to me, it's a requirement of law.'" Conley says McGrath responded, "Well, I suppose so but you know, prior to this we've always handled these things in-house."

Conley says he then stepped across the hall to call the assistant district attorney with whom he had arranged to meet the next day for the purpose of asking how he should proceed. He says the prosecutor told him to go back to McGrath and "tell the bishop that if he does contact Father Aylward that could be interpreted as an obstruction of justice." Conley says he conveyed the message to McGrath, who agreed not to notify Aylward. (Through a spokeswoman, McGrath declined to be interviewed for this article. "He doesn't want to discuss Father Conley," said Roberta Ward. "He's here [in San Jose] now. That was another time. He just doesn't want to go there.")

Not long after Conley's Nov. 17, 1997, meeting with McGrath, he says, he received a call from Wester, the vicar for clergy, advising him to "keep quiet" about Aylward and not damage the priest's "good name and reputation." Conley says Wester said he had spoken with Levada and that "the archbishop forbids you to use the word pedophile" in relation to Aylward. (See No Evil - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly)

 

Appendix B

From The San Francisco Weekly: "Zipped Up"

Seated in a Marin County courtroom, Father Gregory Ingels fidgeted nervously as he waited for his name to be called. Tall and distinguished-looking in his clerical garb, the prominent canon lawyer and former vicar for clergy in the Roman Catholic Church did not project the image of someone who'd been accused of sodomizing a teenage boy three decades before. Rather, he looked every bit the professorial figure who had served on the adjunct faculty at St. Patrick's Seminary and lectured widely before canonical bodies.

Long a favorite of San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada, Ingels had helped devise the American church's "zero tolerance" policy regarding priestly sex abuse that the pope signed off on in 2002. He had often been the church's legal point man in sex abuse cases, flitting around the country as an expert witness and going abroad on behalf of the Canon Law Society, the professional group devoted to the study of church law, to speak on the implications of the abuse scandal. In 2001, Levada tapped him to help set up the San Francisco Archdiocese's Independent Review Board, the panel entrusted with investigating clerics against whom complaints are lodged.

But in May 2003, Ingels was in a prosecutor's cross hairs.

His alleged victim, a male student at Marin Catholic High School where Ingels taught in the early 1970s, had cooperated with police in recording some recent phone conversations. In them, prosecutors said, Ingels had made incriminating statements corroborating the former student's account of being abused at age 15 during a family outing at Muir Beach in 1972. Even as Marin County District Attorney Paula Kamena pressed criminal charges, she was gathering information from another of Ingels' alleged victims, a woman who said the priest had also molested her repeatedly while she was a student at the school. (See sidebar, "Fast Times at Marin Catholic High.")

But Ingels was lucky. At his arraignment, his lawyers announced that he would postpone entering a plea. A month later, the U.S. Supreme Court -- by a 5-to-4 vote -- struck down as unconstitutional a California law that had extended the statute of limitations for prosecuting suspected sex abusers. The law -- enacted during a national furor over sex abuse in the church -- had allowed prosecutors to bring abuse cases against many clerics years after the alleged crimes had occurred. The Supreme Court decision -- Stogner vs. California -- said the retroactive lengthening of statutes of limitation from a few years to, in some cases, decades violated the Constitution's ex post facto clause, which prohibits the enactment of laws that criminalize behavior after the fact.

Along with many others, Ingels walked.

The Stogner decision stopped criminal investigations across California in their tracks. By ending any possibility of public trials in those cases, it also kept information on decades of alleged misconduct by Roman Catholic clerics from entering the public realm. Consequently, the decision kept secret the record of the church hierarchy's response -- or lack of response -- to reports of priestly misconduct.

In the eyes of victims' advocates and other critics, Archbishop Levada's handling of such cases has been notable for its lack of openness. Even after the Stognerdecision ended the prosecution of Ingels, the archbishop continued to push for secrecy in sex abuse matters. And district attorneys of the three counties within the archdiocese's territory -- San Francisco's Kamala Harris, San Mateo's James Fox, and Marin's newly appointed Ed Berberian -- have taken what some other prosecutors view as extraordinarily questionable steps to help Levada keep records of clerical wrongdoing in Northern California from public eyes.

In recent months, lawyers for the San Francisco Archdiocese have taken the unusual step of going to court in Marin County, seeking to block the District Attorney's Office there from turning over to SF Weekly documents related to Ingels and other accused priestly sex abusers. The Weekly sought the documents in August under the state's public records law, and Kamena, who has since resigned as DA, agreed in writing to provide some of them. But the Marin District Attorney's Office also felt compelled to inform the archbishop about the impending release, and church lawyers entered the fray, filing a writ of mandate in an attempt to prevent the material from becoming public. The archbishop's petition -- a quarter-inch-thick legal filing -- offers many arguments for keeping the records secret.

Those arguments are based in a remarkable reality: The Marin County District Attorney's Office did not seek a grand jury subpoena that would have compelled the church to give prosecutors the documents. Instead, the Marin DA signed a legal agreement, or protocol, that, the church contends, requires the documents to remain secret unless a criminal prosecution is instituted.

Some veteran prosecutors consider the protocol -- a version of which the San Mateo County DA also signed -- extraordinary and unwarranted. "As far as we were concerned, that was like making a deal with the devil," says Los Angeles Assistant DA Bill Hodgman, whose boss, District Attorney Steve Cooly, rejected a similar agreement pushed by church lawyers.

Marin County Superior Court Judge Vernon F. Smith -- the third judge to whom the case has been assigned -- is to hear arguments on the church's petition Jan. 26.

At issue in the case is a trove of material that the church surrendered in 2002 after former San Francisco DA Terence Hallinan demanded that Levada turn over records pertaining to priestly sex abuse occurring as far back as 75 years ago. Such records could show, among other things, when Levada and other church officials became aware of specific accusations against individual priests and what was done about the accusations and the priests.

At the time, Hallinan's move elicited grumbling from various quarters, including the San Francisco Chronicle, which accused him in an editorial of engaging in a fishing expedition. But shortly after Hallinan's demand, Levada quietly began to jettison some of his accused priests, bumping a few into retirement and placing others on leaves of absence. Not wanting to be left behind, the district attorneys of San Mateo and Marin counties fell in step with San Francisco, pursuing church documents related to clerics in their jurisdictions. ( Zipped Up - - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly

Appendix C

John Vennari's Invincible or Inculpable?

Pope Benedict XVI appointed San Francisco’s Archbishop William Levada as Prefect of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The announcement came on May 13, the same day Pope Benedict announced he had placed Pope John Paul II on the fast track to beatification, bypassing the prudent five-year waiting period.

By appointing Levada, Benedict XVI has indeed made good his promise to continue the post-Conciliar policies of Pope John Paul II. A “middle-of-the-road” American ecumenist with a proven reputation for compromise now fills the vacancy left by Cardinal Ratzinger. The spirit of Vatican II blazes forward under the new Pontificate.

The secular press repeatedly calls Archbishop Levada a doctrinal conservative, but this is not true. Levada is a man of Vatican II, an enthusiast for ecumenism and interreligious practice. He would have been condemned for his words and actions had he said and done them under Cardinal Ottaviani, his predecessor of the Holy Office.

The Politics of Compromise

One of the ways in which Archbishop Levada showed himself “middle of the road”, was his gingerly treatment of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. A handful of American bishops last year announced they would refuse Communion to such politicians, but Levada “took a more conciliatory approach to the controversy.” He said he would not refuse Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians until he could “listen to their concerns and offer them the opportunity for a truly fruitful examination of Catholic teaching.”[2]

One wonders how much examination on the part of the politician is required if the prelate simply stated the truth in public: abortion is murder of innocent babies, a crime that cries to Heaven for vengeance, and Catholic politicians who support this carnage are in objective mortal sin and must be denied the sacraments. Levada’s position seems more in line with that of Cardinal Mahony from Los Angeles, who “favors educating Catholic politicians on the immorality of abortion, rather than imposing any religious sanctions.”[3] It is the insipid Vatican II solution: endless dialogue that goes nowhere while babies are butchered daily — and by the thousands.

San Francisco’s Archbishop Levada, ever faithful to the middle-of-the-road, “took a neutral position on a second gay-rights initiative, saying he wanted to focus on defeating legalizing of doctor-assisted suicide.” Catholic writer Christopher Ferrara asks, “What does one thing have to do with another? Archbishop Levada simply sold out on the issue.”[4]

Then there is the case of Father Carl Schipper, Academic Dean at Saint Patrick Seminary. According to Michael Rose’s Goodbye! Good Men!, Schipper was arrested following a six month investigation for soliciting sex with minors over the Internet and distributing pornographic material on line. The San Jose police, posing as 13 year old boys on the Internet, caught Father Schipper in the act of soliciting. Schipper pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months in jail.

This left a vacancy in the San Francisco seminary. Archbishop Levada then called back to the seminary staff Father Gerald Cole-man, S.S., from his sabbatical leave. Father Coleman is well-known for advancing the homosexual agenda. For example, Father Coleman, spoke of “the importance” of seminaries recognizing and accepting their sexual orientation, heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. Father Coleman also had publicly called for civil law to “in some fashion recognize these faithful and loving (homosexual) unions by ac-cording them certain rights and obligations, thus assisting (homosexual) persons in unions with clear and specified benefits.”[5]

Perhaps Levada acquired a reputation as a conservative because of his opposition to other areas of the homosexual agenda. In early summer of 2000, when a Gay Pride Festival was scheduled in Rome, Levada traveled to the Holy City. He organized a viewing at the Vatican of a video from San Francisco’s vile Gay Pride parade, to warn Rome what it was in for. The video was then shown to Italian politicians, as the Vatican mobilized to prevent the Festival’s occurrence.[6] The nine-day event took place nonetheless.

On April 3, 2004, Archbishop Levada and another bishop, along with 1,000 Catholics, conducted a five-block march to protest same-sex marriages in San Francisco.

Nice show, but the Catholic Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, who issued marriage licenses to homosexual couples, was not disciplined by Archbishop Levada for doing so. The Archbishop hinted that if the offense continued, the Mayor might be refused Holy Communion.[7] Shortly after, however, when The San Francisco Chronicle asked the archdiocese whether Catholic politicians who support abortion and same-sex marriage would be denied Communion, the Archbishop declined comment. An archdiocesan spokesman said, “Archbishop Levada serves on the U.S. Catholic bishops ad hoc committee reviewing this issue and he wants to focus on discussions within the Church rather than making a public comment at this time.” Once again, Levada sidestepped the issue.

At the same time, Catholic Mayor Newsom boasted that he receives Communion on those Sundays he decides to go to Mass, and that “his conscience is clear”. Mayor Newsom also said at a press conference that he disagreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching on stem cell research, abortion, same-sex marriage and birth-control. Levada did nothing against the Mayor’s public scoff of the Catholic religion.[8] Under Levada’s watch, Catholic politicians (including pro-abortion Rep. Nancy Pelosi) could wipe their boots on Catholic truth with impunity.

Clerical Abuse Cover-up

No one would call Catholic World News a traditionalist publication. But Philip Lawler, the journal’s editor, is clearly shaken by Levada’s rise to prominence. Calling the appointment “shocking”, he explains that the Prefect of the CDF is the second-most influential leader in the universal Church. He also laments that Levada’s style of compromise on major issues such as same-sex benefits and pro-abortion Catholic politicians, “undermined positions taken by other American prelates who had chosen to take a clear stand and risk a direct clash with the popular culture.”

Levada’s track record in the clerical sex-abuse is abysmal. The Portland diocese which he led from 1986 to 1996 is now bankrupt because of payments won in court by abuse victims. “Several of the devastating lawsuits” says Lawler, “involved priests who were restored to parish work by Archbishop Levada after having been accused of molesting children.” Levada also protected these priests from criminal prosecution after the Archbishop learned of their crimes.

Of Levada’s activities in San Francisco, Lawler writes, “In San Francisco, the archbishop has been roundly denounced by sex-abuse victims for what they see as his uncooperative attitude in efforts to identify and punish clerical abuse.” Lawler explains that these denunciations came not only from the abuse victims, but from one of Levada’s own men. Lawler writes, “James Jenkins, a layman chosen by the archbishop to chair an independent review board examining child-abuse allegations, eventually resigned in protest, charging that Levada had stymied the work of the board through ‘deception, manipulation and control’.”

Then in 1999, Bishop Patrick Ziemann of the neighboring diocese of Santa Rosa was forced to resign after news surfaced that he had blackmailed a priest to serve as his on-call homosexual partner. Bishop Ziemann, due to extravagant spending, left the diocese with a colossal $30 million debt. Archbishop Levada, who was made the temporary apostolic administrator in the vacancy, not only refrained from condemning Ziemann’s actions, but asked the faithful to join him “in thanking [Ziemann] for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide.” Levada also covered up Ziemann’s financial misdeeds calling them merely “poor investment decisions,” and said at a February 2000 press conference that it is inappropriate for a layman to call for criminal prosecution of Bishop Ziemann.[9]

What renders all of this even more disturbing is that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, since 2002, is now commissioned with investigating charges of clerical abuse. Benedict XVI has chosen a man with a history of compromise and cover-up to head this central dicastery.

Of Miters and Yarmulkes

Archbishop Levada is no stranger to the Vatican. From 1976 to 1982, he worked at the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He and Cardinal Ratzinger were reported to be friends. Levada was the only American on the seven-bishop editorial committee that produced the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Of the New Catechism, Levada said it “was not meant to ignore or reverse the work of the Second Vatican Council”.[10] He praised Vatican II’s ambiguous Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy as containing “wonderful teaching”.[11] And throughout his career, Vatican II’s new interreligious orientation was the wind in his sails.

In September 1988, while he was Archbishop of Portland, Oregon, Levada and a Lutheran bishop led a joint worship service for a combined congregation of Lutherans and Catholics. He was also the first American bishop to visit a synagogue, and continued to visit synagogues while Archbishop of San Francisco.

March 5, 1996 saw Archbishop Levada take part in an interfaith prayer service at a San Francisco synagogue to remember the victims of a wave of bombing attacks against Israelis. “Catholic Archbishop Levada”, said The San Francisco Chronicle, “was seated prominently on the bimah or pulpit of the synagogue, in the company of the rabbis. Levada delivered a brief but powerful prayer to the one God common to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in which he described the bombing campaign in Israel as and repulsive’.”[12]

First, there is no one God “common to Jews, Christians and Muslims”, since the true God is the Blessed Trinity, denied by Jews and Muslims.

Second, the sad bloodshed of the victims aside, the Archbishop’s religious visit to a synagogue is an affront to Catholic and biblical teaching. The synagogue is set up against the manifest will of Jesus Christ. Our Lord put an end to the religion of the Old Covenant, and had harsh words for those who reject Him. He said to the Jews, “If you do not believe that I am He (the Messiah) you will die in your sins.” (John 8:28)

Saint John, faithful to his Divine Master, taught likewise, “He that hath the Son, hath life. He that hath not the Son, hath not life.” (1 John 5:12) Saint John also warned that he who denies that Jesus has not come in the flesh is “... a seducer and an anti-christ”. (2 John 1:7) But today’s Jewish religion, like no other religion, holds the rejection of Jesus Christ as its central tenet.

A Catholic prelate who visits and prays at a synagogue betrays Jesus Christ, as the visit grants public legitimacy to a religion that holds Jesus Christ in disdain, believing Him to be a liar and deceiver.[13] It tells Jews that their religion which spurns Christ is of equal value with the Catholic religion in which Christ is the center of all.

This was precisely the effect of Pope John Paul’s first visit to the synagogue in Rome on April 13, 1986, an unprecedented ecumenical event.[14] Rabbi Elio Toaff of the Rome synagogue said that as a result of the Pope’s visit, “a turning point in the history of the church” was made, one that “puts the two religions on a level of equality.”[15]

Only fifty years ago, any well-trained seminarian could have explained the disastrous consequences of the Pope’s ecumenical visit to the synagogue. It corrupts the integrity of the Faith and it leaves the Jew in the darkness of his false religion. Saint Ambrose taught clearly the incompatibility of Christian religion with the Jewish religion. “The veil of the temple was torn”, said St. Ambrose, “to signify the division between the two groups of people and the profanation of the synagogue. The old veil was torn to let the Church hang the new veil of Faith.”[16] In other words, what God has torn asunder, let no man join together. It is cruelty to the Jew for a Catholic leader to tell him by word or example that he will find salvation by living his life detached from Jesus Christ.

Archbishop Levada, however, called Pope John Paul II’s visit to the synagogue a “good example,” and directly went about imitating him[17]. There is little doubt that the Vatican’s new “Guardian of the Faith” at the CDF is permeated with the error that the Old Covenant was not superseded by the New Covenant. This theological bankruptcy, sadly, also extends to Pope Benedict XVI, who announced he will perform a Wojtylian-like visit to a synagogue when he travels to Cologne for World Youth Day.[18]

Interfaith Jamborees

On December 1, 1999, Archbishop Levada participated in a San Francisco interfaith event called, “A Call to Oneness”, A Conference on Compassion and HIV/AIDS Diseases. Political leaders along with key representatives from various religions including Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Native American, Protestant, schismatic Orthodox and Hinduism took part in the event. As part of the proceedings, the Archbishop also allowed a World AIDS day ceremony to take place in the archdiocese’s St. Mary’s Cathedral.[19]

Then on March 28, 2003, Archbishop Levada hosted a “Spirit of Assisi” event at the Archdiocese’s St. Mary’s Cathedral entitled, “Interfaith Prayer Service in a Time of National Crisis,” sponsored by the San Francisco Interfaith Council. According to the Jewish Bulletin, the participants encountered “the sweet aroma of incense and the gentle sounds of traditional, Jewish and Christian liturgy blended with gospel music, Arabic and a Buddhist chime.” From the pulpit of the Catholic cathedral, Rabbi Alan Lew read from Psalm 30, and then led the Mourner’s Kaddish, first in Aramaic, then in English. Archbishop Levada, the Jewish Bulletin reported, “set the inclusive tone for the service from the outset.” Levada said, “With all the religions and cultural diversity here, may we know together that our hearts beat as one in prayer to Almighty God for peace today.” Also at the gathering, Norman Fischer of the Everyday Zen Foundation said “We are here to live in harmony.”[20]

Levada’s pan-religious gatherings could not be more contrary to perennial papal teaching, including that of Pope Pius VII who said, “By the fact that the indiscriminate freedom of all forms of religion is proclaimed, truth is confused with error, and the Immaculate Spouse of Christ is placed on the same level as heretical sects and even as Jewish perfidy.”[21] Here, Pius VII was condemning equality of religious in civil society. How much more would he condemn a multi-religious gathering in a Catholic cathedral.

Archbishop Levada also gave faculties to priests from the schismatic Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) to operate in parishes in his diocese. The CPA is a human institution created by the Chinese communist government that does not recognize the Pope as its head. Catholics in China are forced to join this schismatic puppet "church", as the Communist government has declared the true Catholic Church “illegal”, and has jailed, persecuted and murdered Catholics who refuse to submit to this schismatic institution. In an Open Letter to the Vatican Joseph Kung from the Cardinal Kung Foundation complained that the CPA priests given faculties by Levada “were allowed to offer Holy Mass publicly in Roman Catholic Churches and to administer other sacraments openly in parishes. No specific mention was made in parish bulletins that the priest in question belong to the CPA and no explanation was made about the schismatic nature of the CPA.”[22]

Pan-Christian Pilgrimage

In April 2003, Archbishop Levada embarked on an ecumenical pilgrimage with leaders of two other denominations: the Episcopalian Right Rev. William Swing, and the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony, both from San Francisco. The purpose of the trip was to visit Canterbury, Rome and Istanbul, “the centers of their respected branches of Christianity [sic] ... jointly meeting with the leaders of each body and praying together at holy sites.” They described their pilgrimage “as promoting Christian unity, as well as offering a witness to peaceful coexistence against the backdrop of the Iraqi war.”[23]

Yet this pilgrimage is nothing more than a witness to a counterfeit religion condemned by the Popes. In his 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos, which condemned the pan-religious ecumenism practiced today, Pope Pius XI said that this pan-Christian initiative presents a “false Christianity, quite alien to the true Church of Christ.”

Pope Pius XI wrote that the Holy See has “always forbidden” Catholics to take part in interreligious assemblies. He rightly insisted, “unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of belief, one faith of Christians ... There is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.” This is likewise the clear teaching of the perennial magisterium, especially that of Pope Leo XIII’s Satis Cognitum, Pope Saint Pius X’s Ex Quo, and Pope Pius XII’s Instruction on the Ecumenical Movement. Pope Pius XI further warned that the “fair and alluring words” of the pan-Christian initiative “cloak a most deadly error subversive to the Catholic Faith”.

Nonetheless, the three bishops on their ecumenical pilgrimage were warmly received by John Paul II. They also visited the Vatican’s Walter Cardinal Kasper, the man who rejoices that Vatican II forsook the truth that non-Catholics must convert to the Catholic Church for unity and salvation. “Today” said Kasper, “we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which the others would ‘be converted’ and return to being ‘catholics.’ This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II.”[24] By his ecumenical pilgrimage and other interfaith activities, Archbishop Levada shows himself to be in basic agreement with Cardinal Kasper’s heterodox views.

One of Levada’s ecumenical comrades on the ecumenical pilgrimage, the Episcopalian Bishop William Swing, is a colorful character himself. Swing is the founder of the New Age “United Religions” initiative — a United Nations of religions — that works in tandem with the leftist Gorbachev Foundation and the syncretic World Council for Religion and Peace. It encompasses all religions, be they Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, B’hai, Shinto, you name it. Swing’s initiative bears an eerie resemblance to the Masonic “Church Universal” that New Age Alice Baily predicted would arise at the end of the 20th Century.[25]

Can anyone imagine solid Catholic bishops such as Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Saint Francis de Sales, or Giuseppe Cardinal Sarto globe-trotting with a pan-religious flower-child like William Swing? Yet Levada not only considered Swing a friend, but joined him in a lengthy, undoubtedly expensive, ecumenical pilgrimage as a “symbol of unity” — a false unity condemned by all pre-Vatican II Popes. Not surprisingly, the pilgrimage included a stop in Frankfurt, Germany, where the three bishops and their entourages visited a former concentration camp and prayed at a synagogue.

Levada and the True Mass

Archbishop Levada, while in Oregon, allowed an “indult” Tridentine Mass. Once he came to San Francisco, however, he refused to establish the indult. George Neumayer wrote that Levada was probably afraid to anger and alienate priests attached to his predecessor’s policies. Archbishop Quinn, the former Ordinary of San Francisco, vehemently opposed the Latin Mass, saying of the indult, “Not in my diocese.” Quinn also called the indult “divisive” in a letter to a diocesan priest who petitioned for it in 1984.

Neumayer quoted an acquaintance of Levada who said, “I’m not surprised by it. He (Levada) is keenly aware of priestly backlash ... And he knows, like most American prelates, that traditionalists are an expendable group, what with their lack of money and institutions.”[26] The fact that Levada angered those traditional Catholics petitioning for the indult seemed not to trouble him at all.

Archbishop Levada, while Ordinary of Oregon, also had run-ins with Father Eugene Heidt, a feisty traditional priest. Levada eventually illicitly “suspended” Father Heidt for his no-compromise adherence to Tradition. Before the “suspension”, during a meeting with the Archbishop, Father Heidt complained that the Archbishop’s Pastoral Letter on the Eucharist contained no mention of Transubstantiation. Levada replied that Transubstantiation is a “long and difficult term” and that “we don’t use it any more”.[27]

This is a mockery to the infallible Council of Trent, that committed the Church to this precise scholastic definition, hallowed by long usage. Even Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Mysterium Fidei reiterated that the parish priest is duty-bound to speak of “Transubstantiation.” (#54) Levada’s approach is also an insult to “modern man” to whom post-Conciliar churchmen constantly claim to be appealing. It implies that modern man is too stupid to comprehend a term that 2nd grade Catholic school children grasped only fifty years ago.

Shaky Moral Teaching

In a 1995 San Francisco Chronicle interview when he first arrived in San Francisco, Archbishop Levada was asked about the Catholic teaching on birth control and (immoral) devices for AIDS prevention. His answers were not exactly lucent. He said, “The Catholic Church does not teach against the regulation of birth, but says artificial contraception is not in God’s plan. But natural family planning is not given the same attention in the medical community as artificial contraception.”

Clearly, the Archbishop does not even think to reiterate the true Catholic teaching on the goodness of large families, nor does he mention that according to Catholic Moral teaching, any sort of birth regulation for a Catholic can only be for the gravest of reasons. Once again, NFP is falsely touted as a legitimate means of “Catholic” birth control.

Regarding devices for protection against AIDS, Archbishop Levada said, “Certainly if someone has decided not to follow the path of abstinence, and engage in extramarital sexual relations, that already is something that is not in accord with God’s plan. It could be the better part of their choice to use the protections that are available.”

This response is a variation on Martin Luther, “Sin strong, but protect yourself stronger.” Mind you, Levada is saying this to a secular newspaper read by millions, and in San Francisco, no less.

Levada goes on to say that the Church does not believe there should be a widespread campaign to promote the use of these devices, and that the “better policy” is one that “corresponds to God’s plan, to refrain from sex until you marry and are faithful to one person.”[28]

Better policy? Why are men like Levada afraid to speak the simple truth: that the human acts under discussion are mortal sins that send a soul to hell for eternity? Why use the delicate phrase “not in accord with God’s plan”, with no mention of the horrifying eternal consequences for discarding God’s plan? How can a Catholic Archbishop possibly advance the falsehood that for those who will deliberately sin anyway, “it could be a better part of their choice to use the protections that are available”? Does he not know that use of these “protections” is intrinsically evil? That no set of circumstances can justify employing them? Even for the sake of AIDS prevention, has he forgotten Saint Paul’s warning that we may not do evil that good may come from it? Is he not aware that the lesser of two evils is still an evil? And that evil can never be the direct object of our will? Levada’s moral theology appears to be as wobbly as his ecumenical theology.[29]

His Eminence

All of what has been said reveals Archbishop Levada to be a child of Vatican II, a creature of the age, a prelate who side-stepped hot issues in his diocese, a churchman who covered-up clerical abuse and transferred known abusers to active parishes, a man whom no right-thinking Catholic would allow to teach religion to his children.

Yet out of all the bishops on the planet, Archbishop Levada is the man chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to be the alleged “watchdog of orthodoxy”, and to occupy the second most influential position in the Catholic Church worldwide.

The San Francisco Chronicle says William Levada will be made a Cardinal on June 29 of this year.

Our Lady, Conqueror of All Heresies, pray for us! (invincible or inculpable)