AIM Report: Did Mueller Know Hoover’s Dark Secret?

Another underground agent, let's call him "Guy Rouge - private eye," writes:

The republicans know this but they will not fight against the establishment which hired Mueller to take Trump out.

Politically, Trump is a dead man walking and his executioner is man whose hands are covered with the same blood that Irish Mobster, and rifleman man Flemmi, spilled in Boston with the knowledge and assistance of the FBI.

Mueller knew....

"AIM Report: Did Mueller Know Hoover’s Dark Secret?" (Accuracy In Media, April 14, 2002):

It may be the worst scandal in FBI history: Joseph Salvati spent three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He was put there by uncorroborated, false testimony from an informant under the protection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is compelling evidence that the Bureau knew Salvati was an innocent man and then conspired to keep him in prison for more than three decades. Knowledge of the Bureau’s actions seems to have gone right to the very top; documents uncovered recently show that then-Director J. Edgar Hoover monitored the case from Washington.

The FBI scandal was investigated for two years by the House Government Reform Committee, then under the chairmanship of Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), who introduced legislation to remove Hoover’s name from FBI headquarters as a result of what he learned.

But the scandal gets worse than that. When Burton tried to acquire official records on the case from the Justice Department, he was stonewalled, and Attorney General John Ashcroft persuaded President George W. Bush to invoke “executive privilege” to block the committee’s subpoenas. This was President Bush’s first, and thus far only, use of executive privilege to withhold information from the Congress. Some think Bush is trying to protect current FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston during part of the relevant time period. The confrontation with Burton prompted columns on the controversy by William Safire and Robert Novak.

Read more >>

Incredible! Unbelievable!

Related:


Related:

• Will this retired FBI agent be vindicated in what he said to James Comey on the Hillary investigation? (American Thinker, October 25, 2016).
• Why one Catholic lawyer thinks the Al Smith Dinner was an 'abomination' (Fatima Perspectives, October 25, 2016).

Wikileaks: George Soros apparently believes money can buy anything, including the Pope's influence

Elizabeth Yore, Catholic speaker, writer, and founder of an international child protection advocacy group, claims to have identified information in the latest dump by Wikileaks about a strategic plan from a Board Meeting of George Soros' Open Society Foundation for seeking to use the influence of Pope and Cardinal Rodriguez, his senior advisor and confidant, to further its own ends. Scary.

Dreher: "The Problem of Uncertain Trumpets"

Rod Dreher, "The Problem of Uncertain Trumpets" (August 12, 2016):

Maybe you heard that our Catholic vice president, Joe Biden, recent recipient of the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, presided over the wedding of two of his male staffers recently ...

Not a peep was heard from the Catholic bishops about this [UPDATE: Three peeps were heard, and three cheers for these bishops. — RD] — and this got Protestant theologian Carl Trueman to thinking. Excerpt:

... I have made it clear before that I believe Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option seems to build on the most realistic premise: that we must despair of national politics delivering anything for us and refocus on the local. This, as Dreher has pointed out again and again, will require withdrawal from certain spheres.

But I suggest that it will mean more than simple withdrawal. It will also require the drawing of certain lines and thereby the exclusion of certain people from church circles. We cannot bring clarity to the identity and testimony of the church unless we draw some pretty clear boundaries about who belongs and which beliefs and behaviors are legitimate....

As Carl says, if the most prominent Catholic elected official in the country can voluntarily preside in a secular capacity over a same-sex wedding, and not get disciplined by the Catholic hierarchy, something has gone very wrong. It’s not that the Church — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, whatever — has to weigh in on every single issue. But come on, this is the Vice President of the United States. Carl is right: a church that will stand for anything stands for nothing.

The Protestant Trueman goes on to say:

As of this moment, the leadership of all of our churches in the U.S. leaves much to be desired. Mainline Protestant denominations sold out to the world two generations ago. Evangelicalism is full of vibrant enthusiasm but lacks any intellectual depth or consistency when it comes to social teaching. Confessional Protestants are such a small minority that we are barely noticeable. Key to the religious future of the United States is the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It alone has the status and the potential cohesion to make a difference. All of our hopes depend upon the Roman Catholic Church taking a clear and bold stand.

Yet therein lies the problem.

Read more >>

NC State students can't talk to other students about Jesus without a permit

An aerial view of the North Carolina State University campus,
the Memorial Belltower (center) and surrounding area
in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Michael Avramovich, "Teacher, May I Have Permission To Tell My Classmate About Jesus?" (Touchstone, June 30, 2016): Apparently at NC State, you now can't talk to students about religion without a permit. Say what???

The Big Lie: Protestant & Secular Texbook Traditions About The Irish Rebellion of 1641

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, "The Big Lie: Ireland, 1641" (New Oxford Review, May 2016) - a book review of The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory, by John Gibney (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013): 

If to rob a man of his good name for a lifetime is to rob him of his most precious possession, what is it then to rob an entire people of their good name for centuries? The Big Lie about the 1641 rebellion was just such a robbery of the Irish people. It stands at the root of Irish suffering for centuries, even casting a shadow across the Irish Famine of the 1840s. John Gibney’s scholarly book The Shadow of a Year offers an illuminating account of this grave injustice.

Gibney begins by giving the Protestant version of the rebellion. In Ulster, the Irish had recently been dispossessed of their land by English and Scottish settlers, and on October 23, 1641, a mob broke out against these settlers. In the official Protestant account, religion was the reason for the uprising, and it was immediately depicted as a sectarian genocide organized by Irish Catholics. Henry Jones, Anglican dean of Kilmore, said the rebellion had been caused by the “innate bigotry and brutality” of the Irish and ordered by the Pope and Jesuits. Jones headed a commission that collected thousands of depositions about what happened — but these depositions were only from Protestants. In March 1642 he presented lurid extracts from these depositions to the English Parliament, published as A Remonstrance. Thus, says Gibney, the “atrocity propaganda” was first printed in England “for an English audience.”

The Protestant account was used to justify the Cromwellian confiscations of Irish lands from 1649 to 1653, which amounted, Gibney says, to “perhaps half of the available land in Ireland.” In 1649 Cromwell justified the atrocities his New Model Army committed against Catholics in Drogheda and Wexford as a “righteous judgment” for the rebellion of 1641. When the Catholic bishops of Ireland protested that the army seemed bent on “exterminating” the Irish, Cromwell replied that “the massacres of 1641 had yet to be avenged.”

Thus, much depended on the truth of what had taken place. Despite Catholic denials, the Protestant version of 1641 would henceforth be used to deprive Catholics of their lands and also — for the next 150 years — of religious liberty. The 1652 Act for the Settling of Ireland exempted from pardon all Catholic priests on the ground that they had abetted the “murders or massacres” of Protestants in 1641.

Only a tiny fraction of the depositions taken by Henry Jones were about atrocities, yet Sir John Temple, in his book The Irish Rebellion (1646), presented these tales as representative of the whole. Temple’s account was still being described in 1887 as “an almost infallible witness against Catholicism,” even though it was composed, Gibney says, chiefly “to bolster the case for a prospective reconquest of Ireland under the auspices of the English parliament.”

From the first, Protestant historians gave a wildly implausible death toll of those murdered by Catholics in 1641. In March 1643 the Irish Lord Justices put it at 154,000, a figure taken from the “unsubstantiated assertion of Robert Maxwell, an Armagh clergyman of Scottish extraction.” They used this number to block Parliament from coming to terms with Irish Catholics, since that might have saved their lands. Many gave a death toll of 300,000 based on Temple’s Irish Rebellion, but what Temple wrote was that 300,000 English Protestants had been murdered, died of other causes, or been “expelled out of their habitations.” There is a big difference between being forced out of your home and being murdered. Catholics denied that there had even been 100,000 Protestants in Ireland at the time. Meanwhile, in 1649 the Puritan poet John Milton — a rabid enemy of Catholics — put the number of those massacred in 1641 at 600,000.

This Big Lie became the foundational myth of colonial Ireland: It was on the basis of the 1641 rebellion that the 1662 Act of Settlement upheld the Cromwellian confiscations. Also in 1662 the Irish Parliament passed an act ordering the Anglican Church of Ireland to commemorate 1641 with an annual sermon on October 23. The state church added new prayers about 1641, incorporating them into the Irish Book of Common Prayer in 1666, where they remained until 1859, giving religious sanction to an egregious slander against the Irish people.

What can be said of a Christian worship turned into a self-righteous justification for oppression? Where was the Christian charity? In addition to a church service, the annual commemoration included public drinking, bell ringing, a gun salute, a bonfire, and a parade. By the end of the 17th century, a new colonial order prevailed in Ireland, with 800,000 Irish Catholics dispossessed and disenfranchised by 200,000 English and 100,000 Scottish Protestants — and government troops to enforce it.

Rationalists embraced the Big Lie: David Hume harped on the atrocities of 1641, and Voltaire wouldn’t listen to any arguments against the “reality” of the 1641 massacres, linking them to the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. For Hume and Voltaire, Gibney says, 1641 was a “genocidal sadism prompted by little more than hatred based on superstition.” When religious liberty for Catholics was debated in Ireland’s House of Lords in 1793, the Anglican bishop of Cashel rose up to defend the persecution of Catholics by reading aloud a “lurid extract about 1641 from David Hume.”

On the other side, the Catholic version of 1641 remained virtually the same from the 17th to the 19th century. Catholics said that the atrocities attributed to them were “inventions” used to justify their dispossession, that the death toll for Protestants was wildly exaggerated, and that in 1641 Protestants had been the first to inflict terrible brutalities on Irish Catholics across the land.

In 1662 a certain “R.S.” published a Collection of Some of the Murthers and Massacres Committed on the Irish in Ireland Since the 23rd of October 1641. Since Catholics had no freedom of the press, this tract was quickly suppressed and publicly burned in Ireland. Yet it gives, Gibney says, “a reasonably sober account of various brutalities visited on Catholics by Protestants and, later, by parliamentary forces.” R.S. ridicules the inflated death toll given for Protestants “on the reasonable grounds that the figures commonly given far exceeded the Protestant population in Ireland.” Moreover, he recounts how in one night English and Scottish soldiers massacred all the residents of Islandmagee — 3,000 men, women, and children — though no one in County Antrim was in rebellion. R.S. follows this with reports of similar massacres conducted by government troops, county by county.

In 1668 Catholic Bishop Nicholas French said that in 1641 “four hundred English could not be found murdered in Ireland.” In 1684 the Earl of Castlehaven wrote that the rebellion of 1641 arose from legitimate grievances and that the Lord Justices were the ones intent on “exterminating” all the Irish “who would not conform to the established church.” In Ireland’s Case Briefly Stated (1695), Hugh Reily argues that the Lord Justices needed a pretext to confiscate Irish land, so they authorized the massacres at Santry, Contarf, Bullock, Islandmagee, and Carrickfergus to provoke a rebellion. While the death toll given for Protestants was “absolutely impossible,” Catholics died in “much greater numbers.”

The major spokesman for the Irish in the 18th century was John Curry, who asked in his Brief Account (1746) why 1641 was “trumped up” with so many “unjust” exaggerations against his people. He declares that they had not committed a murder in 1641 that had not been “returned upon them at least four fold,” and that the official version was a slander “deliberately and cynically adopted to blacken the name of the Catholic Irish amid the formulation of the land settlement of the 1660s, and thereby used to dispossess them.” Edmund Burke sympathized with Curry, but to save his career in England he left his most important work on the topic unpublished: His “Tracts Relating to the Popery Law” (1765) declares that the Catholic rebellions in Ireland were not “produced by toleration but by persecution” and “arose not from just and mild government but from the most unparalleled oppression.”

In 1819 Matthew Carey published Vindiciae Hibernicae in America, with later editions carrying the commendations of Presidents John Adams and James Madison. By then the Big Lie about 1641 had been spread in this country by John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Carey laments that the slander is, in his day, “almost as thoroughly believed as the best established fact in the annals of the world.” He asserts that there was no massacre in 1641 except for what the Dublin administration “perpetrated against the Irish” to confiscate their land, and he rightly calls the “penal laws” that deprived the Irish of religious freedom for 150 years “tyranny…covered by as base a cloak of hypocrisy as the annals of the world can produce.” He also neatly dissects the various death tolls given for Protestants and shows them to be based, Gibney says, on “forgery and perjury.”

A Catholic account of 1641 was produced by Daniel O’Connell in Memoir on Ireland Native and Saxon (1843), in which he argues that all the suffering of the Irish after 1641 stemmed “largely from calculated and gross Protestant misrepresentations of Catholic conduct during the rebellion.” He sees the lies surrounding 1641 as “the demoniacal means by which Protestantism and English power achieved their ascendancy in Ireland.”

Toward the end of The Shadow of a Year, Gibney discusses the late-19th-century debate between historians James Anthony Froude and W.E.H. Lecky. In The English in Ireland (1872-1874) Froude characterizes the Irish as “a savage, turbulent, and violent people” who needed civilizing by the English. Predictably, he takes the depositions compiled by Jones at face value, gives “uncritical acceptance” to the official version of 1641, and points to the “solemn annual commemoration” in the state church. Lecky responds in his History of Ireland (1892) by saying that the fantastic stories about Catholic atrocities were due to “Protestant designs on Catholic estates” and to the fear that the Irish might otherwise save their lands by “coming to terms” with the English government. He concedes that a rebellious mob in Ulster had committed awful crimes, but these had been “grossly, absurdly, and mendaciously exaggerated…almost beyond any other tragedy on record.” He discredits Sir John Temple as the one who “bore more responsibility than any other for propagating the notion of a massacre” and calls the depositions collected by Jones “untrustworthy.”

The Big Lie continued to propagate in the 20th century. Ernest Hamilton, in Soul of Ulster (1917), a work Gibney describes as “racist and sectarian,” suggests that the death toll for Protestants in 1641 could have been over a million and that “the soul of the native Irish has not at the present day changed by the width of a hair” from that time. Maude Glasgow, in The Scotch-Irish in North America (1936), repeats Milton’s assertion “without qualification” that 600,000 Protestants had been massacred.

At a 1998 conference at the University of Notre Dame commemorating the Tyrone Rebellion of 1798, I happened to see a new book by Ian McBride among the many on display. I skimmed it and discovered that he too reasserted the Big Lie about 1641. When I pointed this out to several people who were attending the conference, I was met with weary shrugs and the response, “What else is to be expected from McBride?”

Recently, the one-sided and mendacious depositions compiled by Henry Jones have been digitized. Gibney (and Ian Paisley) thinks this is a great idea, but I’m not convinced. In Alice Curtayne’s The Trial of Oliver Plunkett (1953), we read that the same Jones, who joined Cromwell’s army in 1649 and was promoted to Anglican bishop of Meath in 1661, was busy collecting new perjurers in 1680 to testify against St. Oliver Plunkett (who was found guilty of high treason for a fictitious plot to bring in the French army and restore the Catholic Church by force of arms). The Protestant duke of Ormonde, viceroy of Ireland, referred to Jones in a letter to his son as “not only a spiteful but a false informer.” Yes, Ormonde called him a liar. It seems that Jones’s Big Lie about 1641 is like a vampire that keeps resuscitating itself every century. We can hope and pray that Gibney’s book has thrust a stake through its beastly heart.

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is Professor Emerita of English at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She has published on Dryden, Milton, and Swift, as well as on Catholics of the seventeenth century.

The foregoing article, "The Big Lie: Ireland, 1641," was originally published in the May 2016 issue of the New Oxford Review and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706. 

The sad and abominable case of Justice Anthony Kennedy and the Most Reverend Paul Stephen Loverde

Adfero, "Justice Anthony Kennedy: 'full communion'" (Rorate Caeli, June 27, 2016):

This was his third sodomy case at the Supreme Court where [Justice Anthony Kennedy] authored the pro-sodomy opinion....

Justice Kennedy, who has also voted to uphold a constitutional right to abortion, resides in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, along with many other pro-sodomy and pro-abortion politicians. He has been seen at Mass often, including at parishes run by conservative priests.

The bishop, the Most Reverend Paul Stephen Loverde, has stood firm in a position of Communion-on-Demand, no matter who presents himself at the altar rail (or missing rail, as the bishop has also banned the construction of altar rails).

Journal eats crow over article claiming conservatism linked to genetic-based psychosis

Steven Hayward, "Epic Correction of the Decade" (Powerline, June 8, 2016):

Hoo-wee, the New York Times will really have to extend itself to top the boner and mother-of-all-corrections at the American Journal of Political Science. This is the journal that published a finding much beloved of liberals a few years back that purported to find scientific evidence that conservatives are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness, and that the supposed “authoritarian” personality of conservatives might even have a genetic basis (and therefore be treatable someday?). Settle in with a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, and get ready to enjoy one of the most epic academic face plants ever. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Star-struck popes confirm "hermeneutic of continuity"!

Doubtless you've heard about how Salma Hayek, Richard Gere, and George Clooney were feted and awarted with medals by Pope Francis recently to promote the work of a foundation inspired by the pontiff, Scholas Occurrentes. "Important values can be transmitted by celebrities," said one of the organizers, Lorena Bianchetti. There's a short video from the event at this site.

Now comes the intrepid Amateur Brain Surgeon, founder of ABE Ministries, with balm for the wounds of wounded conservative and traditionalist Catholic souls. First, from a book entitled Shepherd of Souls: A Pictorial Life of Pope Pius XII, he points to a page showing how Pius XII was a movie buff, a fan of Clark Gable, and, writes the author:

When the movie King of Hollywood, his wife and daughter were granted a private audience, the subsequent callers were kept waiting in the reception hall for two hours. When Clark Gable's visit ended, Bishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli followed. This bishop is now known as Pope John XXIII.

Finally, from the May 9, 1967 issue of the Sydney Morning Herald, ABS quotes from an article with a banner photo of Pope Paul with his arms outstretched to welcome actress Claudia Cardinale at a special audience to mark World Social Communications Media Day. The article says:

Claudia Cardinale worse a mini-skirt, Gina Lollobrigida braved her critics, but Sophia Loren couldn't make it to an unprecedented meeting between Pope Paul VI and the world of showbiz yesterday.

... the film stars stole the show -- even from the Pope himself, who was garmented in dazzling white robes.

Claudia was the first to bring gasps when she walked to her seat near the Pope's throne wearing her mini-little black dress.

Miss Cardinale recently married outside Italy a man who is not the father of her son, born when she was unmarried.

The Church forgave her early sins, but not her marriage to a man the Church considers to be still married to his first wife.

Then came Lollobrigida, who, at first, stood in a small crowd and then was escorted to a chair in a reserved section immediately facing the Throne.

On the way a bearded Swiss Guard stopped her, but a horrified officer reprimanded the Guard with: "Obviously, you don't go to the cinema."

Miss Lollobrigida was recently acquitted of an obscenity charge brought over a falling towel scene in her latest film.

But she has also earned the Church's disapproval because of her legal separation from her husband, Milko Skofic.

... But Miss Loren, who has been embroiled for years in an alleged bigamy case over her marriage to producer Carlo Ponti, disappointed the crowd by preferring to continue work on a film, although invited.

Head of USCCB media arm shows his true colors

Christine Niles, "Head of Bishops' New Outfit Resigns Amid Controversy" (Church Militant, April 14, 2016). No kidding ... He was finally asked to step down from CNS after it became public knowledge that he was promoting an LGBT agenda on social media. Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute first broke the story.


[Hat tip to JM]

A cardinal, a priest with a stripper, and gay days at Lourdes: Catholic crisis exposed

Our underground correspondent in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, just sent us a link to a video (see below) reporting on three scandals symptomatic of deeper problems in the Church, which the commentator sees as presaging an intensifying persecution of Catholoics effectively sold out by their leaders:

(1) Cardinal law, after resigning amidst sex scandal cover-ups in his Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, received John Paul II's permission to resign before the mandatory age of 75 and get himself appointed to the plum position of Archpriest at St. Mary Major in Rome, a position from which he retired in 2011, and continues living in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Renaissance palace near St. Peter's.

(2) Fr. Jay Baker, Vicar General to Bishop Shelton Joseph Fabre of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana, recently appeared in a photo posted on Facebook alongside a stripper on the homepage of Trixie Minx, a scandal prompting a troubled letter from a Louisiana parishioner who can't get a hearing with her stonewalling bishop.

(3) Catholic officials at the Catholic shrine of Lourdes threw open its doors to gays for Valentine's Day this year [HERE]

Guy Noir writes:

Look... I for one don't think we are being "persecuted" in any sense worthy of the word. We *are* being marginalized.

And, unintentionally, being sold out by our leaders. Matt, for my tastes, can be strident. But who can argue with him here. And note -- he's not gay-bashing. This is good old heterosexual roaming. And meanwhile, a bishop cannot even meet with a plaintiff. No one in the private sector could now get away with such stonewalling. Maybe it is a good thing the "bastions," as von Balthasar called them, are being raized.

Wow! What happened to Michael Voris as a 19-year-old lad at Notre Dame

Using the movie "Spotlight" as a foil, Mr. Voris launches into an amazing account of what happened to him personally while a student at the University of Notre Dame. It helps bring clarity to a number of things, though it's not easy hearing.

The rest of the story about "Spotlight": "Spotlight Exposed" (The Media Report)

Wherein Fr. Z. takes Card. Danneels to the woodshed

Fr. John  Zuhlsdorf, "Wherein Card. Danneels makes excuses" (Fr. Z's Blog, November 13, 2015):

Retired Belgian Godfried Cardinal Danneels – who protected a child abuser priest – was invited to the last Synod on the Family despite the fact that he was over 80. HERE That was a surprise, both because of the scandal Danneels was involved in and because of his age. Because of his age because the Cardinal Bishop of Hong Kong (who is standing up to homosexualists), younger than Danneels, was told that he was too old to participate.  Double standard?  You decide.

Danneels was also apparently involved in a group that – contrary to the rules that John Paul II established for conclaves and which Danneels and the others swore oaths to obey – conspired with a group to influence the election.  HERENow Danneels is in the spotlight again, for these comments. From Catholic World News:

Worth reading: Read more >>

"What Francis Does vs. What He Says"

Rod Dreher, HERE (October 15, 2015), contrasting (1) the Pope's words in his general audience about need for loyalty to the promises we make our children and his apology for the scandals of recent times; and (2) his appointment of the confirmed pederast, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels as a Synod of the Family father. Sad state of affairs. (Disclaimer: Rules 7-9)

Then there's this piece, on SEX, which makes the Synod on the Family seem, as our contributer says, "like a sorority pledge drive": Rod Dreher, "The ‘Yes We Can’ Catholics" (American Conservative, October 14, 2015):

I didn’t need Father to remind me every week in his homily to keep my pants up. That’s not the point. What I could have used was any sign that the life to which I had submitted, in obedience to what I believed was the truth, mattered to the Church. The message I constantly received from the silence in the parish(es) was: You are wasting your time trying to live out these teachings. Nobody here cares about this stuff, so why should you?

[Hat tip to JM]

Appalling

Adfero, "Gentle Bishop Blaise: Sin all you want -- I'll still give you Communion" (Rorate Caeli, October 16, 2015)


As reader JM writes: "Did we not see this coming years back. Gay marriage is not 'premier' or 'best,' but it is something on which conscious is 'inviolable.' And now we must not only accompany but integrate and reconcile. Ambiguity always, always leads top erosion, which leads to foundational crumbling. Thankfully there is a strong media and lay attention to the Synod. But with rhetoric like this positioned against a traditionalist response that keys to calling remarrieds 'adulterous,' who do you think is going to win the ad campaign."

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Z: "The 13 Cardinals Letter is a distraction, a trap"

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, "The 13 Cardinals Letter is a distraction, a trap" (Fr. Z's Blog, October 13, 2015):

As intriguing as The 13 Cardinals Letter™ is we have to leave it be now.

The Letter is a tar baby.  Go for it and it entraps you, sticks you in one place.  The more you struggle with it, the more stuck you get.

The Letter the Cardinals wrote (or didn’t write or signed or didn’t sign) doesn’t matter.  One day, months from now, Edward Pentin will piece together the truth.  We can wait.

What does matter is the Danneels thing (the fact that he is at the Synod).

Isn’t it interesting that both Austin Ivereigh and the writers of the Danneels biography backed off from their stories about how Pope Francis was elected?   And what do you think would be the story in the press had Benedict XVI personally invited to the Synod a man beyond 80 who had protected pedophile priests?

If the Letter is the journalistic tar baby, the Danneels thing is the journalistic briar patch.

So, to Catholic journalists out there… forget the Letter.

The Letter is a distraction.

I am sure that that is what the progressivist liberals want the the focus to be on right now.

What does matter is the possibility of the devolution of some functions of the Holy See to regional bishops conferences (The Nightmare Scenario).  As Gagliarducci puts it, “every episcopal conference will adopt its own guidelines to meet doctrinal challenges.” HERE

That’s one that makes me lose sleep.  That’s another journalistic briar patch.

"BOMBSHELL - SECRET PARALLEL SYNOD"

"Papal Post-Synod Document ALREADY being drafted by Jesuit group to allow communion for divorced and other aberrations" (Rorate Caeli, October 1, 2015):

• The Claim:

  Summary: Italian journalist Marco Tosatti reveals that A SECRET PARALLEL SYNOD has been established in Rome, a cabal composed almost exclusively by Jesuits, with the occasional Argentinian presence (easy to guess who), to draft the necessary post-synodal documents to implement whatever the Pope wants to implement. And they will implement it, no matter what, as the secret committee to draft the Annulment reforms has shown; what everyone supposed was true in fact is true: the Synodal process is a sham.

• The Reality: Well, we shall see ...

Philly World Meeting of Families President Ciaruffoli has been promoting Planned Parenthood???

"World Meeting of Families President Funded Planned Parenthood Director's Political Campaign" (Lepanto Institute)

The Vatican, the Devil, and the United Nations

A Lepanto Institute report of some historical and contemporary interest: Catholic dollars to pro-abortion, same-sex 'marriage' causes, and much more.

The scandal of the German Catholic church, RIP

"Mic'd Up - The German Factions" (Church Militant, May 6, 2015). This diabolical and nepotistic plutocracy wallowing in ill-gained filthy lucre has virtually destroyed the German church. Unbelievable.

Related: "SYNOD BATTLES: Blackmail, Veiled Schism Threats, the Kasperization of the German Church, and the Destruction of Marriage - Document and Analysis" (RC, May 18, 2015) - the nitty gritty.