Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The Greek philosophers in general and Christian thinkers after them have seen the emotions (passions) as innate parts of human nature. Even the Stoics, who seem to condemn the passions, really only condemn disorderly, irrational passions, as Aquinas and others have noted. 

John Chrysostom cautions against anger, but he implicitly means disorderly anger, as he sees both anger (the irascible appetite) and desire (the concupiscible appetite) as essential, and therefore God-created, parts of human nature. 

Yet surely both are naturally implanted, and both are set in us for our profit, both anger, and desire: the one that we may chastise the evil, and correct those who walk disorderly; the other, that we may have children, and that our race may be recruited by such succession. (Homily XVII on Matthew V.28.28) 

Of anger Chrysostom says: 

And what is the proper time for anger? When we are not avenging ourselves, but checking others in their lawless freaks, or forcing them to attend in their negligence. 

And what is the unsuitable time? When we do so as avenging ourselves….(Homily XVI. Matt.V.37) 

(One author met someone who said the Israelis must forgive the Palestinians for their attacks on children and turn the other cheek; but this pacifist then went on an length and vituperatively about a colleague who had failed to give the pacifist proper mention in an academic article. I think we have all encountered the type. It is easy to tolerate evils done to others.) 

As someone in the comments mentioned, this analysis of the role of the passions creates a problem for the doctrine of creation: if man was created in a world without evil (and God had pronounced it “very good) and was immortal, why are these two passions clearly designed for a world beset by evil and death?  

Presumably, in an unfallen world the energies that we feel as anger and desire would take different forms – but the forms are unimaginable. And what will they be look in the new creation, when death and evil will be no more? 

My tentative guess is that God, know that his rational creates would sin and fall, create the universe ruled by transiency (and therefore death) and created human nature such that it had these passions so that man could face with courage the evils of the world and reproduce in his warfare against death. 

I heard Bach’s cantata, Wenn die stolze Feinde schnauben, at Christ Lutheran Church in Baltimore.

It is the last part of the Christmas oratorio, and was sung on Epiphany.

While the recitative recounts the narrative of the Three Kings, the meditative parts focus on the evil that already desires to destroy the Child.

Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnauben,

So gib, daß wir im festen Glauben

Nach deiner Macht und Hülfe sehn!

Wir wollen dir allein vertrauen,

So können wir den scharfen Klauen

Des Feindes unversehrt entgehn.

Lord, when the proud enemies snarl, grant that we in steadfast faith may look to your strength and help! We will trust you alone, and so are able to escape unharmed the sharp claws of the enemy.

The Soprano addresses Herod as Du Falscher, You false one, who tries to use his List, his cunning, to destroy the child. A fox is listig, cunning, and Jesus later called another Herod “that fox.”

The chorus sings the tender hymn

Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier,

O Jesulein, mein Leben;

Ich komme, bring und schenke dir,

Was du mir hast gegeben.

Nimm hin! Es ist mein Geist und Sinn,  

Herz, Seel und Mut, nimm alles hin,

Und laß dirs wohlgefallen.

I stand here at your crib, o little Jesus, my life. I come and bring and give to you what you have given to me. Take it, it is my spirit and soul and mind and heat and strength, take it all, and let it be pleasing to you.

The Child escapes to Egypt. The tenor sings 

Was will der Höllen Schrecken nun,

Was will uns Welt und Sünde tun,

Da wir in Jesu Händen ruhn?

What will the horrors of Hell now do, what will the world and sin do to us, who rest in Jesus’ hands.

The choir concludes with the Passion chorale (O Sacred Head Surrounded)

Tod, Teufel, Sünd und Hölle

Sind ganz und gar geschwächt;

Bei Gott hat seine Stelle

Das menschliche Geschlecht.

Death, devil, sin and hell are absolutely weakened. The human race has its place with God.

Bach modulates from the Christmas season to Lent in this cantata, and connects the two. The sweetness and tenderness of Christmas are not sentimentalized by being isolated. Already the proud enemy seeks the blood of the Child, but already God’s wisdom and strength triumphs. He laughs to scorn the proud, and already the Child is Victor. The extraordinary note of universalism in the last line of the cantata looks forward to the final triumph, because already humanity is forever united to God in Christ, and that union contains a promise for the whole human race.

As I listen again and again to Bach’s cantatas, I marvel both at the music, which has never been surpassed, and at the depth of the theology and religious feeling.

Italian musicians periodically have asked the Vatican to canonize Bach, which demurs because he was a Lutheran, but I think that he would be a worthier object of veneration and imitation than a lot of the saints that clutter the calendar.

One of my responders is fortunate enough to live in the parish to which Father Dwight Longenecker is attached. 

Father Longenecker in his blog on Con Men has written one of the best analyses of clerical abusers, Maciel being the most famous. 

Why do people fall for priests who turn out to be such stinkers? It’s pretty complicated, but it goes like this: first of all, the bad priest himself is usually a complex character. He has deep flaws and serious sins deep down in his life. To compensate he tries very hard to be good, and what better way to be good than to become a priest? Becoming a priest helps him to cover up his flaws. He puts on a uniform everyday which proclaims that he is a holy man. The uniform allows him to play a part. He is comfortable being a good pastor, a caring person, a wonderful preacher, a man of prayer. It makes him feel better about himself and if he is not careful, he soon starts believing his own priestly image.If he is charismatic, charming, debonair and dynamic he is even more attractive. If he is wise and wonderful and eloquent and compassionate and caring and almost Jesus himself, then he becomes even more popular and the real deep down problem is only made worse by the imposture, not better. Have you ever noticed how often it is the priests and pastors who seem the very best and most wonderful who are the ones who fall? Every asked yourself if the reason they were so wonderful is linked with their crash? 

 (Snip)

 Furthermore, the whole dynamic of parish life contributes to build up the false image. Everyone loves Father Fantastic. Everyone looks up to him. In fact they invest an awful lot of spiritual capital in him. They put him on a pedestal. In fact, the people, rather than learning to love God (which is hard work) love the priest instead. They idolize him and he can do no wrong because they actually want an idol of a priest who can do no wrong. He epitomizes for the their whole religion. All this false religion does is to make the bad priest’s conflict between his inner demons and the outer false image even worse. 

(Snip) 

Why were so many taken in by Father Maciel? Because so many people wanted to be taken in. It was easier and more exciting to believe the whole fabricated fiction than to take the effort to find out the truth and follow it.

 I have noticed that older Catholics literally make idols of priests: priests can do no wrong, they are a substitute for God. One women recounted how happy how dying mother was to have six priests surrounding her death bed. First of all, I happen to suspect that some of those priests were real stinkers; Secondly, while I want to receive the last sacraments, I want t be surrounded by my family when I die. My wife and I were both blest to be able to be holding our mothers when they died. 

And Father Longenecker considers only the better class of criminals. There are those, such as Rudy Kos, who were abusers before they entered the priesthood and entered the priesthood so that they would have easier access to victims and the protection of the hierarchy. One document I saw proposed that Kos’s ordination be annulled and I suspect it was on tehse grounds. 

Even deeper into evil are those priests who under a holy exterior practice Satanism. A private detective I spoke with had investigated many cases of abuse, and the boys (always boys) said that the priests often used Satanic rites as part of the abuse. The boys’ lawyers told them never to breathe a word of this to the papers or the courts, for fear they would be dismissed as delusory. 

The detective thought that the abusers were trying to scare the boys with Satanism. I thought the motivation was more subtle. They did unbelievable things with the boys, so that of the boys described the abuse and the accompanying rites, they would be dismissed as delusory. People don’t do such things – or do they? 

Perhaps the priests involved in Satanism were atheists and did these things just to discredit the victims and perhaps add a frisson to the abuse. Or perhaps they weren’t atheists, and really believed they were involved with evil spirits – and perhaps they were.

The decline of the Catholic Church in the United States and in Europe is apparent to anyone who looks at the statistics. The American statistics would be comparable to the far worse European ones if it were not for the influx of Hispanic, Vietnamese, and Filipino Catholics. Catholics of European descent are a vanishing race. 

The 2009 Catholic directory reported:

—There were 191,265 church-recognized marriages in the year ending Jan. 1, 2009, more than 5,000 fewer than the year before.

— Confirmations numbered more than 622,000, down about 8,500 from the previous year.

— First Communions numbered nearly 822,000, a drop of about 1,300.

— Infant baptisms totaled more than 887,000, down by almost 16,000.

— Adult baptisms and receptions into full communion totaled more than 124,000, a decline of more than 12,000 from the previous year.

This decline in sacramental practice occurred when the number of Catholics was, according to the Church directory, increasing.

The decline in some places (such as Quebec) began before Vatican II, but the years after Vatican II have seen an accelerating decline. Some blame the Council itself, saying  that the Church was doing fine and should not have changed. Others say that the failure to make enough changes is the cause of the decline. 

The proponents of more changes want the Catholic Church to follow the example of the Episcopal Church in accepting married priests, women priests, homosexual marriages, contraception, abortion, lay governance etc. But the Episcopal Church is in even steeper decline. Why should the Catholic Church not follow the same path if it adopts the same policies? 

Those who want the Church to return to 1950 point to the relative stability or success of conservative Protestant churches. But the worship of these churches is often either charismatic or media-saturated, about as far from the 1950 Tridentine mass as one can get. 

From my limited point of view, I think that the sudden and autocratic changes in Catholic life which were imposed autocratically by the Vatican on the advice of a handful of theological experts, was one source of the decline. Catholics had developed habits: the Latin mass, Marian devotions, fish on Fridays, the Baltimore Catechism. Suddenly, overnight everything was gone. It is always harder to start a new good habit, and many people just drifted away. Whatever the value of the reforms, the way they were imposed was bound to cause damage. 

In an attempt to overcome the hostile, fortress mentality that characterized Catholicism, Vatican II opened new doors to ecumenism and to a less hostile attitude to other religious and philosophies. But this was rapidly interpreted to mean indifferentism: one religion is as good as another, the differences mean little or nothing. 

The legalism that characterized 1950 Catholicism has been succeeded by antinomianism especially in sexual matters: anything that is socially acceptable goes. The Catholic Theological Society has defended about any sexual perversion that one can imagine, and lay Catholics have assimilated the message. 

Larry R. Petersen, Gregory V. Donnerwerth in “Secularization and the Influence of Religion on Beliefs about Premarital Sex” (Social Forces, Vol. 75, 1997) analyze changes in attitudes to pre-marital sex among Catholics and Protestants and conclude: 

The findings indicate that among conservative Protestants who attended church often there was no decline in support for traditional beliefs about premarital sex between 1972 and 1993. On the other hand, support for such beliefs declined significantly among mainline Protestants and Catholics at all levels of church attendance and among conservatives who were infrequent attenders. 

Secularity, or worldliness as it used to be called, is not the inevitable winner in the contest with Christianity. The Catholic Church adopted policies that allowed secularism to erode Catholic belief and practice. Some of the policies were changes that upset established routines. In addition, while continuing to maintain traditional doctrine, the hierarchy allowed corrosive ideas to circulate, and sometimes even discouraged the laity who tried to defend traditional teachings – such conservatives were seen as disruptive. Episcopal toleration extended to the advocacy and practice of pedophilia (Paul Shanley).

Apart from the bishops, the Catholic establishment in the United States (chanceries, colleges, universities, religious orders) would like to see Catholic sexual morality become a dead letter: an interesting intellectual curiosity, like the strictures against usury, that might contain a gleam of wisdom but would not usually affect the way Catholics behaved in either their public or private lives. 

Bishops are careerists and balance their need to impress the Vatican with their orthodoxy against the reality that most of the members of the Catholic Church in the United States, including the members who supposedly transmit traditional teaching, do not accept that teaching. These are the people who pay the bills and give the Catholic Church the illusion that it has an influence in the public sphere.  

Such a compromise with worldliness does not even maintain Catholic numbers. If the Catholic Church is so meaningless, why bother with it? Why get up on Sunday morning to hear third-rate music and intellectual pablum? If you take the Gospel seriously, you are more to end up in a conservative Protestant church which, for all its limitations, has not surrendered, on some key issues that affect daily life, to the world.

 This is the table for the Cincinnati Inquirer that shows the state of the Catholic Church in 1982 when he became the archbishop of Cincinnati and as it is today when he leaves it. 

Ohio is a declining state, and the small shrinkage in parishes and number of Catholics and Catholic school students is not unexpected. 

However, the decline in the number of priests, seminarians, and especially marriages shows that the level of adult commitment to Catholicism is about half what it is when he took over. The decline in marriages is especially significant. It would be interesting to see the figures for baptism and confirmation. 

Usually such massive declines have occurred only in times of extreme crisis such as the Reformation or the French Revolution. To have such a decline (and it is paralleled in other areas of North America and Europe) shows that the Catholic Church s undergoing a crisis as severe as the better known historical ones. 

Yet Pilarczyk thinks that all is basically well, at least in the areas that he controls: 

“We have to avoid the trap of equating numbers with quality. Would I be happier if we had more priests? Sure I would. But it doesn’t mean catastrophe has struck because we have fewer … Today we’ve got lay ministers and professional people working with the priests. In the old days, there was a pastor, a school principal and a maintenance man. Today, (the pastor) has a staff.” 

Pilarczyk blames “secularity” but conservative Protestant churches have shown vitality during the same period. The Gallup Poll shows that as Catholic attendance has declined, Protestant attendance has risen. 

In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying they attended in the past week. By the mid-1960s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%. By the mid-1970s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Attendance for most of the groups continued to fall from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, over the past decade it has generally stabilized, particularly among Catholics in their 20s and 30s.

Across this entire period, attendance among Catholics aged 60 and older has dropped from 73% to 58%.

But if “secularity” is the cause of this drop in Church attendance why has Protestant attendance risen? 

The picture in attendance by age is entirely different among Protestants. Apart from a temporary dip in weekly church attendance among 21- to 29-year-old Protestants in the 1960s and 1970s, attendance has stayed the same or increased among all the age groups. It even rebounded among young Protestants in the 1980s, and is now close to 1950s levels.

 Because the liberal, main-line churches are in long-term decline, this increase must be in the more conservative churches.

 Pilarczyk may have saved the finances of the archdiocese by setting aside 3 M for victims (although I estimate the life-long financial damage to each victim at 500,000 – 1,000,000) but he has not saved the heart of the church– but that is not his concern.

Commonweal has a discussion of the Vatican’s decision to place Pius XII and John Paul II on the path to canonization.

I share the concerns. Canonization is supposed to provide a role model for Catholics to follow, but how can you imitate even a good pope? For centuries almost all saints have been priests and religious, but only a vanishingly small percentage of Catholics live in those states of life.

Canonization, especially of popes, has become another exercise in clericalism, of which the Church needs far less, not more. It is the ultimate career step.

How can Pius XII’s actions during World War II be judged until the archives are opened? From my tiny bit of research around the fringes, I think he will probably come out OK - he did what little he could to save lives. He made mistakes in dealing with Hitler (who didn’t?), but Pius was not in any way sympathetic to Nazism. What he did not do, and it is a serious matter, was ac against Catholic clerics who were sympathetic to Nazism (see my case study). Pius was a good man in horrifying times. He did better than Allied leaders who turned Jews away. Whether he was heroic – only  full study of the documents from 1939 to 1945 might show that, and those are not yet available.

John Paul II, for all his virtues, was a lousy judge of character. His so-called priest friends in the chancery in Cracow betrayed him to the secret police. John Paul II recommended the abuser Maciel as a guide to youth. John Paul II refused personal appeals from a cardinal to make a statement about an abuser. Should a person whose work in the Church is administration and failed so badly in key issues be canonized?

The inimitable Bishop Milingo (APA):

Zambia’s controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who has been defrocked (dismissed) from the church’s leadership after years of controversial actions, on Friday demanded that the Vatican should pay him his pension for the years he served the church.

Maciel molested seminarians, fathered children, and stole Legion money to support them.  

The spiritual writings that he gave to the Legion to form its members turn out to have been written by someone else.

Catholic News  Agency reports:

In an effort to distance itself from the wrongdoings of its founder, the Legion of Christ has recently circulated an internal memo detailing how a long venerated work of spirituality attributed to Fr. Marcial Maciel was actually a slight re-writing of a book from a little-known Spanish author.

 

“El Salterio de mis días” (The Psalter of my Days), according to the Legionary tradition, was regarded as written by Fr. Maciel during the period of the “great blessing,” (1956-59), when the Mexican founder was submitted to a canonical process by the Vatican that was finally called off.

 

The memo now reveals that the text, very popular among the Legion in its original in Spanish and partially translated into English for internal use, was “based” on the little known work of a Spanish Catholic politician, Luis Lucía.

What begins as tragedy ends as farce

Archbishop and Mrs. Milingo

Archbishop Milingo, after years of increasingly outrageous conduct, has been defrocked, according to Catholic Word News. 

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo—the renegade African prelate who has launched a worldwide crusade for married priests, under the influence of the Korean sect figure Sun Myung Moon—has been defrocked, the Vatican announced on December 17.

Because of Milingo’s “regrettable conduct” that resulted in his canonical suspension in 2001 and later his excommunication in 2006, and because he “has shown no sign of the desired repentance,” the Vatican statement said, “the Holy See has therefore been obliged to impose upon him the further penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.”

Archbishop Milingo was suspended in 2001 after he flew to New York to participate in a mass marriage ceremony, at which Rev. Moon presided, in which he was joined to a Korean woman, Maria Sung. After being reconciled with the Church for a short time, in 2006 the African archbishop ordained four married men as bishops, without the approval of the Holy See, thus incurring automatic excommunication.

In recent months Milingo has continued ordaining bishops in illicit ceremonies. Those ceremonies demonstrate his “persistent contumacy,” the Vatican statement said, and show the need for new disciplinary action.

However, no bishops involved in the sexual abuse crisis have been so punished, not even the bishops who were abusers themselves, much less the ones, like Cardinal Law, who were enablers of abusers.

Augustine had to deal with scandals in the North African Church and with bishops who refused to discipline evil clerics. Irish Catholics are suffering both from abusers and stony-hearted bishops. 

But that grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to perish or hinder the salvation of others (The City of God 51) 

God does not desire the death of sinners but that they be converted and live - even abusers and bishops. But God also does not want them to hinder the salvation of others, and that is what they are definitely doing in Ireland.

The liturgical wars continue over the new proposed new translation.  

I have noticed that the current translation is marked by a preference for general language which obscures the biblical references. The Roman liturgy is a tissue of quotations and allusions to the Bible, and biblical language tends to be concrete rather than abstract: how beautiful are the feet of them that bring the Gospel of peace. 

In an attempt to eliminate the hated word “man” from the Scripture readings, the translators have substituted “one.” But this is at best a Briticism; Americans do not use “one” to refer to a person in general. They might say someone or anyone, or possibly man, but “one” leads the American mind to wonder “one what?” 

The current translation tends to the general: “And also with you” really grates on me, because it eliminates the reference to the spirit, a word so important in Paul’s trilogy of body, soul, and spirit. “I am not worthy to receive you” obscures the reference to the centurion, who said to Jesus “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.” “Dominus Deus Sabaoth” becomes “Lord God of power and might,” rather than the more literal and concrete ”Lord God of angelic hosts.” The reference to Malachi’s “and from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun a clean offering shall be offered to your name” is muddled in the translation “from east to west,” which changes a reference to the arc of time to a spatial reference, an important change, since the temporal reference implies that the sacramental sacrifice will endure as long as time endures – but  with the end of time, sacraments will cease. 

This pays the bills

But his heart is here

Once we were in the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal while a Bar Mitzvah of spectacular bad taste was going on. Workmen carried 12 foot models of the Oscars through the lobby. While we were waiting to talk to the concierge, we overheard the conversation between the concierge and black rapper who was the highlight of the evening’s entertainment. 

The rapper was instructing the concierge to have the town car sent around so he could escape this noise and go to the most elegant French restaurant in town after he had had a stroll through the Botanical Gardens. 

My wife informs me that Sting lives in a Scottish castle where he raise old roses. A friend of my niece’s informs me that when he was in the boys’ choir at Downside Abbey, they sang a program for Sting’s fortieth birthday: Handel and Gregorian chant.

I just purchased a CD of Spanish Renaissance songs, Luz y Norte. It came with an extra CD, Amores Pasados, which contains new songs in the style of the Spanish Renaissance, accompanied by baroque harp and viola de gamba. The composer is John Paul Jones, who played electric bass guitar for Led Zeppilin.

The New York Times has described the new cooperation between the Unites States and Mexico in combating the drug trade. What the Times (perhaps wisely) did not mention is that the narcotraficantes are popular in Mexico, at least in some areas. 

Popular Catholicism, as Arturo Vasquez reminds us in his blog Reditus, has some unusual saints. I earlier blogged about Santa Muerte, and he has a selection from Time about the veneration of Ismealito, a “holy” thug. Like many Latin countries, Venezuela suffers from violence.

Many Venezuelans have responded by entrusting themselves to a group of dead “saints” who had lived delinquent lives. Ismaelito and other santos malandros such as Petroleo Crudo (Crude Oil), El Raton (The Mouse), La Malandra Isabelita, Machera and countless others were petty criminals in the 1960s and ’70s. Most, if not all, are said to have died brutally at the hands of the police. But, like sinful ghosts trying to escape purgatory if not hell, they are all believed to have gained some form of redemption through favors and deeds attributed to them by their believers.

snip

There is no doubt in his devotees’ minds, for example, that Ismaelito, the king of the holy thugs, was a thief and one of the most wanted crooks of his time. Still, among many who knew him when he lived, he’s considered more of a Robin Hood than a criminal. In El Guarataro, a shantytown in southeastern Caracas, those who knew him remember the time he raided a meat delivery truck and shared the bounty among his neighbors

La Familia in Mexico, according to La Prensa (Buenos Aires) is following in his footsteps.

Reparte Biblias a los pobres al pie de los cerros del estado de Michoacán, prohíbe el consumo de drogas, construye escuelas y cloacas y se declara protector de mujeres y niños. Pero no es un grupo religioso: es La Familia Michoacana, la más reciente de las bandas de narcotraficantes mexicanos que ahora reina sobre el comercio de metanfetaminas del país. Lo que empezó como un grupo de autodeclarados vigilantes que hacían “la obra de Dios”, es ahora el grupo delictivo más violento de la nación.

It gives out Bibles to the poor at the foot of the hills of the state of Michoacán, It prohibits the use of drugs, it builds schools and sewers and declares itself the protector of women and children. But it is not a religious group: it is La Familia Michoacana, the most recet of the bands of Mexican drug dealers who now reign over the traffic in methamphetamines of the country. It began as a group of self-declared vigilantes who did “the work of God,” it is now the most violent criminal group of the nation

snip

No son el cártel más poderoso de México pero posiblemente sean el más brutal. El grupo se hizo famoso en septiembre de 2006 cuando arrojó cinco cabezas de humanos en una pista de baile en Uruapan con un mensaje que decía: “La Familia no mata por dinero, sólo mata a los que merecen morir”.

It is not the most powerful cartel in Mexico but it is possibly the most brutal. The group made itself famous in September 2006 when it threw five human heads on to a dance floor in Uruapan with a message that said: “La Familia does not kill for money, it only kills those who deserve to die.”

Pandilleros de día, los miembros de La Familia deben seguir un estricto código moral cuando vuelven a sus casas. Se dice que obedecen a una biblia escrita por su líder, Nazario Moreno, apodado El Loco. Suelen reclutar jóvenes en los centros de rehabilitación para alcohólicos y drogadictos, y los ayudan a vencer las adicciones y convertirse en “buenos hombres de familia”. 

Gangsters by day, the members of La Familia have to follow a strict moral code when they return home. It is said that they obey a bible written by their leader, Nazario Moreno, nicknames The Crazy. They usually recruit young men in the rehabilitation centers for alcoholics and drug addicts, and  help them overcome addictions and change themselves into “good family men.”

As Christopher Caldwell details in his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, the elites in Europe have long tried to convince the voters that there is no danger from Moslem immigration. The voters are not convinced. 

The Swiss run their country by referendum, to the horror of the elites, and the Swiss are not happy with Moslem immigration. In a surprise vote, 59% of the voters voted to forbid the construction of minarets in Switzerland, while polls had shown that 53% would reject this measure that had been proposed by “right-wing populists.” 

When they are given the chance, European voters vote against welcoming to their countries unassimilated and increasingly radicalized Moslems – which is why the elites try to make sure they are not given the chance. 

Le Figaro reports:  

Les Suisses se sont prononcés par référendum en faveur de l’interdiction de la construction de minarets, selon les sondages sortie des urnes annoncées par la télévision suisse romande (TSR). Les commentateurs de la TSR ont qualifié ces premiers résultats de “grande surprise”. Une heure après la fermeture du scrutin à midi , la TSR estimait à 59% des voix la part des votants opposés à la construction des minarets.

Une majorité des 26 cantons helvétiques serait également favorable à l’initiative de la droite populiste, permettant la modification de l’article de la constitution sur la liberté religieuse pour interdire la construction de minarets. Les commentateurs de la TSR ont qualifié ce résultat de “grande surprise” car il contredit les sondages qui prédisaient durant la campagne un rejet à 53% de la proposition de la droite populiste.

La droite populiste helvétique a donc convaincu les Suisses en accusant les minarets d’être le “symbole apparent d’une revendication politico-religieuse du pouvoir, qui remet en cause les droits fondamentaux”.

The situation was similar in the U.S. Rudy Kos in Dallas thought the hierarchy would protect him as it had protected the other molesters with whom he shared rectories. 

Brendan O’Connor in The Independent: 

It is now clear that one of the functions served by the Catholic Church in Ireland was that of a club. It was a national club for paedophiles. Clearly, for decades in Ireland, those in the know were aware that if you had certain sick inclinations, the Catholic Church was the place for you. Not only would it offer you access to little boys and girls, not only would it put you in a position of trust with gullible families, but you would also be protected if anything went wrong. So you had the physical access. And you also had reasonable cover because of the special status innocent parents and God-fearing children afforded you. This meant you were unlikely to be questioned or complained about.

But on top of all that you had a whole structure in place that would protect you at all costs, that would move you out of any situation that became dangerous for you or where anything threatened your ability to access children. You would be sent to fresh hunting grounds if there was any hint of trouble or if word got around that people should keep their kids away from you. And the icing on the cake was that this structure, this hierarchy that would protect you above all other considerations, inspired fear and awe among everyone from gardai to government. So your habit was fed and you were untouchable.

What wouldn’t a paedophile pay for a lifetime subscription to this club? No wonder the Church was a magnet for sickos. And you were surrounded by patsies in the form of good priests and good Catholics who gave your whole game a gilt-edged reputation.