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Books about the Roman Catholic Church
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HI, YOU ARE IN THE BOOK SECTION ARCHIVE. THIS SECTION REPRESENTS THE BOOKS THAT WE FORMERLY HAD AVAILABLE in PAPER FORMAT. WE ENCOURAGE ANYONE INTERESTED TO CONTACT US PRIOR TO ATTEMPTING PURCHASE. MOST OF THESE BOOKS ARE NOW ONLY AVAILABLE IN E-BOOK (PDF) FORMAT. WE HAVE MOVED TO EBOOKS (Most are INSTANT DOWNLOAD) AND ENCOURAGE ALL INTERESTED TO CONTACT US TO FIND OUT IF A PARTICULAR BOOK IS AVAILABLE IN EBOOK FORMAT. WE DO OFFER FREE EBOOKS (PDF) AND WE OFTEN ALSO HAVE SAMPLE EBOOKS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SAMPLE OUR E-BOOKS OR TO HAVE ACCESS TO SAMPLE PRIOR TO DELIVERY OF EBOOKS. KNOWLEDGE BRINGS EMPOWERMENT , WISDOM AND DISCERNMENT ----->
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The life and times of Saint Cyprian
Author Poole, George Ayliffe, 1809-1883.
Title The life and times of Saint Cyprian / by Geo. Ayliffe Poole.
Imprint London : Griffth, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 1840.
Descript 287 pages
Series Ancient and modern library of theological literature
Subject Cyprian, Saint, Bishop of Carthage.
$ 27.95
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xob-1840-St Cyprian
The lives of the popes
from the time of our Savior Jesus Christ, to the death of Paul II
Author Platina, 1421-1481.
Title The lives of the popes, from the time of our Savior Jesus Christ, to the death of Paul II, written originally in Latin and tr. into English, ed. by the Rev. W. Benham.
Imprint London, Griffith [n.d.]
Two Volumes
$ 59.95
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xob-1481-Lives of Popes(2V)
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The Jesuits, 1534-1921
The Jesuits, 1534-1921
Two Volumes
Author Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph), 1848-1925.
Title The Jesuits, 1534-1921; a history of the Society of Jesus from its foundation to the present time.
Imprint New York, Encyclopedia Pr., [1921]
Descript xvi, 937 pages in two volumes
Subject Jesuits -- History.
Two Volumes
$ 59.95
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Two Volumes
Roman Catholic Schism by Perceval
The Roman Schism illustrated from the Records
of the Early
Roman Catholic Church
by Rev. Perceval
Available Now - $ 29.95
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The Roman Catholic Church in Italy
Alexander Robertson.
Title The Roman Catholic Church in Italy / by Alexander Robertson.
Imprint London : Morgan and Scott, 1903.
281 pages
Subject Catholic Church -- Italy.
Contents An historic retrospect.--The pope.--The priest.--The church--Confession.--Monasticism.--Saints' days and Sunday.--The Bible.--Clerical education, and more.
$ 29.95
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Cramp, J. M. (John Mockett), 1796-1881.
The Council of Trent: comprising an account of the proceedings of that assembly; and illustrating the spirit and tendency of popery.
Publisher Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841. , J. M. Cramp
Descript 192 pages
Subject Council of Trent (1545-1563)
Addl auth Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Old School). Board of Publication
Council-Trent
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$ 24.95
A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences
Three Volumes
A history of auricular confession and indulgences in the Latin church / by Henry Charles Lea
Three Volumes
Lea, Henry Charles, 1825-1909.
A history of auricular confession and indulgences in the Latin church / by Henry Charles Lea.
Publisher Philadelphia : Lea Bros., 1896.
3 volumes
Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents v. 1-2. Confession and absolution -- v. 3. Indulgences.
Subject Confession -- Catholic Church -- History.
Absolution.
Penance.
Indulgences.
Catholic Church -- Discipline
$ 99.95
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The Moriscos of Spain; their conversion and expulsion
The history of popish transubstantiation
Cosin, John, 1594-1672.
The history of popish transubstantiation / by John Cosin.
Imprint London : J. Leslie, 1840.
Edition A new ed., rev. / with the authorities printed at full length ; to which is added a memoir of the author, by J. S. Brewer.
Descript xlvii, 263 pages
Subject Cosin, John, 1594-1672.
Transubstantiation.
Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references.
Alt author Brewer, J. S. (John Sherren), 1810-1879
$ 27.95
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The ecclesiastical and political history of the Popes of Rome
The ecclesiastical and political history of the Popes of Rome
Two Volumes
by Leopold von Rank
Author Ranke, Leopold von, 1795-1886.
The ecclesiastical and political history of the popes of Rome during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by Leopold Ranke. Translated from the German by Sarah Austin.
Publisher Philadelphia : Lea & Blanchard, 1841.
2 volumes
Subject Papacy -- History.
Reformation.
Church history -- 17th century.
$ 59.95 - Two Volumes
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The history of the popes during
the last four centuries
Three Volumes
by Leopold von Ranke
Author Ranke, Leopold von, 1795-1886.
The history of the popes during the last four centuries, by Leopold von Ranke; Mrs. Foster's translation revised in accordance with the latest German edition by G. R. Dennis.
Publisher London, G. Bell & sons, ltd., 1907.
Descript 3 volumes
Series York Library
Subject Papacy -- History.
Addl auth Foster, E., Mrs.
Dennis, George Ravenscroft.
$ 74.95 - THREE Volumes
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THE TWO BABYLONS
THE TWO BABYLONS
ROMAN CATHOLIC & EASTERN ORTHODOX
Worship
Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife
by The Rev. Alexander Hislop
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Distinctive Character of the Two Systems
Chapter Two
Objects of Worship
Section One - Trinity in Unity
Section Two - The Mother and Child and the Origin of the Child
Subsections 1-5 - The Child in Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Death and Deification of Child
Section Three The Mother of the Child
Chapter Three
Festivals
Section One - Christmas and Lady-day
Section Two - Easter
Section Three The Nativity of St. John
Section Four Feast of the Assumption
Chapter Four
Doctrine and Discipline
Section One Baptismal Regeneration
Section Two Justification by Works
Section Three The Sacrifice of the Mass
Section Four Extreme Unction
Section Five Purgatory and Prayers for the Dead
Chapter Five
Rites and Ceremonies
Section One Idol Processions
Section Two Relic Worship
Section Three The Clothing and Crowning of Images
Section Four The Rosary and the Worship of the Sacred Heart
Section Five Lamps and Wax Candles
Section Six The Sign of the Cross
Chapter Six
Religious Orders
Section One The Sovereign Pontiff
Section Two Priests, Monks, and Nuns
Chapter Seven
The Two Developments Historically and Prophetically Considered
Section One The Great Red Dragon
Section Two The Beast from the Sea
Section Three The Beast from the Earth
Section Four The Image of the Beast
Section Five The Name of the Beast, The Number of His Name-the Invisible Head of the Papacy
Conclusion
Appendix
Index
The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop
333 Pages -
ONLY AVAILABLE FOR FREE AND AS AN EBOOK
Accusations of History
Against the Church of Rome (Townsend)
Available Now
$ 24.95
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The church's task under the Roman empire - four lectures
Author Bigg, Charles, 1840-1908.
The church's task under the Roman empire; four lectures with preface, notes, and an excursus by Charles Bigg ...
Publisher Oxford, Clarendon press, 1905.
Descript xv, [1], 136 pages
Contents Education under the empire.--Religion under the empire. [2 lectures]--Moral and social condition of the empire.--Excursus on lecture IV.
$ 24.95
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****
Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
Jesuit juggling. Forty popish frauds detected and disclosed. By Richard Baxter, ...
Publisher New-York, Craighead & Allen; Boston, Gould, Kendall & Lincoln [etc., etc.] 1835.
Edition First American edition, with an introductory address ...
Descript xxiv, [25]-312 p. 19.5 cm.
Note First edition has title: A key for Catholicks to open the jugling of the Jesuits ... London, 1659.
Subject Jesuits -- Controversial literature.
Catholic Church -- Controversial literature -- Protestant authors.
$ 24.95
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Plain Reasons against Joining the Church of Rome: What the Bible teaches and how this compares to the Rituals & Practice of Roman Catholicism
Find out why Cardinal Newman had so many problems because of this book that he could not refute.
There are so many reasons presented in the book...we can't list them all here. Topic included
Less likelyhood in Rome of knowing God's will, No Romanism in the Old Creeds, The Roman Church Uncertain and Unscriptural, The Roman Church uncertain in Faith, The Roman Church uncertain in Sacraments, Roman Creature Worship, Roman Inconsistency in the Invocation of Saints, Proof that Catholic Image worship is Idolatry, the Church
Fathers on Image Worship, Relics, the Mass converted into the Worship of Mary, Roman Arguments for Mary-Worship, Discouragement of Bible Use, Lack of Assistance to Clergy who try to study Bible, the Church Fathers on Bible Reading, Indulgences, Indulgences destroy Devotion, Falsification(s) of the Church Fathers, Stiffling Intellect, Superstition, Amulets and Charms, Roman Penances, Roman Arguments exposed, Is the Roman Church Holy ? Is the Church of Rome Catholic ? the Historical Truth about Papal Jurisdiction, Flaws in Papal Succession and much more.
250 Pages - Available Now $ 24.95
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The Jesuits : their origin and order, morality and practices, suppression and restoration
by Alexander Duff.
Philadelphia - 1845.
Alexander Duff, 1806-1878.
2nd Edinburgh ed.
Descript 107
Subject Jesuits.
AND
History of the fall of the Jesuits in the eighteenth century
by Count Alexis de Saint-Priest
London - J. Murray, 1861.
Saint-Priest, Alexis de Guignard, comte, 1805-1851.
159 pages
Subject Jesuits -- History -- 18th century.
Jesuits & Fall of the Jesuits
Two Books in One Volume
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$ 29.95
Hidden History of the Catholic Inquisition
Devouring its Own
How a High Ranking Dominican Catholic fell victim to the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the 1840s by Giacinto Achilli, Eyewitness Survivor - @ 1851 - 350 Pages
Father Achilli,D.D, was the Head Professor of Theology
in Vatican City, and Prior of the Dominican Order. Few knew as much about the Catholic Church and its Masters as he did, when he finally escaped the Holy Inquisition in the late 1840s thanks to the Political Revolutions that took place in Italy.
Chapters include: History of my Imprisonment to the World, the Subjects in this narrative, the Inquisition in the 19th Century, the Subtlety of the Inquisition, the Jesuits, The Dominicans and my life among them, My Conversion, My Farewell to Rome, Naples, the Monks and the Neapolitans, the Monks of Naples, my Exile, the Italian Church, My Mission, the Castle of St. Angelo.
1851- 350 pages
$ 24.95
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I was a priest
by Lucien Vinet
IN 1933, Lucien Vinet was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Chuch
By 1942, Vinet came to understand the consequences of what he had done earlier, renounced the Catholic Church , and became a Protestant Pastor.
Find out why in this concise fact-filled book. It is easy to think that we can understand the issues of the Catholic Priesthood. But Vinet’s work documents the difficulties of priestly life, and its inconsistencies. Also find out about many other Catholic Priests who renounced the reality of the Catholic System and turned to the true and historic faith taught in the Bible.
Chapters in “I Was a Priest” by Vinet:
Chapter 1 – The Road to the Priesthood
Chapter 2 – Priests, Sex and Celibacy
Chapter 3 – Mass and Purgatory
Chapter 4 – the Imposture of Mass
Chapter 5 – Rome and the Marriage of Protestants
Chapter 6 – The Mental Tortures of Confession
Chapter 7 – The Roman Catholic Superstitions
Chapter 8 – Why Priests Remain in the Priesthood
Chapter 9 – Why Priests Leave the Priesthood
Chapter 10 – Rome and the Education of French Canadians
Chapter 11 – Rome and Politics
Chapter 12 – The Roman Catholic School System
Chapter 13 – Why we became Protestants
Chapter 14 – Catholicism, Communism and War
Includes pictures
145 pages - Available Now - $ 19.95
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The Papal System
From its origin to the present time
A Historical Sketch
Of every doctrine, claim and practice of the Church of Rome by
William Cathcart, DD
William Cathcart, was educated at the University of Glascow and in Yorkshire, England. He came to the USA in 1853 and became President of the American Baptist Historical Society
This is one of the most complete works on the Roman Catholic Papal System.
Here are the comprehensive Table of Contents:
The Ancient British Church
Planting the Gospel in England, persecutions of the Anglo-Saxons, landing of Augustine, Augustine meets some the Ancient British Christians, they reject his demands, ...the papacy finally [after 8 centuries] crushes opposition in England.
The Popes have No Power in the Irish Church for Many Centuries After Christ
Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick, His Call to preach in Ireland, no connection to Rome, St. Patrick invents the Irish Alphabet, his Bible Christianity, St Columba and his Bible, Irish Monasteries are Bible Schools, They Reject the Pope, Bishop Dagan refuses to east with a Popish missionary, Irish missionaries in France and Germany, the English powers bring the Irish into harmony with the Pope.
The Ancient Scottish Church
The Missionary (& author) Nenius, Columba, Apostle of Scotland, the Scottish clergy love the Scriptures, the Scotish clergy refuse to practice Roman Catholic customs, King Naitan, in the 8th century, sells out his countrymen to Rome
The Church Councils for Seven Centuries Repudiate Papal Jurisdiction
The Council of Nice(Nicea), the Council of Sardica, Council of Constantinople, the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, the Fifth General Council at Constantinople, Another Council in Constantinople in 692, Bishops and Presbyters the same people, the Equality of all Bishops,
How the Pope became Sovereign of All Catholic Church
Pope Leo the Great subverts the Council of Chaldedon, The Keys, Binding and Loosing,
The Pope Claims to be Lord of Kings and Governments
Pope Adrian gives Ireland to Henry II, Pope Innocent excommunicates King John, Pope Innocent Nulifies the Great historical document the Magna Charta, Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII and declares his throne vacant, Pius V deposes Queen Elizabeth, the Pope above all Kings, Pope Innocent IV deposes the Emperor Frederick II...
The Council of Trent
The Causes leading to call the Council, the Authorities quoted, Position of the Pope at the Council, “Sacred” Bribes, the bishops, ...
Baptism
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, Candidates for Baptism in the Early Church, Ceremonies after Baptism, Chrism in the water, Baptism of Heretics, Baptism and Salvation, Protestant Children baptized in Catholic Churches.
Confirmation
Beginnings of Confirmation, Tertullian, Basil, the Greek Church, Modern Catholic Confirmations, the form of words used,...
The Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist & The Mass
The Lord’s Supper, Communion from the 2nd to the 6th Century, the Offering, the Eucharist carried home, Ministers send it to each other, no adoration of the Eucharist, the communicants, the dying and the dead, the Greek Church, Pope Innocent, Pope Gelasius, decree of Trent, Consubstantiation, the name Transubstantiation, Historic church fathers and their position, the mass worshipped, commemoration of the wheat deity, Half Communion after Constance, The words which change the elements, the mass a novelty (new invention), the Protestant side, ...
The Confessional
Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Theodosius, etc. Different classes of Penitents, Confessional in the Middle Ages, Auricular Confession established, the priest truly absolves, Secrecy, Catholic Prayer Books, the Scriptures...
Extreme Unction
The Greek Church anoints to restore, Jonas of Orleans, Council of Chalons, Unction from the 9th century, adopted at the Council of Florence, the parts annointed, the Ceremonies in applying the unction...
The Sacrament of Holy Orders
Bishops, Presbyters & Deacons, Metropolitans, Patriarchs, decree of Trent, Tonsure, the Ancient Scottish, the Tiara, the Keys, Official Garments (clothing) of the Clergy,...
The Celibacy of the Clergy
No authority from Christ, clergy married in second century and in the third century. Stigma attached to marriage of clergy in 4th century. The Council of Nice (Nicea) many married bishops, The Council of Carthage, the Council of Ireland, Gregory VII attacks the marriage of priests, Marriage among the clergy in the 16th Century, the Council of Trent. The Pope and the Greek married clergy at the Council of Florence,...
Purgatory
Nowhere in the Early Church, praying for the dead in the end of the Second Century, Bede’s purgatory, King Charles, the dread of Purgatory, the Greek Purgatory, Masses, ...
The Inquisition
Aims & Laws of the Inquisition, no Charge ever Exhibited to the Prisoner, Sentence of the Inquisition not known until the day of execution, all those under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition must accuse someone else, All property seized when the Inquisition accuses someone of heresy, Insufficient evidence to convict results in torture,
Auto da Fe in Portugal, Inquisition in Rome in 1848, Only Rome had an Inquisition, Victims seized at night...
The Scriptures
The Bible & the books in it, Josephus, Melito of Sardis, the Clergy hate the Bible, the Council of Toulouse, Bible of Wycliffe, Counilc of Trent, Heretical Declarations of the Council, the Vulgate, Catholic Bible in ordinary languages forbidden, ...
The Four Founders of Monkish Institutions
Celibacy, Antony, Benedict founds 12 Abbeys, St. Dominic, the Inquisition as the favorite invention of the dominicans, St Fancis, ...
The Jesuits
Life of Loyola, Loyola and Our Lady of Montserrat, his only written work, laws for the order of the Jesuits, the Jesuits in European countries, Clement XIV, Pius VII,...
Conclusion
Index
The Papal System by William Cathcart, DD
Available Now
@ 1872 – 478 Pages - includes index $ 34.95
More of our Books on Catholicism & the Roman Catholic Church
The Secret History of the Oxford Movement: The Proof that the Catholic Church is attempting to take over the Church of England by Walter Walsh
Did Archbishop Newman decide to sell out the church of England, in order to lead her into the Church of Rome ? Find out what happened at Oxford University ! Find out
About the secret plans of the Catholic Collaborators who worked hard
To corrupt the Protestant Church of England, change its doctrine, and seduce its leaders. If you think that the days of intrigues and Deception by the Catholic Church are over, then this book is for you. More proof than you’ve seen in a lifetime !
Find out about the Secret Order of St. John the Divine, the Catholic Tractarian Movement, Ritualistic Convents as Jails, the Eucharistic Adoration, the Pagan Origins of the Convents, the secret wire-pullers of the Ritualistic Movement, the Society of the Holy Cross and their petition for reunion with Rome – signed by 1212 clergymen of the English (Anglican/Episcopalian) Church,
And much much more
More than 400 pages/Written in 1898/Find out and Understand
How their plans Have come true and the great progress that the Church of Rome has made among Protestant Denominations.
Secret History of the Oxford Movement
400+ Pages – Available Now
$ 34.95
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1836
Thoughts on Popery: The Roman Catholic Church Examined in the Light of Scripture and History
by William Nevins, D.D.
Topics Include
The Source of Heresies, Private Interpretations, Popery Unscriptural, the Nine Commandments, Hostility to the Bible, Mortal and Venial Sins, the Deadly Sins, A Religion without a Holy Spirit, Infallibility, the Keys, the Head of the Church, the Power to Forgive Sins, the Pope as an Idolater, Praying to Saints, Image Worship, Relics, Seven Sacraments, Transubstantiation, Extreme Unction, Penance, the Mass, the Host, the Clergy, Auricular Confession, Purgatory, Canonizing Saints, and more.
216 Pages - Available Now - $ 19.95
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The Council of Constance to the death of
John Hus
being the Ford lectures delivered in the University of Oxford in Lent term, 1900, by James Hamilton Wylie.
London - Longmans & Green, 1900.
200 Pages
The Ford lectures ; 1900.
Council of Constance (1414-1418) & the True beginnings of the Reformation
Jon Huss 1369-1415.
Council of Const (Wylie)
AND
The reformers before the Reformation : the fifteenth century : John Huss and the Council of Constance
by de Bonnechose, (1801-1875)
The reformers before the Reformation : the fifteenth century : John Huss and the Council of Constance by Emile de Bonnechose ; translated by Campbell MacKenzie.
200 pages
"An introduction to D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation.
Reprint of the 1844 ed.
Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references.
Subject Hus, Jan, 1369-1415.
Christian biography -- Czechoslovakia.
Council of Constance (1414-1418)
Two Books in One Volume
Council of Const (Wylie) & Reform (2)
$ 29.95
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quarta-feira, 28 de novembro de 2007
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/aet_1/Lawson.htm
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
INAUGURAL ISSUE - AUGUST 2003
ISSN 1448 - 6326
VATICAN II IN HOPE AND MEMORY
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
Veronica Lawson RSM
ABSTRACT
This paper is a contribution to the opening session of a conference that looks back ‘in memory’ on the 40 years since Vatican II and looks forward to the future in hope. It offers a reflection on memory in this context and then addresses the invitation to look back under the rubric of power: the unquestionable power of Vatican II and the structures of power that have functioned to release or to constrain the power of that event. The discussion focuses on three key features of the Council: 1) the church as the people of God; 2) the biblical renewal; and 3) the church’s new engagement with the world. The conclusion reflects on the sources for hope and the sense in which we can speak of hope 40 years after the opening of Vatican II.
INTRODUCTION
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without… (T.S. Eliot, The Rock). T.S. Eliot wrote these words in a rather different context from ours. There is a nonetheless a sense in which they speak to our experience of Church over the past forty years. Many of us grew to adulthood in a church that was forever wary of attack from without- real or imaginary. We live now in a Church that is beginning to notice and to address the signs of decaying within. Eliot’s architectural metaphor with its Pauline echoes still has power even if the metaphor’s referent has undergone a momentous change. For most Catholics, the catalyst for change was Vatican II.
This session is about Vatican II in memory and history. It is an invitation to look back, but to look back in hope since the conference as a whole is about hope and memory. First, I offer a word about memory in this context. I then address the invitation to look back under the rubric of power: the unquestionable power of Vatican II and the structures of power that have functioned to release or to constrain that power. The topic is vast and the time is short. I focus therefore on what I consider to be three key features of Vatican II: 1) the church as the people of God; 2) the biblical renewal; and 3) the church’s new engagement with the world. Finally, I ask about the sources for hope and the sense in which we can speak of hope 40 years after the opening of Vatican II. The nuances of some of the issues raised will have to be addressed in other sessions, as this time allows only for a ‘broad-sweep’ treatment.
MEMORY
Every worshipping Christian knows that memory is an integral part of our heritage: the rituals at the heart of our Christian tradition are based on the deep conviction that all the power of the originating event is present in the act of re-membering, in the re-telling of the communal story. Our Eucharistic celebration is in a very real sense a story-telling event, a time of re-membering, and this is true not only of the liturgy of the word but also of the liturgy of the Eucharist (On the night before he died…). For the richness of this aspect of our tradition, as for so much else, we are indebted to our Jewish sisters and brothers. In this conference, we rightly remember the event that was Vatican II, and in the remembering, the re-telling, we access once again some of the power of that event. The analogy with the Eucharistic celebration, like all analogies, falls short, but is nonetheless valid, for those of us who speak tonight have been shaped and are still being shaped by the power that was released in that event.
Our remembering, or mine at least, is tinged with a degree of disappointment that much of the promise of Vatican II is yet to be realised. Our re-membering is likewise tempered by the recognition that memory is a two-edged sword. Looking back and remembering, we see those who found the changes that came with Vatican II to be frightening, even overwhelming: some are no longer part of any church; others have found membership in other churches; yet others put their energies into minimising if not attempting to neutralise the effects of Vatican II. We also tap into the pain of those who have not been heard during this period of our history, the pain of those who have gone unnoticed or been discounted, and of those whose experience of the church is one of dealing with the effects of serious and scandalous abuse. Few would deny that we live in a time of crisis. If we were without hope for the future of the church, however, I suspect we would not be here. More of what informs the hope that is mine should emerge by the end of this session.
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
A. The Church as the People of God (Lumen Gentium).
My sense is that the most significant insight of Vatican II was the recognition that the church is the people of God.
All those who in faith look towards Jesus, the author of salvation and the principle of unity and peace, God has gathered together and established as the Church, that it may be for each and everyone the visible sacrament of this saving unity. Destined to extend to all regions of the earth, it enters into human history, though it transcends at once all times and all racial boundaries.’ LG 9
LG does not fail to reiterate the teaching of almost two millenia on the hierarchical nature of the church, but it resituates that teaching, addressing in the first instance the mystery of the church and then the church as the People of God. The power of Vatican II for many Catholics was in the recognition that all the baptised are indeed ‘the church’. I quote the words of Jane, a contemporary of mine who was a student at Melbourne University in the mid-sixties:
I was not a nun and I couldn’t be a priest, so there was nothing special about me as a Catholic. Then, with all the hype about Vatican II in the media and in the air, there was so much hope and some pride in being Catholic, and that was new. Now, for the first time I thought of myself as the church and of myself as someone who could make a contribution to what the church was on about, beyond simply being constrained by the restrictive teachings of a pope and bishops somewhere up there. That may seem trivial but it was very real for me. We got involved in ways we had never done before. We thought less about saving our individual souls and began to think about the communal dimensions of church and about our responsibilities to the wider community.
My friend Jane who looked back on the power of Vatican II and reflected in these terms has taught in government and Catholic schools, and has had opportunities for some formal study of theology. Together with her husband and three children, she has maintained quite active links with parish although she sometimes wonders why she ‘hangs in there’. She reflects further:
The disillusionment set in quite quickly. The first sign of erosion [of the notion that the church was the people of God] was Humanae Vitae. I have to admit there was much that was good in that document which we studied in our little home group. The problem for me was that the listening seemed to have stopped almost before it began. In retrospect, I think this had something to do with the vision of John XXIII and the caution of Paul VI. Things are different now. Before Vatican II, it was not easy to be a Catholic, but I was never ashamed of my faith. Now there are times when I have to say I dread meeting some of my disaffected friends who draw my attention to yet another Church scandal exposed in the media.
Jane’s perception was that ‘the listening seemed to have stopped.’ The example she uses is the encyclical Humanae Vitae and the processes around its appearance. I want to suggest that it may not have been so much the ‘listening’ in this and other instances as ‘the capacity to hear’ on the part of those with the authority to effect change and to sustain the vision expressed in LG. The result is that when Catholics use the word Church today they are invariably imaging the pope and/or the bishops and/or the ordained clergy, more frequently the former than the latter. While some are taking their power as ‘church’, most of those who have stayed around to reflect on the issue do not see themselves included themselves in any significant way.
With some slight modifications, the structures of power function as they have for centuries: decisions are made and are seen to be made by ‘the hierarchy’ while the role of all other baptised Catholics is to comply, usually without question. In other words, the structures of power in the church frequently function as domination, not as ‘power with’ in the spirit of the gospel. Inappropriate exercise of power and lack of transparency has created a climate of distrust and loss of cohesion. If the ecclesiology of Vatican II is to be fully received, then the structures of power must change. To my mind, this will happen if we work together towards an understanding of authority that is grounded more in prophetic leadership than in ‘position’, and exercised more in gospel justice, respect, and openness than in control. Transparent processes need to replace the all too pervasive climate of secrecy and cover-up. Such processes would not in any way diminish the legitimate exercise of papal and episcopal authority, but would rather enhance it.
Some steps have been taken in this direction to deal with issues of sexual abuse by clergy and other church personnel. There is need to develop processes that are more open and just to deal with this and other issues (1). A situation of particular urgency concerns challenges to orthodoxy in teaching. Allegations frequently come from those who have had difficulty with the changing culture of the post-Vatican church. Some allegations are heard and acted upon without due process. The identity of the accuser and judge can be protected while the accused is condemned without trial and often without explanation. Not to address such questions about the malfunctioning of the structures of power in our church is to risk a growing contempt for power and authority, further ecclesial alienation, and an identification of ‘church’ with ‘hierarchy’ (2) . ‘The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within….’
B. Biblical Renewal
Another power-filled feature of Vatican II was the implicit authorisation it gave to the popular biblical renewal that had been gaining momentum over the two decades since Divino Afflante Spiritu. As one of my Mercy sisters expressed it, “The opening up of the bible to Catholics has been the most momentous and formative change in the post-Vatican church.” This has been my own experience.
In those heady days of the Vietnam moratorium and student demonstrations, I was being introduced to critical biblical scholarship by the professors from the Redemptorist studentate in Wendouree. There was no question of formal qualifications for such studies, simply the satisfaction of a thirst to move more deeply into the mysteries of the word of God. I learned my Greek and Hebrew verbs and vocabulary while the boarders at St Martin’s in the Pines, Mt Clear, ate their breakfast. The 150 Year 11 and 12 boarders had less need of meal supervision than I had of those languages, though I was not to know where that informal study would lead me over the subsequent decades. None of the formal studies in theology and scripture and the ministry of the word that followed would have been possible for me as a woman in the church without the impetus that Vatican II gave to the study of the bible (to a large extent a formalising of developments since Divino Afflante Spiritu appeared in 1943) and to the opening up of religious life (although that is another question beyond the scope of this paper).
In the late seventies and into the eighties, parish bible study groups using programs that were informed by serious scholarship nourished the lives of church communities across the globe. Lay Catholics became increasingly more biblically literate. In the scholarly world, old borders were breached and boundaries were crossed in the field of biblical interpretation and in its engagement with other disciplines (3). Catholics, including lay Catholics, had a freedom to participate in this movement in ways that were unthinkable in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Since the first paper scheduled for tomorrow morning addresses the question of Vatican II and the biblical renewal from two perspectives, I am restricting my contribution to these few comments on the power of that movement as I have experienced it, a power that has for the most part been sustained and expanded to an astonishing degree by the structures of power.
C. Hearing the joys and the hopes …of the people of this age.
I turn now to a third feature of Vatican II, the church’s engagement with the world and the recognition of the action of God’s Spirit in the world. The opening paragraph of Gaudium et Spes expressed a new vision and a new hope:
The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ (GS 1).
When that statement was published in December 1965, I for one had only just learned that the indigenous people of Australia were not even counted in the census. I remember my response to the GS statement. I thought that the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age were my griefs and anxieties. Along with the vast majority of my contemporaries in this country I had little idea of the situation in my own land let alone that of the people of this age.
In his 1998 verse novel Freddy Neptune, Les Murray presents a hero struggling with the question of those he must forgive if he is to get a heart (4). Freddy answers his own questioning: ‘Forgive the aborigines. What have I got to forgive? They never hurt me.’ He finds his answer: ‘For being on our conscience….’ But there’s more: ‘Forgive the Jews, my self said…. Forgive women….all women, it said.’ The irony is palpable. Perhaps the aborigines, the Jews, and all the women were on the consciences of some in the immediate aftermath of Vatican II. They were certainly not on our collective conscience, any more than the ailing earth was on our minds. In recent decades, the rights of indigeneous peoples have been espoused by church leadership in this country and globally. Acceptance of such leadership has been mixed. There is still much to be learnt and the learning will only happen if we stop to listen and to hear.
‘Forgive the Jews!’ The irony is almost too heavy to bear. Vatican II re-articulated the relationship between Christianity and Judaism in terms that were more respectful than had been the case in the past. The prevailing ecclesial wisdom of the time was nonetheless successionist in its attitudes to Judaism. Recognition of the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewishness of the reign of God movement in its beginnings was to dawn only gradually on Christian consciousness in the final decades of the 20th century. We are still struggling to coming to terms with its implications.
‘Forgive women…all women,’ says Freddy, with the same dramatic irony. Expressions of the women’s movement that emerged in the sixties were considered mildly embarrassing at best in church circles and dangerous at worst. In a recently published study of women, the papacy and social justice, Camille Paul has demonstrated that papal statements about women are consistently informed by an outdated anthropology that affirms the male as the standard of humanity and the female as the other (5). Women are depicted in church documents primarily as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. Even women religious are spiritual mothers. Terms like complementarity and equal but different serve to reinforce the otherness of women in relation to the male norm. Paul concludes her study with the words:
[I]f the church is to be relevant to women in the twenty-first century, then the theological anthropology concerning women, their ‘nature,’ and their limited role in human affairs-a religious anthropology propounded by a handful of influential men, and belonging to the same category as belief in a flat earth-must, in the name of justice, be abandoned. It is imperative that the full and equal personhood of both men and women, with accompanying rights and dignity, be acknowledged … for true social justice to be preached to the world (6).
The story of women in the post-Vatican church is a story of two steps forward and one step back. There is no denying the power of the data that emerged from the inquiry into the participation of women in the Australian Catholic church. It is probably too soon to know whether or not the structures established to address the findings of that inquiry will facilitate a significant way forward. The constraints imposed by papal teaching on the place of women in the church can only function as a powerful deterrent to any substantive change.
Church leaders have often condemned the manipulations of what John Pilger calls ‘the new rulers of the world’ (7). Church leadership has frequently facilitated a common voice for many of the suffering peoples of our world (refugees, asylum seekers, victims of war and oppressive regimes, those experiencing hunger and starvation). In this country, through the most recent Social Justice Statement, it has appealed to us all to hear the cries of the suffering earth and to learn from our indigenous sisters and brothers new ways of relating to the earth (8).
That same leadership has not, however, been as attentive as it might have been to the ways in which the structures of the Church oppress its members. The hopes and anxieties of those on the edge of the church community, and of those it has alienated, must become the hopes and anxieties of church leadership and church membership at every level. For this to happen, we need to open the channels of communication and make known to each other our hopes, our joys, our fears, and our anxieties. We need to listen and, more importantly, we need to expand our capacities to hear and to respond.
CONCLUSION
And so I return to T.S. Eliot: “Where is the Life we have lost in living?” asks the Chorus in the opening lines of The Rock. There was life and life-giving power in Vatican II. Its vision of the Church as the people of God brought hope to those within. The biblical renewal opened the Word to its members and created new bonds with the Jewish community and with other Christian Churches. A new openness to the world created a new consciousness and initiated a process towards healing the hurts of centuries. The Life and the power of Vatican II will not be ‘lost in living’ if ecclesial structures of power and church members can learn to function in a spirit of openness and mutual respect for the full humanity of every person and for the sacredness of life in all its manifestations. ‘The Church must be forever building [bridges]…’ if it is to become what it is.
REFERENCES
1. William J. Bausch, Breaking Trust: A Priest Looks at the Scandal of Sexual Abuse (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2002), passim.
2. See comments of Dominican Thomas Doyle reported in Chuck Colbert, ‘Church in Crisis: 4,000 Meet to Give Laity a Voice,’ National Catholic Reporter Cover Story. http://www.natcath.org/crisis/080202a.htm. Accessed 011002.
3. See, for instance, Martin O’Kane, Borders, Boundaries and the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 1-4.
4. Les Murray, Freddy Neptune (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998), 264
5. Camille Paul, Equal or Different? Women, the Papacy and Social Justice (Mulgrave: John Garrett, 1999).
6. Paul, Equal or Different, 148-149.
7. John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002), 1-14.
8. Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, ‘A New Earth: The Environmental Challenge,’ in Australian Catholics (Spring 2002).
Dr. Veronica Lawson is a Sister of Mercy and Senior Lecturer in Theology at Aquinas Campus of Australian Catholic University, Ballarat. She lectures in biblical studies, feminist interpretation, and women and the church.
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
INAUGURAL ISSUE - AUGUST 2003
ISSN 1448 - 6326
VATICAN II IN HOPE AND MEMORY
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
Veronica Lawson RSM
ABSTRACT
This paper is a contribution to the opening session of a conference that looks back ‘in memory’ on the 40 years since Vatican II and looks forward to the future in hope. It offers a reflection on memory in this context and then addresses the invitation to look back under the rubric of power: the unquestionable power of Vatican II and the structures of power that have functioned to release or to constrain the power of that event. The discussion focuses on three key features of the Council: 1) the church as the people of God; 2) the biblical renewal; and 3) the church’s new engagement with the world. The conclusion reflects on the sources for hope and the sense in which we can speak of hope 40 years after the opening of Vatican II.
INTRODUCTION
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without… (T.S. Eliot, The Rock). T.S. Eliot wrote these words in a rather different context from ours. There is a nonetheless a sense in which they speak to our experience of Church over the past forty years. Many of us grew to adulthood in a church that was forever wary of attack from without- real or imaginary. We live now in a Church that is beginning to notice and to address the signs of decaying within. Eliot’s architectural metaphor with its Pauline echoes still has power even if the metaphor’s referent has undergone a momentous change. For most Catholics, the catalyst for change was Vatican II.
This session is about Vatican II in memory and history. It is an invitation to look back, but to look back in hope since the conference as a whole is about hope and memory. First, I offer a word about memory in this context. I then address the invitation to look back under the rubric of power: the unquestionable power of Vatican II and the structures of power that have functioned to release or to constrain that power. The topic is vast and the time is short. I focus therefore on what I consider to be three key features of Vatican II: 1) the church as the people of God; 2) the biblical renewal; and 3) the church’s new engagement with the world. Finally, I ask about the sources for hope and the sense in which we can speak of hope 40 years after the opening of Vatican II. The nuances of some of the issues raised will have to be addressed in other sessions, as this time allows only for a ‘broad-sweep’ treatment.
MEMORY
Every worshipping Christian knows that memory is an integral part of our heritage: the rituals at the heart of our Christian tradition are based on the deep conviction that all the power of the originating event is present in the act of re-membering, in the re-telling of the communal story. Our Eucharistic celebration is in a very real sense a story-telling event, a time of re-membering, and this is true not only of the liturgy of the word but also of the liturgy of the Eucharist (On the night before he died…). For the richness of this aspect of our tradition, as for so much else, we are indebted to our Jewish sisters and brothers. In this conference, we rightly remember the event that was Vatican II, and in the remembering, the re-telling, we access once again some of the power of that event. The analogy with the Eucharistic celebration, like all analogies, falls short, but is nonetheless valid, for those of us who speak tonight have been shaped and are still being shaped by the power that was released in that event.
Our remembering, or mine at least, is tinged with a degree of disappointment that much of the promise of Vatican II is yet to be realised. Our re-membering is likewise tempered by the recognition that memory is a two-edged sword. Looking back and remembering, we see those who found the changes that came with Vatican II to be frightening, even overwhelming: some are no longer part of any church; others have found membership in other churches; yet others put their energies into minimising if not attempting to neutralise the effects of Vatican II. We also tap into the pain of those who have not been heard during this period of our history, the pain of those who have gone unnoticed or been discounted, and of those whose experience of the church is one of dealing with the effects of serious and scandalous abuse. Few would deny that we live in a time of crisis. If we were without hope for the future of the church, however, I suspect we would not be here. More of what informs the hope that is mine should emerge by the end of this session.
THE POWER OF VATICAN II AND THE STRUCTURES OF POWER
A. The Church as the People of God (Lumen Gentium).
My sense is that the most significant insight of Vatican II was the recognition that the church is the people of God.
All those who in faith look towards Jesus, the author of salvation and the principle of unity and peace, God has gathered together and established as the Church, that it may be for each and everyone the visible sacrament of this saving unity. Destined to extend to all regions of the earth, it enters into human history, though it transcends at once all times and all racial boundaries.’ LG 9
LG does not fail to reiterate the teaching of almost two millenia on the hierarchical nature of the church, but it resituates that teaching, addressing in the first instance the mystery of the church and then the church as the People of God. The power of Vatican II for many Catholics was in the recognition that all the baptised are indeed ‘the church’. I quote the words of Jane, a contemporary of mine who was a student at Melbourne University in the mid-sixties:
I was not a nun and I couldn’t be a priest, so there was nothing special about me as a Catholic. Then, with all the hype about Vatican II in the media and in the air, there was so much hope and some pride in being Catholic, and that was new. Now, for the first time I thought of myself as the church and of myself as someone who could make a contribution to what the church was on about, beyond simply being constrained by the restrictive teachings of a pope and bishops somewhere up there. That may seem trivial but it was very real for me. We got involved in ways we had never done before. We thought less about saving our individual souls and began to think about the communal dimensions of church and about our responsibilities to the wider community.
My friend Jane who looked back on the power of Vatican II and reflected in these terms has taught in government and Catholic schools, and has had opportunities for some formal study of theology. Together with her husband and three children, she has maintained quite active links with parish although she sometimes wonders why she ‘hangs in there’. She reflects further:
The disillusionment set in quite quickly. The first sign of erosion [of the notion that the church was the people of God] was Humanae Vitae. I have to admit there was much that was good in that document which we studied in our little home group. The problem for me was that the listening seemed to have stopped almost before it began. In retrospect, I think this had something to do with the vision of John XXIII and the caution of Paul VI. Things are different now. Before Vatican II, it was not easy to be a Catholic, but I was never ashamed of my faith. Now there are times when I have to say I dread meeting some of my disaffected friends who draw my attention to yet another Church scandal exposed in the media.
Jane’s perception was that ‘the listening seemed to have stopped.’ The example she uses is the encyclical Humanae Vitae and the processes around its appearance. I want to suggest that it may not have been so much the ‘listening’ in this and other instances as ‘the capacity to hear’ on the part of those with the authority to effect change and to sustain the vision expressed in LG. The result is that when Catholics use the word Church today they are invariably imaging the pope and/or the bishops and/or the ordained clergy, more frequently the former than the latter. While some are taking their power as ‘church’, most of those who have stayed around to reflect on the issue do not see themselves included themselves in any significant way.
With some slight modifications, the structures of power function as they have for centuries: decisions are made and are seen to be made by ‘the hierarchy’ while the role of all other baptised Catholics is to comply, usually without question. In other words, the structures of power in the church frequently function as domination, not as ‘power with’ in the spirit of the gospel. Inappropriate exercise of power and lack of transparency has created a climate of distrust and loss of cohesion. If the ecclesiology of Vatican II is to be fully received, then the structures of power must change. To my mind, this will happen if we work together towards an understanding of authority that is grounded more in prophetic leadership than in ‘position’, and exercised more in gospel justice, respect, and openness than in control. Transparent processes need to replace the all too pervasive climate of secrecy and cover-up. Such processes would not in any way diminish the legitimate exercise of papal and episcopal authority, but would rather enhance it.
Some steps have been taken in this direction to deal with issues of sexual abuse by clergy and other church personnel. There is need to develop processes that are more open and just to deal with this and other issues (1). A situation of particular urgency concerns challenges to orthodoxy in teaching. Allegations frequently come from those who have had difficulty with the changing culture of the post-Vatican church. Some allegations are heard and acted upon without due process. The identity of the accuser and judge can be protected while the accused is condemned without trial and often without explanation. Not to address such questions about the malfunctioning of the structures of power in our church is to risk a growing contempt for power and authority, further ecclesial alienation, and an identification of ‘church’ with ‘hierarchy’ (2) . ‘The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within….’
B. Biblical Renewal
Another power-filled feature of Vatican II was the implicit authorisation it gave to the popular biblical renewal that had been gaining momentum over the two decades since Divino Afflante Spiritu. As one of my Mercy sisters expressed it, “The opening up of the bible to Catholics has been the most momentous and formative change in the post-Vatican church.” This has been my own experience.
In those heady days of the Vietnam moratorium and student demonstrations, I was being introduced to critical biblical scholarship by the professors from the Redemptorist studentate in Wendouree. There was no question of formal qualifications for such studies, simply the satisfaction of a thirst to move more deeply into the mysteries of the word of God. I learned my Greek and Hebrew verbs and vocabulary while the boarders at St Martin’s in the Pines, Mt Clear, ate their breakfast. The 150 Year 11 and 12 boarders had less need of meal supervision than I had of those languages, though I was not to know where that informal study would lead me over the subsequent decades. None of the formal studies in theology and scripture and the ministry of the word that followed would have been possible for me as a woman in the church without the impetus that Vatican II gave to the study of the bible (to a large extent a formalising of developments since Divino Afflante Spiritu appeared in 1943) and to the opening up of religious life (although that is another question beyond the scope of this paper).
In the late seventies and into the eighties, parish bible study groups using programs that were informed by serious scholarship nourished the lives of church communities across the globe. Lay Catholics became increasingly more biblically literate. In the scholarly world, old borders were breached and boundaries were crossed in the field of biblical interpretation and in its engagement with other disciplines (3). Catholics, including lay Catholics, had a freedom to participate in this movement in ways that were unthinkable in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Since the first paper scheduled for tomorrow morning addresses the question of Vatican II and the biblical renewal from two perspectives, I am restricting my contribution to these few comments on the power of that movement as I have experienced it, a power that has for the most part been sustained and expanded to an astonishing degree by the structures of power.
C. Hearing the joys and the hopes …of the people of this age.
I turn now to a third feature of Vatican II, the church’s engagement with the world and the recognition of the action of God’s Spirit in the world. The opening paragraph of Gaudium et Spes expressed a new vision and a new hope:
The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ (GS 1).
When that statement was published in December 1965, I for one had only just learned that the indigenous people of Australia were not even counted in the census. I remember my response to the GS statement. I thought that the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age were my griefs and anxieties. Along with the vast majority of my contemporaries in this country I had little idea of the situation in my own land let alone that of the people of this age.
In his 1998 verse novel Freddy Neptune, Les Murray presents a hero struggling with the question of those he must forgive if he is to get a heart (4). Freddy answers his own questioning: ‘Forgive the aborigines. What have I got to forgive? They never hurt me.’ He finds his answer: ‘For being on our conscience….’ But there’s more: ‘Forgive the Jews, my self said…. Forgive women….all women, it said.’ The irony is palpable. Perhaps the aborigines, the Jews, and all the women were on the consciences of some in the immediate aftermath of Vatican II. They were certainly not on our collective conscience, any more than the ailing earth was on our minds. In recent decades, the rights of indigeneous peoples have been espoused by church leadership in this country and globally. Acceptance of such leadership has been mixed. There is still much to be learnt and the learning will only happen if we stop to listen and to hear.
‘Forgive the Jews!’ The irony is almost too heavy to bear. Vatican II re-articulated the relationship between Christianity and Judaism in terms that were more respectful than had been the case in the past. The prevailing ecclesial wisdom of the time was nonetheless successionist in its attitudes to Judaism. Recognition of the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewishness of the reign of God movement in its beginnings was to dawn only gradually on Christian consciousness in the final decades of the 20th century. We are still struggling to coming to terms with its implications.
‘Forgive women…all women,’ says Freddy, with the same dramatic irony. Expressions of the women’s movement that emerged in the sixties were considered mildly embarrassing at best in church circles and dangerous at worst. In a recently published study of women, the papacy and social justice, Camille Paul has demonstrated that papal statements about women are consistently informed by an outdated anthropology that affirms the male as the standard of humanity and the female as the other (5). Women are depicted in church documents primarily as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. Even women religious are spiritual mothers. Terms like complementarity and equal but different serve to reinforce the otherness of women in relation to the male norm. Paul concludes her study with the words:
[I]f the church is to be relevant to women in the twenty-first century, then the theological anthropology concerning women, their ‘nature,’ and their limited role in human affairs-a religious anthropology propounded by a handful of influential men, and belonging to the same category as belief in a flat earth-must, in the name of justice, be abandoned. It is imperative that the full and equal personhood of both men and women, with accompanying rights and dignity, be acknowledged … for true social justice to be preached to the world (6).
The story of women in the post-Vatican church is a story of two steps forward and one step back. There is no denying the power of the data that emerged from the inquiry into the participation of women in the Australian Catholic church. It is probably too soon to know whether or not the structures established to address the findings of that inquiry will facilitate a significant way forward. The constraints imposed by papal teaching on the place of women in the church can only function as a powerful deterrent to any substantive change.
Church leaders have often condemned the manipulations of what John Pilger calls ‘the new rulers of the world’ (7). Church leadership has frequently facilitated a common voice for many of the suffering peoples of our world (refugees, asylum seekers, victims of war and oppressive regimes, those experiencing hunger and starvation). In this country, through the most recent Social Justice Statement, it has appealed to us all to hear the cries of the suffering earth and to learn from our indigenous sisters and brothers new ways of relating to the earth (8).
That same leadership has not, however, been as attentive as it might have been to the ways in which the structures of the Church oppress its members. The hopes and anxieties of those on the edge of the church community, and of those it has alienated, must become the hopes and anxieties of church leadership and church membership at every level. For this to happen, we need to open the channels of communication and make known to each other our hopes, our joys, our fears, and our anxieties. We need to listen and, more importantly, we need to expand our capacities to hear and to respond.
CONCLUSION
And so I return to T.S. Eliot: “Where is the Life we have lost in living?” asks the Chorus in the opening lines of The Rock. There was life and life-giving power in Vatican II. Its vision of the Church as the people of God brought hope to those within. The biblical renewal opened the Word to its members and created new bonds with the Jewish community and with other Christian Churches. A new openness to the world created a new consciousness and initiated a process towards healing the hurts of centuries. The Life and the power of Vatican II will not be ‘lost in living’ if ecclesial structures of power and church members can learn to function in a spirit of openness and mutual respect for the full humanity of every person and for the sacredness of life in all its manifestations. ‘The Church must be forever building [bridges]…’ if it is to become what it is.
REFERENCES
1. William J. Bausch, Breaking Trust: A Priest Looks at the Scandal of Sexual Abuse (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2002), passim.
2. See comments of Dominican Thomas Doyle reported in Chuck Colbert, ‘Church in Crisis: 4,000 Meet to Give Laity a Voice,’ National Catholic Reporter Cover Story. http://www.natcath.org/crisis/080202a.htm. Accessed 011002.
3. See, for instance, Martin O’Kane, Borders, Boundaries and the Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 1-4.
4. Les Murray, Freddy Neptune (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998), 264
5. Camille Paul, Equal or Different? Women, the Papacy and Social Justice (Mulgrave: John Garrett, 1999).
6. Paul, Equal or Different, 148-149.
7. John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002), 1-14.
8. Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, ‘A New Earth: The Environmental Challenge,’ in Australian Catholics (Spring 2002).
Dr. Veronica Lawson is a Sister of Mercy and Senior Lecturer in Theology at Aquinas Campus of Australian Catholic University, Ballarat. She lectures in biblical studies, feminist interpretation, and women and the church.
NEW VATICAN SCANDAL: SEX ABUSE
http://www.1335.com/Romearch/rw0903.html
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NEW VATICAN SCANDAL
SEX ABUSE
Pope John XXIII whose seal was on the document
COVER-UP EXPOSED IN 40 YEAR OLD SECRET DOCUMENTS
As you read this shocking exposure of Vatican intrigue, photographically reproduced from the prestigious “Observer” newspaper, remember the documents bear the seal of the man often called “good Pope John” who was responsible for calling the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and for promoting the Ecumenical or Church Unity movement. Now read on:-
Article by Antony Barnett
Public Affairs Editor
The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church.
The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a ‘blueprint for deception and concealment’. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as ‘explosive’.
The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ‘strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.
They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to ‘be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.’
The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called ‘Crimine Solicitationes’, which translates as ‘instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation’.
It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the ‘worst crime’, described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with ‘youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)’.
Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases ‘in the most secretive Way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office ... under the penalty of excommunication’.
Texan lawyer Daniel Shea uncovered the document as part of his work for victims of abuse from Catholic priests in the US. He has handed it over to US authorities, urging them to launch a federal investigation into the clergy’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.
He said: ‘These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal, conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.’
British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the document as ‘explosive’.
He said: ‘We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.’
Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962. It rides roughshod over the Catholic Church’s claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon.
He claims the discovery of the document will raise fresh questions about the actions of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Murphy-O’Connor has been accused of covering up allegations of child abuse when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Instead of reporting to the police allegations of abuse against Michael Hill, a priest in his charge, he moved him to another position where he was later convicted for abusing nine children.
Although Murphy-O’Connor has apologised publicly for his mistake, Scorer claims the secret Vatican document raises the question about whether his failure to report Hill was due to him following this instruction from Rome.
Scorer, who acts for some of Hill’s victims, said: ‘I want to know whether Murphy-O’connor knew of these Vatican instructions and if so did he apply it. If not, can he tell us why not?’
A spokesman for the Catholic Church denied the secret Vatican orders were part of any organised cover-up and claims lawyers are taking the document ‘out of context’ and ‘distorting it’.
He said: ‘This document is about the Church’s internal disciplinary procedures should a priest be accused of using confession to solicit sex. It does not forbid victims to report civil crimes. The confidentiality talked about is aimed to protect the accused as applies in court procedures today. It also takes into consideration the special nature of the secrecy involved in the act of confession.’
He also said that in 1983 the Catholic Church in England and Wales introduced its own code dealing with sexual abuse which would have superseded the 1962 instructions. Asked whether Murphy-O’Connor was aware of the Vatican edict, he replied: ‘He’s never mentioned it to me.’
Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office which ran the Inquisition in the medieval ages.
Rev Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain in Germany and a specialist in Church law, has studied the document. He told The Observer: ‘It is certainly an indication of the pathological obsession with secrecy in the Catholic Church, but in itself it is not a smoking gun.’
Doyle added: ‘If, however, this document actually has been the foundation of a continuous policy to cover clergy crimes at all costs, then we have quite another issue. There are too many authenticated reports of victims having been seriously intimidated into silence by Church authorities to assert that such intimidation is the exception and not the norm.
If this document has been used as a justification for this intimidation then we possibly have what some commentators have alleged, namely, a blueprint for a cover-up. This is obviously a big “if” which requires concrete proof.’
(Read the English translation of the secret Vatican document at http://www.observer.co.uk)
Additional research by Jason Rodrigues
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OLD TACTICS - THE STONING OF PROTESTANTS
Curtis Martin
This is the face of little Curtis Martin, the five year old Protestant child, who had to undergo a five hour operation to save the sight of his left eye after a mob of Roman Catholic youths stoned the car in which he and his father were driving home through the Nationalist Roman Catholic Markets area.
The Martins were returning from the 12th July Orange demonstration. The tiny tot was wearing a Rangers Football top and his father a band uniform. Their only crime was to be Loyalists and Protestants. They were victims of the virulent anti-Protestant bigotry that we never hear about or else are told does not exist.
To date nobody has been arrested. We would have hoped that the Roman Catholic priests at nearby St. Malachy’s chapel would have called on their flock to hand over the perpetrators of this vicious outrage. We thought perhaps a rousing condemnation of such blatant sectarianism would have come from the Ecumenical clergy of South Belfast who carry crosses each Easter to Ormeau Park with priests and nuns.
Now we know the Roman Catholic/Republicans not only don’t want Orange feet on their streets but woe betide the defenceless Protestants who dare to drive in their area.
Of course the tactic is not new. It was in this same Cromac Street/Markets area that lawless Romanists in 1935 attacked the 12th July Orange parade, and again in 1966 a Roman Catholic mob attacked a procession of Free Presbyterians with stones, and lumps of metal.
Nothing seems to change.
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WHY PRAY FOR ROMAN CATHOLICS?
Above we see one of the thousands of Irish Roman Catholics who queued for hours to kiss a golden statue of St Anthony of Padua, described by Rome as the saint of “lost property” during a nine day tour of Dublin and Carlow.
The relics of the saint who died in 1232 are enclosed inside the idol of gold. Traffic was gridlocked outside one Roman Catholic church in Dublin. The faithful brought white lilies to these festivals of idolatry and the relics received a Garda (Irish Police) escort from Dublin Airport. All this in the new “Pluralist Ireland”.
THE BIBLE SAYS:
“THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THYSELF ANY GRAVEN IMAGE...... THOU SHALT NOT BOW THYSELF DOWN TO THEM” - (EXODUS 2O:4-5)
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IRISH REPUBLIC AND THE "HOLY SEE" FAILED TO PROTECT IRISH CHILDREN
A special UN Human Rights Committee hearing in Geneva will be told that the Holy See and the Irish Republic failed to protect children from abuse under the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mr Colm O’Gorman, director of the One In Four abuse victims’ organisation, will highlight forced child labour in Ireland’s industrial schools and the sexual exploitation of Irish children.
He will also say that the response of Catholic dioceses (under the direct governance of the Holy See) has been one that sought at all costs to protect the institution rather than honour its commitments under the UN’s Declaration and Convention on the rights of the Child. The Holy See’s permanent representative at the UN in Geneva is the newly appointed Co-adjutor Archbishop Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin. He is in Geneva today.
Mr O’Gorman’s Invitation to the hearing arose from an interview he did with the BBC Radio 4 programme “Taking A Stand,” broadcast earlier this year.
He will argue that work, not education, was the lot of most children in Ireland’s industrial schools and that the effects of child sexual abuse can leave individuals enslaved to their traumatic experience long after childhood. As such they were entitled to have their rights vindicated under Article 39 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
He will say that the Irish experience was shaped largely by two States Parties to the UN Convention [any state or party which has agreed to adhere to it] - namely the Republic of Ireland and the Holy See. He will point out that from the foundation of the Irish State the Catholic Church had a primary role in providing social care, education, the formation of legislation and social policy, and was in reality as powerful politically as the Government.
He is expected to argue that human rights conventions should not just protect against future abuses but also respond to past failures and abuses. He will contend that the rights of abused children, now adults, are ignored and that any States Parties to the Convention had an obligation to vindicate abused children.
Article 39 says: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse; torture or any other form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child.”
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SPAIN SEEKS SAINTHOOD FOR ISABELLA OF CASTILE
By
Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid
Senior churchmen led by Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco, the Archbishop of Madrid, recently revived a campaign asking that Queen Isabella be beatified, the first step towards being made a saint. They hope for her to be beatified next year, the 500 anniversary of her death. During her tempestuous 15th century reign, Isabella conquered much of Latin America for the Vatican, ended the 700-year presence of Moors and Jews on the Iberian Peninsula and assured the hegemony of Castile and the Catholic Church in Spain.
"We have investigated every aspect of this controversial woman and it appears to be the time to abandon intransigence and see her in the context of her time and environment,” said Jose Delicado, Archbishop of Vallodolid.
Earlier attempts to canonise Isabella ended when her detractors accused her of exiling Jews and Muslims from Spain, instigating genocide in Latin America and setting up the Inquisition.
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VATICAN FINANCIER "MURDERED"
Roberto Calvi
PROSECUTORS investigating the 1982 death of a Vatican-connected financier who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in central London have concluded he was murdered and did not kill himself, reports in Rome said. Roberto Calvi, nicknamed “God’s Banker”, was implicated in Italy’s biggest post-Second World War banking scandal. His body was found within days of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was president and in which. the Vatican’s bank held a significant stake.
Four suspects in the case, including an alleged mafioso, have been notified of the conclusions, but have not been indicted, the ANSA news agency reported.
RAI state television said prosecutors believe that the Mafia killed Calvi because he had lost their money and knew too much about their operations.
Legal officials were not available to confirm the reports.
Last year, a panel of forensic experts also concluded that Calvi was killed. See the associated links below.
Classic Financial and Corporate Scandals
Roberto Calvi - God's Banker
Vatican's Banker 'was murdered'
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PRIEST JAILED FOR 20 YEARS
A Retired Catholic priest was jailed for 20 years for decades of sexual misconduct against children. Father Louis Miller (72) who admitted to 44 counts of indecent and immoral practices and six counts of sexual abuse, told the court in Louisville, Kentucky, that he took “full moral responsibility” for his crimes and said, “I stand before God to be judged later.”
He blamed his crimes on “whatever mental illness I might have had.”
”I hope some day I can have your forgiveness,” Miller said.
Miller is the first of four priests or former priests who face criminal charges in the state. The archdiocese expects to spend more than £600,000 on legal, settlement and counselling costs this year.
PRIEST WHO WAS SHOT BY ABUSE VICTIM INDICTED ON RAPE CHARGES
By
Kevin Eckstrom
(RNS) A Baltimore Catholic priest who was shot by his alleged abuse victim a year ago was indicted Wednesday (May 7) on child sex abuse charges
The Rev Maurice Blackwell is expected to turn himself in to authorities. Each of the four rape counts carries a penalty of 15 years in prison, according to the Associated Press.
Blackwell, 57, was shot last year by Dontee Stokes, who said he confronted Blackwell on a Baltimore street to demand an apology for raping him. Stokes, 27, was later acquitted of attempted murder after he pleaded temporary insanity, but was convicted on minor gun charges.
Blackwell was removed from his inner-city parish in 1998 after he told church officials about an inappropriate relationship with another minor. Church officials had investigated Stokes’ initial claims in 1993 but found them not credible. Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler later apologized to Stokes.
A church statement said it hopes the trial ”brings some measure of peace to those who have been harmed”. Stokes’ lawyer, Warren Brown, told the Associated Press, his client is “overjoyed“ by the indictment. “Its been a long time for Dontee,” he said.
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ROMAN CATHOLICS AND HINDUISM
Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2002 (David W Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) -
Roman Catholicism is increasingly syncretised with Hinduism and Buddhism. In March, many Catholic priests, including the Pope’s nuncio (ambassador) to India, participated in the jubilee celebration of the Institute of Philosophy and Religion in that country, which has been training Catholic and liberal Protestant church leaders for decades in Hinduism. Students in the Institute are taught Yoga techniques.
The president of the Institute is Catholic priest Noel Sheth, who frequently quotes the Hindu scriptures in his talks. The Institute’s motto is taken from Hinduism. One of the attendees of the jubilee celebration, Swami Prabhudar, told The Hindu newspaper, “I am a swami [Hindu holy man] but also a Jesuit priest. I worship Christ but include tales from Hindu mythology and the Upanishads in my sermons!"
When my wife and I interviewed a nun in the mid 1990s who worked with Mother Teresa’s organization in Nepal assisting dying Hindus, we asked her what they did to prepare them for death. She replied, “We teach them to pray to their gods.”
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ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA ARRESTED IN FATAL HIT-AND-RUN CASE
Conor O’Clery, New York
Bishop Thomas J O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, has been accused of leaving the scene of a car accident in which a father of four was killed and left lying on a busy highway The hit-and-run charge comes just two weeks after the spiritual leader of Arizona’s 430,000 Catholics narrowly avoided indictment on obstruction-of-justice charges related to sex abuse cases in the diocese.
The extraordinary incident compounds the acute embarrassment for the Catholic Church in the USA over the resignation this week of the head of a lay sex abuse panel who accused some US bishops of mafia-like secrecy in their handling of sex scandals. Bishop O’Brien was said to have been driving his tan Buick sedan on Glendale Avenue, Phoenix, when it struck and killed Mr Jim Reed, 43, at 8:35 pm on a Saturday. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and released on bail of $45,000. The 67-year-old Bishop was also ordered to forfeit his passport and remain in Arizona prior to a court hearing on June 25th.
On the Sunday, according to court records, a fellow priest told the Bishop that police were looking for him after a witness gave them a partial registration number that was traced to a diocesan vehicle. However the Bishop did not contact police and on Monday morning made telephone calls to have his damaged windscreen repaired.
Police arrived at his residence soon afterwards and found front-end damage and a shattered windshield on the passenger’s side of his Buick. Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Randy Force told reporters, “The damage was consistent with a pedestrian impact.” Agents impounded the car and the clothing the victim was wearing on Saturday.
Mr Reed was jay walking when he crossed the junction of two four-lane throughfares and was struck by two cars, the spokesman said. The second vehicle, which may have dragged him a considerable distance, has not been located. Bishop O’Brien had been celebrating a confirmation mass on Saturday evening. He acknowledged he was driving the car at the time when the accident occurred but told police that he believed he had hit a dog or cat or that someone threw a stone at the windscreen. When he was being charged in Maricopa County jail, the bishop suffered a dangerous rise in blood pressure and had to be taken for treatment to St. Joseph’s Hospital before returning for finger-printing.
The case has shocked a diocese that has been under scrutiny for months over reports that the Bishop covered up sex abuse cases and moved around abusive priests.
Two weeks prior, Bishop O’Brien finalised a deal with Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley under which he obtained immunity from prosecution. As part of the deal he admitted that he allowed priests “under my supervision to work with minors after becoming aware of allegations of sexual misconduct”. He apologised and agreed to diocesan reforms. Mr Romley said recently that he was “incredulous” when he was told that the bishop was involved in a hit-and-run case and he instructed his officials that he should not be treated any differently than anyone else.
He told a subsequent press conference that investigators were checking the Bishop’s activities in the hours before the accident to see if he had consumed alcohol or drugs that could have caused impairment. “They should remember that a person has died here, we can’t forgive that,” he said.
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ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST TO JUDGE "MISS ITALY” BEAUTY CONTEST
A Priest has accepted an invitation to be a judge in the Miss Italy beauty contest.
Mgr Carlo Crucianelli, 56. was asked to join the show by competition organiser Enzo Mirigliani.
It is the first time a priest has been invited on to the panel of judges for the three day pageant, which takes place in September and is broadcast live on television. Officials wrote and asked Mgr Crucianelli to the main event after he helped judge a preliminary contest at his home town of Sassaci, near Rome.
Mirigliani said: “He has a real forward-thinking mentality and he knows how to interact with young people. All priests should look to him as their role model.” He added that Mgr Crucianelli was on a spiritual retreat in Tuscany, and had accepted the invitation.
However not everyone is pleased with the priest’s role. One MP, Riceardo Pedrizzi, said: “As if we didn’t have enough with priests acting as social workers and trade unionists, now we have priests getting involved in television.”
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STATEMENT OF POLICY
It is not the aim or intention of Rome Watch to incite hatred of Roman Catholics but rather, by use of International Press reports already carried in newspapers, to show the religious and political advances of the Papacy in the light of Bible Prophecy, which foretells an end-time World Religion, Government and Economy.
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NEW VATICAN SCANDAL
SEX ABUSE
Pope John XXIII whose seal was on the document
COVER-UP EXPOSED IN 40 YEAR OLD SECRET DOCUMENTS
As you read this shocking exposure of Vatican intrigue, photographically reproduced from the prestigious “Observer” newspaper, remember the documents bear the seal of the man often called “good Pope John” who was responsible for calling the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and for promoting the Ecumenical or Church Unity movement. Now read on:-
Article by Antony Barnett
Public Affairs Editor
The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church.
The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a ‘blueprint for deception and concealment’. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as ‘explosive’.
The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ‘strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.
They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to ‘be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.’
The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called ‘Crimine Solicitationes’, which translates as ‘instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation’.
It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the ‘worst crime’, described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with ‘youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)’.
Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases ‘in the most secretive Way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office ... under the penalty of excommunication’.
Texan lawyer Daniel Shea uncovered the document as part of his work for victims of abuse from Catholic priests in the US. He has handed it over to US authorities, urging them to launch a federal investigation into the clergy’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.
He said: ‘These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal, conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.’
British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the document as ‘explosive’.
He said: ‘We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.’
Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962. It rides roughshod over the Catholic Church’s claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon.
He claims the discovery of the document will raise fresh questions about the actions of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Murphy-O’Connor has been accused of covering up allegations of child abuse when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Instead of reporting to the police allegations of abuse against Michael Hill, a priest in his charge, he moved him to another position where he was later convicted for abusing nine children.
Although Murphy-O’Connor has apologised publicly for his mistake, Scorer claims the secret Vatican document raises the question about whether his failure to report Hill was due to him following this instruction from Rome.
Scorer, who acts for some of Hill’s victims, said: ‘I want to know whether Murphy-O’connor knew of these Vatican instructions and if so did he apply it. If not, can he tell us why not?’
A spokesman for the Catholic Church denied the secret Vatican orders were part of any organised cover-up and claims lawyers are taking the document ‘out of context’ and ‘distorting it’.
He said: ‘This document is about the Church’s internal disciplinary procedures should a priest be accused of using confession to solicit sex. It does not forbid victims to report civil crimes. The confidentiality talked about is aimed to protect the accused as applies in court procedures today. It also takes into consideration the special nature of the secrecy involved in the act of confession.’
He also said that in 1983 the Catholic Church in England and Wales introduced its own code dealing with sexual abuse which would have superseded the 1962 instructions. Asked whether Murphy-O’Connor was aware of the Vatican edict, he replied: ‘He’s never mentioned it to me.’
Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office which ran the Inquisition in the medieval ages.
Rev Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain in Germany and a specialist in Church law, has studied the document. He told The Observer: ‘It is certainly an indication of the pathological obsession with secrecy in the Catholic Church, but in itself it is not a smoking gun.’
Doyle added: ‘If, however, this document actually has been the foundation of a continuous policy to cover clergy crimes at all costs, then we have quite another issue. There are too many authenticated reports of victims having been seriously intimidated into silence by Church authorities to assert that such intimidation is the exception and not the norm.
If this document has been used as a justification for this intimidation then we possibly have what some commentators have alleged, namely, a blueprint for a cover-up. This is obviously a big “if” which requires concrete proof.’
(Read the English translation of the secret Vatican document at http://www.observer.co.uk)
Additional research by Jason Rodrigues
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OLD TACTICS - THE STONING OF PROTESTANTS
Curtis Martin
This is the face of little Curtis Martin, the five year old Protestant child, who had to undergo a five hour operation to save the sight of his left eye after a mob of Roman Catholic youths stoned the car in which he and his father were driving home through the Nationalist Roman Catholic Markets area.
The Martins were returning from the 12th July Orange demonstration. The tiny tot was wearing a Rangers Football top and his father a band uniform. Their only crime was to be Loyalists and Protestants. They were victims of the virulent anti-Protestant bigotry that we never hear about or else are told does not exist.
To date nobody has been arrested. We would have hoped that the Roman Catholic priests at nearby St. Malachy’s chapel would have called on their flock to hand over the perpetrators of this vicious outrage. We thought perhaps a rousing condemnation of such blatant sectarianism would have come from the Ecumenical clergy of South Belfast who carry crosses each Easter to Ormeau Park with priests and nuns.
Now we know the Roman Catholic/Republicans not only don’t want Orange feet on their streets but woe betide the defenceless Protestants who dare to drive in their area.
Of course the tactic is not new. It was in this same Cromac Street/Markets area that lawless Romanists in 1935 attacked the 12th July Orange parade, and again in 1966 a Roman Catholic mob attacked a procession of Free Presbyterians with stones, and lumps of metal.
Nothing seems to change.
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WHY PRAY FOR ROMAN CATHOLICS?
Above we see one of the thousands of Irish Roman Catholics who queued for hours to kiss a golden statue of St Anthony of Padua, described by Rome as the saint of “lost property” during a nine day tour of Dublin and Carlow.
The relics of the saint who died in 1232 are enclosed inside the idol of gold. Traffic was gridlocked outside one Roman Catholic church in Dublin. The faithful brought white lilies to these festivals of idolatry and the relics received a Garda (Irish Police) escort from Dublin Airport. All this in the new “Pluralist Ireland”.
THE BIBLE SAYS:
“THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THYSELF ANY GRAVEN IMAGE...... THOU SHALT NOT BOW THYSELF DOWN TO THEM” - (EXODUS 2O:4-5)
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IRISH REPUBLIC AND THE "HOLY SEE" FAILED TO PROTECT IRISH CHILDREN
A special UN Human Rights Committee hearing in Geneva will be told that the Holy See and the Irish Republic failed to protect children from abuse under the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mr Colm O’Gorman, director of the One In Four abuse victims’ organisation, will highlight forced child labour in Ireland’s industrial schools and the sexual exploitation of Irish children.
He will also say that the response of Catholic dioceses (under the direct governance of the Holy See) has been one that sought at all costs to protect the institution rather than honour its commitments under the UN’s Declaration and Convention on the rights of the Child. The Holy See’s permanent representative at the UN in Geneva is the newly appointed Co-adjutor Archbishop Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin. He is in Geneva today.
Mr O’Gorman’s Invitation to the hearing arose from an interview he did with the BBC Radio 4 programme “Taking A Stand,” broadcast earlier this year.
He will argue that work, not education, was the lot of most children in Ireland’s industrial schools and that the effects of child sexual abuse can leave individuals enslaved to their traumatic experience long after childhood. As such they were entitled to have their rights vindicated under Article 39 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
He will say that the Irish experience was shaped largely by two States Parties to the UN Convention [any state or party which has agreed to adhere to it] - namely the Republic of Ireland and the Holy See. He will point out that from the foundation of the Irish State the Catholic Church had a primary role in providing social care, education, the formation of legislation and social policy, and was in reality as powerful politically as the Government.
He is expected to argue that human rights conventions should not just protect against future abuses but also respond to past failures and abuses. He will contend that the rights of abused children, now adults, are ignored and that any States Parties to the Convention had an obligation to vindicate abused children.
Article 39 says: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse; torture or any other form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child.”
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SPAIN SEEKS SAINTHOOD FOR ISABELLA OF CASTILE
By
Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid
Senior churchmen led by Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco, the Archbishop of Madrid, recently revived a campaign asking that Queen Isabella be beatified, the first step towards being made a saint. They hope for her to be beatified next year, the 500 anniversary of her death. During her tempestuous 15th century reign, Isabella conquered much of Latin America for the Vatican, ended the 700-year presence of Moors and Jews on the Iberian Peninsula and assured the hegemony of Castile and the Catholic Church in Spain.
"We have investigated every aspect of this controversial woman and it appears to be the time to abandon intransigence and see her in the context of her time and environment,” said Jose Delicado, Archbishop of Vallodolid.
Earlier attempts to canonise Isabella ended when her detractors accused her of exiling Jews and Muslims from Spain, instigating genocide in Latin America and setting up the Inquisition.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VATICAN FINANCIER "MURDERED"
Roberto Calvi
PROSECUTORS investigating the 1982 death of a Vatican-connected financier who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in central London have concluded he was murdered and did not kill himself, reports in Rome said. Roberto Calvi, nicknamed “God’s Banker”, was implicated in Italy’s biggest post-Second World War banking scandal. His body was found within days of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was president and in which. the Vatican’s bank held a significant stake.
Four suspects in the case, including an alleged mafioso, have been notified of the conclusions, but have not been indicted, the ANSA news agency reported.
RAI state television said prosecutors believe that the Mafia killed Calvi because he had lost their money and knew too much about their operations.
Legal officials were not available to confirm the reports.
Last year, a panel of forensic experts also concluded that Calvi was killed. See the associated links below.
Classic Financial and Corporate Scandals
Roberto Calvi - God's Banker
Vatican's Banker 'was murdered'
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIEST JAILED FOR 20 YEARS
A Retired Catholic priest was jailed for 20 years for decades of sexual misconduct against children. Father Louis Miller (72) who admitted to 44 counts of indecent and immoral practices and six counts of sexual abuse, told the court in Louisville, Kentucky, that he took “full moral responsibility” for his crimes and said, “I stand before God to be judged later.”
He blamed his crimes on “whatever mental illness I might have had.”
”I hope some day I can have your forgiveness,” Miller said.
Miller is the first of four priests or former priests who face criminal charges in the state. The archdiocese expects to spend more than £600,000 on legal, settlement and counselling costs this year.
PRIEST WHO WAS SHOT BY ABUSE VICTIM INDICTED ON RAPE CHARGES
By
Kevin Eckstrom
(RNS) A Baltimore Catholic priest who was shot by his alleged abuse victim a year ago was indicted Wednesday (May 7) on child sex abuse charges
The Rev Maurice Blackwell is expected to turn himself in to authorities. Each of the four rape counts carries a penalty of 15 years in prison, according to the Associated Press.
Blackwell, 57, was shot last year by Dontee Stokes, who said he confronted Blackwell on a Baltimore street to demand an apology for raping him. Stokes, 27, was later acquitted of attempted murder after he pleaded temporary insanity, but was convicted on minor gun charges.
Blackwell was removed from his inner-city parish in 1998 after he told church officials about an inappropriate relationship with another minor. Church officials had investigated Stokes’ initial claims in 1993 but found them not credible. Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler later apologized to Stokes.
A church statement said it hopes the trial ”brings some measure of peace to those who have been harmed”. Stokes’ lawyer, Warren Brown, told the Associated Press, his client is “overjoyed“ by the indictment. “Its been a long time for Dontee,” he said.
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ROMAN CATHOLICS AND HINDUISM
Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2002 (David W Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) -
Roman Catholicism is increasingly syncretised with Hinduism and Buddhism. In March, many Catholic priests, including the Pope’s nuncio (ambassador) to India, participated in the jubilee celebration of the Institute of Philosophy and Religion in that country, which has been training Catholic and liberal Protestant church leaders for decades in Hinduism. Students in the Institute are taught Yoga techniques.
The president of the Institute is Catholic priest Noel Sheth, who frequently quotes the Hindu scriptures in his talks. The Institute’s motto is taken from Hinduism. One of the attendees of the jubilee celebration, Swami Prabhudar, told The Hindu newspaper, “I am a swami [Hindu holy man] but also a Jesuit priest. I worship Christ but include tales from Hindu mythology and the Upanishads in my sermons!"
When my wife and I interviewed a nun in the mid 1990s who worked with Mother Teresa’s organization in Nepal assisting dying Hindus, we asked her what they did to prepare them for death. She replied, “We teach them to pray to their gods.”
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ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA ARRESTED IN FATAL HIT-AND-RUN CASE
Conor O’Clery, New York
Bishop Thomas J O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, has been accused of leaving the scene of a car accident in which a father of four was killed and left lying on a busy highway The hit-and-run charge comes just two weeks after the spiritual leader of Arizona’s 430,000 Catholics narrowly avoided indictment on obstruction-of-justice charges related to sex abuse cases in the diocese.
The extraordinary incident compounds the acute embarrassment for the Catholic Church in the USA over the resignation this week of the head of a lay sex abuse panel who accused some US bishops of mafia-like secrecy in their handling of sex scandals. Bishop O’Brien was said to have been driving his tan Buick sedan on Glendale Avenue, Phoenix, when it struck and killed Mr Jim Reed, 43, at 8:35 pm on a Saturday. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and released on bail of $45,000. The 67-year-old Bishop was also ordered to forfeit his passport and remain in Arizona prior to a court hearing on June 25th.
On the Sunday, according to court records, a fellow priest told the Bishop that police were looking for him after a witness gave them a partial registration number that was traced to a diocesan vehicle. However the Bishop did not contact police and on Monday morning made telephone calls to have his damaged windscreen repaired.
Police arrived at his residence soon afterwards and found front-end damage and a shattered windshield on the passenger’s side of his Buick. Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Randy Force told reporters, “The damage was consistent with a pedestrian impact.” Agents impounded the car and the clothing the victim was wearing on Saturday.
Mr Reed was jay walking when he crossed the junction of two four-lane throughfares and was struck by two cars, the spokesman said. The second vehicle, which may have dragged him a considerable distance, has not been located. Bishop O’Brien had been celebrating a confirmation mass on Saturday evening. He acknowledged he was driving the car at the time when the accident occurred but told police that he believed he had hit a dog or cat or that someone threw a stone at the windscreen. When he was being charged in Maricopa County jail, the bishop suffered a dangerous rise in blood pressure and had to be taken for treatment to St. Joseph’s Hospital before returning for finger-printing.
The case has shocked a diocese that has been under scrutiny for months over reports that the Bishop covered up sex abuse cases and moved around abusive priests.
Two weeks prior, Bishop O’Brien finalised a deal with Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley under which he obtained immunity from prosecution. As part of the deal he admitted that he allowed priests “under my supervision to work with minors after becoming aware of allegations of sexual misconduct”. He apologised and agreed to diocesan reforms. Mr Romley said recently that he was “incredulous” when he was told that the bishop was involved in a hit-and-run case and he instructed his officials that he should not be treated any differently than anyone else.
He told a subsequent press conference that investigators were checking the Bishop’s activities in the hours before the accident to see if he had consumed alcohol or drugs that could have caused impairment. “They should remember that a person has died here, we can’t forgive that,” he said.
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ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST TO JUDGE "MISS ITALY” BEAUTY CONTEST
A Priest has accepted an invitation to be a judge in the Miss Italy beauty contest.
Mgr Carlo Crucianelli, 56. was asked to join the show by competition organiser Enzo Mirigliani.
It is the first time a priest has been invited on to the panel of judges for the three day pageant, which takes place in September and is broadcast live on television. Officials wrote and asked Mgr Crucianelli to the main event after he helped judge a preliminary contest at his home town of Sassaci, near Rome.
Mirigliani said: “He has a real forward-thinking mentality and he knows how to interact with young people. All priests should look to him as their role model.” He added that Mgr Crucianelli was on a spiritual retreat in Tuscany, and had accepted the invitation.
However not everyone is pleased with the priest’s role. One MP, Riceardo Pedrizzi, said: “As if we didn’t have enough with priests acting as social workers and trade unionists, now we have priests getting involved in television.”
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STATEMENT OF POLICY
It is not the aim or intention of Rome Watch to incite hatred of Roman Catholics but rather, by use of International Press reports already carried in newspapers, to show the religious and political advances of the Papacy in the light of Bible Prophecy, which foretells an end-time World Religion, Government and Economy.
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VATICAN: THE FIRST SECRET.
http://www.timesfinalrose.org/Ross1c.html
Little Book - Big Secret
LITTLE BOOK - BIG SECRET
Part one - THE ULTIMATUM
THE FIRST SECRET.
As the reader of this modest publication will soon discover, every important thing has it's time just as every person who ever lives has their purpose, though many never know what it is.
This little book has been compiled in the expectation that its remarkable contents will at least help a few to understand.
I say 'at least' because, as you will see, it has the potential to do a great deal more than that.
Real understanding will guide your life so that you may play an active role in helping others to see by it too.
Little Book - Big Secret covers two related subjects that combine to show and prove the real nature of the truth behind our lives.
It also brings to light the fact that there is an active opposition that has been working for centuries to prevent that proof becoming widely known.
An opposition that disguises itself as a supporter of the truth. An institutional liar in several guises. It protects itself by being a keeper of big secrets.
That liar is a highly organised propaganda and education control network that actively works to keep the majority of the people in bondage to their system by keeping them in a state of ignorance by having them believe false beliefs.
In very recent times the interest and suspicion of 'ordinary' people has been aroused by a little wake up bell that has spread throughout the world and they have started to ask the kind of questions that the opposition don't want them to ask.
That opposition fears that their own secrets and the crimes related to them will come into the open if people poke around and unearth hidden things.
The little nagging bell that I have mentioned is Dan Brown's immensely popular novel, The Da Vinci Code.
That book has upset a lot of people who think it offends them by putting their beliefs into dispute.
As I write this in India the newspapers are full of letters containing comments about the Da Vinci Code film written by enraged Christians who seem to need to deny others the right to free thought or speech while exercising their own God given right to have exactly that.
Those people are not going to like the real truth one little bit, at first.
The Vatican's reaction to Mr. Brown's book has been particularly aggressive yet it's writer states that it is a work of fiction, and it is.
It does however contain some hints about some very sensitive factual links that I will come to in good time.
Dan Brown's novel is far from the only book that dares to suggest that Jesus was a man and not God.
Many academic books that are not presented as works of fiction like Holger Kersten's 'Jesus Lived in India' or 'The Jesus Conspiracy' have been best selling titles yet there has been no uproar from the churches about their publication.
When 'The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail' was released it caused a flurry of interest among the kind of people who like the idea of mysteries and like trying to solve them. That book hinted at the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci was connected to the keeping of secrets that he had to conceal in coded form because they were too dangerous to speak about openly, secrets connected to the truth about Jesus that would put the holders of them in danger if the established church discovered who they were.
It was the book that first aroused peoples interest in the secret of the village of Renné's Le Château in France and the unexplained events in the life of it's secretive priest Francois Bérenger Saunière.
There were no worldwide cries of blasphemy among the general population when it hit the bookshops.
So what makes Dan Brown's novel such a target of the church?
Why are they so afraid of this one?
If they really are hiding secrets from the world as his book suggests why are they doing it and what are the secrets?
The real answer to those questions will be revealed to the reader of this book.
The reason for the Vatican's reaction to 'The Da Vinci Code' has something to do with the fact that that book has aroused the interest of a much greater number of people than the academic works ever did and it has caused them to become interested in the subject of the book that Dan Brown based his novel on, the subject being Da Vinci's connection to the Priory De Sion, a secret society reputed to be the guardians of the secret of the real Holy Grail, hidden codes and their connection to Sauniere's lucrative secret.
In doing so Dan Brown's book has prepared the way for the public acceptance of the fact that there really is a Da Vinci Code although it cannot be said that he created it, and there really are people who don't want the world to know that there is.
One name of that code is THE ROSE another is THE ORACLE.
One purpose of this little book is to prove it to the world by demonstrating it.
Before I help you to see what it is, how it works and why it has been kept secret I need to tell you how I came to know about it and why.
While doing so I will show you the second secret.
In 1996 agents working for the British and American governments witnessed, participated in and recorded a sequence of events that were designed by God to give them absolute proof that God exists.
It was done in such a way that they could show that proof to the world if they elected to do so.
The author of this book was also involved in those shockingly crucial happenings.
The whole thing occurred totally automatically, as all things really do, so it was not by my personal merit that it occurred.
I had no idea that it was going to happen until it started in the spring of 1996.
Prior to that time I had been a mussel farmer in Scotland and I was also what people call 'a seeker'.
My role was to help God to supply parts of the proof directly to the British and American governments.
The proofs had been set up in such a way that vital parts of it were received by them long before I was born.
By the time it got into full swing in October 1996 the intelligence agencies had a better idea about the nature of the things that were about to happen than I did. Thank God!
However, having said that, the actual events that occurred must have shocked them to the core even being, as they were, on the receiving end of it.
My own part in it was almost unendurably shocking at times.
Along with the tangible proof that they received they also received an ultimatum given to them in a very startling manner. The spoken message offered them an opportunity to do things in the right way to solve the world's problems before it is too late.
The government agents who received that vital message were advised to tell the world the truth about the things they have been hiding and to implement drastic changes in the way they are governing this world.
Those changes were to end the high level corruption that is currently causing a massive problem for the people of this dying planet Earth.
They were compassionately warned that failure to comply with the voice of God's reason would result in global catastrophe.
Instead of doing the sane and sensible thing they did the opposite and hid the whole thing from the people at the expense of the lives of some very well known figures who found out about it.
At the time that I was used to deliver the ultimatum under very special circumstances in October 1996 they were told that they had three and a half years to set a positive response in motion.
A very special identity proof that God supplied to the intelligence services without my knowledge of it proved beyond all doubt that the message I had been used to give to them was the genuine ultimatum from God.
They were literally shown THE WRITING ON THE WALL.
As their response was a negative one I was led to my proof when their three and half years was up to help me to break their secrecy.
That proof was given to me when I was very cleverly led by God to break the biblical seventh seal and find my own way to the discovery of the real Da Vinci code.
After the initial discovery of the existence of the secret Seven Seal code a small group of people were led to complete the master key that contains the anagram information lines that contain the timed links to recent catastrophe's that prove that they were preplanned to provide further warning 'hints' to the secretive government liar's who are still concealing the truth from the ordinary people of this dying world.
LITTLE BOOK - BIG SECRET part one, contains the details of the 1996 events and some important things that happened in the years that followed them, part two explains how the Ana code and the real Holy Grail was given by God.
It contains a big demonstration of the proof in the code.
Discover the secret of the SION MASTER FILE and how you can use it to communicate with God. Buying these books will help it to happen.
These books are not yet available in Bookshops for obvious reasons.
Little Book-Big Secret - Part one; The Ultimatum
and
Little Book-Big Secret - Part two; The Real Da Vinci Code
..are the books that can end the conspiracy and allow people to live in a world free of lies and free of fear.
These books are needed NOW and that's why they are available.
Order books
Copyright © Ross Kelly 2006
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ET IN ARCADIA EGO
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THE HOLY GRAIL
THE HOLY GRAIL
THE ORACLE
THE ORACLE
DEPORTATION FROM AUSTRALIA
DEPORTATION FROM AUSTRALIA
Little Book - Big Secret
LITTLE BOOK - BIG SECRET
Part one - THE ULTIMATUM
THE FIRST SECRET.
As the reader of this modest publication will soon discover, every important thing has it's time just as every person who ever lives has their purpose, though many never know what it is.
This little book has been compiled in the expectation that its remarkable contents will at least help a few to understand.
I say 'at least' because, as you will see, it has the potential to do a great deal more than that.
Real understanding will guide your life so that you may play an active role in helping others to see by it too.
Little Book - Big Secret covers two related subjects that combine to show and prove the real nature of the truth behind our lives.
It also brings to light the fact that there is an active opposition that has been working for centuries to prevent that proof becoming widely known.
An opposition that disguises itself as a supporter of the truth. An institutional liar in several guises. It protects itself by being a keeper of big secrets.
That liar is a highly organised propaganda and education control network that actively works to keep the majority of the people in bondage to their system by keeping them in a state of ignorance by having them believe false beliefs.
In very recent times the interest and suspicion of 'ordinary' people has been aroused by a little wake up bell that has spread throughout the world and they have started to ask the kind of questions that the opposition don't want them to ask.
That opposition fears that their own secrets and the crimes related to them will come into the open if people poke around and unearth hidden things.
The little nagging bell that I have mentioned is Dan Brown's immensely popular novel, The Da Vinci Code.
That book has upset a lot of people who think it offends them by putting their beliefs into dispute.
As I write this in India the newspapers are full of letters containing comments about the Da Vinci Code film written by enraged Christians who seem to need to deny others the right to free thought or speech while exercising their own God given right to have exactly that.
Those people are not going to like the real truth one little bit, at first.
The Vatican's reaction to Mr. Brown's book has been particularly aggressive yet it's writer states that it is a work of fiction, and it is.
It does however contain some hints about some very sensitive factual links that I will come to in good time.
Dan Brown's novel is far from the only book that dares to suggest that Jesus was a man and not God.
Many academic books that are not presented as works of fiction like Holger Kersten's 'Jesus Lived in India' or 'The Jesus Conspiracy' have been best selling titles yet there has been no uproar from the churches about their publication.
When 'The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail' was released it caused a flurry of interest among the kind of people who like the idea of mysteries and like trying to solve them. That book hinted at the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci was connected to the keeping of secrets that he had to conceal in coded form because they were too dangerous to speak about openly, secrets connected to the truth about Jesus that would put the holders of them in danger if the established church discovered who they were.
It was the book that first aroused peoples interest in the secret of the village of Renné's Le Château in France and the unexplained events in the life of it's secretive priest Francois Bérenger Saunière.
There were no worldwide cries of blasphemy among the general population when it hit the bookshops.
So what makes Dan Brown's novel such a target of the church?
Why are they so afraid of this one?
If they really are hiding secrets from the world as his book suggests why are they doing it and what are the secrets?
The real answer to those questions will be revealed to the reader of this book.
The reason for the Vatican's reaction to 'The Da Vinci Code' has something to do with the fact that that book has aroused the interest of a much greater number of people than the academic works ever did and it has caused them to become interested in the subject of the book that Dan Brown based his novel on, the subject being Da Vinci's connection to the Priory De Sion, a secret society reputed to be the guardians of the secret of the real Holy Grail, hidden codes and their connection to Sauniere's lucrative secret.
In doing so Dan Brown's book has prepared the way for the public acceptance of the fact that there really is a Da Vinci Code although it cannot be said that he created it, and there really are people who don't want the world to know that there is.
One name of that code is THE ROSE another is THE ORACLE.
One purpose of this little book is to prove it to the world by demonstrating it.
Before I help you to see what it is, how it works and why it has been kept secret I need to tell you how I came to know about it and why.
While doing so I will show you the second secret.
In 1996 agents working for the British and American governments witnessed, participated in and recorded a sequence of events that were designed by God to give them absolute proof that God exists.
It was done in such a way that they could show that proof to the world if they elected to do so.
The author of this book was also involved in those shockingly crucial happenings.
The whole thing occurred totally automatically, as all things really do, so it was not by my personal merit that it occurred.
I had no idea that it was going to happen until it started in the spring of 1996.
Prior to that time I had been a mussel farmer in Scotland and I was also what people call 'a seeker'.
My role was to help God to supply parts of the proof directly to the British and American governments.
The proofs had been set up in such a way that vital parts of it were received by them long before I was born.
By the time it got into full swing in October 1996 the intelligence agencies had a better idea about the nature of the things that were about to happen than I did. Thank God!
However, having said that, the actual events that occurred must have shocked them to the core even being, as they were, on the receiving end of it.
My own part in it was almost unendurably shocking at times.
Along with the tangible proof that they received they also received an ultimatum given to them in a very startling manner. The spoken message offered them an opportunity to do things in the right way to solve the world's problems before it is too late.
The government agents who received that vital message were advised to tell the world the truth about the things they have been hiding and to implement drastic changes in the way they are governing this world.
Those changes were to end the high level corruption that is currently causing a massive problem for the people of this dying planet Earth.
They were compassionately warned that failure to comply with the voice of God's reason would result in global catastrophe.
Instead of doing the sane and sensible thing they did the opposite and hid the whole thing from the people at the expense of the lives of some very well known figures who found out about it.
At the time that I was used to deliver the ultimatum under very special circumstances in October 1996 they were told that they had three and a half years to set a positive response in motion.
A very special identity proof that God supplied to the intelligence services without my knowledge of it proved beyond all doubt that the message I had been used to give to them was the genuine ultimatum from God.
They were literally shown THE WRITING ON THE WALL.
As their response was a negative one I was led to my proof when their three and half years was up to help me to break their secrecy.
That proof was given to me when I was very cleverly led by God to break the biblical seventh seal and find my own way to the discovery of the real Da Vinci code.
After the initial discovery of the existence of the secret Seven Seal code a small group of people were led to complete the master key that contains the anagram information lines that contain the timed links to recent catastrophe's that prove that they were preplanned to provide further warning 'hints' to the secretive government liar's who are still concealing the truth from the ordinary people of this dying world.
LITTLE BOOK - BIG SECRET part one, contains the details of the 1996 events and some important things that happened in the years that followed them, part two explains how the Ana code and the real Holy Grail was given by God.
It contains a big demonstration of the proof in the code.
Discover the secret of the SION MASTER FILE and how you can use it to communicate with God. Buying these books will help it to happen.
These books are not yet available in Bookshops for obvious reasons.
Little Book-Big Secret - Part one; The Ultimatum
and
Little Book-Big Secret - Part two; The Real Da Vinci Code
..are the books that can end the conspiracy and allow people to live in a world free of lies and free of fear.
These books are needed NOW and that's why they are available.
Order books
Copyright © Ross Kelly 2006
Return to top
Scrub The Web:
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Click on the graphic to vote for this
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Welcome Page
INTRODUCTION
Welcome Page
INTRODUCTION
Diana Spencer
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DIANA'S INQUEST
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Jill Dando
Jill Dando
Global Catastrophe &
Gods' Ultimatum
Global Catastrophe &
Gods' Ultimatum
Diana's Candle
Timing is Everything
Diana's Candle
Timing is Everything
The Devils Requiem
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The Devils Requiem
Five Days in Varkala
Buy the Books
Buy the Books
Et In Arcadia Ego
Et In Arcadia Ego
Welcome Page
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Introduction to -
Little Book Big Secret
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Little Book Big Secret
DIANA SPENCER
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DIANA'S INQUEST
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MOTHER TERESA
MOTHER TERESA
ROBIN COOK
ROBIN COOK
JILL DANDO
JILL DANDO
DAVID KELLY
DAVID KELLY
Global Catastrophe &
Gods Ultimatum''
Global Catastrophe &
Gods Ultimatum''
DIANA'S CANDLE
DIANA'S CANDLE
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Watch...
'The Devils Requiem''
Watch...
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Watch...
'Five Days in Varkala'
Watch...
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Little Book Big Secret order form
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ET IN ARCADIA EGO
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
ARS MAGNA
ARS MAGNA
THE HOLY GRAIL
THE HOLY GRAIL
THE ORACLE
THE ORACLE
DEPORTATION FROM AUSTRALIA
DEPORTATION FROM AUSTRALIA
sexta-feira, 9 de novembro de 2007
Vatican plan to block gay priests
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1558063,00.html
Vatican plan to block gay priestsJamie Doward, religious affairs correspondentSunday August 28, 2005The Observer
The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests.
The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.
It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.
Article continues
The document expresses the church's belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern.
Vatican-watchers believe the Pope harbours doubts about whether the church should publish the document, which has already been the subject of three drafts.
'Inevitably, such a directive will be met with opposition,' said John Haldane, professor of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
The instruction tries to dampen down the controversy by eschewing a moral line, arguing instead that the presence of homosexuals in seminaries is 'unfair' to both gay and heterosexual priests by subjecting the former to temptation.
'It will be written in a very pastoral mode,' Haldane said. 'It will not be an attack on the gay lifestyle. It will not say "homosexuality is immoral". But it will suggest that admitting gay men into the priesthood places a burden both on those who are homosexual and those they are working alongside who are not.'
The instruction was drawn up as part of the Vatican's response to the sexual abuse scandal that surfaced in the American church three years ago, which has seen hundreds of priests launch lawsuits against superiors whom they accuse of abusing them.
As the former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body charged with looking into the abuse claims, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was made acutely aware of the scale of the problem. He is thought to have made clearing up the scandal one of the key goals of his papacy.
Next month the Vatican will send investigators to the US to gauge the scale of the scandal. More than 100 bishops and seminary staff will visit 220 campuses. They will review documents provided by the schools and seminaries and may interview teachers, students and alumni, then report directly to the Vatican, which could choose to issue the instruction barring homosexuals from entering the priesthood as part of its response.
Studies show that a significant proportion of men who enter seminaries to train for the priesthood are gay. Any move signalling that homosexuals will not be allowed to join the seminaries, even one couched in the arcane language of the Vatican, could reduce the number of recruits to the priesthood.
In a further sign of the instruction's deeply controversial nature, it is expected the document would be signed by a cardinal rather than the Pope himself if the Vatican decides to publish it.
The Vatican has been carefully trying to soften Benedict's image since he was elected earlier this year. In recent weeks he has reached out to the Jewish and Muslim communities as well as young Catholics during the church's World Youth Day. The initiatives have been seen as a significant PR success. A decision to publish an instruction that would underscore his religious conservatism would be detrimental to Benedict's standing as he enjoys his 'honeymoon period' on the world stage.Special reportsThe PopeItalyReligious affairsFocusPope John Paul IIIn pictures19.04.05: The election of a new popeUseful linksThe VaticanBeliefnet - the PopeThe Pope BlogCatholic Online
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Vatican plan to block gay priests International The Observer- [ Traduzir esta página ]
Vatican plan to block gay priests. Jamie Doward, religious affairs correspondent ... drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests. ...observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1558063,00.html - 48k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
Vatican plan to block gay priests - theage.com.au- [ Traduzir esta página ]
A worldwide directive to Catholic seminaries banning the ordination of gay men is in the pipeline, Vatican sources have confirmed. - The Age.www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/09/1039379784109.html - 25k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
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Vatican plan to block gay priestsJamie Doward, religious affairs correspondentSunday August 28, 2005The Observer
The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests.
The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.
It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.
Article continues
The document expresses the church's belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern.
Vatican-watchers believe the Pope harbours doubts about whether the church should publish the document, which has already been the subject of three drafts.
'Inevitably, such a directive will be met with opposition,' said John Haldane, professor of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
The instruction tries to dampen down the controversy by eschewing a moral line, arguing instead that the presence of homosexuals in seminaries is 'unfair' to both gay and heterosexual priests by subjecting the former to temptation.
'It will be written in a very pastoral mode,' Haldane said. 'It will not be an attack on the gay lifestyle. It will not say "homosexuality is immoral". But it will suggest that admitting gay men into the priesthood places a burden both on those who are homosexual and those they are working alongside who are not.'
The instruction was drawn up as part of the Vatican's response to the sexual abuse scandal that surfaced in the American church three years ago, which has seen hundreds of priests launch lawsuits against superiors whom they accuse of abusing them.
As the former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body charged with looking into the abuse claims, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was made acutely aware of the scale of the problem. He is thought to have made clearing up the scandal one of the key goals of his papacy.
Next month the Vatican will send investigators to the US to gauge the scale of the scandal. More than 100 bishops and seminary staff will visit 220 campuses. They will review documents provided by the schools and seminaries and may interview teachers, students and alumni, then report directly to the Vatican, which could choose to issue the instruction barring homosexuals from entering the priesthood as part of its response.
Studies show that a significant proportion of men who enter seminaries to train for the priesthood are gay. Any move signalling that homosexuals will not be allowed to join the seminaries, even one couched in the arcane language of the Vatican, could reduce the number of recruits to the priesthood.
In a further sign of the instruction's deeply controversial nature, it is expected the document would be signed by a cardinal rather than the Pope himself if the Vatican decides to publish it.
The Vatican has been carefully trying to soften Benedict's image since he was elected earlier this year. In recent weeks he has reached out to the Jewish and Muslim communities as well as young Catholics during the church's World Youth Day. The initiatives have been seen as a significant PR success. A decision to publish an instruction that would underscore his religious conservatism would be detrimental to Benedict's standing as he enjoys his 'honeymoon period' on the world stage.Special reportsThe PopeItalyReligious affairsFocusPope John Paul IIIn pictures19.04.05: The election of a new popeUseful linksThe VaticanBeliefnet - the PopeThe Pope BlogCatholic Online
Advertiser links
Fast Weight Loss with Ephedrine Hcl
Pharmaceutical grade pure ephedrine Hcl starting at £8.99!astronutrition.com
Weight Loss Program that Works
We can help you with a fast Weight Loss program which is...hearthealth.biz
Diet Pills and Appetite Suppressants
Lose weight fast with C-Trim and Hoodia. Highly effective...4slimmingpills.com
City Breaks Cheap Flights Cold Remedies Slimming Ethical Gifts
Vatican plan to block gay priests International The Observer- [ Traduzir esta página ]
Vatican plan to block gay priests. Jamie Doward, religious affairs correspondent ... drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests. ...observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1558063,00.html - 48k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
Vatican plan to block gay priests - theage.com.au- [ Traduzir esta página ]
A worldwide directive to Catholic seminaries banning the ordination of gay men is in the pipeline, Vatican sources have confirmed. - The Age.www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/09/1039379784109.html - 25k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
Nation: A gay priest speaks on impending Vatican document- [ Traduzir esta página ]
NCR spoke with a gay priest who is active in an ethnically diverse urban ... gay men from entering the seminary, news of a Vatican plan to send teams of ...ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005d/101405/101405h.php - 20k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
Americans Plan Rome Trip Over Ban on Gay Priests - New York Times- [ Traduzir esta página ]
Americans Plan Rome Trip Over Ban on Gay Priests .... VATICAN EXPECTED TO EXCLUDE GAYS AS NEW PRIESTS (September 22, 2005); Times Select Content ...www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/national/30catholic.html - Páginas Semelhantes
Admirers of Fallen 9/11 Hero Disdain the Vatican's Likely Plan to ...- [ Traduzir esta página ]
"The idea that gay priests somehow cannot serve straight congregants, when you have ... The Vatican document on gay seminarians has not yet been completed, ...www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/nyregion/25judge.html - Páginas Semelhantes[ Mais resultados de www.nytimes.com ]
Vatican Plan to Block Gay Priests- [ Traduzir esta página ]
The new Pope faces his first controversy over direction of Catholic church after it was revealed that Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction ...www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-27-2005-75617.asp - 17k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
"Pro-Choice", Pro-Gay Priest Given Permission from Bishop but not ...- [ Traduzir esta página ]
"Pro-Choice", Pro-Gay Priest Given Permission from Bishop but not Vatican to Run for Politics. Father Raymond Gravel is former homosexual prostitute ...www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06103002.html - 29k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
Vatican plans to test if trainee priests are gay Sunday Herald ...- [ Traduzir esta página ]
Vatican plans to test if trainee priests are gay from Sunday Herald, The in Array provided free by LookSmart Find Articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20021020/ai_n12579166 - 30k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
A gay priest speaks on impending Vatican document National ...- [ Traduzir esta página ]
A gay priest speaks on impending Vatican document from National Catholic ... kind of plans to make anymore and that you have friends--gay priests--who are ...findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_44_41/ai_n15979367/pg_4 - 26k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes[ Mais resultados de findarticles.com ]
Concerned Women for America - 'Gay' Activists Plan to Fight ...- [ Traduzir esta página ]
'Gay' Activists Plan to Fight Upcoming Vatican Ban on Homosexual Priests 12/17/2002 By Allyson Smith. You'd be surprised who's criticizing the Catholic ...www.cwfa.org/articles/2934/CFI/cfreport/index.htm - 38k - Em cache - Páginas Semelhantes
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