The Foxes Appoint More Foxes to Watch Them

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        Our Lord never promised that the human element of His Church would not, in various places, succumb to the worst sort of corruption and even suffer destruction. He promised only that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church as a whole, and that, however small and weak She may become in certain epochs of history, She will always survive.

        Witness the massively corrupt North American hierarchy, whose recent escapades in Rome and Dallas demonstrate that it is incapable of any real reform. As this column is being written, our fearless bishops have banned kneeling to receive Holy Communion, issued a document repudiating any effort to convert Jews, and, to top off their busy schedule of Church-wrecking, are now appointing as "child abuse experts" people who have themselves covered up the sexual abuse of children.

        On the last point, CWNews.com reported on August 21, 2000 that "in the Washington Times, two researchers have charged that the US bishops are getting their ‘expert’ advice on pedophilia from people who have covered up or even defended sex between men and children." The authors of the Washington Times column (Judith Reisman and Dennis Jarrard) point to two of these "experts": Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the bishops’ new National Review Board, and Dr. Fred Berlin, who advised the US bishops in Dallas. The authors charge that "both McHugh and Berlin violated Maryland state law, while working at a Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, by failing to report incidents of child molestation to law-enforcement authorities. They report that Berlin has admitted withholding that information, on the grounds that disclosure might have deterred other child molesters from seeking help at the clinic."

        So the foxes in the episcopate have hired still more foxes to help them guard the chicken coop. And why should this surprise us? After forty years of ecclesial chaos, starting with the wreck of the Roman liturgy in 1969, Catholics have become almost habituated to scandal. Meanwhile, the Vatican does nothing about the auto-demolition of the Church, which is in high gear in America.

        Ah, but the Vatican has been quite attentive to the comings and goings of one priest - Father Nicholas Gruner. Incredibly, the Vatican apparatus has issued more "announcements," "notices" and "declarations" about this one faithful priest than it has concerning all the heretics, child-rapists and other miscreants in the Catholic priesthood combined. Even more incredibly, in the midst of unprecedented scandal and pandemic dissent from Catholic teaching, Father Gruner, who has committed no offense whatsoever, was the only priest in the entire Catholic Church to be mentioned in public condemnations by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy in the year 2001. This fact alone ought to tell us why our beloved Church is in the midst of the worst crisis in Her 2,000 years of existence.