Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, head of the Vatican’s anti-Fatima clique, is basically running the Catholic Church these days, exercising a virtual veto over papal decisions. It was he, for example, who just recently undermined the Pope’s directive that the traditional Latin Mass be permitted once again in St. Peter’s Basilica. Sodano ordered that celebrations of the traditional Mass be confined to the modernized Hungarian Chapel in the basilica’s basement, which lacks even kneelers. And no public presence is allowed!

        Sodano’s policies smack of governance by an ecclesiastical politician whose utterances would not offend a liberal Democrat. Consider his recent long, boring speech on "Dialogue," which he issued to the 33rd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS).

        Sodano’s pronouncement to the OAS declares that "The members of the OAS, however, ... are conscious that the promotion and consolidation of democracy occurs through the elimination of poverty and everything that is a cause or consequence of it: illiteracy, violence, crime, terrorism, corruption, arms and drug trafficking, while not forgetting other social problems such as discrimination, racism, intolerance, lack of respect for human rights."

        How is Sodano’s message distinguishable from the platform of the Democratic National Committee? Notice how he suggests that poverty causes violence, crime, terrorism, and drug trafficking, as if those who were guilty of such wrongdoing were lacking in free will. This is nothing but the old "root cause" saw of liberals everywhere — poverty is the "root cause" of all human misbehavior. Never mind that many of the greatest of the Church’s saints came from the most impoverished of circumstances, and that Our Lord Himself lived in conditions that would be considered utterly impoverished by the "poor" of today.

        Sodano went on to say that "dialogue, which is the strength of democracy, must be the credo of politicians. Through dialogue, the riches of some become the patrimony of everyone and mistakes can be corrected before it is too late. With dialogue, the foundations of a better and truly democratic society are laid."

        What on earth does that mean? What could be more meaningless than this "dialogue" which has somehow become the watchword of post-conciliar thinking in the Church, replacing the Church’s formerly simple approach to the world: making converts in order save souls from hell, while teaching the world the error of its ways.

        Perhaps the greatest threat to the Church today lies not so much in the overt heterodoxy and heteropraxis which have overtaken so many of Her human members — this indeed is disastrous enough — but rather the sudden and mysterious dumbing-down of the Church’s message to the point where it consists of little more than vacuous liberal platitudes.

        When the salt loses its flavor, it is good for nothing but being trampled under foot. And thus the world tramples on the Catholic hierarchy today — thanks to the empty palaver of men like Cardinal Sodano.