FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER SEVEN – Part 26
Nothing Has Changed
QUOTE FOR THE WEEK:
“Pope Shocks Chile by accusing sex abuse victims of slander”
– News headline, Nicole Winfield/Associated Press, published Jan. 18, 2018 at 6:07.
https://mercurynews.com/2018/01/18/pope-shocks-chile-by-accusing-sex-abuse-victims
Truth, i. e., “the whole truth and nothing but the truth—its current counterfeit balderdash bandied around as “alternative facts” — is indeed “stranger” and more boring “than fiction.” That’s the inevitable result when one allows the minds to the mind to explore, Eve-like, the technology-enhanced landscape of fiction, fantasies, and drama instead of God’s pure truths.
But when one familiarizes himself with the divine diagnostic tool of God’s Word and Bible prophecy, prayerfully and judiciously using this to filter out the deflections, distractions, and smokescreens mingled in the overwhelming deluge and mesmerizing cornucopia of news, entertainment, and current events, one will find it much easier to safely navigate this heavily-mined spiritual field.
Current news relevant to end-time prophecy has taken on a life of its own in the yet evolving progress of the #MeToo movement and the sickening revelations of decades of sexual abuse by a Larry Nassar, USA Gymnastics doctor and Osteopathic physician at MSU. More than 160 women claim to have been victimized. He was sentenced from 40 to 175 years in federal prison. Now the slow wheels of justice for sexual assault victims everywhere have begin to move. But not in the Church! Notice:
“Santiago, Chile – Pope Francis accused victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile of slander Thursday, an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that cost the Catholic Church its credibility in the country. Francis said that until he sees proof that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in covering up the sex crimes of Rev. Fernando Karadimas, such accusations against Barros are ‘all calumny.’
“The pope’s remarks drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates. They noted the accusers were deemed credible enough by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of ‘penance and prayer’ for his crimes in 2011. A Chilean judge also found the victims so credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crime wasn’t lacking.
‘As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all,’ tweeted Barros’ most vocal accuser, Juan Carlos Cruz. ’These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.’
“The Karadima scandal dominated Francis’ visit to Chile and the overall issue of sex abuse and church cover-up was likely to factor into his three-day trip to Peru that began late Thursday.
“Karadima’s victims reported to church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the swank Santiago parish he ran, but officials refused to believe them. Only when the victims went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from the ministry.
“The emeritus archbishop of Santiago subsequently apologized for having refused to believe the victims from the start.
“Francis reopened the wounds of the scandal in 2015 when he named Barros, a protégé of Karadima, as bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno. Karadima’s victims say Barros knew of the abuse, having seen it, but did nothing. Barros has denied the allegations. His appointment outraged Chileans, badly divided the Osorno diocese, and further undermined the church’s already shaky credibility in the country.
“Francis has sought to heal the wounds [caused by whom?] by meeting this week with abuse victims and begging forgiveness for the crimes of church pastors. [What about “exercising repentance towards God and faith I Jesus Christ” for the forgiveness of these heinous sins” rather than just “prayer and penance”?] But on Thursday, he struck a defiant tone when asked by a Chilean journalist about Barros.
‘The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,’ Francis said. ‘There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?’ . . . . Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online database BishopAccountability.org, said it was ‘sad and wrong’ for the pope to discredit the victims since ‘the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims,—and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed.’
‘He [Francis] has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis,’ she said in a statement. ‘Who knows who many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?’” (read the rest on the story on website cited above].
Here’s a few examples from Germany to the Spanish Peninsula to the Philippines of a universal problem, yes, “a cardinal sin” of sexual perversion in the Church that requires celibacy of its priests which is both unnatural and classed as “doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4: 1-3), revealed in the revolting “works of the flesh,” the exact opposite of the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5: 19-24). : Facts of Faith, Christian Edwardson, pp. 160-161:
“The Roman Church was sadly in need of a reformation, but she refused to surrender the elements that corrupted her, and she slew those who tried to save her. There were two Papal ordinances which especially contributed toward the terrible and widespread depravity of her priesthood: (1) enforced celibacy (forbidding priests to marry), and (2) exemption of the clergy from the domain of civil law, so that government officials could not punish them for any crime.
H.C. Lea says of the Roman Catholic clergyman:
‘No matter what crimes he might commit, secular justice could not take cognizance of them, and secular officials could not arrest him. He was amenable only to the tribunals of his own order, which were debarred from inflicting punishments involving the effusion of blood, and from whose decisions an appeal to the supreme jurisdiction of distant Rome conferred too often virtual immunity..’ – ‘ History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,’ Vol. I, p. 2. New York: 1888.
“This author makes a further statement concerning a complaint laid before the pope by the imperial Diet held at Nuremberg early in 1522 . . . The Diet, in recounting the evils arising from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which allowed clerical offenders to enjoy virtual immunity, adduced, among other grievances, the license afforded to those who, debarred by the canons from marriage, abandoned themselves night and day to attempts upon the virtue of the wives and daughters of the laity, sometimes gaining their ends by flattery and presents, and sometimes taking advantage of the confessional.
It was not uncommon, indeed, for women to be openly carried off by their priests, while their husbands and fathers were threatened with vengeance if they should attempt to recover them. As regards the sale to ecclesiastics of licenses to indulge in habitual lust, the Diet declare it to be a regular and settle matter, reduced to the form of an annual tax, which in most dioceses was exacted from all the clergy without exception, so that when those who perchance lived chastely demurred at the payment, they were told that the bishop must have the money, and that after it was handed over they might take their choice whether to keep concubines or not.’ [“celibacy” indeed!].—‘An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church,’ pp. 431, 432, and Note 1. Boston: Houghton Miffin and Co., Riverside Press, 1884.
“Let the reader remember that those complaints were made by the highest authority in the empire.’ – Ibid. Professor Philip Limborch records the same fact, and adds:
‘Erasmus says: ‘There is a certain German bishop, who declared publicly at a feast, that in one year he had brought to him 11,000 priests that openly kept women’: for they pay him annually a certain sum to the bishop. This was one of the hundred grievances that the German nation proposed to the Pope’s nuncio at the convention at Nuremberg, in years 1522 and 1523. Grievance 91.’ – ‘History of the Inquisition,’ p. 84.
“H.C. Lea says: ‘The extent to which the evil sometimes grew may be guessed from a case mentioned by Erasmus, in which a theologian of Louvian refused absolution to a pastor who confessed to having maintained illicit relations with no less than two hundred nuns confided to his spiritual charge.’ –‘ An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy,’ pp. 567, 568.
“While the Pope had ample machinery in the Inquisition for the correcting his sinning priests, yet he was very lenient with them, except for ‘heresy.’ In fact, heinous depravity seemed to have been worse where the Inquisition reigned supreme. H.C. Lea continues:
‘It is rather curious that in Spain, the only kingdom where heresy was not allowed to get a foothold, the trouble seems to have been the greatest and to have first called for special remedial measures [extreme forms of torture and death].’ –‘Id., p. 568.
“Of the ‘remedial’ laws enacted in 1255, 1274, and 1302, Lea says:
‘However well-meant these efforts were, they proved as useless as all previous ones, for in 1322 the council at Valladolid, under the presidency of the papal legate, [enacted still more laws]. The acts of this council, moreover, are interesting as presenting the first authentic evidence of a custom which subsequently prevailed to some extent elsewhere, by which parishioners were wont to compel their priests to take a female consort for the purpose of protecting the virtue of their families from his assaults.’ – Id., p. 310. ‘The sale state of affairs continued until the sixteenth century was well advanced.’ – Id., p. 312.
“We have already seen ecclesiastical authority for the assertion that in the Spanish Peninsula the children sprung from such illicit connections rivaled in numbers the offspring of the laity.’ – Id., p. 336.
Philippine Victims. “Such conditions seem almost unbelievable But, when in 1900 W.H. Taft was sent to the Philippines to establish civil government with a public schools system there, he reported finding in these islands conditions similar to those described above. See Senate Document 190, 56th Congress, 2nd Session: ‘Message from the President of the United States,’ [1901] A.D.’ – Facts of Faith, p. 161.
“If some Protestants of today had known the conditions existing at the time of the Reformation they would not have judged Dr. Martin Luther so critically for his harsh statements. That the Reformation was inevitable result of the fallen condition of the Catholic Church, was acknowledged by the speakers at the Council of Trent. H. C. Lea says: ‘Even in the Council of Trent itself, the Bishop of St. Mark, in opening its proceedings with a speech, January 6th, 1546, drew a fearful picture of the corruption of the world, which had reached a degree that posterity might possibly equal but not exceed. This he assured the assembled fathers was attributable solely to the wickedness of the pastors [priests, prelates] , who drew their flocks with them into the abyss of sin. The Lutheran heresy had been provoked by their own guilt, and its suppression was only to be hoped for by their own reformation . . . . “ – ‘An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy,’ pp. 518, 519; Facts of Faith, pp. 161,162.
(Continued next week)