Posted on 12/15/2002 8:34:40 PM PST by Notwithstanding
Their so-called smoking gun theory boils down to this: the pope in 1999 recommended that a defrocked priest ought not return to the area where he committed his offenses. They take this eminently sensible advice and use it as a hammer to bludgeon the pope. Just so everyone understands what’s going on here, what the pope did was to say that a former priest—someone who had been returned to the status of a layman—ought to start a new life in a new location. Isn’t this what parole boards recommend to released inmates—that they not return to the neighborhood that nurtured their maladies? Shame on Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly and others for disseminating this mindless charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicleague.org ...
In fully utilizing your freedom of speech, you make our job easier. In fully using the power you do have as a taxpaying citizen to jail these creeps you will make our job still easier. If you think you are going to opportunistically score points off the one Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself by cheap smarmy internet graffiti scrawled on the walls of that Church, you are sadly mistaken. But you are certainly welcome to try.
What is it about self-proclaimed "free speech" or "FREE SPEECH" advocates that makes them so very inappropriately touchy when other folks use the same freedom of speech to respond to their inanities? America wants to know!!!
This is not some government indoctrination center for captive school kids whose parents don't care and we are not a life support system for the manifestly unearned "self-esteem" of the terminally ignorant.
Have another camel.
In an argument you have obviously brought a strand of well-boiled spaghetti to a gun fight. Rave on!
As to you, I am not so sure.
Meanwhile, many Catholics, whether antlered or clothed in Our Lady's color of blue will respond with our own vigorous use of the First Amendment lest you imagine that you have earned a right to self-esteem by broadcasting your errors.
Bring it on!
Second, people who express themselves publicly and with vehemence are in a poor position to demand silence of their critics.
Third, defamation cases are notoriously disfavored in our courts.
Fourth, and most important, it is black letter law that truth is a complete defense to any charge of defamation: libel, slander, false light or whatever.
I agree with most of what you've been posting, BlackElk, but folks have been forecasting JPII's death & disability since the 80's. He's still got it in the top story, though his physical abilities have gone back and forth a bit. He has Ratzinger and Sodano to take care of the details so he can focus on the big picture and spread the Gospel within and outside the Church. Some think a younger, more physically active pope is needed, but in my view JPII's spirit and obviously physical cross exemplify the role of Christ's vicar on earth.
Bernard Cardinal Law is not a Muslim yet and we are still never going to hear the end of it but that's OK because it will put the fear of public exposure and accountability in the lavender clerics and their supportive AmChurch liberal bishops.
Catholic bump.
The more I learn about these evil priests and their enablers, the more I appreciate my local priests who have served the Lord with integrity and honor.
And how do you prove it. You really dont think the pope would get off his throne and come here to testify do you?
Um...Faithful Catholics?
BUMP(Desdemona)
And, I'll see that Bump and raise you two...
I think this is one of those statements that is going to require several pieces of irrefutable proof...
We Catholics mark history by centuries and millenia and not by newspaper headlines. I am afraid you will have to learn to live with the stately pace of Vatican activity. It is quite traditional and ever more necessary due to due process standards imposed upon discipline by Canon Law. We aren't likely to hurry on your account.
The Mad Monk of Milwaukee, Rectalbert Weakland, leftist AmChurch prelate extraordinaire, personally authorized the payoff, er, payment to the younger "man" whom he had diddled or by whom he had been diddled in the approximate amount of $400 K to his young and apparently irresistible boytoy. The Vatican never approved that.
Do you suppose that the fact that the press wants to speak to a pope means that the press will get the interview? The press will get whatever interviews the pope sees fit to grant them and not one bit more.
There are over a billion Catholics in the world and JP II is not expected to micromanage them individually or even, for the most part, through Vatican bureaucracies.
The unparenthesized portion of your third paragraph does not follow logically from the facts or even from the planted axioms. Are you working from a papal job description familiar to the Vatican?
Fatima is private revelation and not required belief, although the Third Secret probably is nothing like what you suggest and seems more likely a suggestion of a papal martyrdom.
As to JP II disbanding the Chrurch, I would not hold my breath waiting if I were you since Jesus Christ Who founded the Catholic Church guaranteed that the Church would be here through the end and that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.
The last pope will be reigning and applauding on the day when Our Lord and Savior tosses Lucifer into the fiery pit once and for all.
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