Priests 'In Orgy' at Seminary

Roman Catholic leaders in Austria called an emergency meeting today after officials discovered a vast cache of photos and videos allegedly depicting young priests having sex at a seminary.

About 40,000 photographs and an undisclosed number of films, including child pornography, were downloaded on computers at the seminary in St Poelten, about 50 miles west of Vienna, the respected news magazine Profil reported.

Officials with the local diocese declined to comment but were meeting privately on the scandal, Austrian state television reported.

It said the seminary’s director, the Rev Ulrich Kuechl, and his deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, had resigned.

The Austrian Bishops Conference issued a statement today pledging a full and swift investigation.

“Anything that has to do with homosexuality or pornography has no place at a seminary for priests,” it said.

Church officials discovered the material on a computer at the seminary, Profil said. It published several images purportedly showing young priests and their instructors kissing and fondling each other and engaging in orgies and sex games.

Bishop Kurt Krenn, a conservative churchman who oversees the St Poelten Diocese, told Austrian television he had seen photos of seminary leaders in sexual situations with students. Krenn, however, dismissed the photos as “silly pranks” that “had nothing to do with homosexuality”.

A group of St. Poelten Diocese officials planned to ask the Vatican to remove Krenn as bishop, Austrian radio reported.

Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini told the Austria Press Agency that the Holy See had no comment.

Krenn, 68, issued a statement calling the accusations groundless while conceding that he “may have made some wrong personnel decisions” at the seminary.

In fact, to follow the logic of Rome, they can be saved with no covenant at all, either old or new, since most Jews are atheists but Rome says that they are just fine the way they are.

How is this supposedly Roman doctrine compatible with the Catechism, which says that men cannot be saved without faith?

Perhaps you could give an appropriate citation from the Pope which explains that Jews have their own salvific covenant? Or are you attributing Kasper's (possible?) opinion to the Pope, when it is well known that Kasper disagrees with Roman teaching on various matters (e.g. the letter of the CDF on the Church as Communion, which he has publicly criticized)?

It was in the awareness of the one universal gift of salvation offered by the Father through Jesus Christ in the Spirit (cf. Eph 1:3-14), that the first Christians encountered the Jewish people, showing them the fulfilment of salvation that went beyond the Law ... Therefore, in connection with the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus Christ, the unicity of the Church founded by him must be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith. Just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of Christ, a single Bride of Christ: “a single Catholic and apostolic Church” ... it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God ... With the coming of the Saviour Jesus Christ, God has willed that the Church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity (italics in orig.) ... If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation. (CDF, "Dominus Iesus")

How is this compatible with the theory that Jews have a separate salvific covenant?

"The pope owes you no answers."

Wrong. The Pope owes his Church correct doctrines, reasons, explanations. The Church has always insisted faith should be nourished by reason. We can't do this in the current climate. Modernism can't be reconciled with Tradition. So it doesn't even try. It's simply waiting for whole generations of traditional Catholics to die out.

"You owe him obedience."

Not when he commands what is wrong or unCatholic. Obedience is over-rated as a virtue anyhow. Of far more importance is the courage to resist someone with so much power when he commands what would do harm to souls.

"You don't like him."

Correct. I resent that he has allowed his Church to slide into chaos. All these scandals were preventable. But he has always had more mind to punish Tradition than he had to get after the perverts and apostates. That is what I blame him for--and for the disrespect he showed to the faith itself at Assisi.

"He excommunicated your heroes and adjudged SSPX a schism which it is."

They weren't my heroes until much later when I did some investigating and found out they were innocent. I investigated the so-called "excommunication"--and discovered it was never imposed by anyone, that it depended on the individuals themselves, on their internal dispositions. I also discovered the Pope's interpretation of the so-called "schism" was dishonest and ignored the evidence.

Of course, to someone like yourself this would hardly matter. To you the Pope is the boss, even when he's wrong and even when he's trying to give Catholic Tradition the shaft. But to me it matters that the Archbishop was innocent and the Pope in the wrong. It matters because I believe the Archbishop is the one who was defending the faith, and the Pope was the one who wasn't. It should have been the other way around.

You can't pretend that it's simply Kasper. First of all, Kasper is a cardinal of the Church. He was made a cardinal by JPII. He has never been disciplined, as far as is publicly known. Far from it, he has been promoted to the position that is the most in the public eye of any job in the Vatican. Just this week, for instance, he was down in Buenos Aires saying that "anti-zionism" is now the same as "anti-semitism." So it is clearly disingenuous to attempt to separate Kasper from the Vatican.

However, there are other sources besides Kasper. Here is a good article from Seattle Catholic which discusses some of the recent statements which imply that Jews don't need to convert, and it quotes the infamous "Reflections on Covenant and Mission" document of the USCCB which looks to Pope John Paul II for support:

"John Paul II has explicitly taught that Jews are "the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God," "the present-day people of the covenant concluded with Moses," and "partners in a covenant of eternal love which was never revoked."

Seattle Catholic: "From Ratisbonne to Reflections"

Apparently Cardinal Keeler, the author of the "Reflections" document, and I are in agreement on one thing at least, that JPII doesn't want to convert any Jews. Why else would the pope appoint as bishop to the "Hebrew Catholics" of Israel someone who considers himself more Jewish than Catholic and has no intention of converting any Jews? A Benedictine whose appointment was opposed by his own monastic superior?

[quote from Dominus Iesus] How is this compatible with the theory that Jews have a separate salvific covenant?

C'mon. We all know the drill by now. First you release a liberal document, then you release a conservative-sounding document. Unless of course you save time by mixing both types of statements into a single document. It's the dialectical method. But I hope that 40 years after Vatican II no one is taken in by it anymore.

It only takes a very small amount of cyanide in the food to kill you. You will consider it quite irrelevant to have someone point out the perfectly healthy chicken and peas that are also in the dish if you know that there is also a lethal dose of poison as well.

John Paul II has explicitly taught that Jews are "the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God," "the present-day people of the covenant concluded with Moses," and "partners in a covenant of eternal love which was never revoked."

For one thing, these are all statements lacking context. They never, however, say that Jews can be saved if culpably outside the Church. I don't think the Pope is saying anything substantially different than St. Paul:

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.

I am not anti-Catholic, as I realize that abuse can occur in any church or setting, but I will say this: The problems with the Catholic church are an epidemic, aided and abetted by higher ups, who either move dirty priests, from one parish to another or remain silent, in the face of overwhelming evidence. Is the Pope God's representative on Earth, running an organization like this? (And, please. no one give the excuse that the Pope is 'senile' and 'not really' aware of what's going on - it was going on LONG before he became enfeebled, and he did nothing then, either).

Of course, the fact is that your personal and idiosyncratic beliefs that malicious Marcel was "innocent" are utterly irrelevant.

You and the other schismatics are entirely too full of yourselves and obviously believe that this is all about YOUR tastes, beliefs preferences and delusions. Your cover is that you speak for an unrecognizable form of "Catholic" "Tradition" in which the pope is to be despised whenever he fails to obey you and your eccentric friends.

Modernism is a heresy. If you believe that JP II is a Modernist heretic, perforce you must be a sedevacantist since the Holy Ghost will protect the pope from doctrinal error.

You are also rejecting the promise of Jesus Christ that he will be with the Church (not your schism du jour but the CHURCH) all days even unto the end of the world. Don't waste bandspace claiming that either you or Marcel's little band of schismatics are the actual Church and that JP II's Roman Catholic Church is a masquerade.

JP II is pope. You are not. If you claim to be a Catholic against all evidence, then you owe him obedience. That is how it works and how it has always worked. Marcel and SSPX share with Luther and the Reformation an identical Modus Operandi and deserve the same fate.

JP II punished no one legitimately describable as Catholic Traditionalists. He punished despicably disobedient rebel clerics led by impudent Marcel, excommunicated the bishops and declared the movement and its adherents in schism. The resulting posture assumed by SSPX of being some sort of ecclesiastical ACLU (a schismatic Civil Liberties Union???) ought to be embarrassing to even schismatics but SSPX is far beyond embarrassment in its infernal and "intellectually" incestuous love affair with itself.

The pope is the boss, as he should be and was intended by Christ to be.

The pope is right and YOU are wrong.

Marcel was not only wrong. He was excommunicated and apparently died unrepentant. Some hero!

Your opinions are, again, utterly irrelevant. Catholicism is NOT democracy. Repent and return to the Faith of your ancestors. Submit to papal authority as an act of faith even if you have so poisoned your own mind and will as to make such a simple submission to the Vicar of Christ distasteful to you. You have time.

Marcel's time has run out.

Just as I never spent much time cruising through carefully crafted Soviet propaganda from Pravda, Izvestia or Granma and am always somewhat disinclined to take that propaganda seriously, so it is with the recycled propaganda of your and Marcel's schism. There is NOTHING to take seriously much less to waste time on.

On one hand, a pack of snarling schismatics. On the other, the Vicar of Christ on Earth (not God but definitely His Vicar on Earth). For any actual Catholic, this is not a choice. The truth is self-evident that the SSPX schism and its excommunicated leaders are to be rejected outright without further ado. Entertaining fantasies such as the possibility that schism is correct and the Church wrong is simply not available as an option to Catholics. If you are not happy with Catholicism, formalize the fact that you have gone elsewhere. Make an honest man of yourself and recognize the obvious reality that SSPX is a mere apostasy and its adherents apostates.

Stupid response, since you admit you don't know what you're talking about. If you don't read the opinions of those with whom you disagree, what makes you think you have the right to decide those opinions are wrong?

Of course you would respond that the Pope's word alone is good enough for you. Fine. But it's a dumb response just the same since the Pope is often wrong. Not only is he often wrong, but he is often in contradiction with himself.
If you don't want to look into this, that too is fine. But it reveals your shallow understanding of what's at stake. It is not simply that the Pope is the supreme authority in the Church and should be obeyed--that is not disputed. But the real issue is whether that authority has limits, whether the Pope is the servant of the Tradition he has received, or whether he is master over it and may oppose that Tradition any time he wishes.

If he is servant, as the SSPX believes, then his commands need to be resisted when they aim at destruction of Catholic Tradition. If he is master, then the faith is whatever the Pope himself says it is and the Pope may do as he wishes. The problem with this notion is that it is in direct contradiction to the First Vatican Council which mandated unequivocally that papal power is given primarily to GUARD what has been transmitted. Vatican I also explicitly denied that papal novelties had divine protection. This limited absolutist notions of papal power. Despite this, papal absolutism is the vain belief you profess over and over on these threads. It is your only argument and it is false.

Marcel's time has run out? Is that why the Pope is suing the SSPX for peace? He sues because he was wrong and he knows it. He sues because he knows a Church opposed to its own Tradition is a laughing stock. He sues because he can't make a lie the truth, nor an injustice anything other than what it is, an injustice.

It is not we who are full of ourselves. Read these posts. It is you who are arrogant and pompous and deluded. What you call "tastes" are reasoned arguments you can't find time to think about--because you assume the Pope is never wrong--which is a false assumption to begin with. It's not even Catholic. It's nonsense.

Where does it say the Holy Ghost will protect the Pope from doctrinal error? Divine Protection is guaranteed for any ex cathedra definition made binding on the universal Church--but there's no guarantee a pope may not otherwise posit a heretical action--when he organizes interfaith prayer meetings and practices indifferentism, for instance. Some popes, such as John XXII, are known to have fallen into heresy. That is a matter of fact. It's not disputable.

Your claim that the promise of Jesus Christ is involved in the current conflict is ridiculous. During the Arian crisis most bishops and the pope himself were weak in defense of Catholic Tradition. That did not mean Jesus was not keeping His promise. It meant that the few who remained faithful, despite bearing the brunt of persecution, nevertheless saved the Church. This is going on today. The few--led by the SSPX--is saving the Church in the name of Jesus Christ and his promise.

JPII is the Pope, I am not disputing this. This does not mean he's never wrong. Nor does it mean that those who point this out are aligned with Martin Luther or are bad Catholics. Nor do we do this in our own name, but in the name of Catholic Tradition. We follow authority--but it is that of preconciliar popes and councils--authorities which are above reproach. If there is a conflict, it means somebody's wrong and the issues should be investigated objectively. Your knee-jerk response in favor of John Paul II is not helpful. It muddies the water. Investigate the claims! Look at the facts! Let truth prevail.

You slander Archbishop Lefebvre. He died at peace with his decision because he knew it was in conformity with truth and justice--which is all God asks of any of us. The excommunication was latae sententiae and depended on the conscience of the individual and what that individual believed to be true, not on what the Pope believed to be true. The Pope only spoke from his flawed perspective. The Archbishop was true to the faith as he had always known it. It was the faith of his childhood--and he was certain it was a truer guide than the flawed thinking of a flawed pope.

So you say. So Luther said. Wrong then and wrong now.

I suppose I would be regarded as a deep thinker if he deluded myself out of the Roman Catholic Church by embracing your sad little schism and your thoroughly excommunicated leaders and dead excommunicated Marcel. No thanks.

Also, I don't need to pay Michael Moore money to view Fahrenheit 9/11 to know that he is wrong and deserving of derision. And I won't pay him or pay attention to his arguments any more than I will make believe that the SSPX schism has anything to say to actual Catholics loyal to the Vicar of Christ on Earth. For the same reasons of non-credibility.

The difference between the Michael Moores and the SSPX is that if people fall for SSPX's schismatic nonsense they may well suffer eternal consequences. If they fall for Michael Moore, they simply reveal that they are haplessly gullible earthly windtunnels which may not have eternal consequences.

The stewardship of this or any pope will be judged by God and by God alone. Last time I checked, God was neither you nor Marcel nor SSPX nor any of dead and excommunicated Marcel's sycophants. Your claim (necessarily given the apostasy) is that any Catholic in communion with the Holy See (therefore disagreeing with you and your revolutionary schismatic mentors) must be "dumb" or "stupid" or "shallow."

You also assume the right to decide what Catholicism is (in opposition to the pope), what constitutes "tradition", what constitutes "novelty", etc. That is beyond your job description to the extent that you claim to be Catholic.

If you do not dispute that the pope is to be obeyed and that he is the supreme earthly authority in the Church, fine. Then stop insulting him. Stop reviling him. Stop despising him. Start obeying him and act as though you mean what you said on the subject. Of course your last paragraph, as usual, states the escape clause which is that you and your fellow schismatics get to sit in self-appointed judgment over the pope. Why should anyone pay attention to the lengthy propaganda from the Angelus or whatever from people with the same impious and apostasized belief systems. I don't read The Story of O, Fanny Hill, the Tales of Maria Monk, or Jack Chick Comix and I don't read regurgitated Angelus propaganda. Repent and return while time remains.

Marcel is gone. He has died excommunicated. He was not right. He was very wrong and he added scandal to his repertoire of disobedience, thereby jeopardizing the fate of the souls of those gullible enough to follow his Gallican stiff-necked resistance to legitimate authority.

If JP II is ever wrong as to a PRUDENTIAL judgment, it will not be accepted on the "authority" of his apostate enemies and self-annointed critics who continue Marcel's recent "tradition" of following him out of the Church. If JP II or any pope should ever lift the excommunications without full public repentance and penance and renunciation of the schismatic disobedience, then I would accept such a judgment because I have no business doing otherwise since the pope will have the keys. Unless and until such a thing should occur, I can certainly hope as I do that it will not occur.

John XXIII was a heretic????? So you say. I am no fan of John XXIII but he was no heretic and neither was Paul VI. Both made bad prudential judgments. Other than the Founder, no one is perfectly prudent. Your claim is further evidence of your sedevacantism.

Stop embarrassing SSPX with the comparisons with St. Athanasius. Don't hold your breath waiting for excommunicated Marcel to be restored and raised to the honors of the altar either.

Your last paragraph is a comedy riot and a tragedy at the same time.

Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia!

The topic of this thread is sin. Rumor has it that such despicable sins have been with us since at least Sodom and Gomorrah. Execution would be a fit punishment.

That having been said, you and the other adherents to the schismatic view regard this as yet another opportunity for cheap shots against the pope whom you despise for excommunicating Marcel and your (not our) other bishops. Bishops they are with all that that portends but they are about as loyal to Catholicism as Talleyrand who was a promiscuous archbishop before apostasizing to become the foreign minister of the French Revolution (an earlier instance of the fruit of obstinate Gallican disobedience).

I am not delighted with Hindus praying in the Fatima Basilica or with Hindus praying at Assisi but, you know what, it's not my call and it is not yours. I also would not be fond of the pagan rituals conducted as a shaman by the Lakota Black Elk who later was baptized and became a Catholic lay missionary to his people. My God is big enough to handle pagan piety however ineffective. How about yours?

If you are fortunate enough to be welcomed into the presence of the Beatific Vision after your death and, despite the riveting Awesomeness revealed thereby, you happen to notice the Dalai Lama nearby or a few Lakota warriors of 1000 AD (and thereby not baptized by water), will you feel cheated and ask to be expelled from heaven? Have you ever heard of the Cluniac Reform? It was necessitated by such behavior as that in Austria. It worked in its time.

Whether or not you reveal your residence (general area of Seattle?) as you previously have (am I mistaken here?) and as I have (vicinity and diocese of Rockford, Illinois) is your business and my business respectively. If you attend Masses said by priests of the schism, you hear their sermons. That is relevant to this thread. I have not questioned your Catholicism. Quite the contrary. I ahve noted repeatedly that one living in such an archdiocese is a good example of what may be the necessity of attending SSPX Masses.

Sinkspur has apologized to you at your insistence. It is not the first time that he and I have disagreed although his apologies are his business. The mere assertion that where you attend Mass is irrelevant without actual proof that it is (rather impossible to provide proof of such a thing) does not require apologies.

The schism is in constant full attack mode on all actually Catholic authority. Consuming a steady diet of revolutionary sermons seems quite likely to be relevant because it undermines the credibility of arguments of even fully Catholic persons on matters in institutions that are the responsibility of actual Catholics in communion with Rome. Any necessity of attending masses said by priests attached to the schism does not mean that their sermons are any sounder than their attachments to the schism.

I think I have taken great care not to consciously post anything on this subject which might be expected to offend your sensibilities. Your post to which I am responding is, forgive me, a bit hysterical in tone. I respect you individually whether or not I might make different decisions. I will not be intimidated, however, into ignoring what I deem as relevant to the argument on any thread.

For the record, I also do not particularly care where you attend Mass (why should I?) except insofar as it may be relevant to the argument. You are not like another who imagines that people are trying to literally stalk the schismatics by finding out what specific Church they may attend.

You normally seem not as offended by the schism itself as I am and you do not have to be. Nor do I have to be less offended by it than I am.

When we post here, we understand that there is a certain freewheeling nature to the argument as there should be. Also the didactic and imperative tone of your post is a bit misplaced.

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