Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa makes a big Messa at the Vaticana

First, we must always be sure to differentiate the Vatican administration and management from the thousands of local Catholic Churches and the many millions of Catholic peoples of the world.

Nobody has to do much research to discover that the Vatican is in a lot of trouble these days. Most recently the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa gave a Good Friday sermon in the presence of the Pope in which he compared the growing criticism of Vatican administration to the evils of antisemitism against the Jewish people.

This will forever be known in the university textbooks as the classic case of attempted damage control that does exceedingly more damage than control. Read about it here, here, here and here. [Hat tips to Yochanan Hashlishi, and welcome home.]

The story of the rapid decline and fall of the Pope and the Vatican as we see it is simple and tragic. A cardinal named Joseph Alois Ratzinger assembled massive files over several decades on Church pedophile scandals worldwide, did nothing to respond to them and then lo and behold got himself elected pope. Does it appear to the suspicious outsider that the Vatican leadership was blackmailed into voting for said ambitious and unscrupulous cardinal? He had secret files on scandals covered up by every one of them. We cannot offer any other logical explanation for the self-defeating selection of a reactionary antisemitic German, a former member of Hitler's Youth, to the papacy.

The thousands of Catholic churches in every country will persevere long after the earth opens to swallow up the unceasingly evil purveyors of cover-ups, lies and immorality. Catholic believers around the world will stay faithful to their religion and continue all the good that their religion does for the poor and the downtrodden, without the Vatican. Our heart goes out to them all. Be strong and of good courage.

No question that the entire immoral authority of the Vatican is bankrupt and determined to declare itself so - going headlong into what we will call the biblical Prophet Nahum's version of absolute bankruptcy -- i.e., Chapter 3 (Verse 19, revised to apply to the present travails): There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?