Phil Brennan
Wednesday, June 12, 2002

Your Excellencies:

As I write this, you are meeting in Dallas to discuss the problem of sexual abuse of minors now plaguing our Church. There really should be no dilemma about how the matter should be handled – from deacons to cardinals, members of the clergy who commit offenses against sexual morality, whether their targets are minors or adults, have no business being in holy orders. Period.

You shouldn't have any problem here. Where the matter of forgiveness is concerned, if the offender is repentant, he should be forgiven. But he should never again be permitted to function in a priesthood he has both betrayed and degraded by his behavior.

Now that this is out of the way, I want to discuss the real problems afflicting the Body of Christ – the problems that should be at the core of your agenda in Dallas. To put it bluntly, the fact is that your excellencies are the problem from which all the others arise.

Many of you have failed to perform your principal function – that of being the good shepherds for the flock over which you are obliged to watch. Out of either fear of giving offense to those most worthy of being offended, or just plain laziness, you have neglected to lead your flocks into the green pastures of God's grace, and have instead allowed them to wander into the muck and mire of the modernist swamp that is today's secular society.

You have forgotten that we are meant to be "a royal priesthood, a people set apart," living in the world but not of it. When all around us our brothers and sisters wander lost and without guidance in a corrupt and atheistic society, you have stood aside and failed to provide the leadership and example your episcopal vows demand of you.

You have allowed the doctrines of the faith to be questioned or flouted by theologians and others in Holy Orders. You have permitted the pastors and priests under your jurisdiction to experiment with the rituals of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in some cases so altering it that it has become unrecognizable as a sacred liturgical rite during which bread and wine are transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The time has now arrived for the massive abuses that have so distorted the image of Holy Mother Church to come to a sudden stop. And it is your duty to make that happen. We, the laity, can't – this is a hierarchic church that has survived for 2,000 years only because under Divine guidance it is hierarchical. But we can demand that you do your job.

At the root of the scandal you are meeting to discuss is the matter of homosexuality in the priesthood. The great majority of the scandals involving priests have involved young men and homosexual priests. Surely you were aware that a number of seminaries under your direct control had become hotbeds of homosexuality. You have ordained active homosexuals and put them in a position to practice their perversions, often among some of the most vulnerable of your flock – young, impressionable boys and men.

In a larger context, you have stood idly by and watched as organized homosexuals have launched campaigns to legitimize their perversions and gain the right to propagandize children in our public schools in an ill-disguised attempt to proselytize the young and enlist them into their perverted lifestyle.

It is time for you to speak out. In every diocese it should be made plain that homosexuality is a sin, a serious offense against God. It is an addiction, like alcoholism. Not a civil right. You don't see Drunk Pride weeks or Drunk Pride parades or Drunk Pride days at Disneyworld. You don't see organized drunkards demanding that drunk-driving laws be abolished because they violate their civil rights, or drunkards seeking to go into the public schools to preach about the joys of alcohol to youngsters.

Alcoholics don't insist they were born that way. They do, or course, organize. They join AA in an effort to rid themselves of their addiction.

It is your responsibility to take the leadership in thwarting organized homosexual groups from gaining a legitimacy for their addiction in such cases as so-called hate crime laws or the legitimizing of same-sex marriage. If you fail to act, and act decisively, you will be guilty of aiding and abetting perversion of more and more impressionable children, now targets of organized homosexual groups.

When the Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued in the '60s, many American bishops simply ignored it. Thanks to their inaction, and in some cases outright hostility, huge numbers of married Catholics today practice artificial birth control.

Yet we hear not a single word of condemnation of the practice from the pulpit. Out of fear of offending their parishioners, pastors and priests remain silent, allowing their congregations to persist in this forbidden practice without a word of censure or an attempt to explain why artificial birth control is destructive to spiritual growth.

A case can be easily made for Humanae Vitae and what it teaches, but that case is never made from the pulpit. Mustn't offend the parishioners, you see.

Come to think of it, nowadays mentioning any kind of sin is verboten. Mustn't offend sinners because, since we're all sinners, that would mean offending everybody.

Your excellencies have all but abandoned your authority over the so-called Catholic colleges and universities in your dioceses. You have been ordered by the Holy Father to reassert your episcopal authority over these institutions and see to it that they proclaim the faith. Sure, you've paid lip service to the mandatum but you have not taken the decisive action called for.

Last Ash Wednesday, for example, the president of Holy Cross College, like a number of his peers in other allegedly Catholic institutions, permitted the pornographic "Vagina Monologues" to be performed under the college's auspices, despite massive protests. On Ash Wednesday! That president should have been removed from office instantly by the Ordinary of the Diocese and the Roman collar ripped from his neck. He's still there.

Many of you have given scandal by refusing to call to account those Roman Catholic public officials who openly support the murder of the unborn. Any politician who professes to be a Catholic while still supporting abortion should be publicly condemned and promptly excommunicated. The spectacle of the likes of Sen. Edward Kennedy, for example, receiving communion is scandalous and makes a mockery of the Church's condemnation of this unspeakable practice. It gives the impression that such people, by virtue of their positions, are immune from Divine law.

If the polls are right, large numbers of our fellow Catholics come to communion not believing that they are receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Yet how many priests say a word about this tragic unbelief in the most important of all doctrines, the root of our faith. Damned few, from what I've been able to observe.

Then there's the matter of the liturgy, which since Vatican II has been modified and changed and distorted until it is possible to go to a number of churches and participate in rituals that bear little if any resemblance to each other. Every one of you should instruct the priests in your dioceses to conform to the authorized ritual without any alterations whatsoever.

There's a lot more, but this will do for now. Go back to your dioceses and start acting like bishops instead of trying to be all things to all people. It is not your function to go along to get along. It is your sacred obligation to proclaim the truth to a society immersed in the lie, regardless of the consequences.

A beloved and now dead priest used to refer to the Episcopal Church as "the little Church that can't say no." Under your direction, the Catholic Church in America has striven mightily to become the big Church that won't say no.

It's past the time you started to say no. Loudly. Thunderously. And with absolute conviction.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute.

He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.

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