MEDJUGORJE IS NOT FOR REAL

Medjugorje and Propaganda

by Marco Corvaglia

As early as 1985, La Civiltà Cattolica, the historic Jesuit magazine, wrote, about Medjugorje, "a large number of books, articles, interviews, videos, movies, radio and TV reports, which, in fact, give - and not only to us - the impression of an advertising campaign very well and diffusely organized” [Giovanni Caprile S. J., Circa i fatti di Medjugorje, "La Civiltà Cattolica", No. 3238, 18 May 1985, p. 363].

Perhaps there is an inaccuracy in this description. The advertising campaign was not and is not "diffusely organized". It grows in a completely natural way and is self-feeding: in many cases, those who make propaganda have in turn been victims of it.
It remains only to understand why it happens. And it is not difficult.

Let's start with the books: whether we are dealing with Medjugorje, or, for example, with any magical or mysterious belief, the market is dominated by publications in favor of the phenomena at issue.
Currently, in Italy, hundreds of books on astrology or on UFOs are on the market, nearly all written by and for "believers". With regard to reiki (a New Age practice), on the market there are 61 books, of which only one is critical.
As to Medjugorje, the situation is analogous.
What does it mean?

Since publishers are commercial entities and invest only in what can increase their gains, the alleged wonderful and mysterious phenomena, although there are deep differences between them, mainly attract the attention of those who believe in them already (and not of the skeptics who are more likely to ignore than to criticize them).

Stuart Sutherland, Professor of Psychology at Sussex University, noted:

The paranormal is news, its absence is not. In 1979 an excellent book (by David Marks and Richard Kammann), which debunked Uri Geller's tricks and other alleged paranormal phenomena, was turned down by over thirty American publishers, all of whom were competing to publish books endorsing psychic phenomena.
[Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality, Pinter & Martin Ltd, London, 2013, p. 225]

If we extend this scrutiny to the other mass-media, we must remember that these are also legitimate activities for profit. Therefore, they must give the general public what it wants.
London University Professor Stephen Law wrote:

Tabloid newspapers and TV production companies know that, as a rule, their audiences tend to be more interested in dramatic and extraordinary tales than in articles or programs that shed doubts on such stories. As a result, even while pretending to be "balanced", TV programs on the paranormal are often little more than puffs for self-styled psychics. Doubts, if voiced at all, tend to be in the background.
[Strephen Law, Believing Bullshit, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2011, p. 177]

The popular monthly of the Pauline Fathers, Jesus, in a survey which explored the way in which TV addresses the phenomena linked to religion, highlighted:

The TV preferred the easy and profitable way of turning into a spectacle the "religious fact" - both in the information and in fiction - instead of trying a more difficult but perhaps more respectful path of reflection and analysis.
[Laura Badaracchi, Schermo divino, "Jesus", No. 5/2004, p. 53]

Arnaldo Nesti, Catholic scholar, former Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Florence, in the same survey said that TV production is "in line with an external devotion and with sensationalism" [ibid.] and added that "religious communication remains in a context devoid of a critical aspect, as if there were the concern of not being respectful" [ibid., p. 52].

It seems that this is not so much a sincere respect as an instrumental use of certain religious phenomena. In any case, what happens is that an ample space is given to news reports and stories inspired by the sensationalism and, if the arguments are likely to hurt the feelings of many people, not too much room is left for criticism, not to irritate large parts of the public. It is clear that this does not help an informed and objective assessment of the facts.

Marco Corvaglia

The Bloody Handkerchief

by Marco Corvaglia

In September 1981 it was rumoured through the village that, near Medjugorje, an unidentified driver had been the protagonist of a, by the way, unoriginal story, that was, as noted by Joachim Bouflet in his book Faussaires de Dieu, the repetition of a pious legend common in European folklore for centuries.

The issue concerns us because the locals asked Vicka to ask the Virgin if the fact was true.
Vicka herself, in the well-known interview-book with Father Bubalo, declared it:

VICKA: Someone told us to ask the Virgin if that was the way it was.
[Janko Bubalo, A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The Seer Vicka Speaks of Her Experiences, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago, 1987, p. 92]

The story in brief is this: a taxi driver, like Vicka reports, "was returning to Medjugorje when, somewhere in Cerno some poor man stopped the car" [Ibid., p. 91, therefore, the "seer" presents it as a real and concrete fact].
That man was Jesus, who gave the driver a bloody handkerchief and told him to throw it into the river.
Going on, the same taxi driver met the Madonna, who got the man to give her the bloody handkerchief and then told him that if he had instead thrown it into the river, there would have been the end of the world.

Well, according to Vicka, the Madonna confirmed that the fact had actually occurred this way [see also Ogledalo Pravde. Biskupski ordinarijat u Mostaru o navodnim ukazanjima i porukama u Međugorju (The Diocesan Curia of Mostar on the Alleged Apparitions and Messages of Medjugorje), Mostar, 2001, p. 110]


Indeed, let us look at the diary of the "seer" [first book], on 4 September 1981.
Here are the pages related to the issue:

[Transcription: 72. ukazanje. PETAK, 4. 9. '81 god. Danas smo čekali kod Marije Gospu. Ja, Marija, Ivanka i Jakov smo počeli moliti u 6 i 20 min. Došla je Gospa odmah. […] Pitali smo za čovjeka koji je sreo Isusa u putu kada je razvozio narod svojim putem. Sreo je jednog čovjeka svog u krvi i dao mu je taj čovjek a on je bio Isus maramicu krvavu i rekao da je baci u rijeku. Vozeći dulje sreo je jednu ženu a to je bila Blažena Djevica Marija i Ona je molila čovjeka da mu da krvavu maramicu. Čovjek joj je pružio svoju maramicu ali Gospa je tražila krvavu. Kad joj je čovjek davo krvavu Gospa je rekla: Da mi je nisi dao, bio bi strašni sud. Gospa je rekla da je to istina.]

Translation:

72nd apparition. Friday 4. 9. '81.
Today we have waited for the Virgin at Marija’s. Marija, Ivanka, Jakov and I have begun to pray at 6 and 20 minutes. Our Lady has come soon.
We asked about the man who met Jesus on the road while driving some people to their destination. He met a man covered with blood and that man (he was Jesus) gave him the bloody handkerchief and told him to throw it into the river. Going on, he met a woman and she was the Blessed Virgin Mary and she asked the man to give her the bloody handkerchief. The man offered his handkerchief, but Our Lady asked for the bloody one.
When the man gave her the bloody one, Mary said: If you had not given it to me, there would have been the end of the world.
Our Lady said that this was the truth. 

Vicka confirmed also in the interview-book:

FATHER JANKO: Did he Virgin respond?
VICKA: She said that it did actually happen more or less as related. And the poor man was her Son, and that the the woman in black was she.
[Janko Bubalo, A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The Seer Vicka Speaks of Her Experiences, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago, 1987, p. p. 92]

As mentioned, the story actually is, with few adaptations, an ancient legend that has been circulating in Europe for centuries.
The first reliable attestation is found in the Croniche (“Chronicles") written in the fifteenth century by the Italian Giovanni Sercambi, where a very similar story is told, not about a handkerchief, but about some loaves.
Let us read a passage, translated from the ancient Italian:

While in those areas of England there was a great war [...] Christ, in the guise of a pilgrim, appeared to a farmer intent on working [...] He said to the worker: Go near to the piece of land that you work, and put these breads in the source you'll find there [...] The farmer wanted to put the bread in that spring, but the Virgin Mary, in the guise of an honest woman, approached him [...] She said: Go and tell that man that I, his mother, have not wanted you to put these breads in the spring [...] I want you to know that the man who came to you is Christ, my son, and I am the Virgin Mary, his mother. And I tell you that if I had let you put the bread in the source, the whole world would have been destroyed. 
[Giovanni Sercambi, Le Croniche, vol. II, Giusti, Rome, 1892, pp. 291-293]

Marco Corvaglia

The Bloody Handkerchief

by Marco Corvaglia

In September 1981 it was rumoured through the village that, near Medjugorje, an unidentified driver had been the protagonist of a, by the way, unoriginal story, that was, as noted by Joachim Bouflet in his book Faussaires de Dieu, the repetition of a pious legend common in European folklore for centuries.

The issue concerns us because the locals asked Vicka to ask the Virgin if the fact was true.
Vicka herself, in the well-known interview-book with Father Bubalo, declared it:

VICKA: Someone told us to ask the Virgin if that was the way it was.
[Janko Bubalo, A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The Seer Vicka Speaks of Her Experiences, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago, 1987, p. 92]

The story in brief is this: a taxi driver, like Vicka reports, "was returning to Medjugorje when, somewhere in Cerno some poor man stopped the car" [Ibid., p. 91, therefore, the "seer" presents it as a real and concrete fact].
That man was Jesus, who gave the driver a bloody handkerchief and told him to throw it into the river.
Going on, the same taxi driver met the Madonna, who got the man to give her the bloody handkerchief and then told him that if he had instead thrown it into the river, there would have been the end of the world.

Well, according to Vicka, the Madonna confirmed that the fact had actually occurred this way [see also Ogledalo Pravde. Biskupski ordinarijat u Mostaru o navodnim ukazanjima i porukama u Međugorju (The Diocesan Curia of Mostar on the Alleged Apparitions and Messages of Medjugorje), Mostar, 2001, p. 110]


Indeed, let us look at the diary of the "seer" [first book], on 4 September 1981.
Here are the pages related to the issue:

[Transcription: 72. ukazanje. PETAK, 4. 9. '81 god. Danas smo čekali kod Marije Gospu. Ja, Marija, Ivanka i Jakov smo počeli moliti u 6 i 20 min. Došla je Gospa odmah. […] Pitali smo za čovjeka koji je sreo Isusa u putu kada je razvozio narod svojim putem. Sreo je jednog čovjeka svog u krvi i dao mu je taj čovjek a on je bio Isus maramicu krvavu i rekao da je baci u rijeku. Vozeći dulje sreo je jednu ženu a to je bila Blažena Djevica Marija i Ona je molila čovjeka da mu da krvavu maramicu. Čovjek joj je pružio svoju maramicu ali Gospa je tražila krvavu. Kad joj je čovjek davo krvavu Gospa je rekla: Da mi je nisi dao, bio bi strašni sud. Gospa je rekla da je to istina.]

Translation:

72nd apparition. Friday 4. 9. '81.
Today we have waited for the Virgin at Marija’s. Marija, Ivanka, Jakov and I have begun to pray at 6 and 20 minutes. Our Lady has come soon.
We asked about the man who met Jesus on the road while driving some people to their destination. He met a man covered with blood and that man (he was Jesus) gave him the bloody handkerchief and told him to throw it into the river. Going on, he met a woman and she was the Blessed Virgin Mary and she asked the man to give her the bloody handkerchief. The man offered his handkerchief, but Our Lady asked for the bloody one.
When the man gave her the bloody one, Mary said: If you had not given it to me, there would have been the end of the world.
Our Lady said that this was the truth. 

Vicka confirmed also in the interview-book:

FATHER JANKO: Did he Virgin respond?
VICKA: She said that it did actually happen more or less as related. And the poor man was her Son, and that the the woman in black was she.
[Janko Bubalo, A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje. The Seer Vicka Speaks of Her Experiences, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago, 1987, p. p. 92]

As mentioned, the story actually is, with few adaptations, an ancient legend that has been circulating in Europe for centuries.
The first reliable attestation is found in the Croniche (“Chronicles") written in the fifteenth century by the Italian Giovanni Sercambi, where a very similar story is told, not about a handkerchief, but about some loaves.
Let us read a passage, translated from the ancient Italian:

While in those areas of England there was a great war [...] Christ, in the guise of a pilgrim, appeared to a farmer intent on working [...] He said to the worker: Go near to the piece of land that you work, and put these breads in the source you'll find there [...] The farmer wanted to put the bread in that spring, but the Virgin Mary, in the guise of an honest woman, approached him [...] She said: Go and tell that man that I, his mother, have not wanted you to put these breads in the spring [...] I want you to know that the man who came to you is Christ, my son, and I am the Virgin Mary, his mother. And I tell you that if I had let you put the bread in the source, the whole world would have been destroyed. 
[Giovanni Sercambi, Le Croniche, vol. II, Giusti, Rome, 1892, pp. 291-293]

Marco Corvaglia

PAT SAYS:

I have never been to Medjugorje and I have no desire to go there.

In fact, I am just back from Split in Croatian and was a two-hour drive from there but had no desire to see it.

For me, places like Medjugorje, Knock, and Fatima are CASINO CATHOLICISM.

The people who make the money out of these places are the Catholic clergy and the hawkers of religious objects.

I feel a little different about Lourdes because of the presence of the sick and those who work with them. But even  Lourdes is a money factory for the clerics and hawkers.

God is everywhere. We are no nearer to him in Medjugorje than we are in Dublin or Belfast.

Mary is NOT a goddess and these places make her. She was the mother of Jesus and a servant of God.

We should not pray TO Mary - but through Mary to God.

The whole Marian movement comes from the dynamic in Catholicism to canonize virginity and women being backroom servants.

At Split airport I met very sincere old ladies who were up at 5 in the morning following priests up mountains.

Those women were wives and mothers back here in Ireland and what makes them good and special is their vocations in and outside of the home - not following priests up mountains.

But like all casinos Casino Catholicism has its "addicts" and basically they are very often uncurable because they like the drugs given out to them by their "dealer" priests. 

Even Pope Francis has a big problem with Medjugorje. 

Whoever can give them illusions easily masters them."
Gustave Le Bon, Psychology of Crowds (1895)

VATICAN DIPLOMAT RECALLED OVER CHILD PORN

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Latest News

Vatican diplomat recalled from US over child-porn allegations

by Cindy Wooden

People are seen outside the apostolic nunciature in Washington in 2014 (Getty Images)

The priest could face up to 12 years imprisonment if found guilty

A member of the Vatican diplomatic corps serving in Washington has been recalled to the Vatican where he is involved in a criminal investigation involving child pornography, the Vatican said.

The Vatican press office said that it was notified on August 21 by the U.S. State Department “of a possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images by a member of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See accredited to Washington.”

“The Holy See, following the practice of sovereign states, recalled the priest in question, who is currently in Vatican City,” the press office said.

The Associated Press reported that the State Department confirmed it had asked the Vatican to lift the official’s diplomatic immunity. It said that request was denied.

The Vatican said the priest’s identity and other details are covered by “investigative confidentiality” during the preliminary investigation stage. The Vatican yearbook lists the nuncio, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, and three priests as making up the diplomatic staff at the Washington nunciature.

After receiving the notification from the State Department, the Vatican said, “the Secretariat of State transmitted this information to the promoter of justice of the Vatican tribunal.” The promoter of justice is the Vatican’s chief prosecutor.

“The promoter of justice opened an investigation and has already commenced international collaboration to obtain elements relative to the case,” the Vatican said.

Greg Burke, director of the Vatican press office, said the investigation is concentrated on matters defined as “crimes against children” in the Vatican’s 2013 “Supplementary Norms on Criminal Law Matters.”

Specifically, he said, the investigation is referring to what the law defines as “child pornography,” which “means any representation, by whatever means, of a minor engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities as well as any representation of the sexual parts of a minor for primarily sexual purposes.”

Burke also referred reporters to section 10 of the supplementary norms, which discuss criminal penalties for a person found guilty of producing or selling and trading child pornography; in those cases Vatican law foresees a maximum of 12 years imprisonment and a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($299,000/£220,000).


PAT SAYS:

This happening at the Papal Nunciature in Washington is a sign that problem of child abuse in the Roman Catholic is a CURRENT PROBLEM as well as HISTORIC PROBLEM.

The causes of paedophilia are complex and mainly unknown.

In the case of Catholic priests, I think that the issue is further complicated by:

1. The Catholic negative and harmful approach to sexuality in general.

2. Obligatory celibacy.


In saying that only 4% of priests are known to have sexually abused children.

Some reports have suggested that priests abuse boys more than girls?

What I can't understand about this case is the Vatican refusing to lift this priests diplomatic immunity.

He was downloading child porn in the US.

He should have been handed over to the US authorities for prosecution and punishment.

It proves that the Vatican is still putting canon law above civil law.

The US nuncio should be expelled from the US and their so called "embassy closed down.

The Vatican is still protecting child abusers!

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CORMACS FUNERAL

A WESTMINSTER PP SOURCE HAS TOLD ME THAT CARDINAL MURPHY O'CONNOR'S COFFIN - TOOK 8 MEN TO CARRY IT AND WAS MADE OF SOLID ENGLISH OAK.

It weighed 50+ stones.

Inside the solid English Oak coffin was a lead coffin which was sealed with solder.

According to civil law the sealed inner lead coffin is obligatory for all burials inside buildings.

This casket is also available in Mahogany and Canadian Maple.

Oak caskets like this, without the solid brass handles are, I'm told £1500 to £2000.

I know this because I recently handled a repatriation from Birmingham for a Belfast family and needed the weight for the Northern Ireland graveyard.

The handles on the coffin were made of solid brass and not plastic.

It was laid in a space in the floor that had formerly been a air vent and it had been concretated up for the occasion.

The coffin lies two feet under floor level as the pictures show.

My priest contact told me that Cormac's will stated that his coffin should lie on the floor but this was impossible as the eight coffin bearers would not be able to lift it from the floor at that weight.

He had also left instructions that his coffin was NOT to be on the normal 6-foot high catafalque and that there were to be no candles around the coffin.

His family provided the simple wooden crucifix that was attached to the top of the coffin.

At the funeral the ceremony and the hymns were simple.

Cormac left instructions that Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff  - and not Cardinal Vincent Nicholls - preach the homily. Apparently, Cormac and Nicholls were NOT the best of chums.

Another Westminster priest told me that Cormac's will is the talk in every presbytery in Westminster and the subject of inter presbytery telephone calls.

The funeral directors were A France - who have been in operation in Pall Mall since 1780 and who have handled all the funerals of Westminster's archbishops and cardinals.

------------------------------------------------------------

A MARKED MAN

THE WOUNDED HEALER BRADY - after a flight delay managed to get to the funeral.

Here he is in Westminster Cathedral with a strange mark on his forehead.

Did he forget to bring his own white mitre and have to borrow one with from a bishop with a SMALLER HEAD than he has?

One is sure - there was no other bishop at the funeral with a harder neck than OUR SEAN!

CLEARED DERRY PRIEST LEADS MEDURJORE PILGRIMAGE

FATHER EUGENE BOLAND

FATHER EUGENE BOLAND - THE DERRY PRIEST CLEARED OF CHILD ABUSE CHARGES - THIS WEEK LED A PILGRIMAGE TO MEDURGORE.

Father Boland was reinstated as the parish priest of Cappagh in Derry diocese after he was found NOT GUILTY of the accusations brought against him.

But a short time after his reinstatement he left his parish again and the diocese said that he needed more time to come to terms with the personal trauma he had undergone by being accused.

On Wednesday night he was pictured at Split Airport in Croatia after leading a pilgrimage of 40 people from Lurgan Parish in County Armagh.

FATHER BOLAND AT SPLIT AIRPORT ON WEDNESDAY EVENING

At the first Mass of the pilgrimage, Father Boland briefly explained his position and told the congregation that he had received special permission from Donal McKeown, the Bishop of Derry, to celebrate public Masses in Medurjore. 

"Dickie" McKeown

One pilgrim said that he said at Mass that he was not back in public ministry in Derry diocese as of yet as there were some "outstanding matters".

Maybe the "outstanding matters" are personal matters for Father Boland?

Even though they have been cleared by a civil court every accused priest also has to undergo a church trial.

I would have thought that such a trial would have been done and dusted by now?

From Derry diocesan website:

Excerpts from the Irish Bishops Guidelines:

10.2.5 Leave from ministry for diocesan or religious clergy Leaving intact the rights of the accused cleric to hold a particular ecclesiastical office, the Ordinary can ask the accused cleric to voluntarily refrain from the exercise of that office, and from other forms of public ministry, including the public celebration of the Mass and other sacraments, for the duration of the investigation of the allegation.

10.2.5 Leave from ministry for diocesan or religious clergy Leaving intact the rights of the accused cleric to hold a particular ecclesiastical office, the Ordinary can ask the accused cleric to voluntarily refrain from the exercise of that office, and from other forms of public ministry, including the public celebration of the Mass and other sacraments, for the duration of the investigation of the allegation.

An accused cleric who is asked to take leave from ministry is still entitled to his rightful income and his right to be provided with a residence. Any deprivation of these rights at this stage is to be interpreted as punitive and can be the subject of canonical recourse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The accused cleric may be requested to seek an appropriate medical or psychological evaluation at a mutually acceptable facility. This assessment will be carried out by an accredited professional and a contract will be agreed with regard to its future use. However, an accused cleric cannot be forced to undergo this evaluation. If an accused cleric undergoes an evaluation, the results may not be released without his consent. The fact that an accused cleric is asked to take leave from ministry is not to be understood as determination of his guilt, nor is the acceptance of the request to be considered an admission of guilt, always mindful of the presumption of innocence of the accused cleric until proven guilty and of the fundamental right of every person to their good name. The accused cleric is to be given the opportunity to express a view regarding how he wishes the fact of his leave from ministry to be communicated to the clergy of his diocese or his fellow religious, his family and any other person he may wish to be informed. At any point, an accused cleric may voluntarily resign from his ministerial position. At any point, an accused cleric may request from the Roman Pontiff a dispensation from the obligations of the clerical state (laicisation).

10.5.1 Diocesan cleric The diocesan bishop will initiate an investigation and if, after consulting with the Child Protection Committee, he concludes that the ministry of the accused priest constitutes a risk to children and young people or is a cause of scandal to the faithful, he may limit the ministry of the accused cleric for the good of the Church (pro bono Ecclesiae) by appropriate disciplinary action, such as a singular Precept (canons 48–58). If the facts demonstrate that the ministry of the priest has become harmful or at least ineffective, the diocesan bishop can, in accordance with canons 1740–1747, remove a parish priest from his parish or, in accordance with canon 552, remove a curate from office.

CORMAC MURPHY O'CONNOR

YESTERDAY IN WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL IN LONDON THEY BURIED THE 85 YEAR OLD CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY O'CONNOR - A MAN WITH NOT ONE - BUT THREE IRISH NAMES.

His family was originally from County Cork.

Here is what the editor of the English Catholic Herald said about him:

THE CATHOLIC HERALD by Luke Coppen

Tall, imposing and jovial, the cardinal moved skilfully through Vatican corridors

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor took on leadership of the English Church amid political and ecclesiastical turmoil

There was an unnerving moment during Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s installation at Westminster Cathedral in March 2000. The new spiritual leader of Catholics in England and Wales stumbled on the marble altar steps, and it looked as if his 6ft 4in frame would come crashing to the ground. But at the last second he caught himself and carried on. This was, with hindsight, a fitting metaphor for his choppy years as Archbishop of Westminster.

Murphy-O’Connor’s appointment to England’s premier see was a surprise. He had been preparing for retirement, not national leadership, when he received the nuncio’s call. Yet he was a shrewd choice, because he embodied the unique character of English Catholicism. In him, the Church’s two historic wings – Irish immigrants and the aristocracy – met and were reconciled.

He bore not just one but two Irish names thanks to his grandfather, who joined his surname with his half-brother’s when they went into the wine trade. Despite being born in Reading, Murphy-O’Connor spoke with an Irish lilt and had the easy charm associated with his ancestral land. Yet Clifford Longley once described him as “every inch a dog-walking, golfing, rugger- and piano-playing English country gentleman”. Though firmly middle class (his father was a doctor from County Cork), he moved comfortably in upper-class circles. He became a friend of the Duke of Norfolk during his more than two decades as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, and England’s senior Catholic layman is said to have helped him to Westminster.

Cardinal Basil Hume, the popular 9th Archbishop of Westminster, was perhaps the first to see Murphy-O’Connor’s full potential. In 1999, on his deathbed, he told him: “Cormac, you will have to take over this job.” Under Hume, the English Catholic Church had grown in confidence, if not in overall numbers. To be a Catholic was no longer to be a suspicious outsider. His unpretentious Benedictine spirituality resonated with the English and he welcomed an influx of high-profile converts, as well as hundreds of ex-Anglican clergy. Hume’s establishment project – his desire for Catholics to find a place at the heart of British affairs – had advanced further than he could have hoped.

After Hume’s passing, Murphy-O’Connor took up the project enthusiastically. Following the Queen Mother’s death in 2002, he became the first cardinal for centuries to read a scriptural passage at an English royal funeral. Later that year, at Sandringham, he was the first Catholic cleric since 1688 to preach a sermon to the reigning monarch. He considered taking a seat in the House of Lords and even prepared the opening of his first speech (“As my predecessor, Cardinal Pole, was saying …”). But he declined the offer after Rome vetoed it. He initially criticised the Act of Settlement, the law barring Catholics from inheriting the throne. But after a backlash he dropped the matter, saying that the Act would be quietly discarded one day.

Like most English bishops, Murphy-O’Connor broadly welcomed the ascendancy of New Labour in 1997, after almost two decades of Tory rule. He thought that the Church could help the government, led by the Catholic-friendly Tony Blair, to repair Britain’s frayed social fabric.

It was not to be. In 2006 Alan Johnson, then education secretary, tried to impose a quota of non-Catholic pupils on new Catholic schools. An outcry, led by bishops, resulted in what one observer called the “fastest U-turn in British political history”. The following year, with Cabinet ministers still smarting, Murphy-O’Connor asked for an exemption from gay adoption laws. Blair’s power had by now melted away and he was unable to find a compromise. The Church was forced to close or cut ties with its adoption agencies. This brute display of secularist might angered the cardinal. In one of our final email exchanges, he said that he still felt strongly about the episode 10 years later.

Murphy-O’Connor had taken the Hume project as far as it could go. It was true that the Establishment was no longer fiercely Anglican, but it had been invaded by an aggressive secularism no less hostile to the Catholic Church. Full admission required the abandonment of Catholic principles. Murphy-O’Connor had come to believe that it was better to remain at the margins. “There is still a sense that being Catholic is being different,” he told me in 2012. “You’re not part of the Establishment and most Catholics wouldn’t want to be.”

Murphy-O’Connor longed to unify England’s Christians. Tears had filled his eyes when Dr Robert Runcie welcomed Pope John Paul II to Canterbury Cathedral in 1982. He was not alone in thinking that this symbolic moment would be followed by the recognition of Anglican orders, leading to intercommunion between Catholics and Anglicans. As co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), he saw one obstacle after another topple – until the Church of England voted to ordain women priests in 1992.

His soaring hopes then gave way to a good-natured realism. Rome and Canterbury wouldn’t become one in his lifetime, but he insisted that ecumenism was a “road with no exits” (an unsettling image, but one that got across the sense of permanence). Rarefied theological dialogue was giving way to an “ecumenism of life”, in which the faithful worked side by side as if they were already united.

His greatest trial came a few months after his installation at Westminster, when the media discovered that he had mishandled an abuse case in Arundel and Brighton. In 1985, he had appointed Fr Michael Hill as a chaplain to Gatwick Airport, despite reports that the priest was a danger to children. Hill had wept, got down on his knees and begged Murphy-O’Connor to give him a new post. Viewing himself as a spiritual father and Hill as a wayward son, he gave in, characteristically letting his heart overrule his head. At Gatwick, Hill abused a boy with learning difficulties and was convicted of nine counts of indecent assault in 1997. Murphy-O’Connor came under pressure to resign the See of Westminster, but never seriously considered it.

While others might have felt compelled to step aside, he accepted full responsibility for his error and tried to ensure that bishops would never again reassign abusers. He asked Lord Nolan, an authority on probity in public life, to review the Church’s child protection procedures. Nolan urged the Church in England and Wales to adopt some of the most stringent measures in the Catholic world. Despite complaints from clergy, who felt the new rules treated them as guilty until proven innocent, the bishops adopted the reforms. This marked a breakthrough for Murphy-O’Connor, who otherwise struggled to impose consensus on the bishops’ conference. But it put new strain on his relationships with priests.

Murphy-O’Connor’s openness to married clergy and his belief that condoms were sometimes licit in the fight against Aids placed him at the liberal end of the global Catholic spectrum. While he had great reverence for John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he felt they had stifled some of Vatican II’s revolutionary insights. He took Cardinal Hume’s place in the St Gallen group, named after the Swiss city where like-minded cardinals such as the Italian Cardinal Martini and the Belgian Cardinal Danneels had met since 1996. Members discussed how a new kind of pope might emerge to lead the Church in a more progressive direction.

Murphy-O’Connor’s ecclesiastical career flourished even though he was at odds with Rome’s prevailing conservatism. That was because of his Romanitas: his intuitive ability to navigate Vatican corridors, developed during his years as a student in Rome and then as rector of the English College. Although he often froze in front of the cameras, he was fluent and funny in ecclesiastical settings. With his imposing height, firm handshake and jovial storytelling, he resembled one of those formidable Irish-American bishops who flourished in the last century. Like them, he also had a calculating side just visible beneath the bonhomie.

Only occasionally did his instincts fail him: at a dinner with cardinals after Benedict XVI’s election he began what he hoped would be a rousing chorus of Ad Multos Annos. “I thought everyone knew it and they’d all join in,” he recalled, “but nobody did. And so I carried on right until the end, just me, in front of Pope Benedict, and all these cardinals.”

He received the ultimate sign of Vatican approval in 2001, when John Paul II gave him the red hat. Among the others elevated that day was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. From then on, they were seated together at Vatican events and built a rapport.

Murphy-O’Connor said that his heart leapt when his friend emerged on the balcony of St Peter’s as Pope Francis in 2013. Two days later, in the Hall of Benedictions, Francis smiled and told him: “It’s your fault! What have you done to me?” As he was over 80, Murphy-O’Connor hadn’t voted in the conclave, but he had helped to create the buzz around his Argentine colleague.

He welcomed the austere Jesuit’s efforts to change the culture of the Catholic Church. With a direct line to the papacy, he arguably enjoyed more influence in his retirement than he had ever had at Westminster.

I remember coming away from an interview with Murphy-O’Connor a few years ago with the impression that he envied those mystics who could spend hours in contemplation away from the world’s cares. He had taken a different path: dogged service of the institutional Church. Whether as a curate in Portsmouth or as Archbishop of Westminster, he had simply done what he had been asked to do as conscientiously as possible.

At his eventful installation Mass in Westminster Cathedral, he recalled that he had once found a stone commemorating a Celtic saint in the Outer Hebrides. “Pilgrim Cormac,” it said, “went beyond what was deemed possible.” That would be a fitting epitaph for Murphy-O’Connor himself.

PAT SAYS:

Cormac Murphy O'Connor never rocked any church boats. He was a safe pair of hands and simply a "manager".

His memory will be overshadowed by his appointment of the paedophile priest, Fr Michael Hill, as chaplain to Gatwick Airport AFTER he had already abused young boys.

In Gatwick Hill went on to sexually abuse a boy with learning difficulties in the chapel of the airport.

After Hill got out of prison the diocese of Arundel and Brighton housed him in a church owned apartment three minutes walk from a primary school.

Murphy O'Connor said he did not properly understand paedophilia at the time!

Growing up in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s I knew that paedophilia was "dirty" and wrong.

I do not swallow that "we did not understand paedophilia" lark at all.

Nonetheless, the Catholic Church went on to make CMO'C an archbishop and a cardinal and a pope maker.

At the end of the day, they do look after their own.

Yesday CMO'C was given a big funeral - TICKET ONLY ADMISSION - and will be buried in the floor of Westminster Cathedral.

People who knew him say he was a "nice man".

Is it enough to be a "nice man" ? Is it enough for a Christian leader to be "nice"?

AFTER THOUGHT:

A couple of years ago I had a wedding in the chapel of Trinity College Dublin. An English tourist was surprised to see a Catholic bishop on the steps of Trinity Chapel and came over to me. He turned out to be a next door neighbour of the retired Cardinal CMO'C's in a district in London where the houses were in the multi million bracket. I asked him if he knew his neighbour. He replied:

"No, he does not mix with the neighbours - but after dark, we take a look in his bin to see what wine he is drinking and go and buy it. The cardinal likes fine wines".

Hopefully, there are Michelin Star wine bars in Heaven where they serve Pomerol :-)

AMY MARTIN v DERMO MARTIN

Readers of this Blog will know that I am not a fan of Amy Martin of Armagh diocese.

However, credit must be given where credit is due - and there is a huge difference between how the Armagh and Dublin Martins operate.

Amy Martin, while showing a great weakness on the reform of scandal swamped Maynooth has shown more leadership in his diocese with regard to diocesan scandals than Dermo in Dublin has.

Armagh has had two priestly scandals - both involving senior priests and sexual activity on the Internet.

Amy's Master of Ceremonies, Father Rory Coyle, was found showing his face and his genitals on GRINDR to a young man he had formerly taught religion to as a school chaplain.

As soon as the scandal broke Amy removed Father Coyle from his diocesan appointments and sent him away for help and therapy.

To date, we do not know what, if any, plans Amy has for Rory.

Then along comes Father Eamon McCamley the PP of Keady who was in the habit of exposing himself on the gay website CAFFMOS and occasionally treating his viewers to films of him "relieving" himself.

Very quickly Amy removed him from Keady and has sent him away also for help and counselling and has put him c/o Ara Coeli on the diocesan website.

This Blog knows of at least SIX other Armagh priests in the same boat as Rory and Eamon. I'm sure Amy Martin is also aware of them.

In fact, an Armagh PP contacted me yesterday to say that Amy has appointed three very senior priests to investigate rumours and reports to him and to help him decide on how to act.

Amy has also published his diocesan clerical changes on his website and in the media.

IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT THERE ARE PICTURES OF THE COYLE AND MC CAMLEY EXPOSITIONS CIRCULATING AMONG A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE.

Compare that to what Dermo Martin in Dublin is at.

DERMO WITH CHRIS DERWIN

His biggest scandal to date is the Deacon Gorgeous scandal and to date, Dermo has not made his intentions about Gorgeous' future known to anyone.

He hid Gorgeous in The Irish College in Rome where, according to all reports Gorgeous had a great time, inside and outside the college.

One rumour says that Gorgeous has departed. Another says that Dermo will ordain him in November?

Then we had the disappearance of Fr Chris Derwin after a short time in Balbriggan Parish and an even shorter time in a Tallaght Parish. The local media carried stories of a "break in", a stolen television and Father Derwin driving the burglar home after the burglary!

Dermo has moved other gay priests in recent times.

But all these moves are IN SECRET!

And Dermo refuses to publish his diocesan changes anymore.

What can account for the difference between the TWO MARTINS?

Is Amy more principled than Dermo. It would be nice to think he was.

Or is it that Amy has a better chance of inheriting a Red hat than Dermo.

We know that \dermo's chances are 1,000,000 to 1.

FATHER MC CAMLEY SENT AWAY

FATHER EAMON MC CAMLEY  who featured on this blog a week or two ago for masturbating on line on a site called CAFFMOS has been removed by Amy as PP of Keady and sent to an unknown location.

One Armagh priest has informed me that Fr McCamley has been sent to the same clinic in the USA that Rory Coyle was sent to?

If you look at the Armagh website you will see Fr McCamley's new address:

KEADY PARISH PERSONNEL:

Amy's problem is that there are least SIX more Armagh priests in the same position as Fathers Coyle and McCamley"!

HOW LOW CAN THE BCATHOLIC CHURCH STOOP?

With a long history of crimes against humanity, Garry Otton wonders if there is any limit to how much Catholic adherents will put up with. 

As much as Scotland’s fourth estate might try to paper over the cracks with whatever the Scottish Catholic Media Office might throw at it, there are no escaping calls from the Scottish Secular Society for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the Vatican State to face charges for Crimes Against Humanity in the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Prior to Herr Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) ‘state’ visit to Scotland – at considerable cost to taxpayers, involving the raiding of funds set aside for overseas aid and coinciding with news of 13 suicides of former victims of priestly abuse in Belgium – former Cardinal Keith O’Brien was pictured in the press laughing, smiling and saying that he would be “happy” if the Pope didn’t apologise for the child abuse. Apparently, there wasn’t very much in Scotland anyway. Oh, really? That was before victims of Fort Augustus Abbey School announced they were launching a lawsuit for compensation for the abuse they suffered at the hands of monks.

Homosexuals; the sixties; ephebophiles, a greater prevalence of incidences in other institutions and secularism have all been trotted out as excuses and deflections for the rot within the Church. Catholic apologists continue to do what they can to lay the blame at someone else’s door. Can they afford to do so any longer following a damning report from the United Nation’s?

Scotland should not forget the allegations against the Poor Sisters of Nazareth filed in the High Court in Aberdeen against Sister Alphonso, alias Marie Docherty. Former children from the orphanage lined up to provide testimonies of daily beatings, sexual abuse from visiting priests, the force-feeding of a little girl with her own vomit, the wrapping of bed-wetters in their urine-soaked sheets, the forcing of a wee girl into a cold bath in the middle of an epileptic fit which Sister Alphonso was supposed to have described as “the work of the devil”, lads being dropped into scalding baths and the ‘cleansing’ of menstruating girls by immersing them in baths filled with Jeyes disinfectant. One woman claimed Sister Alphonso had dragged her by her hair and beat it against a wall so hard it broke her front teeth leaving only the stumps. Helen Cuister told a court that when she began menstruating, Sister Alphonso told her that it was ‘God’s punishment’ for girls who did not behave and that her punishment would go on until midnight when she would die for being so dirty. Louise Clark told the same court how she had been beaten mercilessly simply for not attending church. In defence, Sister Alphonso told the court how, as a child she had pulled down her knickers and asked her father to hit her and, when as a sister in the Aberdeen home, she had given the girls a good talking to after she caught them watching forbidden TV programme, ‘Top of the Pops’. The church stood by Sister Alphonso. A Scottish Catholic Church source told the press: “The view within the church is that she deserves sympathy, not more punishment. The church will rally round her.” And it did. The Catholic Church appointed a team of leading lawyers, including former Solicitor General Paul Cullen, QC and the Rt Rev Mario Conti, the Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, later the Archbishop of Glasgow, who stepped in as chief apologist, explaining: “Some practices which, today seem excessive and even cruel, would not have been viewed in this light years ago. These convictions do not, moreover, invalidate the great good, which was done by the Sisters of Nazareth, including Sister Marie, in caring competently and appropriately for many thousands of children over the last 100 years”. Still dressed in her nun’s habit, Marie Docherty was found guilty of just four counts of cruelty and unnatural practices. Former care assistant Helen Howie, 75 was angry that she was not called as a witness. “She has made all these children out to be liars”, she was reported saying, “but everything they said was true. A couple of times when my husband came to collect me from his work he had to pull her off to stop her beating the children. I called him many a time to take her away from the children”. Docherty’s age, state of health, lack of previous convictions and the time that had passed since the crimes took place were all taken into consideration. After whispering a polite ‘thank you’ to Sheriff Colin Harris, Marie Theresa Docherty was free to walk away.

But there was also the allegations a decade ago by 11 former pupils in the Court of Session in Edinburgh who claimed to have been brutalised by an order of Catholic monks. Their solicitor, Cameron Fyfe claimed he was handling the biggest abuse case Scotland had ever seen. Allegations from former pupils of St Ninian’s List D School in Gartmore, Stirlingshire described electric shocks administered from a device described as a type of generator kept in a boot room where boys had to hold on to a pair of wires leading from the machine. Central Scotland Police were involved in compiling a report for the Procurator Fiscal that also included complaints of regular thrashings, being forced to eat vomit, sexual fondling and serious physical abuse.

The Big Issue in Scotland at the time reported a particularly harrowing tale by resident John McCorry of the behaviour of the nuns from the Smyllum Park Orphanage near Lanark. “They warped our sexualities. We were told that the toilet – and even using the word toilet – was evil. We couldn’t refer to any part of our body between the neck and knees as anything other than ‘our front’. But as a result kids would get beaten for talking about their fronts. We would get beaten for asking to go to the toilet. It was institutionalised insanity… Boys who wet the bed were beaten all the time… They were forced to drink Epsom salts over and over again. But that ended up making them doubly incontinent. Most of the boys who suffered this ended up soiling themselves a few hours later. The most disgraceful thing I ever saw was one boy who was forced to walk up and down all day in the dining hall with his wet sheet under his arm. The sister who made him do this was shouting at us, saying, ‘Why aren’t you laughing at him?’ There was the sound of forced laughter everywhere. The boy was crying. It was sadistic, sick, mental torture”. The Catholic Church’s spokesman had his secretary explain to The Big Issue: “It’s nothing to do with us any longer”.

But this is just Scotland. Some of the crimes around the world committed in this religion’s name have been horrific. A few years ago in Brazil the Catholic Church was in a pitched battle with the State after a 9-year old girl was admitted to a hospital complaining of stomach pains. Doctors quickly determined that the child, a victim of rape, was pregnant with twins and that her undeveloped uterus did not have the ability to contain one foetus, let alone two. They prescribed an abortion in order to save the little girl’s life. That’s when the Catholic Church stepped in to try and stop it. Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, told journalists that God’s Law was above all human law and that anyone involved in or aiding the abortion would be subject to excommunication from the Church. And so they did.

I want to remind myself of the Catholic Church’s own rule about the Pope’s – the ‘successors of Peter’ – all being culpable. That must include the ones guilty of nepotism, murder, sexual debauchery and general depravity, none of whom the Church has officially condemned. There are the ones who took lovers, mistresses, girls or boys, married, had illegitimate children; housing and promoting their ‘nephews’. Many Pope’s had children. And Pope Julius III hardly made much of a secret about the teenage boy he picked up in the street. First he was his ‘monkey keeper’ and then he was made a Cardinal.

Then there is this Church’s historical hatred of Jews; passing laws that closed professions to them, locking them up in ghettos and forcing them to wear yellow identification. Read about the inquisitions, enforced conversions, slave trading and operations of torture and you are left either needing counselling or wondering what kind of twisted mind would ever want to associate itself with such a poisonous institution. The most obvious explanation has been ‘cognitive dissonance’.

And then there has been the gun-running, the financial wheeling and dealing, the laundering of illegal funds and the Magdalene laundries where women were incarcerated and kept as slaves. Then there has been the denial of rights to women and LGBT people, the latter including boys who were physically castrated in Dutch Catholic institutions in the sixties. Then there were the concordats with South American dictators; the deals with the Mafia (Pope Paul VI’s financial advisor, Sicilian tax lawyer, Michele Sindona recycled proceeds from Mafia heroin sales through the Vatican bank and helped the Vatican evade tax by transferring the bulk of its financial and investment assets overseas). And let’s never forget the Catholic Church’s administration of Nazi rat-runs. Oh, yes… You didn’t even need to be a Catholic to get Vatican help here: Just a Nazi. After the war, funded by Nazi gold, twenty Catholic agencies helped spirit away the likes of the commander of Treblinka, Franz Strangl who murdered 900,000 people; deputy commander of Sobibor, Gustav Wagner who murdered 250,000 Jews and Adolf Eichmann. One of the beneficiaries was most probably Dr Carl Vaernet who performed the most horrible experiments on Jewish homosexuals in the Buchanwald concentration camp in an attempt to cure homosexuals. All this before you get to the endless cases of sexual, physical and mental torture it put children through before the Vatican tried to cover it up, often blackmailing its victims into silence or moving priests to different areas where they could go on abusing more children.

The Catholic Church appears to be an institution that can get away with murder. Literally.