John Crowley, Bishop of Middlesbrough,
dismisses the dissent of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)
from the faith of the Catholic Church
Calling it merely: “… healthy
tension in a living church”!
Bishop
Crowley was born on 23 June 1941 in Newbury, England. On
8 December 1986, he was ordained titular bishop of Tala
by Cardinal Hume in Westminster Cathedral and given special
responsibility as Area Bishop for Central London. In
November 1992, he was appointed to succeed Bishop Augustine
Harris as Bishop of Middlesbrough. From 1988 to 2000,
he was Chairman of CAFOD (the Catholic Fund for Overseas
Development). Bishop John Crowley has been a member
of COMECE since
September 2001. John Crowley is yet another Hume
protégé, although neither as cautious nor
as skilful as his late mentor at concealing his dissent
from the faith of the Church.
A Mass to celebrate a homosexual "love" affair!
On Sunday, June 10, 2001, Bishop John
Crowley planned to offer a special Mass organized by
homosexual Catholics in London to celebration the twenty-five
year affair between Pendergast, a militant gay ex-Carmelite,
and his homosexual partner Julian Filochowski, the director
of CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development,
which is Britain's leading Catholic charity, and officially
attached to the bishops' conference. The restricted invitations
described the Mass as a celebration of "25 years
of friendship and commitment to justice"!
Bishop Crowley abruptly pulled out as
celebrant (but still gave grave scandal by attended)
on the morning of June 10, after the Daily Telegraph
blew the whistle on his plans.
He claimed that he had decided not to be the celebrant
because of "misleading" press reports,
and added: "I want to make it perfectly clear
at the outset that what is being celebrated at this Mass
is, as the invitation card indicated, '25 years of friendship
and commitment to justice.' It is simply that." The
report was not in fact in the least bit misleading.
The contempt that dissident have for the intelligence
of the orthodox faithful can be quite breathtaking.
Bishop Crowley added that any suggestion
the celebration sought to challenge Catholic teaching
on marriage and sexuality was "totally without foundation." One
should also point out that any suggestion that the celebration
actually supported Catholic teaching on marriage
and sexuality was also totally without foundation.
He revealed that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor had
not been aware in advance of plans for the Mass. However,
he kept under wraps the fact that the Cardinal had telephoned
him that morning and asked him not to participate.
The current chairman of CAFOD, Bishop
John Rawsthorne, also attended the Mass, which was eventually
celebrated by Father Jim O'Keefe, the president of Ushaw,
a seminary in the north of England.
It must really console the faithful to learn that the
man responsible for priestly training in the north
of England is happy to offer the holy sacrifice of the
Mass to celebrate twenty-five years of gay
"love".
The following day, shock waves rippled
through Catholic parishes in England and Wales, as the
ordinary faithful reflected that they were, through their
contributions to the Sunday collections, regular supporters
of CAFOD. Shaken parishioners told priests that
they did not contribute to CAFOD in order to subsidize "gay
champagne breakfasts."
Bishop Crowley apologized to Cardinal
Murphy-O'Connor for creating a difficult situation. The
Cardinal in turn rang up the Catholic newspapers as they
were going to press to inform them that he had accepted
Crowley's apology. So that makes it alright? Incidentally,
there has been no report of an apology either from Father
Jim O'Keefe or bishop Rawsthorne. It's not advisable
to hold your breath while you're waiting.
Bishop Crowley then disappeared on a
short trip to Amsterdam and left it to one of his spin
doctors to tell the Catholic press that he had no idea
that Filochowski and Pendergast were homosexual partners.
It has been suggested that Bishop Crowley is now under
investigation by Rome - but that could be no more than
wishful thinking on the part of orthodox Catholics.
One must of course accept, in the absence
of clear evidence to the contrary, that bishop Crowley
is speaking the truth when he says that he knew neither
that Filochowski and Pendergast were homosexual partners
nor that Pendergast was a militant gay activist who goes
into schools with the express purpose of undermining
the Church's teaching on anal-copulating. However,
it would also be fair to point out that this was general
knowledge among orthodox Catholics.
If bishop Crowley defense is that he
was ignorance of the fact that Pendergast and Julian
Filochowski were homosexual lovers, it follows that had
he known he would not have got involved. Why then,
when he did know, did he not withdraw? St John
the Baptist was martyred for denouncing the sexual misconduct
of Herod, and Our Lord described the Baptist as the greatest man
born of a women. Is it therefore unreasonable to
expect a Catholic bishop to have the courage and personal
integrity to withdraw from gracing a sodomite's Mass
with his presence?
After all the worst martyrdom he would have suffered
is a few predictable sneers from a few well known dissidents,
who are so dumb that they have not woken up to the fact
that they are in the wrong church.
So we are now obliged to stretch our
credibility to breaking point in order to believe that
two bishops and a seminary rector traveled half the length
of England to celebrate....friendship - and a private commitment
to justice? Why private?
Well, by Monday, the press office of CAFOD was denying
any link between the Mass and the charity. It was,
they now claimed, a "private event" - in
spite of the fact that Heythrop College had previously
explained it thought the service to be a CAFOD event!
On the other hand, if
these clerics did know Pendergast and Filochowski where
homosexual partners, we are required to believe that
our clerical trio are so touchingly innocent that they
really believe that when a militant gay activist talks
about
"justice", he is actually talking about food
for the starving?
The Jesuit link raises its head
again on the 14 December, 2001
The above scandal took place at Heythrop
College, a Jesuit institute of higher education in central
London.
Coincidentally, the Jesuit link raised its head again
on the 14 December, 2001. The Catholic Herald gave
major coverage to the wide spread dissent from the faith
of the Church of many Jesuits. This was sparked
by an open letter to the Jesuit Father General from Fr
Rodger Charles SJ, an Oxford academic, a splendid and
entirely admirable Jesuits, who is deeply saddened by
the dissent and disobedience of so many in his once great
order.
Fr Rodger Charles' letter and bishop
John Crowley's response to Fr Rodger Charles' letter
and to the excellent coverage given the subject by the
Catholic Herald is printed below. His Lordship's
letter is infused with the Modernist's mindset and reads
more like a missive from an Anglican "bishop" than
a Catholic. Throughout his response, the bishop
clumsily confuses orthodoxy with orthopraxis. As
it is impossible to believe that a man with the wit and
ambition to rise to his high office in the Church is
truly incapable of such elementary distinctions, one
is forced to assume that this confusion is deliberate,
and thus mendacious.
An Open Letter to Father Kilvenbach
(Jesuit Father General) from the admirable Fr Roger
Charles
Feast
of St Edmund Campion and St Robert Southwell
and Companions, Martyrs 2001.
Dear
Fr Kilvenbach
Thank
you for your letter of 3rd September. I apologize
for not replying sooner. These last few weeks
have been traumatic, culminating in a collapse
and my hospitalization at the end of October
for four days. It was not life-threatening, just
the result of the tensions of the last 30 years,
as a result of which I will be retiring In the
next few months.
In
confirming your decision to refuse me permission
to publish my book, Pope’s Men: The
Jesuits Yesterday and Today, you say that
you have no objection to my manifesting conscience
on this matter; only to the manner In which I
have made it, i.e. by a book of this nature.
I accept this. My concerns can be briefly stated
in this open letter. This will enable me to manifest
that conscience most directly and ease the pressure
on it.
That
conscience has been under strain since 1968 when
the Society as a whole, despite Fr Arrupe’s
exhortations on the matter, refused to support
Paul VI on Humanae Vitae. Since
Ignatius founded the Society to campaign for
God In faithful obedience to the papacy, and
to put aside all judgment of our own to obey
in all things our holy mother, the hierarchical
Church, our duty here was clear and our refusal
to do it was scandalous.
Since
1965 four General Congregations have accepted
that some of us have been remiss in our duty
of obedience to the popes and the hierarchical
Church and promised we would change our policies,
but we have not. Too many Jesuits are still giving
the opposite impression and going unchallenged.
I was not so long ago told by a distinguished
Catholic academic that he admired Jesuits because
they "can say and do what they like in the
Church and get away with it". I pointed
out to him that we are not all tarred with the
same brush. He was more than a little surprised.
Fr
Arrupe warned that if three popes have called
us to account then it is Christ the Lord who
expects something better of us. He also warned
us that to fail in fidelity to the papacy is
to sign our own death sentence. Far from resenting
John Paul II’s intervention in 1981 he
saw it as an occasion for demonstrating that
wholehearted obedience to the Holy See to which
we are vowed. Our response generally has
been quite different —
doing the minimum necessary to ensure no further
action was taken against us and feeling aggrieved
that we have been wrongly treated.
You
yourself have reminded us that fidelity to the
Holy See is of the essence of our vocation, and
when the 33rd General Congregation asked you
to look again at the rules for thinking with
the Church in the light of the Council you said
that they are as valid today as ever. My
experience of the Society tells me that that
is not the way Jesuits on the whole think. The
general view is that we are an autonomous organization
in the Church and should be allowed to proceed
as we think fit.
Far
from superiors generally giving us a lead in
faithful obedience to the Pope and the Magisterium,
too many regard anyone who insists these are
the essence of the Jesuit vocation as stupid
or malicious. I on many occasions have
had to resist pressure from such men to abandon
these ideals; this is a complete perversion of
Jesuit obedience; to have been subject to such
pressure is a form of spiritual and mental torture,
a scandal that should not be allowed to pass
unchallenged.
I
write this letter on our patronal feast day,
and I cannot help reflecting on Campion’s
words, when on his capture he was taken before
the Queen.
His fidelity to the papacy being challenged,
he told his questioners that that was "my
greatest glory". Such is the
tradition of the English Province. Not
till we return to it will our work flourish. My
prayers will continue to be that the day will
come.
Yours
in Christ
Rodger
Charles SJ |
Response
from John Crowley, the Bishop of Middlesbrough (Catholic
Herald 28th December, 2001)
Sir,
The Society of Jesus is well equipped, if it
so chooses, to defend itself, but I, like many
others surely, felt distress at the way in which
it was portrayed in your newspaper (Nov 21).
Over the 12 years of my involvement with CAFOD,
I came across Jesuits at work in many of the
world’s outposts, most notably through
the Jesuit Refugee Service, and it has left me
with a deep admiration for their steadfast commitment
to the very poorest.
The face of
the Church they represent in many desperate
and abandoned situations is one of which we
can be justifiably proud, going as it does
to the very heart of the Gospel message. Here
in Britain my own contact with Jesuits has
been through the service of Ignatian apostolic
spirituality they offer to the Church and to
the wider Christian community. A large
number of persons, not least in our own diocese,
would want to express gratitude. for this precious
gift of Scripture based, Christ-centered, prayer
and discernment, allied to a strong justice
and peace commitment which is its distinguishing
hallmark. That is simply to touch upon
two aspects of their mission, at home and abroad,
of which I have a little personal experience. Like
every other institution (and person) within
our Church they have their struggles and tensions. It
could not be otherwise in a living Church which
tries faithfully to interact with a world of
bewildering complexity and appalling inequality. They,
again like the rest of us, have to do their
fallible best to get the balance right, for
example, between the primacy of Peter and the
collegial nature of the Church, as expressed
both within the world wide body of bishops
and in the sensus fidelium. The
recent Synod in Rome spent much of its time
grappling with that very tension. To
struggle and openly to get the balance right
between the centre and the universal Church
is not only necessary but vital. Your
report mentions the suspension from teaching
in 1998 of the Belgian Jesuit Fr Jacques Dupuis
after the publication of his book "Toward
a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism". Just
before all that happened I was in Rome, together
with the other bishops of England and Wales,
to attend a study week. There were
a number of distinguished speakers, including
Cardinal Ratzinger. The undoubted highlight
for most, if not all of us, was the presentation
given by Dupuis. Drawing upon his own
life-long experience as both teacher and missionary
in the Far East, he gave us a profound insight
into the increasing importance of the inter
religious dialogue, and of the centrality of
Jesus Christ as Universal Saviour. It
was therefore a special joy when the painful
period of his investigation by the CDF ended
with the essential integrity of his theological
work upheld and his teaching role in Rome restored. Jesuits
come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (don’ we
all), but what an outstanding contribution
they have made and will continue to make within
our Catholic Church to the greater glory of
God.
Yours faithfully
+ JOHN CROWLEY
Middlesbrough. |
And there you have it in a nutshell. In
the Church of men like bishop John Crowley it doesn't
matter what you believe or teach, provided you are a
jolly nice fellow. One can only wonder why he doesn't
just up sticks and go and join the Anglican church, which
is undoubtedly his natural spiritual home. It is
as if one was to complain to the headmaster that his
science master was teaching the children that the earth
is flat, and the headmaster replied, "I know, and
that is not the only strange doctrines he teaches, but
I'm not going to do anything about it, because he is
such a splendid fellow. In fact the splendid fellow
contributes so much to the school, I think it is rather
churlish of you to point out that he is not teaching
the truth"!
As for the Jesuits continuing to
make an outstanding contribution - seeing that, since
they embraced wide spread rebellion, their vocation have
completely dried up, their continuing contribution
would seem more than a little problematic.
In 2000 the British Jesuits had no vocations for the
first time in almost 200 years! In 2001, they had
just one. Indeed, this is the one crumb of comfort
for orthodox Catholic: the day any institution in the
Church, including dioceses, embrace dissent, their vocations
dry up. Blessed be God!
Bishop John Crowley’s view of
the apparent inevitability of tension between Peter
and colleges of bishops owes more to half-baked Hegelianism
than to the faith of the Church. The Magisterium's
view of the college is not that of a "bodiless head",
i.e. the pope, plus a "headless body", i.e.
the college of bishops - two such ghoulish monsters would
of course inevitable experience the constant tension
of which the bishop apparently approves. The Church’s
view is that the Magisterium itself is the College of
which the pope is both the head and a member. Without
the pope’s consent, there is no magisterium, and
hence no college. A healthy body cannot be in conflict
with its own head, for all decision must include the
head.
National hierarchies may of course meet, "But
the college or body of bishops has no authority unless
it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the
successor of Peter as its head. The pope's power of
primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains
whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that
is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church,
the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power
over the Church. And he is always free to exercise
this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds
to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic
body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme
and full power over the universal Church, provided
we understand this body together with its head the
Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This
power can be exercised only with the consent of the
Roman Pontiff." (Lumen Gentium 22).
The bishop appears to be trying rather
clumsily to draw a cloak over his own dissent and disobedience
with his nonsense about tension within a living Church. Rome
is not teaching anything today that has not been taught
by the Church for the last 2000 years. So, if Rome
has not changed, whence the current tensions?
After all, there is no tension between Rome and those
Catholics who embrace the faith of the Church with integrity. On
the contrary, there is a beautiful harmony.
This tension (which is localized both geographically
and historically) is the fruit of the bishop's own dissent
from the faith of the Church. This tension is the
stinking fruit of the sinister attempt to turn the Catholic
Church in England into a close cousin to the Anglican
church, a church where anything goes, anything that is
of course except orthodoxy.
Jesuit college appoints a witch!
It may be of interest to readers to
learn that the Kensington-based Heythrop College, the
Jesuit-run faculty of the University of London, in January
2002, a few months after hosting the sodomite Mass reported
above, appointed a witch as a part-time tutor! Dr
Vivianne Crowley, a Wiccan "high priestess" who
has run witches covens in a number of countries over
the last 20 years, has been made a visiting tutor. Dr
Crowley, along with her Wiccan high priest husband, is
described as a "revered British witch" by the
women's magazine Marie Claire.
A glut of sodomites
While still on the subject of the Jesuits,
of 26 novices who entered the Missouri Province of the
Jesuit order in 1967 and 1968, only seven were eventually
ordained priests. Of these seven, three have so far died
of AIDS, and a fourth is an open sodomite now working
as an artist in New York. The priest-artist deplored
the fact, not that his fellow Jesuits engaged in buggery,
but that they did not take "safe-sex" precautions
even after the facts about HIV transmission became known. In
this case, four of seven priests in a sample are known
to have been active sodomites. What can one extrapolate
from this data about the remaining three men, or about
the modern Jesuit order in general?
Off the Rails
Bishop Crowley -v- the Catholics of York.
One of the fundamental shifts in the
sub-consciousness of the post-Conciliar episcopacy is
that much loved churches are no longer assumed to belong
to the faithful. They are now considered very much
to be the private baubles of the bishop and his closed
inner circle of newchurch activists. Thus, when
his lordship decides, in the name of his half-baked Hegelian
theories and his full-baked secular relativism to turn
your much loved church into a fashionable worship space
that looks like a cross between an airport lounge and
an ad for pastel shades of Dulux emulsion paint, there
is very little you can do ……… except
of course withdraw your financial support.
Early in November 2000, parishioners
at St Wilfrid's York stumbled upon plans to remove the
communion rails from their splendid Victorian church.
There had been no official announcement, indeed the parish
newsletters had only spoken of "refurbishment" ...... "The
work will involve complete rewiring and new lighting
and the installation of a new heating system, new toilet
facilities etc." (newsletter 12/11/00). However,
keen-eyed church goers noticed the small print of a diagram
at the back of the church (dated January 2000).
Not until after the matter was raised
at a fund-raising meeting did the parish priest, Canon
Michael Ryan, finally come clean and pontificated about
his altar rail plans. "In former times Altar
rails were very much part of Church life when laity were
not welcome into the Sanctuary area (except for Altar
Servers). Today we are all encouraged to participate
fully in our Liturgy. The Altar rails can be looked on
as a barrier between Sanctuary and congregation and often
do not enhance our present Liturgy. Before any work is
done in our Church a thorough consultation will take
place." (newsletter19/11/00).
The Scriptures record that when Our
Lord was crucified, the veil of the temple was rent from
top to bottom. Had of course "experts" such
as Canon Ryan been around at the time, this drama would
all have been avoided, as he would have had the dazzling
insight to have removed the veil of the temple long beforehand. This
sort of newchurch speak offers interesting insights into
the mindset of many of our post-Conciliar shepherds formed
in the sixties and seventies. You see, for 2000 years,
following in the traditions of our Jewish forefathers
in faith, and in union with all the other venerable churches
of Christendom, our sanctuary in the Latin Rite have
been sacred places set apart. But now that we have
woken up to our dreadful past errors, thanks of course
to the brilliant insights of "experts" such
as Canon Ryan, and we now encourage a few selected lay
activists to systematically trespass upon this sacred
space, it has become necessary to remove all indication
that the space is sacred! Which is rather like
arguing that if we are going to let the dogs in, we had
better take the carpets up.
What Canon Ryan neglected to mention
was that the plans had already been clandestinely approved
by the Diocesan Historic Churches Committee (HCC). A
letter of protest to Bishop John Crowley elicited the
following response: "As you rightly suggest
the HCC have given their full approval to the proposed
re-ordering at St Wilfrid's. Canon Michael Ryan is someone
who has a well-deserved reputation in our diocese for
being sensitive to, and well versed in, the heart and
mind of the Church as regards the Liturgy. ....... Changes
in a well loved Church cannot always be to everyone's
taste, but over the long years of its history there have
been a great number of changes in St Wilfrid's which
have brought it to the state you admire so much today.
That process inevitably goes on in a living Church". (Letter
22/11/00).
To make sense of this last paragraph
it is essential to understand that it is now standard
practice for our smug post-Conciliar shepherds to "communicate" by
learning a couple of dozen newchurch clichés by
rote and then stringing them together in a semblance
of rational thought. The experience for the faithful
can be somewhat disconcerting at first, rather like trying
to dialogue with a talking clock. Bishop Crowley
is much-admired for his mastery of this new religious
art form. He is especially fond of his "living Church" cliché,
dropping it into his discourse at every possible opportunity. The
more perceptive may wonder why, if bishop Crowley is
heading a living Church, his diocese is shrinking
quite so fast? The simply minded may even be excused
for assuming that such a rapid implosion is a sign of
a dying Church rather than a living Church,
but if there is one thing our post-Conciliar shepherds
can never be accused of, it is being too sharp
when it comes to spotting the bleeding obvious.
"Expert"
is yet another word that has also undergone violence
osmosis to serve the purpose of Modernists. It
no longer means someone with a profound knowledge of
a particular subject. It simply means, in the
newchurch speak above, that the cleric believes that
unless the faithful are running, jumping, dancing,
reading, greeting, strumming guitars, chorusing, distributing
communion or are otherwise animatedly they are not "actively
participating." Such a cleric then needs
only to demonstrate that he is able and willing to
impose his newchurch belief system ruthlessly, or even
mendaciously if necessary, on the orthodox faithful
against their wishes or active knowledge, and he automatically
earns the right to be acclaimed an "expert" by
his Modernist masters.
Although the HCC had approved the work,
it transpired that the proper procedures had not been
followed, as campaigners quickly pointed out. Posters
had not been displayed in advance of the HCC meeting
calling for comments. The HCC secretary made the following
admission:
"upon investigation I have discovered that a breach
of procedure has occurred." (Letter 15/12/00). This
allowed time for the campaigners to gather 415 signatures
for a petition against the plans. Research was
also carried out into the history of the wrought iron
rails. It was discovered they were the work of the late
Wilfred Dowson, a noted craftsman. His son and
a former apprentice were enlisted in the battle to save
the rails, and the dispute featured in the pages of several
Catholic and local newspapers. In February 2001
the HCC revoked its previous permission for the work, "there
had been insufficient information available and a procedural
deficiency had come to light" (Minutes of HCC 7/02/01)
and many parishioners relaxed thinking the battle was
over. It wasn't.
The matter was now back with Canon Ryan's
and he, true to form, kept his cards close to his chest
for several months. Once again his plans were not
openly announced so much as discovered. At a meeting
to discuss the refurbishment in May 2001 the architect,
Peter Briggs, was challenged about the rails. He
agreed with a statement which was put to him that there
were "no plans to do anything to the sanctuary and
if there were any plans they'd be fully publicized". In
fact, the plans on the table in front of him as he spoke
included the line "communion rail to be removed
as part of phase 2".
In September parishioners were finally
notified of this via the newsletter and posters were
displayed. The HCC decided a public hearing should be
held and this took place on 8th November 2001. The impassioned
and eloquent speeches of the defenders of Catholic Tradition
were met with the usual vacuous new-Church buzz-words,
such as "inclusiveness",
"hurt feelings" and "the young people".
Those in favour of removing the rails were almost exclusively
Extraordinary Ministers or Readers, or middle-aged clergy
with an ideological commitment to their new post-Conciliar
religion. The HCC had promised "an equal number
of speakers .... for and against the proposal" (letter
10/10/01) but in fact the tally of those called was 13
for removing the rails and 8 against.
The HCC ruled that the rails must stay
in the church "with a useful purpose" but not
the purpose for which they were designed. A final appeal
against the rails removal was dismissed without a further
public hearing. The whole episode left a nasty taste
in the mouths of those Catholics who had fought to retain
their heritage. Throughout, the authorities spouted absolute
nonsense in defense of their plans and behaved in that
thoroughly underhand manner that the faithful have sadly
learned to take for granted.
To date (21/02/03) the rails are still
in place. We can only pray they stay where they belong!
Bishop Resigns
Some time round May/June 2006 Bishop
Crowley (aged 65) offered his resignation. This was accepted
by Rome. There is a strong rumour coming from very well
placed sources in his diocese that he resigned because
he had lost the Faith and that this had triggered a nervous
breakdown. This explanation is somewhat problematic,
because a prelate who travels half the lenght of England
to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass to celebrate
25 years of disordered sexuality self-evidently never
had the Faith to lose in the first place. Nevertheless,
if there is some truth in this rumour, it is actually
to Bishop Crowley's credit that he has had the personal
integrity to resign when most of his fellow bishops are
obviously prepared to soldier on regardless.
This vaporous notion
of active participation is a natural development of the
Modernist heresy, which teaches that transubstantiation
is not effected by the words of the priest acting in persona
Christi, but that it (or more likely some very diluted
or muddled version of this doctrine) is brought about
by the faith of the community. Those who have embraced
this heresy do not talk of priests, but of "presbyters" or "presidents",
because, if it is the community that effects the Real
Presence, then the traditional Catholic priesthood is
obsolete. It follows that when all that is needed
is someone to "preside", this person may in
due course be someone elected to perform this function
- who could of course be just as easily a woman
as a man. Which is why followers of this heresy are very
keen on lay led Eucharistic services, seeing them as
a sort of halfway house, and a step in the direction
of rendering in due course the traditional male Catholic
priesthood obsolete.
