At least the good ladies of the diocese of Koper can't say they have not been warned.
And the bad ladies know where to go for an exciting and unconventional confession.
And the rest of us know what a total joke any noises coming out of the faces of Pope Francis or any senior cleric are. Especially when they pretend to deal vigorously with offenders. But probably most readers of The Pillar know how worthless such promises are.
The phenomenon of women being attracted to indescribably horrible men is too visible to deny. The ultimate example has to be our own good Catholic lad, Sir Jimmy Savile. He boasted publicly in his 1975 autobiography about bedding 2,500 women and later very credible allegations accused him of necrophilia in the morgues of the hospitals where he was a volunteer worker. This did not stop him getting an knighthood through the efforts of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most powerful women in history. Plus a Papal Knighthood from Pope St JPll.
And he died totally legally innocent, as is Rupnik to date. There are plenty of off-colour jokes here, not least invoking the Declaration of Human Rights in his defence. Is his bishop seriously allowing him to hear confessions and have private conversations with women as any ordinary priest might do? Hopefully his parishioners will make his life unbearable. Who wants to live in a place where you are surrounded by hundreds of people who are nervous at your very presence? Then he might move on to spend more time with his art and his money before another atrocious scandal erupts
I'm sure everything seemed like a good idea at the time to everyone responsible (whenever I have done something criminally stupid, it seemed to be either a normal and reasonable and commonplace thing to do, and/or the only possible course of action, but in fact neither was really true.)
I freely assume that people are already praying daily for the Pope! - if for no other reason than because it is a condition of a plenary indulgence; the poor souls in purgatory would, as far as I know, be very glad of our assistance (the imagination quails at the thought of what it is like). The following are indulgenced, if I recall correctly: 1. praying a rosary with at least one other person; or, 2. 30 minutes of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament; or, 3. 30 minutes prayerfully reading Scripture; or, 4. praying the stations of the cross.
In addition we ought to pray for Rupnik (I also freely assume that we are already praying for victims because it is natural to desire to pray for them), in direct contradiction to our natural desire to throttle him while saying "pay back what you owe".
If we pray for repentance, as we may, we do so knowing that as more people participate in keeping him from reckoning with sin and crime, repentance is withdrawn farther and farther from him. And them.
We can justly pray for God's severe mercy in such situations. This is not being unforgiving, but sharing more fully in the hearf of Jesus.
And yet Archbishop Ganswein isn't given a position. Maybe it is wrong to compare these two men but it is perplexing to me. It is what makes me question way too much in the Church today and I don't like the feeling.
Not to beat my own drum, but I called this one back when he was expelled from the Jesuit order. This was always the most likely outcome. He has friends in high places, and almost certainly the protection of the Pope. A basic knowledge of how the Church operates in recent history, especially since Pope Francis' pontificate began, pointed to this from the beginning. It's time for people to open their eyes and see that the "reform" of the past ten years is nothing more than a smokeshow.
I am not an abuse victim, and as far as I know, I don't know any abuse victims. The abuse crisis, although clearly a terrible thing, has never been something I am obsessed about. But I thought that the leaders of the church would learn from the mistakes of the past. That is why I was willing to move on. But the continued, incomprehensible protection and promotion of this monster is really a gut punch.
It makes me question how the individuals leading the "True Church" could do this. Maybe it is not the True Church after all. Maybe the Holy Spirit is guiding some other church. I just don't know.
Erin, when I was contemplating becoming Catholic in the late 20-Teens, I forced myself to really "stare" at the abuse crisis because I didn't want to make a leap of faith, only to become scandalized and cynical. I was--and remain--greatly consoled by a passage from St. John Henry Newman's "Arians of the Fourth Century." Specifically, by "Note 5. The Orthodoxy of the Body of the Faithful during the Supremacy of Arianism" (it's available online at newmanreador.org). It tells how the great majority of Catholic bishops became Arians in the years after the Council of Nicea, and it offers inspiring stories about what the lay faithful did in response. It made me realize, "Oh, gosh, our times aren't nearly as bad as all that! No bishop is cooperating with civil leaders to kill me. And if they were, that wouldn't mean the Catholic Church was no longer the true church. It would mean I need to be as heroic as that mother from Edessa" (go read her story). None of this is new, and it's not yet even particularly grievous. But as then, we need to play our part in the True Church even if some of our bishops don't. Take heart! He's still guiding the Church, and you and me, too.
In the parable of the wedding feast, the Father invites guests, and they don't come, and so he invites everyone from highways and byways to the feast, and they come, except there's this guy not wearing a wedding garment, so he eventually gets kicked out.
Christ came to call sinners. We came. Some of us are horrifying "of a kind that is not found even among the pagans". Some of us become Saints. Some of us never repented and never will, even sitting at the feast. Our Lady is the only impeccable Catholic that ever was, which is why the Middle Ages were smart enough to have Popes abase themselves before her in their artwork. The Holy Spirit doesn't keep people from doing evil, doesn't force us to do what is right, or even to do bare-bones justice. The Holy Spirit guides us insofar as we listen, and teaches us to pray insofar as we actually try to pray. Those who don't listen or pray, even bishops, aren't guided or taught.
The promise is not that there will be no wounds or casualties, or that the really bad evils will be kept out of the Church, or that the leadership will learn from their mistakes, or that things will get better in our lifetimes. The promise is that the gates of hell will not prevail, that the Sacraments will give grace when validly performed, that forgiveness will be given for our repentance, mercy to those that accept it, and that the True Church will never authoritatively teach error. That leaves a lot of room for men to do great evil. God keeps His promises, and He loves us more than we love ourselves - He just doesn't do whatever we think is reasonable, in our time, and with our preferred methodology.
The marks of the True Church are One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The Catholic Church is the only one that can claim them all. Only the Catholics and Orthodox have Apostolic Succession. "Holy", means "Set apart for God", in this particular instance, rather than "Doesn't commit any really bad sins". There is no church without members committing really bad sins, except possibly the 5-person church that was started yesterday by someone who was definitely not the Son of God. And the Church is set apart. She exists for God, and from Him, being born from the water and blood that came from Jesus' heart, as Eve came from the side of Adam. And the Church is One, meaning One Lord (Jesus), One Faith (authoritative Church doctrine), and One Baptism (Trinitarian). The Orthodox Churches are divided by nationality and often don't accept each others' Baptisms, so, neither Catholic (universal) nor One.
"Do you also want to leave?" "Lord, to whom shall we go?"
The virtue of patience isn't just about waiting, but also about bearing wrongs and suffering evils without falling into despair, or doing evil ourselves. It's not my favorite. Let's take our thoroughly justified horror and apply it to cleaning up the corruption (prayer and works), not to worrying about whether corruption means God isn't here. Prayer, Confession, Eucharist, Duties of our state in life, trust God, rinse, repeat.
Something I would like to understand better from the legal/procedural point of view: is there a Vatican dicastery that would have needed to be kept in the loop on all this? Or is the whole excardination-incardination process something that bishops can do on their own initiative? Did Bizjak consult Speich because he had to, or just because he wanted a second opinion?
Also: Had Incitti already been consulted by Bizjak before he carried out his visitation at the Aletti Center?
The reason I have these questions is because I am curious how widely known the news of Rupnik's successful incardination was in Rome up to this point. It is curious to me that Rupnik's incardination is only leaking to Silere 4 months after the fact. That seems to suggest it was kept under wraps to some degree (or maybe not; I don't really understand how these things work).
Yet through the summer we've got all these well connected people on social media banging on about how the Christian thing to do is to forgive, and not to condemn Rupnik's mosaics, etc...
I'm left wondering whether they knew he had already been approved to operate as a priest in Slovenia & basically rehabilitated.
I have seen some commentary from priests on Twitter/X that this process is usually a very lengthy one, and can take years for a "normal" priest who isn't surrounded by scandal and accusations of abuse, wrongdoing, etc. If this is true, I think it's pretty clear that strings were pulled here by people in high places. This whole thing was probably decided some time ago for it to move this quickly, or at the very least the official process was sped up to lightning speed or ignored entirely due to Rupnik's connections.
My understanding is that after his expulsion from the Jesuits, he would nominally fall under the Pope's direct jurisdiction, so his direct approval would be needed for this move to happen. Of course, if and when Pope Francis is asked about this, I am sure he will plead ignorance and that he delegated this to someone, probably Cardinal De Donatis, who is already known as a staunch defender of Rupnik's.
My guess is that Rupnik used his connections in Rome to facilitate this move since he could not get incardinated in Rome as there would be no way to deny the Pope's direct involvement if he stayed there. But on the other hand, we already know he is friends with the Pope and his vicar, so it's still not a stretch or conspiracy theory to assume that this cover-up goes all the way to to the top. I don't see any possible explanation for the Pope not being informed of a case with this high of a profile, and not having a direct hand in the decision.
According to reports, Rome was kept aware of this the entire time. Rome also reserves the right to block any incardination request even without cause. (They famously did this with the "Fatima Priest" Nicholas Gruner, demanding he find a diocese to incardinate him or face suspension if he continued priestly ministry.. He found a dicoese, Rome rejected the request, and then proceeded to suspend him in something that could only be called a flagrant abuse of power)
I think it's reasonably clear what happened: Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) lifted Rupnik's excommunication. Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) declined to prosecute Rupnik for crimes it was pretty clear he comitted, and the Jesuits believed he committed. Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) was aware of attempts to incardinate Rupnik after his expulsion, could have acted, but did not.
That all seems very possible. But I don't get why a well-connected blog like Silere (or the press in general) has only learned about this incardination 4 months after it occurred. It's not like there wasn't interest. I admit that my knowledge base is limited here, but I find it hard to imagine that if this had gone through some major dicastery, someone wouldn't have leaked it. There seems to have been some major infighting between different parties involved in this (cf., Incitti taking apparently gratuitous shots at the DDF process in his report), so it's not like the motivation wasn't there. Or is it possibly true that this was an "open secret" among well connected circles in Rome, yet somehow never made it to the press?
I think people wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. Just like with McCarrick. What we are seeing now ith Rupnik is what Francis would have done with McCarrick, had Vigano not decided to just crash the plane.
If you read between the lines, this sounds like it was an open secret. Journalists need someone to go on the record though, they can't just report on something that lots of people know but aren't direct witnesses to. Just like they needed a victim to prove the McCarrick thing even though apparently his abuse was open and notorious among Catholic journalists and even people beyond that.
I don't know, not sure how the sausage was made here. My gut feeling is that journalists were waiting for one shoe to drop and when it did they were finally able to report on it.
Is he in Rome? The diocese in which he’s been incardinated? Either way, he’s presumably not publicly celebrating mass. Not sure this is something that would be public knowledge.
My parish is taking up the collection for foreign missions this weekend. The Church's refusal to deal with abusers just ensured that I will not be giving them a dime. I was an abuse victim and the higher ups obviously still don't care about protecting the laity from abusive religious.
Good! There's no need to donate to missions through the official parish collections. We haven't donated to them in years. There are plenty of well-run, lay-influenced, accountable foreign aid organizations out there who get plenty of my family's money. And I trust them way more than I do whoever runs those organizations where the "second collection" goes. The fact that our parishes still collect for this stuff (and the bishop encourages it) is frustrating.
We give to Cross Catholic among other charities. My bishop, Bsh. Ron Gainer is/was heading it up (he just retired). I vouch for him as a good bishop. I like the chart showing the ratio of overhead to actual spending https://crosscatholic.org/
I like it when we can give to one specific mission directly (religious sisters from Nigeria or other places, or sometimes laypeople, have visited our parish to talk about what they do and then collected after Mass). It seems like a more direct connection which is important on a human level even if the Church as a bureaucratic organization was marvelously free from corruption.
Years ago, my acid tongued friend (now sadly deceased) was at Mass in St Patrick's in New York. A special collection came round to cover the costs incurred by the NY Archdiocese on an earlier round of paedo court cases and damages awards. Paul publicly and vigorously refused to give. Sell the cathedral. Sell the Bishop's house. Don't expect a penny from the laity.
How is this still happening‽
Apparently because we're not listening hard enough.
Maybe he knows where some bodies are burried.
I'm sure he does. And some of the bodies probably have SJ after their names.
At least the good ladies of the diocese of Koper can't say they have not been warned.
And the bad ladies know where to go for an exciting and unconventional confession.
And the rest of us know what a total joke any noises coming out of the faces of Pope Francis or any senior cleric are. Especially when they pretend to deal vigorously with offenders. But probably most readers of The Pillar know how worthless such promises are.
This ain't it, chief. This is serial rape we're talking about here - your joke about good and bad ladies is beyond off-color.
The phenomenon of women being attracted to indescribably horrible men is too visible to deny. The ultimate example has to be our own good Catholic lad, Sir Jimmy Savile. He boasted publicly in his 1975 autobiography about bedding 2,500 women and later very credible allegations accused him of necrophilia in the morgues of the hospitals where he was a volunteer worker. This did not stop him getting an knighthood through the efforts of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most powerful women in history. Plus a Papal Knighthood from Pope St JPll.
And he died totally legally innocent, as is Rupnik to date. There are plenty of off-colour jokes here, not least invoking the Declaration of Human Rights in his defence. Is his bishop seriously allowing him to hear confessions and have private conversations with women as any ordinary priest might do? Hopefully his parishioners will make his life unbearable. Who wants to live in a place where you are surrounded by hundreds of people who are nervous at your very presence? Then he might move on to spend more time with his art and his money before another atrocious scandal erupts
Absolutely disgusting.
I'm sure everything seemed like a good idea at the time to everyone responsible (whenever I have done something criminally stupid, it seemed to be either a normal and reasonable and commonplace thing to do, and/or the only possible course of action, but in fact neither was really true.)
We ought to pray for his repentance.
As an abuse victim, I can only say this puts one more roadblock between myself and the upper echelon of the Church in Rome.
Rupnik's, or Francis?
I freely assume that people are already praying daily for the Pope! - if for no other reason than because it is a condition of a plenary indulgence; the poor souls in purgatory would, as far as I know, be very glad of our assistance (the imagination quails at the thought of what it is like). The following are indulgenced, if I recall correctly: 1. praying a rosary with at least one other person; or, 2. 30 minutes of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament; or, 3. 30 minutes prayerfully reading Scripture; or, 4. praying the stations of the cross.
In addition we ought to pray for Rupnik (I also freely assume that we are already praying for victims because it is natural to desire to pray for them), in direct contradiction to our natural desire to throttle him while saying "pay back what you owe".
This is not a correct use of that parable.
If we pray for repentance, as we may, we do so knowing that as more people participate in keeping him from reckoning with sin and crime, repentance is withdrawn farther and farther from him. And them.
We can justly pray for God's severe mercy in such situations. This is not being unforgiving, but sharing more fully in the hearf of Jesus.
Have a short conversation with St. Therese of Lisieux about mercy. You are out of my league.
This is scandalous! Those poor nuns that were abused for so long have no justice.
What are the canons regarding
incardination?
Aren't all priests attempting to excardinate from one diocese to incardinate into another doing so on an "in experimentum" basis.
Is Fr. Rupnik's situation so unusual?
Other than his offenses that is?
I'm not a canon lawyer, but as I understand it, it is very common for incardination transfers to begin on an "ad experimentum" basis.
Doesn't it usually take months, rather than days, to be approved?
It often does, but a bishop can make an incardination happen at any speed.
Gentlemen, where is the edit and delete button in the com boxes?
the three little dots to the right of your comment
And yet Archbishop Ganswein isn't given a position. Maybe it is wrong to compare these two men but it is perplexing to me. It is what makes me question way too much in the Church today and I don't like the feeling.
Not to beat my own drum, but I called this one back when he was expelled from the Jesuit order. This was always the most likely outcome. He has friends in high places, and almost certainly the protection of the Pope. A basic knowledge of how the Church operates in recent history, especially since Pope Francis' pontificate began, pointed to this from the beginning. It's time for people to open their eyes and see that the "reform" of the past ten years is nothing more than a smokeshow.
Come, Holy Spirit, burn this rot of corruption & cronyism out of Your Church! Come, cleansing fire! Come, Holy Spirit!
Saint Peter Damian, pray for the rooting out of sexual sin & ecclesiastical complicity!
These brazen hellions!
I am not an abuse victim, and as far as I know, I don't know any abuse victims. The abuse crisis, although clearly a terrible thing, has never been something I am obsessed about. But I thought that the leaders of the church would learn from the mistakes of the past. That is why I was willing to move on. But the continued, incomprehensible protection and promotion of this monster is really a gut punch.
It makes me question how the individuals leading the "True Church" could do this. Maybe it is not the True Church after all. Maybe the Holy Spirit is guiding some other church. I just don't know.
Erin, when I was contemplating becoming Catholic in the late 20-Teens, I forced myself to really "stare" at the abuse crisis because I didn't want to make a leap of faith, only to become scandalized and cynical. I was--and remain--greatly consoled by a passage from St. John Henry Newman's "Arians of the Fourth Century." Specifically, by "Note 5. The Orthodoxy of the Body of the Faithful during the Supremacy of Arianism" (it's available online at newmanreador.org). It tells how the great majority of Catholic bishops became Arians in the years after the Council of Nicea, and it offers inspiring stories about what the lay faithful did in response. It made me realize, "Oh, gosh, our times aren't nearly as bad as all that! No bishop is cooperating with civil leaders to kill me. And if they were, that wouldn't mean the Catholic Church was no longer the true church. It would mean I need to be as heroic as that mother from Edessa" (go read her story). None of this is new, and it's not yet even particularly grievous. But as then, we need to play our part in the True Church even if some of our bishops don't. Take heart! He's still guiding the Church, and you and me, too.
In the parable of the wedding feast, the Father invites guests, and they don't come, and so he invites everyone from highways and byways to the feast, and they come, except there's this guy not wearing a wedding garment, so he eventually gets kicked out.
Christ came to call sinners. We came. Some of us are horrifying "of a kind that is not found even among the pagans". Some of us become Saints. Some of us never repented and never will, even sitting at the feast. Our Lady is the only impeccable Catholic that ever was, which is why the Middle Ages were smart enough to have Popes abase themselves before her in their artwork. The Holy Spirit doesn't keep people from doing evil, doesn't force us to do what is right, or even to do bare-bones justice. The Holy Spirit guides us insofar as we listen, and teaches us to pray insofar as we actually try to pray. Those who don't listen or pray, even bishops, aren't guided or taught.
The promise is not that there will be no wounds or casualties, or that the really bad evils will be kept out of the Church, or that the leadership will learn from their mistakes, or that things will get better in our lifetimes. The promise is that the gates of hell will not prevail, that the Sacraments will give grace when validly performed, that forgiveness will be given for our repentance, mercy to those that accept it, and that the True Church will never authoritatively teach error. That leaves a lot of room for men to do great evil. God keeps His promises, and He loves us more than we love ourselves - He just doesn't do whatever we think is reasonable, in our time, and with our preferred methodology.
The marks of the True Church are One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The Catholic Church is the only one that can claim them all. Only the Catholics and Orthodox have Apostolic Succession. "Holy", means "Set apart for God", in this particular instance, rather than "Doesn't commit any really bad sins". There is no church without members committing really bad sins, except possibly the 5-person church that was started yesterday by someone who was definitely not the Son of God. And the Church is set apart. She exists for God, and from Him, being born from the water and blood that came from Jesus' heart, as Eve came from the side of Adam. And the Church is One, meaning One Lord (Jesus), One Faith (authoritative Church doctrine), and One Baptism (Trinitarian). The Orthodox Churches are divided by nationality and often don't accept each others' Baptisms, so, neither Catholic (universal) nor One.
"Do you also want to leave?" "Lord, to whom shall we go?"
The virtue of patience isn't just about waiting, but also about bearing wrongs and suffering evils without falling into despair, or doing evil ourselves. It's not my favorite. Let's take our thoroughly justified horror and apply it to cleaning up the corruption (prayer and works), not to worrying about whether corruption means God isn't here. Prayer, Confession, Eucharist, Duties of our state in life, trust God, rinse, repeat.
Something I would like to understand better from the legal/procedural point of view: is there a Vatican dicastery that would have needed to be kept in the loop on all this? Or is the whole excardination-incardination process something that bishops can do on their own initiative? Did Bizjak consult Speich because he had to, or just because he wanted a second opinion?
Also: Had Incitti already been consulted by Bizjak before he carried out his visitation at the Aletti Center?
The reason I have these questions is because I am curious how widely known the news of Rupnik's successful incardination was in Rome up to this point. It is curious to me that Rupnik's incardination is only leaking to Silere 4 months after the fact. That seems to suggest it was kept under wraps to some degree (or maybe not; I don't really understand how these things work).
Yet through the summer we've got all these well connected people on social media banging on about how the Christian thing to do is to forgive, and not to condemn Rupnik's mosaics, etc...
I'm left wondering whether they knew he had already been approved to operate as a priest in Slovenia & basically rehabilitated.
I have seen some commentary from priests on Twitter/X that this process is usually a very lengthy one, and can take years for a "normal" priest who isn't surrounded by scandal and accusations of abuse, wrongdoing, etc. If this is true, I think it's pretty clear that strings were pulled here by people in high places. This whole thing was probably decided some time ago for it to move this quickly, or at the very least the official process was sped up to lightning speed or ignored entirely due to Rupnik's connections.
My understanding is that after his expulsion from the Jesuits, he would nominally fall under the Pope's direct jurisdiction, so his direct approval would be needed for this move to happen. Of course, if and when Pope Francis is asked about this, I am sure he will plead ignorance and that he delegated this to someone, probably Cardinal De Donatis, who is already known as a staunch defender of Rupnik's.
My guess is that Rupnik used his connections in Rome to facilitate this move since he could not get incardinated in Rome as there would be no way to deny the Pope's direct involvement if he stayed there. But on the other hand, we already know he is friends with the Pope and his vicar, so it's still not a stretch or conspiracy theory to assume that this cover-up goes all the way to to the top. I don't see any possible explanation for the Pope not being informed of a case with this high of a profile, and not having a direct hand in the decision.
The idea that Cardinal Di Donatis would have acted on his own initiative at any stage of this situation is simply not credible.
I agree, it's not. Pope Francis might try to claim that (it's what he did last time this topic was brought up to him) but I think few will believe it.
According to reports, Rome was kept aware of this the entire time. Rome also reserves the right to block any incardination request even without cause. (They famously did this with the "Fatima Priest" Nicholas Gruner, demanding he find a diocese to incardinate him or face suspension if he continued priestly ministry.. He found a dicoese, Rome rejected the request, and then proceeded to suspend him in something that could only be called a flagrant abuse of power)
I think it's reasonably clear what happened: Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) lifted Rupnik's excommunication. Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) declined to prosecute Rupnik for crimes it was pretty clear he comitted, and the Jesuits believed he committed. Francis (either on his own accord or at the advice of others) was aware of attempts to incardinate Rupnik after his expulsion, could have acted, but did not.
That all seems very possible. But I don't get why a well-connected blog like Silere (or the press in general) has only learned about this incardination 4 months after it occurred. It's not like there wasn't interest. I admit that my knowledge base is limited here, but I find it hard to imagine that if this had gone through some major dicastery, someone wouldn't have leaked it. There seems to have been some major infighting between different parties involved in this (cf., Incitti taking apparently gratuitous shots at the DDF process in his report), so it's not like the motivation wasn't there. Or is it possibly true that this was an "open secret" among well connected circles in Rome, yet somehow never made it to the press?
I think people wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. Just like with McCarrick. What we are seeing now ith Rupnik is what Francis would have done with McCarrick, had Vigano not decided to just crash the plane.
If you read between the lines, this sounds like it was an open secret. Journalists need someone to go on the record though, they can't just report on something that lots of people know but aren't direct witnesses to. Just like they needed a victim to prove the McCarrick thing even though apparently his abuse was open and notorious among Catholic journalists and even people beyond that.
But in this case, presumably all they'd have needed to do was call up the diocese of Koper and ask for confirmation of the incardination.
I don't know, not sure how the sausage was made here. My gut feeling is that journalists were waiting for one shoe to drop and when it did they were finally able to report on it.
Is he in Rome? The diocese in which he’s been incardinated? Either way, he’s presumably not publicly celebrating mass. Not sure this is something that would be public knowledge.
But I’m ignorant about these things.
My parish is taking up the collection for foreign missions this weekend. The Church's refusal to deal with abusers just ensured that I will not be giving them a dime. I was an abuse victim and the higher ups obviously still don't care about protecting the laity from abusive religious.
Good! There's no need to donate to missions through the official parish collections. We haven't donated to them in years. There are plenty of well-run, lay-influenced, accountable foreign aid organizations out there who get plenty of my family's money. And I trust them way more than I do whoever runs those organizations where the "second collection" goes. The fact that our parishes still collect for this stuff (and the bishop encourages it) is frustrating.
I hope you find healing for your suffering.
We give to Cross Catholic among other charities. My bishop, Bsh. Ron Gainer is/was heading it up (he just retired). I vouch for him as a good bishop. I like the chart showing the ratio of overhead to actual spending https://crosscatholic.org/
I like it when we can give to one specific mission directly (religious sisters from Nigeria or other places, or sometimes laypeople, have visited our parish to talk about what they do and then collected after Mass). It seems like a more direct connection which is important on a human level even if the Church as a bureaucratic organization was marvelously free from corruption.
Very much agreed.
Years ago, my acid tongued friend (now sadly deceased) was at Mass in St Patrick's in New York. A special collection came round to cover the costs incurred by the NY Archdiocese on an earlier round of paedo court cases and damages awards. Paul publicly and vigorously refused to give. Sell the cathedral. Sell the Bishop's house. Don't expect a penny from the laity.
If Rupnik had attempted to celebrate a traditional form liturgy one wonders if he would have been welcomed back into the fold so readily.