Ding! Ding! Ding! Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of South Africa wins the award for most nauseating and blasphemous statement made about the Vigano allegations with this tweet:
How similar the Master and his servant have been in their hour of trial! “But he was silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Mark 14:61 Throughout the ‘Trial by Media’ the parallels have been close & repeated!
PopeWatch will have to cut short this post before he uses language about a Cardinal he never thought he would have any desire to use.
Austen Ivereigh has made the same comparison.
“Bergoglio’s 1990 essay, ‘Silence and Word’, suggests a deeper spiritual purpose to his silence, one drawn from a meditation on the Passion in the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises. There St Ignatius describes how in the Passion, God ‘goes into hiding’, concealing, as it were, his divinity.
This is a very different kind of silence from, say, the silence of complicity or the silence of inaction faced with evidence of evil, as we have seen too often in the case of sexual abuse of minors.
The purpose of Christ’s self-emptying silence — his meekness faced with ferocious hostility — is to create space for God to act. This kind of silence involves a deliberate choice not to respond with an intellectual or reasoned self-defence, which in a context of confusion, of claims and counter-claims and half-truths, simply fuels the cycle of hysterical accusation and counter-accusation. It is a spiritual strategy to force the spirits behind the attack to reveal themselves.”
I knew some darn fool would eventually make the comparison between Pope Francis’ silence on his complicity in the sex abuse scandal and Jesus’ silence before His wrongful execution. Sadly and frustratingly, the persons who make such comparisons really don’t read the actual exchange between the High Priest and our Blessed Lord, or between Pontius Pilate and our Blessed Lord:
John 18:19-24
19 The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. 20 Jesus answered him, “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together; I have said nothing secretly. 21 Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me, what I said to them; they know what I said.” 22 When he had said this, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” 24 Annas then sent him bound to Ca′iaphas the high priest.
John 18:33-38
33 Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.” 37 Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
I am really sick and tired of this cherry-picking of selected Scripture passages to support preconceived and wrong-headed conclusions and comparisons. And I am beyond angry that liberals, progressives, feminists, secularists, environmentalists and humanists have infected and infested the presbytery and episcopate to such an extent that vile comparisons are made (with apparent credibility!) between the holiness and humility which so characterized our Lord, and the arrogance and hubris of that Argentinian Marxist Peronist.
Georgius Bergoglius demovendus et anathemandus est!
I mean that. I absolutely 100% mean that.
One thousand upvotes to Lucius!
You know who also did the “my silence is like Jesus” shtick?
Maciel.
The sooner the investigation starts the better.
We all want the Truth to be brought forward but that doesn’t mean the accused is part of the all.
Not if there is truth to the allegations.
What is Truth?
Indeed.
Let’s keep up the prayers for Truths sake.
A deep cleanse is worth the effort. The toil to rid the church of toxins is worth our prayers and fasting. Let’s keep our eyes on that goal.
A HOLY Catholic Church.
As noted on these pages, St Thomas Moore pointed out that silence indicates consent. When you look at it that way, maybe there is a comparison…
Pilate: “Are you the Christ?” Christ’s silence indicates consent
Reporters: “Did you know McCarrick is a terrible person?” Pope’s silence indicates…?
Austen Ivereigh has made the same comparison.
Silence might be a satisfactory policy for Dr. Invereigh.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120222033312/http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42967&c=1
It has been my observation that unfaithful Catholics and Pope Francis defenders have an unparalleled gift for a corrupt interpretation of the Scriptures. Everything is the complete mirror image, a complete moral inversion. I’ve seen plenty of it in the comments of Pope Francis defenders.
Mikes writes, “St Thomas Moore pointed out that silence indicates consent.”
The maxim, “Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi tractatur de suo commodo” – He who is silent gives consent, where his advantage is in question, comes from the Canon Law. It can be found in Sext or Liber Sextus of Pope Boniface VIII issued in 1298 (Book 5, Title 13, De Regulis Juris No 43)
It made its way into English law via the ecclesiastical Chancellors who presided in the Court of Chancery; More was the first layman to hold the office; all his predecessors had been bishops.
It is a rare instance where the Canon law and the Civil (Roman) law are at odds. Paulus says in the Digest, “Qui tacet, non utique fatetur: sed tamen verum est eum non negare” – He who is silent does not of course confess, but it is true that he does not deny (Dig. 50.17.142 Paulus 56 ad ed.)
It is the opinion of Paulus, rather than the Canonists, that has been adopted in modern civil codes, into Scots law and into the Roman-Dutch law of South Africa.
St Thomas More, great and learned jurist that he was, was obviously thinking of the second part of the Canonists’ maxim, “where his advantage is concerned.”