Since I happen to live in the Bible Belt of the United States, I am surrounded by Evangelicals and Baptists all the time. So if you happen to be an Evangelical, Baptist, Charismatic or Pentecostal Christian, this essay is for you. Other Protestants may find this interesting as well, and I’m sure some non-Christians may find it at least a little enlightening.
I used to be a Protestant. In fact, I was raised Baptist, spent about 8 years of my adult life as an Evangelical, before becoming an Anglican and then finally Catholic. I’ve been a Catholic Christian for nearly 20 years now, so I think I have a well-rounded view of both the Catholic and Protestant worlds. Obviously, I can’t speak on behalf of all Catholics. I can only speak from among them. But I think my views might be somewhat representative of how a lot of Catholics feel right now.
I think I know what a lot of you Protestants are thinking. You’re probably thinking such things as…
- What is going on in the Catholic Church?
- Thank God I’m not Catholic!
- Why does this keep happening to them?
- Is it the celibacy thing?
- Is it something about the religion itself?
- Why do Catholics tolerate this?
- Why don’t Catholics just leave the Catholic Church and join some other church?
These are legitimate questions. A lot of the good folks who live in the Ozarks of the Bible Belt usually lack knowledge of Catholicism. It’s all a bit of a mystery to them. So, while I can’t answer every single question here, I will try to put your mind to rest about a few things.
First thing’s first, you need to understand that faithful Catholics absolutely hate what is going on in the Catholic Church right now. In fact, nobody hates it more than we do. Whatever anger, frustration and bewilderment non-Catholics might be feeling right now, I promise you it’s ten-times worse among Catholics. We feel betrayed by our leaders, lied to, tricked, manipulated and used. We cannot believe what has been going on, beneath our noses, not for years, but for decades! Words cannot describe the shock and horror when we learned of the news, not just once but twice in less than two decades. As for the victims of this abuse and harassment, we are speechless, and it doesn’t matter because words are useless in situations like this. What the victims need is justice, and that is desperately something we want to see them have — the sooner the better!
News that the pope himself was likely involved in the active cover-up of a pederast cardinal (now demoted to archbishop), and actually used his recommendations to select new bishops in the United States, is surreal. It’s like a nightmare, that just keeps getting worse and worse. We’re all just waiting for the next shoe to drop. What next? Could it possibly get any worse? We’re terrified to find out.
We faithful Catholics don’t just want reform. We want justice, and justice is a little different from reform. The first element of justice is sacrifice. We want to see heads roll over this, not literally, but you get the idea. Many of us want the pope to resign, and most of us want all of our American cardinals demoted. We would like to see a lot of them canned as well, sent packing, laicized (defrocked), and removed from all ministry permanently. Of course, the same goes for a number of American bishops complicit in cover-up and naturally the priests guilty of abuse themselves.
In addition to praying, we’ve also been writing to our bishops, organizing financial boycotts and planning protests. (You’ll be seeing a big one in November at the bishops’ conference in Baltimore this year.) I even wrote an open letter to Pope Francis about a week and a half before revelations about his cover-up hit the news. I now fear that even if he ever does read it, it will just fall on deaf ears. So, in the wake of these recent revelations, I am of the very popular opinion that he should lead the bishops by example and resign. However, recent news reports seem to indicate that he has no intention of doing so. All I can say to that is — unfortunate.
Another thing that is so important to understand is that the majority of Catholic priests and bishops are innocent of all this. What we have is a small minority of bad clergymen who are giving the rest a bad name. Odds are, that priest you see walking in the market, or visiting a somebody down the street, is probably not a sexual abuser. Odds are, he’s probably a pretty decent fellow who’s made a lot of sacrifices in his life to serve our Lord and Savior.
I think the biggest question many of you have is why we Catholics won’t just leave the Church en mass, in protest of this scandal and crisis. I think that’s a fair question and it deserves a fair answer. The answer is this. We have been taught, and we know, the Catholic Church is the one and only Church established by Jesus Christ. This is taught in Scripture and backed by history…
Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.
Matthew 16:15-19
If you look back through the writings of the early Christians in the first century, second century, third century and even fourth century, they speak unanimously of only one Church ever established by Jesus Christ, and it is headed by the Bishop of Rome who is the successor of Saint Peter the rock, who bears the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is why a set of keys is featured on the flag and insignia of the Vatican.
We cannot leave the Church Jesus founded. Rather, we faithful Catholics are called to stay and fight for her. Why should we leave? We didn’t cause this scandal and crisis. We want to kick out those responsible who did. At the very least we want them out of Catholic ministry. If they decide to leave the Church entirely, that’s their business, and it’s between them and God. But we shouldn’t be forced to leave the Church just because they tried to ruin it. Think about it. Is it fair that the good should leave while the bad stay? No, of course it’s not. So justice dictates that we stay and they go. That’s what we’re fighting for here — justice!
You see, it’s pretty easy for Protestants to leave one denomination and go to another. In fact, a good number of Protestants do it all the time. They’ll hop from denomination to denomination, changing their beliefs and practices along the way. I did it when I was a Protestant. My parents did it. Most of my protestant friends and family did it. It’s a fairly common practice. So naturally, when Protestants hear of such a grave scandal and crisis erupting in the Catholic Church, their tendency is to ask: “Why don’t they just go to a different church?” This is exactly what most self-respecting Protestants would do. If a major scandal and crisis erupted in the Southern Baptist Convention (for example), on par with what is going on in the Catholic Church right now, most Southern Baptists would just bolt. The only way pastors could save their chapels would be to disassociate with the Southern Baptist Convention, and just go independent for a while. Later they might choose to associate with some other Baptist convention. Baptist chapels that refused to disassociate with the Southern Baptist Convention, in the face of such a crisis, would be gutted. The pews would empty out. The congregation would be thinned. People would just leave. That’s how it works in the Protestant world, and that’s exactly how it should work in the Protestant world. This is not a criticism. This is just how Protestantism polices itself. This is a statement of a reality that every Protestant admits to be true. Protestant denominations were made by men. They were not founded by Jesus Christ. Not a single Protestant denomination today is more than 500 years old, and none claim to be. Most of them are less than 200 years old. Protestants know this, intuitively if not academically, and their willingness to so easily leave one denomination for another only proves this point. No organization, founded by men, deserves to survive in the face of such scandal and abuse. Indeed, no organization, founded by men, ever would.
This is not the case for Catholics. We know that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ. It’s not just another denomination. It’s the one and only Church Jesus ever founded, and so we can’t just get up and leave. To walk away from the Church Christ founded is to walk away from Christ. Besides, we have nowhere else to go. No Protestant denomination has valid sacraments, except for baptism and matrimony. Yet if we leave for a Protestant denomination what can we do? We’ve already been baptized, and any marriage we try to contract there would be unlawful for us outside the Catholic Church. So what do Protestant communities have to offer Catholics? Literally, nothing. It would be a huge step down for us.
The only other type of church we could find the sacraments in are the Eastern Orthodox churches. At least there we could find the Eucharist, Confession, Holy Orders, etc. However, there are still two very big problems. The first is that these churches are everything the Catholic Church is, minus communion with the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), and as I just stated above, that is what Jesus built his Church upon. Again, this would be a step down for us, albeit a smaller step, but a step down nonetheless. There are also cultural aspects to consider. The Eastern Orthodox are just that — Eastern. They do things very differently, in an eastern way, which would be foreign to us. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but it’s not part of our Western heritage. In addition to breaking communion with Rome, a schismatic act, we would be having to relearn many new things, and radically change our disciplines and practices. In some cultural ways, Protestantism is less foreign to us than Eastern Orthodoxy, but I’ve already described above why Protestantism is not an option either.
So leaving the Catholic Church is not as easy for Catholics as leaving Protestant denominations is for Protestants. Catholics, who are educated in our faith, are charged to stay and fight the evil that has infected Christ’s one true Church — the Catholic Church. We really have no other viable option. Protestants would get up and walk out of their denominations, if this happened to them, and I wouldn’t expect it any other way. They should! Those denominations are man-made and everybody knows it. Catholics, on the other hand, are part of the one, true Church established by Jesus Christ. We can’t just leave in the face of such evil. We are charged to stay and fight back!
This leads me to the nature of the evil we are fighting. I’m going to tell you a secret, but I think you might already know, at least intuitively. The evil that we are fighting is not limited to the Catholic Church. The evil that we are fighting is like an octopus, that has thoroughly wrapped its tentacles into the Catholic Church, but has also reached out to the Protestant denominations as well: Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal and Evangelical. These tentacles have also taken grip of our secular governments, the media, universities, public schools, etc. Obviously, we Catholics cannot fight all of these tentacles in these other places. We can only fight them within the Catholic Church, and apparently they’ve been there for a very long time. What has happened in 2002, and again in 2018, is the exposure of these tentacles for what they are. The veil has been peeled back, so to speak, and there we see it in plain daylight. The octopus has wrapped itself up in the Catholic Church, all the way up to Rome.
What is this proverbial “octopus” I’m talking about. It’s a network of sexual deviants, primarily homosexual in nature (about 80% homosexual), but also allied with pedophiles and womanizers. These sexual deviants work together to maintain an atmosphere of secrecy, so as to cover up their crimes and perversions. They are not men of faith. But they masquerade as men of faith, so as to make themselves appear above reproach. They keep records on each other’s sexually deviant activities as “insurance policies” to make sure nobody talks. They abuse their positions of power to keep people silent, and abuse those who are good and trying to do the right thing. They like to keep the common laypeople as ignorant as possible, so they dumb-down religious education and liturgical practice. This keeps the masses of the laity dependent on the priests and bishops for every little decision, every little judgement, allowing the abusers to micro-manage the Church. The people are left to believe the priests and bishops know all and see all. It’s a very insidious system they’ve created, but it is NOT Catholicism.
Real Catholicism is very different. It looks different and sounds different. Real Catholicism focuses on lifting people up: spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. The last thing real Catholicism would ever do is dumb something down. Real Catholicism challenges the laity, and gives them something to aspire toward. It makes them better people, moral people, and gives them a strong sense of right and wrong. Real Catholicism also offers people hope, because it gives them the real opportunity to become more than what they are, and move toward what God intended them to be. That’s real Catholicism. That is the true religion of the Catholic Church. We see elements of this true Catholic religion in the Church today, but it is obscured by the massive tentacles of this octopus of sexual deviants. We have a name for this octopus, which describes the nature of the kinds of deeds its infamous for. We call it “The Lavender Mafia.”
The Lavender Mafia “octopus” is an evil “creature” of sexual deviants, made up primarily of homosexual men (about 80%) and a mix of other sexual deviants (about 20%). They move into an organization, take it over, and use the powers of that organization to perpetuate their perversity and keep the general population ignorant of their deeds. This is done for two reasons.
The first is to keep the money rolling in. Perversion needs to be financed. Male prostitutes are expensive, don’t you know? This is especially true of the attractive ones. You can’t buy a good male hooker on an average priest’s salary. You’re going to need access to lots of Church funds to keep that gravy train going, especially if you want to augment it with illegal drugs. Those don’t come cheap either! Regular people, who put money in the collection plates, generally stop giving when they find out this is how their money is being used. So secrecy is absolutely essential. They have to be good at leading a double life, hiding their perversion, and presenting a good public face that seems perfectly innocent of their secret lifestyle. Only the most skilled at a double life can advance through the ranks to the levels of bishop, archbishop and cardinal. They can’t risk some amateur getting a high rank and being exposed publicly — an amateur like formal Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is an example of what they don’t want in the hierarchy. They need smarter people than that. They need skilled liars who know how to cover their tracks.
The second reason is they need a steady supply of victims to rape and molest. If the common people in the pews know what’s going on, they’re not nearly as likely to trust putting their kids into Church ministries, such as the altar guilds, youth groups, and boys retreats. So secrecy is absolutely essential to keep a steady supply of victims. While children of all ages and both sexes were victims, the overwhelming vast majority of minor victims were post-pubescent teenage boys. This is by clinical definition NOT pedophilia. There is a specific word for this. It’s called homosexual pederasty. Now pedophilia and pederasty are not the same thing. They sound somewhat similar, but they’re two totally different perversions. Pedophilia is the abnormal sexual interest in pre-pubescent children (both boys and girls) who show no sign of sexual development at all. For the most part, they are sexual “blanks” so-to-speak, having no adult sexual characteristics at all. Statistically speaking, the incidence of pedophilia is no higher in the Catholic Church than it is in the general population. In contrast, pederasty is the abnormal sexual interest in post-pubescent teenagers (usually boys) who are beginning to display the physical characteristics of an adult man: facial and pubic hair, deep voice, pectoral development, etc. For each male teenager, the onset of these characteristics is a different age. Some boys start going through puberty as early as age eleven. Others, go through it as late as age fourteen. The highest number of sexual abuse victims in the Catholic Church (approximately 80%) was with teenage boys between the ages of 11 and 17. That is pederasty not pedophilia. If you don’t believe me, you don’t have to take my word for it. Do a Google search. Go to the library. See for yourself. Pederasts look at their craft of teenage boy-grooming and domination as an investment. They seek to “convert” these teenage boys to the homosexual lifestyle, so they can continue using them for this purpose when they become young men on their eighteenth birthday. Ideally, their homosexual relationship with these young men will continue well into their twenties, keeping the pederast supplied with a steady stream of youthful men throughout his life.
The irony to all this is that if the Catholic bishops just followed their own code of canon law, they would have never ordained homosexual men to the priesthood to begin with. They could have prevented this problem from ever reaching such a scale if they just followed their own law. That law, however, was ignored, and so was homosexuality in general. Publicly, the Catholic Church condemns homosexual behavior. Privately, the bishops turned a blind eye to it, probably because some of them are engaged in it as well.
The Lavender Mafia is real, and it is dangerous. In addition to blackmail, people who have knowledge, and threaten to go public, sometimes have “unfortunate accidents.” People closely associated with the Lavender Mafia often commit “suicide” in strange and bizarre ways, like for example, shooting one’s self in the head — twice. I’ve heard of brake lines being cut and an assortment of other “inexplicable events.” This is one reason why Archbishop Vigano has gone into hiding after the release of his eleven-page statement exposing multiple U.S. bishops and the pope himself as taking part in the dealings of The Lavender Mafia.
Most importantly, I want to make this crystal clear. The Catholic Church did not spawn the Lavender Mafia. It was infected by it, and there is ample evidence to prove this. The McCarthy hearings in Washington DC, during the 1950s, uncovered extensive evidence of communist infiltration into the Catholic Church and other religious organizations, including admissions by former communist agents. These men (and women) were charged with recruiting as many faithless and immoral (especially sexually deviant) men as possible and getting them into public ministry, especially inside the Catholic Church. The Soviet Union saw the Catholic Church as the number-one obstacle to the expansion of communism into the West. The obstruction had to be neutralized, and putting faithless and immoral men into the priesthood was seen as the best way to go about this. The infiltration began in the 1920s and continued well into the 1950s.
The communist connection is ancient history now, almost irrelevant at this point, but what remains is the Lavender Mafia, an octopus of many tentacles wrapped up into the Catholic Church. For Catholics there is good news on the horizon. For Protestants, that good news for Catholics should be taken as an ominous warning for you. The Lavender Mafia is about to be ejected from the Catholic Church. Since the pope will not yet act in a decisive way, and the bishops are somewhat powerless to act outside of their own dioceses, the matter is now being turned over to the governments of the world, starting with the United States federal government. We now have it on good authority that the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) will soon enact RICO statutes against the Catholic Church in the United States, treating it an interstate criminal organization. This will be a long and tedious process of unwrapping the tentacles of the octopus from American Catholicism, one diocese at a time. The Lavender Mafia’s days are numbered in the US Catholic Church. In addition, this kind of government action in America will likely lead to government action in other countries, and maybe even some kind of international intervention with the Vatican city-state itself. One way or another, the Lavender Mafia octopus is about to be ejected from the Catholic Church entirely, and when it’s finally out, it’s going to look for other places to set up shop. Guess where that might be?
This is the warning for Protestants. When the Lavender Mafia octopus leaves the Catholic Church, it will likely go straight for the Protestant denominations, to spread its tentacles among them. Watch out! The Eastern Orthodox should also be mindful of this. They will not be immune either. This beast knows no boundaries and has no limit to the depths of depravity it will sink. So be prepared. It’s a nasty one and very clever. Once we get it out of our Church, it’s probably coming your way. So here’s the best advice I can give you. If a former Catholic priest comes knocking on your chapel door, looking for a ministry job, don’t give him one. It doesn’t matter what kind of story he tells you. He may even say exactly what you want to hear. Maybe he’ll tell you how he “escaped” from the Church of Rome, that “Great Whore of Babylon,” and pull the whole Fundamentalist shtick on you. Fine, let him sit in your pews, but whatever you do — don’t give him a job in the ministry. Don’t do it. I’m as serious as a heart attack. If you want to keep the Lavender Mafia tentacles out of your chapel and denomination, tell that former priest the ministry is off-limits to him in your organization. If he sues you for discrimination, fine! Get a good lawyer and fight back. Better to lose some money on legal fees than have your chapel and denomination converted into a sex-trafficking, organized-crime ring. I’m telling you this as your Catholic brother in Christ, because I wouldn’t wish this horrible scourge on anyone. Beware the Kraken! It’s real, in a metaphorical kind of way, and once we’ve unlocked its tentacles from the Bark of Peter, it will be set loose into the sea again, looking for more prey.
Complete Christianity 