TRILOGY: Bk I, Ch 26 (Jackass for the Hour)

Revealed religion sacrifices children

By 10:00 A.M., the Paul VI Audience Hall was filled to its capacity of thousands upon thousands. Everyone was on their feet, speaking more loudly even as the din became more deafening.

Cardinal Francisco’s secretary said, “We welcome our visitors here today, representatives of the media, delegations from various religious groups, and others who desire to advance the common good as well as the particular good of the individuals who have a special interest in this case. We will begin with a prayer.”

The Cardinal thought it best to begin with a ‘multi-cultural prayer’, worried that clarity might offend disparate sensitivities. Among the wide variety of languages and nationalities and religions, Jews and Muslims were in sizable numbers in the Hall. Ignoring the new artwork framing the stage, the Cardinal lapsed into semi-Pelagianism, saying, “O God of the cosmos, we are at one this morning, invigorated by our dialogue and enthused by the common purpose of sharing our lives with each other. We praise you for helping us to be one with the cosmos, one with you, forever and ever…” He couldn’t add ‘Amen’ lest this sound too Judaeo-Christian. The Cardinal sat down. Most in the crowd stared at him blankly. Others, for whom such nonsense was their usual Sunday fare, said ‘Amen’. Everyone sat down, causing a wave of noise to roll up the sloping floor of the Hall.

“The proceedings of the trial of Father…” began the Cardinal, unable to finish his sentence. A banner had been unfurled by a group of demonstrators during the opening ‘prayer’. It stretched halfway across one side of the Hall, in the middle of the crowd, behind the reporters. Those holding up the banner had begun to chant the slogan printed upon it in large red letters.

The cameras swept around to get a closeup of the banner: “REVEALED RELIGION SACRIFICES CHILDREN.” There were smaller words below these proclaiming that the group’s members were abuse survivors. A multitude of guards swept down upon the protestors, but they were kept at bay by multiple rows of people on all sides of the banner, all of them obviously belonging to the same group. Their chanting of the slogan was picked up by many others. Mayhem reigned.

Cardinal Fidèle looked content, but Cardinal Francisco was hitting his gavel on the table, which only annoyed the crowd. Father Alexámenos leaned forward into his microphone and said, “No! Let them stay. Let them hold up their banner. You must let them have a voice.”

The guards looked to Cardinal Francisco for direction. “We are so pleased to have you with us to share your concerns,” he said loudly over his microphone. The protesters sat down, continuing to hold the banner open. After this, only two sets of two guards remained in the aisles to either side of the group.

“The proceedings of the trial of Father Alexámenos,” Cardinal Francisco repeated, “will now commence. The defendant is accused of heresy, lack of charity to other religions and immorality. It may seem that res ipsa loquitur, that a trial is not needed, that punishment should not be delayed. Yet, a matter does not always speak for itself, for a lack of context can be a pretext for injustice. Questions must be settled prior to any punishment. Finding the truth is in everyone’s interest. We want the world to say that we will have accomplished our purpose accurately and affably. It is peace, the absence of rancour, which we desire. We are happy to be at peace.”

A man dressed in traditional Muslim attire shouted, “Per la pace, dev’essere giustiziato!” meaning that the accused had to be put to death, so as to establish justice and obtain peace.

Cardinal Fidèle, thinking that peace should be the ‘tranquillity of Truth,’, however ‘prudently presented’, said to Cardinal Francisco, “Thank you, your Eminence. Your words are… very nice.” His biting sarcasm won him the crowd’s respect. He had convinced the other prelates to have a relaxed trial so that he could better guide the process in view of the rather unusual public nature of the gatherings. Neither side wished to make an opening statement, so he turned to Cardinal Froben, the Prosecutor for the morning and, usurping authority, said to him, “The floor is yours, your Eminence.”

Cardinal Froben, the President for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, had always been a showman, and now was his chance to demonstrate his talent. Before the session began, the Cardinal had made sure to be fitted with a radio microphone that also relayed to the sound equipment of the media, a procedure which the technicians followed afterward for all the Prosecutors. He walked to the very centre of the stage and, turning to Father Alexámenos, said, “Father, would you agree that a trial is too adversarial? Why don’t we just ignore exaggerated procedural rules? Just think of our time together as a conversation, sharing with each other. After all, it is better that we let you hang yourself with the greatest opportunity to explain yourself, don’t you think? I’ll even dispense reading out the charges against you. Surely you are humiliated enough.” He held up five pieces of paper taped together, which he let unfold until they almost reached the floor.

Father Alexámenos, however, took charge of his own interrogation, saying, “What was written on the banner correctly states the case and sums up all charges against me, for, as I understand it, I am to be interrogated about Revelation, religion and the sacrifice of children…”

“Or is it more accurate to say that you will be questioned about your misunderstanding of Revelation and religion, as well as about the flagrant abuse of children?” asked the Cardinal.

“It all depends,” asserted Father Alexámenos, again guiding the conversation.

The Hall was completely quiet, except for the hushed sound of note-taking by hundreds of reporters, who were holding digital recorders in the air with one hand and writing with the other.

Cardinal Froben cautiously took up the challenge, asking, “It all depends… on what?”

Father Alexámenos repeated what he had previously said to both Rabbi Shelomoh and Eliyahu, who were watching the proceedings from backstage. Eliyahu had escaped disciplinary measures in the military, having been subpoenaed in case he was needed. With them were Signora Gagno and Carpe Diem. The health of Cardinal Fidèle had markedly deteriorated in the last month and she needed to be present as an impromptu nurse, medicines in hand.

“It depends on whether you are a faithful or an unfaithful priest,” said Father Alexámenos. “Notice that faithless priests hate to speak of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass…”

“What does that have to do with anything?!” exclaimed Cardinal Froben.

Father Alexámenos said, “A faithless priest hates to speak of the Last Supper and Calvary as the Sacrifice of Jesus. As it is, God the Father sent Christ Jesus into the world to freely accomplish this very Sacrifice, a Child-Sacrifice if you will – but by laying down His own life – fulfilling the righteousness of justice by which He asked for mercy for us: ‘Father, forgive them…’ The faithless priest thinks that this is incriminating instead of it being a Revelation in mercy. There is too much goodness, too much kindness, too much…”

“Just too much! Get to the point!” Cardinal Froben insisted, not realising the point had been made.

“To avoid feeling guilty about his lack of goodness and kindness,” explained Father Alexámenos, “the faithless priest attempts to rid himself of revealed religion, for what is revealed points to this Child-Sacrifice of our Heavenly Father, though Jesus laid down His own life to take it up again for us. All that the faithless priest needs to do to reject Revelation is to assert that Faith is unnecessary, that the very Tradition by which Scripture was written and by which it must be understood is unnecessary. For him, Revelation is merely the text of Scripture. Full stop: a religion of a book. Despite knowledge of the historical circumstances in which the text was written, without knowing and living the same Faith, the same Tradition in which the text was written, he must see in the text only what he wants to see, namely, his own imagination, the ‘preconceptions’ of society that he has vacuumed into his brain. A faithless priest is self-referentially fundamentalist. He insists on ‘historical’ interpretation, but, in his case, history is reduced to his own anachronistic relativism. He reads himself into the text. He rejects the Living Truth which would open him to the Eternal Word, God Incarnate, Christ Jesus.”

“Don’t tell me that you are going to attack the exegetical community,” said Cardinal Froben. “Even you have a ‘world view’ relative to yourself, Father.”

“Everyone has their own ‘world view’, your Eminence, but sanctifying grace given to us in the supernatural virtue of Faith, of Tradition, establishes our unity with God and each other. This unity with the Lord of History, who is Living Truth, lifts us out of the quagmire of relativity.”

“I’m glad to see, Father, that you identify Faith and Tradition. I understand Tradition as a stream of historically conditioned ‘traditions’, or as a stream of cultural phenomena creating our individual assent to God. The assent of each person should be similar to the assent given by most people for the sake of unity. Faith, individual assent to God, is necessarily relative to the person. However, it is made ‘traditional’ in the sense that the ‘pre-conceptions’ of so many individuals assenting to God in more or less the same way are transferred from one generation to the next as a simple anthropological fact, easily recognised with statistical analysis. It is our assent to the most common expression of assent to God, called ‘faith’, in which one necessarily finds one’s justification, in other words, one’s unity with others and God… though others, falling through the cracks of my historical analysis, are not excluded.”

“Your Eminence, Faith and Tradition are identical, but not because Faith is equated with the historical fluctuations of democratic expedience. If that were the case, even your idea of ‘faith’ and ‘tradition’ could not be equated to prepare for your ‘assent’, but would only follow upon the lowest common denominator of some pre-existing circumstances. You would just be one more dead fish in a river. Coercion of circumstance is not unity. Instead, Faith freely lived is an absolute, regardless of time, regardless of culture, intellectual capacity, or anything else. To repeat, Faith is the supernatural virtue given directly by the Holy Spirit with the grace which sanctifies us, uniting us to God and, indeed, to others. Faith unites all those whom Christ incorporates into His Body by way of His Sacrifice, His obedience, His listening to the Father speak. He is the Father’s Word, Whom we offer at Holy Mass…”

“No!” interrupted Cardinal Froben, starting to show how flustered he was becoming. “Tradition is historical. It continues with fluctuations in the circumstances in which different individuals live. Tradition brings the reality of Faith to life.”

“Dialectical reactions do not write the pages of history or Tradition, your Eminence. Christ Jesus is the Lord of History. His Holy Spirit, Who inspired the words of the Word to form us into that Incarnate Word, establishes our unity with the Lord and each other. He takes our disparate languages of the tower of Babel and has us speak to all in the one language, the one Word, the one Charity Who is God. This Charity is not transcendent because it begins as a material reaction and evolves upward, moves upward, transfers itself upward, becoming something nicely spiritual; instead, God’s Charity is supernatural… above nature. We know it as sanctifying grace, your Eminence, the love of Christ which – hyperbállousan – proceeds above earthly knowledge…”

“Grace?” scoffed Cardinal Froben. “We do not use that non-ecumenical verbiage any more.”

“Our human involvement as the centuries roll on,” began Father Alexámenos, “is not that we actually hand on the Faith from one generation to the next, as if human, Magisterial commentary – however infallible – could possibly be equated with handing on the Faith throughout the generations as wrought by the Holy Spirit. Instead, the Holy Spirit so univocally gives the sanctifying grace of the supernatural virtue of Faith to all men in each generation – regardless of their ‘world view’, personal history, culture, nationality, or whatever – that the effect of this one grace of Faith, especially in Magisterial teaching, makes it look as if we men have handed on this supernatural grace of Faith down through the generations, but we do this only quasi per manus, only as if by hand. Faith, having a ‘traditional’ effect, and rightly called Tradition, is wrought by the Holy Spirit. Living Faith is Tradition. Tradition is Living Faith, the sanctifying grace of Charity in Truth. It is this supernatural Tradition, this supernatural Faith, which makes Revelation of the Living Truth to be Revelation. Without Sacred Tradition, without grace, it must be that Sacred Scripture is a dead letter to the reader, who must replace the Faith with what he wants to see. There could be nothing more dead than what we want to see in separation from God.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Cardinal, making a show of yawning. “Are you trying to turn the clock back to the year Martin Luther died, when Trent promulgated its fourth session on Word, Rule of Faith and Witness? Our world view of unity has changed since then.”

“But your Eminence, Faith, Tradition, lifts us out of time even while we remain in time. With this Faith, this Tradition, we, upon this earth, have a ‘vision’ of God, who is in heaven, a vision seen…”

“So, now you’re a visionary as well!” scoffed the Cardinal.

“A vision seen as if in a dark mirror,” continued Father Alexámenos, referring to Saint Paul. “The mirror is ‘dark’ only because grace is supernatural and we cannot see its brilliance with our merely natural brains. Yet, we are members of the Body of Christ, and He, the Word spoken by the Father, sees the Father for us, the members, even while we are on this earth. In heaven, Faith will fall away, for we will have direct vision through, with and in Christ. What we will then be has not yet been revealed, for we shall see God as He is… But now, seeing the Father through our Eucharistic Lord by the grace He gives…” The voice of Father Alexámenos trailed off, caught up in the prayer of what he was saying, but before Cardinal Froben could respond, don Hash elbowed him, and Father Alexámenos continued, saying, “Your Eminence, by grace we have a taste of eternity, of heaven, of appreciating the good of the saints as our good. It is a taste of knowing, however faintly, the saints’ rejoicing in the good in us as their own good. The good we share is the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity. For us, this Tradition, Living Faith, and for them a vision of Living Truth, has us better understand the Sacred Mysteries, which the Holy Spirit has described in the inspired, written words of God. Those words are about the Word of God, who is spoken by the Father. Scripture and Tradition constitute the Revelation of God, whose fulness is Christ.”

“So, you’re saying that our understanding of Revelation does not develop as the centuries unfold, as Cardinal Newman told us?” asked Cardinal Froben.

“Our understanding develops, but this is not the same as Tradition, as Faith, your Eminence, as if the sanctifying grace of supernatural Faith itself develops. Refined arguments, for instance, in front of wilful faithlessness is useless. The faithless priest holds that Scripture is the product of dialectic circumstance, not of Faith and inspiration, and that, therefore, it must be read as Scripture alone. No Faith. No Tradition.” Father Alexámenos waited for a response, but not getting any, continued, saying, “The faithless priest thinks that without Tradition, without Faith, he is reading God’s Revelation, though he is only seeing in the text what he wants to see there, just himself with the pretence of thinking that he is without sin. He is escaping from who he actually is and who he should be in God’s presence. Escape is no development of understanding. It is a regression, an expression of Adam’s sin, the idolatry of attempting to replace God with oneself.”

“It is not replacing God with oneself, Father,” insisted Cardinal Froben. “Today’s philosophies of communication, with much common sense, are simply demanding common ground. God and oneself are already similar enough to each other that a successful dialogue – much like evolution – proceeds dialectically as history marches on to a glorious eschatological conclusion when Christ will be all in all…”

“Your Eminence, if Christ is not All in all now, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, then He never will be. The Word of God is not cold, dialectic, evolutionary dialogue, as if one could, for instance, arbitrarily apply any ‘method’ to Scripture, forcing the text to reflect oneself. Christ, the Word, brings us into communion with the Most Holy Trinity, with grace, which transforms us, but does not transform God. This communion is personal, and not simply a common ground where we ‘confront’ God, or coldly ‘encounter’ Him, where God and man are equals, a dialogue which is already a fait accompli, making Revelation redundant. Dialogue is illegitimate if…”

“Dialogue is always good!” exclaimed the Cardinal indignantly.

“Christ is the Word, the Logos Incarnate; He does not become dia-logos by becoming Man, but lifts manking by the Revelation that He provides,” insisted Father Alexámenos.

“What we are talking about is conversation,” said the Cardinal. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Without univocal Faith, without univocal Tradition, so-called dialogue must reject the One to whom Revelation points,” replied Father Alexámenos. “For instance, when is the last time that you heard the Common Ground Initiative or Catalyst for Renewal or any ‘expert’ in dialogue from Tübingen speak of the Mass as the Sacrifice of the Son of the Father? Their dialogue is not dialogue with God or men, but capitulation of the worst kind. The faithless priest has no interest in communion or communication. Their dialogue is an imploding dialectic continually destroying the antithesis, dragging everyone down to what is ou-topos, ‘utopia’, no-place, the lowest common denominator, oneself.”

“What’s wrong with oneself ? Have you no self-esteem?” the Cardinal asked, ironically, with a voice of sarcasm. “Did not our Lord say, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself?’”

“He did!” exclaimed Father Alexámenos. “But he didn’t intend what you imply, as if loving one’s neighbour as oneself meant that one projects what one hates about oneself onto another in order to have a ‘good’ excuse to destroy the other.”

“You make civil exchange sound discourteous,” replied the Cardinal as an accusation.

“May I speak openly, your Eminence?” asked Father Alexámenos, using a favourite question of don Hash, who knew this was a hint from Father Alexámenos that he should now pay close attention to what would follow.

“The attempt to conform the world to self with a will-to-power, your Eminence, is nothing less than the source of all violence and abuse and, to the point of what was on the banner, of all the sacrifice of children to such a person’s whims. Ultimately, this violent conformity, this forcing of the lowest common denominator of self, attempts to test the Lord, to shake one’s fist at God, screaming out, ‘Come down from that Cross, down to us morally, down into our hell of sin, down! Then we will believe! Non serviam!

“Your exaggeration demonstrates your insincerity,” replied the Cardinal, pushing him to overstate the matter.

“If only we could see that Christ was crucified on the lowest streets of hell!” replied Father Alexámenos with intensity. Then, with an inquisitive voice, he asked, “You do know what Saint John Chrysostom said the streets of hell paved with, don’t you, your Eminence?” As he asked this, Father Alexámenos touched his head. When the Cardinal realised that he was aping Father Alexámenos, answering the question by touching his skull, he threw his arms down, flustered. Father Alexámenos continued, “To sum up about the statement, ‘Revealed Religion Sacrifices Children,’ it is true that the Revelation which religion brings to us is the Sacrifice of Christ, the Son of our Heavenly Father, but when Revelation is attacked by denying the Faith – that Tradition necessary to assent to truths of Scripture– it is the Sacrifice of Christ, the Mass, which is rejected, for Revelation points to it. The faithless priest thinks of himself as Revelation. He will continue to offer sacrifice, but this time, instead of the divine Son of the Father, it is our own children who will be…”

“We reveal God to each other if we are members of the Body of Christ,” replied the Cardinal flatly.

“If the faithless priest denies the difference between nature and grace, the natural and the supernatural and, ultimately, the created and the Creator,” began Father Alexámenos, “he only reveals that he holds himself to be the lowest common denominator of mankind. But this is not any Revelation of communion, but merely his ‘down to earth’, private interpretation of his own isolated private ‘faith’ alone, his own manipulating forlorn theology alone. So much for his Scriptura sola and sola fide! It’s all very private and lonely. For him, there is no Family of Faith, no ecclesial interpretation. He is true anti-‘ecumenical’ in the worst sense, lost to himself. He cannot bring the Sacrifice of the Mass to others. Instead, he makes the Mass into an expression of the tyranny of his own relativism. There is a sensory overload, but no prayer. Don’t get me wrong! The faithless priest will continue to offer sacrifice, but this time, instead of the divine Son of the Father, it is our own children who will be…”

“All of your talk about the Sacrifice in the Mass has me thinking that you are saying that God uses religion to reveal that He is pleased with children being offered to Him in sacrifice,” said the Cardinal. “I seem to remember a case in Haïti where children were sacrificed to the whims of…”

“What God the Father is pleased with, your Eminence, is that, in His sending of God the Son to redeem us in full justice and mercy, God the Son freely laid down His own human nature to take it up again, for us. What God the Son does is not meant to be pleasing to the Father in the sense that the Father’s attitude toward the Son somehow changes. God the Father is always well-pleased with His Son. God the Son did not consider that divinity something to be grasped at, or received: He is God. And now, Jesus is the Priest, the Sacrifice, the Altar, and remains God. On the one hand, the priest of Faith upholds the Mass as the Sacrifice mandated by our Heavenly Father; he knows – in the word of the famous banner – that revealed religion does offer a Child in Sacrifice, the very Son of God. On the other hand, the faithless priest will not tolerate such talk, but will continue to offer sacrifice, but this time, it is our own children who will be…”

“But what does this have to do with the statement on the banner – Revealed Religion Sacrifices Children, a plurality – and with the accusations against you, Father?”

Continuing to guide the conversation, Father Alexámenos replied, “If you want, I’ll give you some examples of how it is that the faithless priest, in rejecting the Sacrifice of the Mass, must continue to offer sacrifice, but this time… sacrificing any children of God, or any would-be children of God that he finds, those who have or could have the Faith, those whom he will use for his own…”

“Oh, do so!” exclaimed the Cardinal, thinking this would lead to Haïti.

“Take the example, your Eminence, of the useless homilies of a faithless priest. Since he has already rejected all that the prophets had to say about the fulness of Revelation in the Sacrifice of Jesus, the Suffering Servant of the Father, the words of his homily will slay, for him, both the prophets of the past and those who have Faith in the present, for he rejects what the prophets spoke about, making sure to replace the Sacrifice of the Mass with rituals of self-affirmation.”

“I am sure I do not understand what you are saying,” said Cardinal Froben.

“Your Eminence, let me provide another example. Consider the faithless priest in charge of publishing an edition of the Bible, having it printed ever so nicely, but manipulating the text and notes from his own motives.” Father Alexámenos noted that the Cardinal had started to become restless, listening defensively, but continued with his observation: “Since the faithless priest has already effectively killed off, in himself, the truth of which the prophets wrote, not believing with the Faith by which those Scriptures were first produced, he is, then, in printing that manipulated Bible, doing nothing more than building the tombs of the prophets, effectively murdering them once again. He is no different from some of the scribes and pharisees of old, and would plot to murder Christ the first chance he had, but he is content to do away with those who are made in the image of God, those around himself, by way of…”

“Just whom are you accusing?” asked the Cardinal quietly, but with deadly intensity. “We can forget about our conversational sharing… Is that what you want?”

“Abuse of the Son of the Father in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the worst sin possible,” said Father Alexámenos, talking over Cardinal Froben. “And abuse of the Mass leads to the abuse of our own children. Either priests will offer the Sacrifice of the Son of God with reverence, or they will turn to the sons of man and destroy them in whatever way, either by…”

“If that’s the way you want it…” began Cardinal Froben, but he could not continue. He was distracted by the crowd’s distraction. They were listening to what he had tried to ignore, thinking it would just go away.

It was the applause of Eliyahu and Rabbi Shelomoh coming from the room to the side of stage. They were well aware that Cardinal Froben was in charge of providing guidelines for publishing Bibles. Their applause was respectfully shushed by the guards, but their applause was then seconded on stage by Cardinal Fidèle, who used the opportunity to boost himself at the expense of Cardinal Froben. He could humiliate Father Alexámenos easily enough later. Even part of the crowd lightly clapped. Father Alexámenos was also distracted with this. He didn’t know who was backstage, but he could see Cardinal Fidèle clearly. For an instant he saw the “no-conscience” look in the eyes of the Cardinal he had previously seen in Benin as a child-soldier, and then in Rome and Haïti.

Cardinal Froben said, “I, for one, think the abuse survivor’s group would want you to say something more specific.” He then turned to the protestors with the banner and asked them to hold it up once again. They stood and held it high, wondering if they should have chosen a different slogan. When the cameras had swung around to take in the panorama of the crowd and the banner stretched wide – “REVEALED RELIGION SACRIFICES CHILDREN” – Cardinal Froben then turned to Father Alexámenos and tauntingly said, “You, who are a world traveller, most recently to a brothel for child-prostitution in a shantytown in Haïti, must have something to say about this.”

“I do,” replied Father Alexámenos. “Religion is rendering to God what He is due in justice, but it should be clear that we, in our sin, without the Revelation coming with grace, cannot do anything righteous, least of all offer the worship, praise and thanksgiving that is due to God in justice. We are all lost in a lack of integrity, from conception to death, either because of being corrupted by Adam’s sin alone, or because of both that ancient sin and our own sin, and so much so that none of us could offer ourselves in vicarious atonement for the rest of mankind. Such a sacrificial offering would be rejected by God as unworthy, for the victim, of himself, is blemished. This is why Abraham was, in the end, not to offer Isaac as a child-sacrifice. Only God with us, Immanuel, Jesus, the Messiah, innocent, like us in all things but sin, could justly ask the Father to forgive us. He, tortured, crucified, dying, said, “Father, forgive them…”

“You really are a sorry case,” said the Cardinal, repeated what he had heard previously.

“So, to bring the matter right down to child abuse…” began Father Alexámenos.

“Yes, yes. Go on,” prodded Cardinal Froben.

“But there are many stages of this abuse,” said Father Alexámenos, buying the time he would need.

“I’ve never seen anyone open their mouth for long without hanging themselves,” replied Cardinal Froben.

“Sometimes, we are condemned for not saying anything, ever, your Eminence. Anyway, each stage of abuse depends on an increasingly belligerent hatred of the Living Truth. In the first stage, the faithless priest stops praying in a humble manner, if he ever did, meaning that any praying he does do is more of a Pelagian self-congratulations for his own activity rather than a communion with God that is established by God. He is a rationalist-individualist in the line of Descartes. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ – ‘I think, therefore I am’ is his modus operandi. The life of the faithless priest is the definition of self-referential fundamentalism. He must end up relativising all religion to himself. He openly ridicules large Catholic families who practise their Faith with enthusiasm. He has no time for any family, especially the Family of Faith, but he will redefine the family as those who merely live together, whether hetero- or homosexual, or whatever. By virtue of his ‘private’, ‘individual’ interpretation of the Bible, the faithless priest cannot tolerate the Holy Father of the Family of Faith, the Bishop of Rome. He cannot bear to have any children of the Faith around. If someone is living the Faith and taking the teaching of the Church seriously, such a priest will try to stop this with his mockery of doctrine and morality, sacrificing their purity on the altar of his own…”

“But what about abuse?” asked the Cardinal impatiently, not realising that this was abuse.

“The faithless priest practises what he preaches, your Eminence. His lack of Faith is reflected in a life lacking in integrity. In attacking the children of God, he is attacking himself as a would-be child of God, for he hates himself. He doesn’t recognise himself as a Father since he doesn’t see himself as being married to the Church. He must despise the children of God; he must seek to damage their Faith. ”

“Again… Get to the point, Father.”

“Abuse can be accomplished at a distance,” continued Father Alexámenos, “by those faithless priests, who, due to their passive political correctness, accept an artificial division of Scripture and Tradition which other heretics have advanced. The children in the parish of such a faithless priest are abused at least by way of omission of the good things which could have been done for them.”

The Cardinal crossed his arms, looked at the floor, and shook his head, impatient for Father Alexámenos to begin speaking more about Haïti.

“If a priest intensifies his faithlessness,” continued Father Alexámenos, “he goes out of his way to prescind from the faith when reading Scripture, mocking the ecclesial interpretation of the Bible. He thinks he can successfully avoid the Truth which the Scriptures would otherwise bring to him concerning the condemnation he himself risks if he does not convert. In rejecting the Faith of the Scriptures, which speak of the Sacrifice of the Mass, of Jesus, the Child-Sacrifice of the Father – so to speak – the faithless priest must continue to replace this Sacrifice of the Mass with his attempt to kill off the Faith of God’s children. He does this by attempting to substitute the Sacrifice of the Mass with the ‘tolerant and understanding’ counsel he provides for ‘the rare but safe’ abortion and, more commonly, for the ‘morning after’ pills that he is happy to say are found at the emergency rooms of ‘Catholic’ hospitals. It is demonically ironic. He is happy to become involved in ‘difficult decisions’ favouring euthanasia. He counsels married couples, one of whom has AIDS, to continue having marital relations by using condoms, a deadly Russian Roulette whereby the other spouse will soon die of AIDS as well, making the priest a conspirator in the murder of soul and body. A faithless priest will not tolerate mention of the Sacrifice of the Mass to which Tradition and Scripture point because he cannot. He is literally sacrificing the children of God in his daily life because he has attempted to make the revealed religion of Jesus’ Sacrifice relative only to himself.”

At this point, Cardinal Froben seemed to be able to start putting the pieces together, making him hesitate for many seconds on end, but then it struck him that he should not let himself be side-tracked from Haïti. “Surely you have more to tell us than that, do you not?” he insisted.

“Saint Paul described this final corruption of the faithless priest in his letter to the Romans, Chapter One. Such a priest, who kills the prophets and cuts children out of their mother’s wombs, thus suppressing the truth, suppressing the least of the brethren of Christ, this faithless priest must understand the sexual act to be merely flesh meeting flesh, or latex for that matter; being male or female means nothing to him. A man, a woman and children are, for him, not made in the image of God as described in Genesis. When the faithless priest denies grace, he also denies nature. The faithless priest sets about, with predatory inversion, to ‘prove’ that he is justified by sinning. The ‘might’ of the quantity of sin, for him, makes right. For him, there is no bodily sin, since, for him, the body is merely a mass of feelings and emotions he thinks he enjoys. ‘Tradition’, for him, is relativistic feelings and emotions, and all the societal preconceptions going with them. This ‘tradition’ is, he thinks, ‘transferred’ from one person to another, from one generation to the next. Scripture, the body, so to speak, of Tradition, is manipulated by him with the ‘private’ interpretation of his inversion, which his suppression of Tradition, of Faith, has brought about. He is anti-ecclesial, anti-family. Because of this…”

“What is the sin of which you speak?” asked Cardinal Froben.

“The sins against the children of God carried out by the faithless priest, your Eminence, may be sins of violence, verbal or physical or even, most horrifically – in his mockery of God – sexual.”

“Now you are getting to the point,” said Cardinal Froben. “Give some examples.”

“Pornography and sex-slavery,” replied Father Alexámenos. “Institutionalised paedophilia, moreover, can include pornographic ‘sex-education’ and pornographic so-called ‘child-protection’ programmes. The faithless priest preys on children and attacks parents if they insist on instructing their children in the Faith, morally, as is their God-given right.”

More in the crowd applauded, but only momentarily, realising that they might be encouraging an abuser, for they had all seen the images from Haïti countless times. Yet, doubts were continuing to be raised in their minds. They wondered if the images could possibly be interpreted differently.

“You ignore the fact that eighty percent of the children, of teenagers, or whatever age, who are abused by faithless priests, are male,” said Cardinal Froben. “You’ve only been speaking of all the children of God. Therefore, everything else you say about revealed religion must be wrong.”

“In setting about to destroy revealed religion by replacing Sacred Tradition with his own life,” replied Father Alexámenos, “the faithless priest, rejecting the Sacrifice of the Suffering Servant spoken of by the Scriptures, must attack those for whom that Sacrifice was offered. In his tyrannical, self-referentially fundamentalistic relativism, his marauding, anti-family individualism, he must attempt to obliterate anyone with a family spirit, attempting to strip them of their identity before God and others by trying to give them what he imagines to be his own identity. He tries to conform them to the lowest common denominator he considers himself to be. Such a priest is essentially and necessarily a predator, lusting to conform others to himself, an effort which is essentially the advancement of sameness on his own terms. This inversion, this cowardice before others, expresses itself by what the faithless priest thinks are the control and power of sameness. It is the abuse of authority in action. It’s about foisting himself, cut off from God, making himself into a god, upon others.”

“When you say ‘sameness’, what do you mean to say?” asked the Cardinal impatiently.

“Your Eminence, the word for ‘sameness’ is homo. Faithless priests necessarily suffer from horrific inversion.”

“But many priests speak of loneliness, of their desperate desire to be married,” replied the Cardinal. “Surely, you are not charging them with…”

“Your Eminence, we are all meant to be married, whether to a single spouse or, for the priest, to the whole Church. Priestly celibacy is directed to the priest’s witness to revealed religion, to his offering of the Sacrifice of the Son of the Father, Christ Jesus, during Holy Mass. Priestly celibacy flourishes in the priest’s marriage to the Church through the Wedding Banquet of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by which the one Priest, Christ Jesus, is wed to His Bride, the Church, making the priest a Father of the Family of Faith.

“And so, back to the ‘sameness’ that you mentioned…” prodded the Cardinal.

“Your Eminence, a priest who is faithless cannot accept the Sacrifice of the Mass, and all the sacraments flowing from the Mass, as the marriage of Christ. Because of this, he does not know that he is already married, and in such a glorious manner. Because of this, he is in a contradictory situation. In his self-induced loneliness, he can only turn to himself. He lusts for sexual expression, what you call being married, only for the sake of sexual expression. As defined by his own, now contradictory circumstances, he cannot distinguish between male and female. Such an invert, even if he avoids sinful behaviour, has no capacity to rejoice in fatherhood. He is not to be ordained. His life would be a lie. He is dangerous, even if he does live chastely. He is already suppressing the Faith by continuing to live with such a mistaken, damaging perspective.”

“But this inversion of which you speak. Do you really mean to say that it is homosexuality?” asked the Cardinal.

“Such a faithless priest, your Eminence, in rationalising about his own circumstances, will eventually come to think that homosexual tendencies are not contradictory to the priesthood. He is continually suppressing his identity as an alter-Christus, his identity as a father in the faith. It is impossible for the faithless priest, for such an invert to be any kind of father. Speaking of ‘chaste homosexuality’, as the faithless priest does, as that which makes one worthy to be ordained, misunderstands both inversion and priestly celibacy. The faithless priest doesn’t stop with suppression, but attacks what he hates.”

“But why children?” asked the Cardinal, waiting for Father Alexámenos to destroy himself by his own words.

“Inversion, your Eminence, whether or not they act out sexually with men or women, or much worse, boys or girls. Sex outside of marriage is not accompanied by true sexual attraction, but only selfish lust, inversion, egotistical self-affirmation, a suppression of the truth, a despising of God’s presence, an affirmation of one’s same, homo self to the destruction of self and others. The faithless priest, in his contradictory circumstances of not believing in the marriage of Christ with the Church by way of the Last Supper and Calvary, suppresses his own marriage, and is, then, just so open to forcing himself upon others in a way contradictory to everything that marriage and fatherhood is all about. Abusing a woman, or, going against nature, a man, is bad enough, but it is even worse to go after the fruit of marriage. Since the faithless priest hates the Child, so to speak, of our Heavenly Father… since the faithless priest hates the Son of the Living God, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by which Christ offers the Redemption by which we can become the children of God, it is only being consistent for that faithless priest to turn his hatred on the rest of the children of God. What is the worst on the spiritual level will be brought out as what is worst on a physical level.

“But what about the fact that eighty percent of the children, of teenagers, or whatever age, who are abused by faithless priests, are male?” repeated the Cardinal, verbatim. “You are not making sense.”

“Your Eminence, the inverted, faithless priest places himself in danger of falling into homosexual attractions and actions the more inverted he becomes in his opportunistic cowardice. He is almost bound to abuse boys of whatever age, especially if those boys are altar boys. For the faithless, now inverted, sinful priest, these boys symbolise Christ Himself; the faithless priest is attempting to rape Christ. Such rape is, for the faithless priest, the perfect symbol of his success in conforming others to his faithless self. It is this which consoles him. His sin cries to heaven for vengeance. What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is nothing compared to what such a priest deserves.”

“So, you’re saying that the priesthood, as a profession, is dangerous to children,” judged Cardinal Froben, wanting Father Alexámenos to exaggerate and discredit himself.

“Priesthood isn’t a ‘homosexual profession’ as some call it, so hurt are they,” replied Father Alexámenos, “but it can become a haven for the faithless, the inverted and predators. Bishops and Cardinals who have asserted ad nauseam that ‘homosexual’ seminarians should stay in the seminary and be ordained must be punished, not excluding laicisation. They think there is no occasion of sin for such seminarians as long as they proclaim they are homosexual and celibate. This disrespects revealed religion, for it rejects what Scripture and Tradition speak about, the Mass as the Sacrifice of Christ by which God is wed to His Bride, the Church, and by which Sacrifice the priest himself, acting in Persona Christi, in the Person of Christ, is wed to the Church, becoming a Father.”

“It sounds as if you are you saying that it was mostly boys who were molested by faithless priests because these faithless priests have fallen into homosexuality,” replied Cardinal Froben. “You must know that many bishops and Cardinals are trying to avoid speaking in this fashion. You must also know that all priests sin, and go to confession, but, according to you, any sin leads to inversion.”

“Of course, all priests sin, and all sin is a kind of inversion in action, your Eminence.”

“And what does that mean for yourself ?” asked the Cardinal.

“Take the example of when our Lord told Peter to walk on the water. Peter did so, until he stopped looking to our Lord and started looking to himself, to his own meagre strength, becoming frightened, with this kind of inversion, of the waves and the wind. Under stress, Peter had more ‘faith’ in himself than in Jesus. Looking to himself, he sank down in sin. His ‘little Faith’ – as described by our Lord – was drowned. With this rejection of Faith, of Tradition, Peter was unable to interpret the Word of God, Who was standing in front of him on the waves. Peter wasn’t witnessing to revealed religion for the apostles, but, for that split second, the example he was giving was how to sink into hell. It was as if he was saying to the other apostles, ‘Come, follow me!’ Your Eminence, all sin attacks revealed religion in favour of oneself, of inversion, and, in some way, attacks others. All priests sin, including me, your Eminence, but not all directly deny revealed religion by rejecting the Tradition by which Scripture was written. And not all sinful actions, not all inversion, express homosexual tendencies. Inversion is brought about with sin, and is the structure by which the faithless priest opened up to homosexual tendencies. Again, priests, who lose the Faith and remain priests, open themselves up to homosexual tendencies, effectively affirming that they are militant homosexuals, however they act out their heresy.

“So, what do you say is to be done?” asked Cardinal Froben, hoping to use the words against Father Alexámenos, though unsure if there was anything in his words that could be attacked.

“Your Eminence, heretics must be removed from the priesthood to end the abuse.”

“You come to the point handily for this particular trial. But before moving on to the bit about heresy, isn’t there something you still have to say, something that you’ve been leaving out about your activities?” asked the Cardinal.

“What is it you want to know?” countered Father Alexámenos.

“Are you purposely pushing me to make a fool of you, Father? We want to kow some particularities about yourself and the real purpose of the banner that reads: ‘REVEALED RELIGION SACRIFICES CHILDREN.’” With that, the Cardinal descended the massive staircase of the Audience Hall, and went up the main aisle. The cameras followed his movements to see what he would do to make a fool of Father Alexámenos.

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Chapter 27 coming soon…

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© 2007-2008 Renzo di Lorenzo — All rights reserved

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