Muck bears only bitter fruit

By Fr. David Muscat

I wonder why nobody of our literati and honourable MPs wrote to the Police Commissioner to charge the Times of Malta for hate speech for their report on the Abner Aquilina compilation of evidence.   After all, when in January I wrote a Facebook post in defence of this young man, who had once been both an altar boy, and a passionate member of a parish band club, I was virtually crucified and now at risk of an eighteen-month prison sentence and a fine of €23,000. Because it is apparently more culpable to claim that sexual abuse by homosexuals is worse than any fantastical claims of the occult activity or demonic possession in a secular court of a state whose government vaunts about the separation of church and state.

God knows how many paedophiles hounded Abner for service and into the psychiatric deterioration that broke him!  God only knows the number of libertine men that sought this rent boy out for the satisfaction of their own depravities!  But pointing this out is anathema in our current moral vacuum.  Let me put this very clearly.  If I am found guilty in this travesty of justice that Malta has become, I shall appeal to the ECHR, and I shall subpoena to appear before that court our would-be cardinal and his vicar general that in January, in tandem with our liberal organizations, the Faculty of Social Wellbeing, our socialist government and with the empty vessels of social justice, conspired to crucify me.  All this because I stood up for this young man, once a devoted altar boy, whose life was broken by the depravity of the current moral climate in our country!

On more than one occasion, I have written about this moral vacuum afflicting our youth. The first of these was Holy Matrimony Will Stay. When Parliament passed an Act recognising homosexual marriage, I reminded Maltese Catholics that there is separation between Church and State and State Law is not binding on ecclesiastical practice.

In the second article, Born This Way?, I tackled the questionable ideas that Fr Kevin Schembri expressed on Xarabank.  According to Fr Schembri, God wants us to celebrate homosexuality because while the Bible’s judgement on the matter was defective, his own was authoritative, enlightened, and sound.

In my third piece, Fr David Muscat reviews Drachma’s book, I demonstrated how egregious were the errors in that book launched by the  Pro-LGBT group Drachma, in the bishop’s curia at Floriana.  Drachma’s book is fundamentally flawed on many points, especially because the normative view of same-sex couplings in the Graeco-Roman world (that they were the ruin of youth) was such that St Paul would have had to be significantly more liberal than the mainstream pagans of the time to hold views in favour of them.  Drachma not only has appalling theology but truly horrible history and no knowledge of classics.

This lobby thinks that they are making a positive contribution to social wellbeing, but their voices have hardened with the sclerosis of fanatic dogma. So many of my brothers in the priesthood tell me that they are resigned to an environment hostile to any divergence from this clamorous creed. My brothers warn me to hold my tongue, that the best way of challenging the venomous hiss of Drachma is to ignore it, and that if their publication were to come into their hands and under their roofs, they would place it on some anonymous shelf to gather dust and to feed worms (the very words of a senior clergyman these).

I reject this attitude given that, as the Latin phrase asserts, qui tacet consentire videtur – he who holds his tongue appears to give his consent.

The time will come when this generation of pastors, both bishops and priests, passes away. When that time comes, our successors will have to deal with the consequences of the illusions and deception that we have fed the youth of today. In twenty or thirty years, even sooner perhaps, the teens of our time will have come to full maturity.  There will be many who finally realise that their lives have been ruined by destructive lifestyles adopted under the influence of toxic ideologies that, though delivered by those appointed by the Magisterium have, in fact, sprung from the pits of hell – ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing unleashed upon the children of God. They will then fiercely turn against these predators and return to the traditional teaching of the Church, and to those pastors still faithful to the imperishable truth of the Church.

There will be however legions of them that will not return to the Church. Instead, they will rise in fury to destroy Her. They will do this as they are overwhelmed by bitterness at the ruin of their lives in consequence of the toxic guidance of those wolves. As the mental and physical consequences of this cancerous teaching hit them, they will be overcome by rage at the cost they have had to bear – the permanent loss of the incomparable emotional and social treasures that arise from the committed union of man and woman open to the blessing of new life.

This rage will burn like fire, and corrode like acid, and they will be filled with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance on those teachers, counsellors, catechists, and priests who, taking “glory… in their shame”, and with “mind… set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:9), instead of teaching those children and young people the immemorial truths of the Church and of human nature, imparted the turpitude of the lying new doctrine that homosexuality is the gift of God.

Do not think that they will blame the State, for nothing is expected from the faceless state and the corrupt politicians that run it. The rage will be directed fully at the pastors of their faith. For pastors make the claim of sanctity and service to the Divine. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, more will be asked” (Luke 12:48). Who has been given more, and who has been entrusted with more than those who have received the sanction to claim that they are the mouth of God? From those then, as much will be demanded, and as much will be asked, as the full extent of that that they have claimed.

Does this sound like the script of a horror film? Does a new generation of young people seeking revenge and compensation from their abusers sound unlikely? Have we forgotten the evisceration of diocese after diocese all over the world, in particular, the Americas and Ireland, as legions of abuse survivors sued the dioceses and their clerical abusers for the unthinkable sexual abuse that had been inflicted on them by those the Church had appointed as their spiritual guardians and custodians? Have we forgotten the vast sums paid out, dioceses ruined, and the numbers of clergymen, some of the highest eminences, torn from their offices and flung into prison? It will come again. This will be the Damnatio Memoriae of such leaders of the Church of our time. Their victims will hold them to account, even when they have turned to dust, and the accusations will be incredibly serious, among them that they were wont to sit on the fence, serving God with one foot, and Satan with the other. It is nothing but opportunism of the worst kind to preach the uniquely heterosexual character of matrimony while simultaneously celebrating Drachma under the very roof of official institutions of the Church.

Let’s think this through. The worst enemies very often close ranks to bury the truth. The Archbishop of Malta has successfully united two mortal foes – Labour’s soldiers of steel, and the neo-liberal abortionists of our politically liberal NGOs – into one cry and one cause. Against whom? Against one powerless priest daring to fling into the face of today’s homosexual agenda the universal and immutable doctrine of Mother Church that homosexual relations are sinful, and that the only physical union the Church sanctions is that between man and woman for the purpose of begetting new life. It is this doctrine that the wannabe cardinal appears ambivalent about. For while on the one hand, he brings it up on occasion in his sermons, on the other hand, his ardent defence and support of groups and ideas driving the homosexual agenda call into question his real loyalty. This has implications not only for the status of the Church’s doctrine but for the future fate of his successors.

In a very short while, these erstwhile foes will celebrate the retirement of H.E. Ladaria from the Holy Office. The Pope appears on course to appoint our doctrinally ambivalent Scicluna to the office of Prefect of the Holy Office, a cardinal the following year. And thus, will be fulfilled those words of Pope St Paul VI – that the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God. But wait, there is more. The smoke of Satan does not beget life. It begets broken lives and a thirst for vengeance and destruction. If this happens, expect that in one short generation, a second, greater, wave of young people, whose lives have been ruined by the teaching of the homosexual agenda, this time from pulpit and catechist, will rise to extract from the Church that betrayed it an incalculable price, in both ecclesiastical and criminal courts.