The Gospel for this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and contains an account of how the public ministry of Jesus began.

If it had been up to us, we would have begun preaching and healing straight away after the baptismal experience in the Jordan river. But Jesus has taken extra preparation time, and there must have been a decent time lapse between John’s encounter with Jesus and John getting arrested, which could have been well over 40 days.

The ending of John’s public ministry becomes the signal for Jesus to begin His public ministry.

Where does He choose to begin? Not at the Temple, not in the ancestral lands of Judah and Benjamin, but out in the boondocks of Galilee where there’s a big ethnic mix of Jews, Greeks, Romans and peoples from nearby countries and plenty of descendants of Abraham who don’t know which of the 12 tribes they belong to.

How does He begin? By repeating the message of John to repent and believe, and in the early days without any kind of team at all.

The message of repentance is perennial. If we don’t make some kind of change in our lives, then we aren’t giving God any room to work in us. How can we expect God to do something new in us, if we keep on with the same routine week in and week out? Perhaps it doesn’t have to be a big change, just something small, sustainable and regular, and over time God can lead us step by step into more of Him.

Although sometimes He does ask for the big change.

We know that Peter and Andrew, James and John, had met Jesus before. Last week’s Gospel confirms that. But when the crunch came, and Jesus more or less said, ‘It’s go time, are you coming with me?’, they had to make a complete and total change of lifestyle then and there, or miss out on being disciples of the long awaited Messiah.

Which begs the question, if you had an encounter with Jesus tonight, and He invited you to do something completely different, would you give Him an unequivocal yes, a timid maybe, or a blunt no?

Note that Jesus doesn’t start the next phase of His public ministry with a big team, but with a small team that already has good working relationships with each other.

Jesus seems to be in the business of building solid relationships, not in the business of seeking celebrity. Only solid relationships endure the tests of time and other trials, celebrity is ephemeral.

For those of us seeking likes, comments and shares, this should make us pause and reconsider our priorities, and commit to putting more time and effort into building up the quality of our face to face relationships.

For many of us the ‘kairos’ time has arrived. Many of us have been waiting for a long time for this anointed moment. May God grant us the grace to give Him an unequivocal Yes. Amen.
​
#GospelReflection
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The Gospel for this Sunday, the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the latter part of St John Chapter 1, and contains the account of how the public ministry of Jesus began.

What we don’t have in the Gospel of St John is an account of the temptation in the desert, nor do we have a narrative account of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river. What we do have is the witness of St John the Baptist. It is possible that by the time the priests and Levites came to question John that the baptism of Jesus had already happened, and the time in the desert was reaching its conclusion.

It is possible that after the time in the desert Jesus returned to the place where He had that extraordinary experience of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Most of us go back to places where we have been touched by God when we are in need or seeking guidance. As we read elsewhere in the Scriptures, river banks were popular places to pray.

We know that John the Baptist recognised Jesus, and publicly pointed Him out. But Jesus did not call attention to Himself, so it might not have been clear which man on the river bank John was pointing to.

It must have felt strange to everyone when no one responded, ‘Yes, I am He’. It must have felt strange to John the Baptist too, considering the massive revelation of God he had experienced when baptising Jesus.

If that wasn’t God’s way, (ie pointing out Jesus to a crowd), what then was God’s way? I think we can safely assume that John the Baptist spent the night in prayer about it.

So the ‘next day’ we see John the Baptist standing with two of his disciples. It was customary for teachers to sit when they were teaching, so he wasn’t teaching. He isn’t baptizing. He isn’t preaching to a crowd. It feels like he is deliberately waiting.

In John the Baptist’s shoes after the declaration of who Jesus was fell flat, I would have paid careful attention to the direction that Jesus went when He left the river bank.

Knowing in such an experiential way who Jesus was, every instinct of John’s must have been to leave everything and follow Jesus. To sit at the feet of the promised and long-awaited Messiah, who wouldn’t want that? But the hints of Jesus coming humbly to be baptized and then not declaring Himself indicated a desire for a much more incognito start than a bold, ‘here I am’. If John, by now a well known and public figure, follows Jesus as a disciple, goodbye incognito start. John also recognises that his vocation to call to repentance, to baptize, and to prepare hearts to receive God’s Messiah is still active and more necessary than ever.

Just imagine what a difficult obedience that must have been for John the Baptist! Every fibre of his being must have wanted to be with Jesus, yet he stayed true to his vocation as the voice in the wilderness.

But if he couldn’t go and be with Jesus and follow Him, he could send his heart instead, by showing Jesus to his two most promising disciples, Andrew and John. It must have been very, very hard to cut these two loose. Yet John the Baptist did it.

So John stood there waiting for Jesus to pass by, deliberately waiting with his two best disciples. We are told that John the Baptist stared hard at Jesus. He needed to make sure that it was really Jesus, but also more-than-maybe John needed and wanted to fix the features of Jesus in his mind and memory.

And so it began, this person to person domino effect of meeting Jesus, being changed by Him, and dragging your nearest and dearest to meet Him too.

God’s way is definitely not the way we would do it. We’d get mega-phones and horse-floats and big media releases. God does it person to person, and we know it works.

God’s timing isn’t like ours either. We’d be in a frenzy of getting as many crowds together as possible. Jesus lingers on a river bank in prayer, and has a leisurely late afternoon and evening getting to know two new friends. God isn’t in a hurry, and yet it all works out.

Here we have three major challenges:
The first one is that of being obedient even when it costs us dearly.
The second one, and maybe the more difficult one in our days, is trusting in God, and trusting in His timing.
The third one asks us whether we value following Jesus as much as St John the Baptist did. He desperately wanted to, but that wasn’t God’s will for him. We are able to follow Jesus if we want to; are we taking up that opportunity with gusto?
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#GospelReflection

As followers of Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, it is important that we stand up for the Truth when deception is rife. We believe, that however painful it is, 'The Truth will set you free'.

That's one reason why I am posting this information today.

The other reason is that because I am doing my darndest not to use the big social media organisations, the blog becomes the best way to share (word of mouth and email being the other remaining ways left).

So here are the trilogy of reports into the 3 Nov 2020 Presidential Election in the USA prepared by Dr Peter Navarro. They are known colloquially as the Navarro reports.

The website contains all three reports:
navarroreport.com/

But you may like to read them in order...

The first one is 'The Immaculate Deception'
img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/be36dc6d-0df4-4c20-addf-fca72be46150/The%20Immaculate%20Deception%2012.15.20.pdf
Investigating the six key dimensions of electoral irregularities

The second one is 'The Art of the Steal'
img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/be36dc6d-0df4-4c20-addf-fca72be46150/The%20Art%20of%20the%20Steal%201.5.21%20FINAL.pdf
Investigating how it happened, or how it was enabled and permitted to happen

The third one is 'Yes, President Trump won'
img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/be36dc6d-0df4-4c20-addf-fca72be46150/The%20Navarro%20Report%20Volume%20III%20Final%201.13.21-0001.pdf
Tabulating the numbers and kinds of electoral irregularities in each of the contested States, and comparing the total with the margin of 'winning' votes for Joe Biden.

I have read all three reports.
I recommend that you read them too.
I recommend that you share them, and invite others to read them.

As the saying goes, all that is necessary for evil to win is that good people do nothing. Thus, this is my little 'something' towards the cause of good and the cause of truth.

The other little 'something' all of us can do is to pray.

Since it has become clear that this situation is far more than just human beings behaving badly, you might like to use this prayer:

St Michael the Archangel
Defend us in battle
Be our safeguard against all the wickedness and snares of the enemy
May God rebuke him we humbly pray
And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host
by the power of God
cast into Hell satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl around the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.  
  

Should you have been reading this blog for a while, you will soon see some changes. They result from a general queasiness and from the recent attacks against free speech.

When I began the foray into the wilds of Reddit, I experienced a general queasiness about the dichotomy on one hand of attempting to answer a person’s real questions and on the other hand those contributions becoming part of the product that is Reddit. Answering questions I am OK with, but becoming part of the product I was definitely not OK with. Why I felt this more with Reddit than with the other social media options, I don’t know, but I felt it strongly.

Last week President Trump was removed from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other social media places. Many of the other people on those sites that I had been tuning into for up to date and reliable information also got shut down. If the duly elected President of the United States of America is denied free speech, then everyone else’s right to free speech just got shot down too, and not by a government, but by a multinational corporation.

So I asked myself if I could in conscience continue to be a partaker in these social media sites, and the answer was No.

As my little protest, I am withdrawing from engaging in them except for the purposes of responding to direct messages and refreshing my memory for the names of the people I want to find on non-censored sites. It is a tiny protest, but I can no longer contribute to the censoring media’s bottom lines.

Therefore I am going to bring what I’d normally do elsewhere onto the blog.

This means you should now see a weekly reflection on the Gospel for the upcoming Sunday, and a few obituaries from time to time.

It also means that I am open to answering r/Catholicism type questions (if you send them to me), and that I might do some blog-posts on perennial questions that Redditors asked.

I imagine that the big social media sites are betting that we are so addicted that we will eventually give in and go back. Yes I am going to miss the international updates, and I am going to miss most of the personalities and the memes that I found funny. But No I am not going back. The importance of free speech as a safeguard against totalitarianism is too great for my resolve to waver.

It will require a bit of creativity to discover how to connect with them in other ways, but it is do-able.
​
May God bless us as we start all over again from scratch on the non-censored social media sites, so that what we collectively build is much better than we ever had before. Amen.

As you may, or may not, be aware, the right to free speech is under serious attack.

The most glaring example of this is President Trump’s accounts on social media and email server being shut down. If the right to free speech is taken away from the duly elected leader of the USA, then no one’s free speech is safe.

It used to be said, ‘I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.

Now it is, ‘If I don’t like what you say, I will take it (and you) down’.

There seem to be two ways things can go from here, but they both end up with the same result:

Scenario A, there is some kind of social media blackout between now and inauguration day, and possibly for longer.
Scenario B, proof emerges of social media complicity in false election results, an existing executive order comes into play, and the social media owners and their sites all get taken down (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, SnapChat, WhatsApp etc).
The same result is that the days of social media as we now know them are numbered.

So be prepared.

If there are voices on social media that you trust, then find out if they have a blog or website, and if so, sign up for email notification of new blogs and bookmark those websites.

If not, and you have alternative means to contact them, urgently encourage them to get a website and associated blog set up.

Are there alternatives? Yes there are.

Many have migrated to Parler, but because significant verification protocols are in place (in addition to an email address, a phone number must be provided, and to be a verified user images of driver's licence are required) it makes it easier for the enemies of free speech to find you via hacking, and easier for public calls to shut it down to be made.

Others have migrated to Gab, where being anonymous is still possible.

Both are receiving deluges of new members.

I have seen a list of alternatives to YouTube, I can’t recall what they were, but they do exist.

Be prepared

Think about what plans need to be in place to keep in contact with family and friends when social media becomes unavailable; and start putting them together.

Think about whether you still want to be an active part of social media organisations that have shut down free speech.

If your spidey-sense has been twitching, then you have been asking questions like...
How come the security at the Capitol was so poor?
Were they really outraged patriots who stormed the building or Antifa/BLM wearing MAGA gear?
How come Trump’s speech at the 6 Jan rally got glossed over so quickly?

If so, you may find these websites worth a browse
https://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/
https://themarshallreport.wordpress.com/
https://www.neonrevolt.com/

Why is this important?
Because the truth has to be important to anyone who follows Jesus who said, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life', and 'The Truth will set you free'.
And how can you come to the truth unless you have access to multiple viewpoints on the same topic/event? As soon as an alternate narrative is suppressed, freedom departs and persecution begins.

Who would ever have thought that we would see all levels of American government resolutely refuse to investigate allegations of election fraud? Seekers of truth don't do that, they investigate until an unequivocal 'yes there was' or 'no there wasn't' is determined to public satisfaction.

Peace isn't possible unless it is based in Truth. 
Any attempt to build peace based on untruths will crumble. 

​May God graciously help all of us to come to full knowledge of the truth, no matter how disturbing or painful that might be. Amen.

As most would be aware by now, Pope Francis declared a Year of St Joseph from 8 Dec 2020 till 8 Dec 2021.

This will overlap with the Year of the Family beginning 19 Mar 2021 and ending 26 Jun 2022.

Both are very interesting initiatives, especially when viewed in the light of devotion to the Chaste Heart of St Joseph and the series of apparitions in Brazil during the 1990s and approved in 2010:

3sacredhearts.com/most-chaste-heart-st-joseph.html

All three seem to be part of heaven's fight back plan for our troubled world.

One of the gifts of the Year of St Joseph is particular encouragement to pray for employment needs, viz:

"Everyone who entrusts their daily activity to the protection of St. Joseph, and every faithful who invokes the intercession of St. Joseph so that those seeking work can find dignifying work can also obtain the plenary indulgence."

The latter part is what this following prayer is all about, which you might like to use on a daily basis during this Year of St Joseph:

Daily Prayer to St Joseph for Employment

Dear St Joseph, chaste husband and foster father,
you were yourself once faced with the responsibility
of providing the necessities of life for Jesus and Mary.
Look down with fatherly compassion upon me,
and my loved ones,
and upon all who suffer anxieties over their present inability to support their families
and upon all who long to use their God-given gifts and talents 
to the utmost but cannot currently find a way to do so.
Please help us all find gainful employment very soon,
so that these heavy burdens of concern
and feeling useless will be lifted from our hearts,
and that we will soon be able to provide for those whom God has entrusted to our care.
Help us to guard against bitterness and discouragement,
and help us to grow in peace of heart and confident expectation
of God’s perfect answers to our needs,
so that we may emerge from this time of trial spiritually enriched
and with even greater blessings from God.
Thank you for your intercession for us
and for the amazing answers that are coming.
St Joseph, we entrust ourselves and our families to you. Amen.
Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory Be…
St Joseph, pray for us.

And if you would prefer an easy to print version:

Please feel free to copy and share this prayer widely.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if during this Year of St Joseph if unemployment, under-employment and the misfortunes of being stuck in the wrong job were completely eradicated?

Prayer can make that happen, but it will take you and me and many others united in daily prayer to obtain through St Joseph's intercession before the throne of Almighty God a worldwide blessing of such magnitude.

Have you felt a hunger for the truth recently?
If so, you are not alone.

Currently the nightly news on TV contains a lot of poorly disguised advertisements, ‘stories’ designed to increase fear, a lashing of political spin and something about sport. Whatever it is, it can no longer be called news.

The newspapers aren’t much better. My ‘go-to’ sections are the death notices and the comic page (if it exists). I then turn to the section on world news to gauge whether or not there is any balanced reporting, conclude that it isn’t there, and put the newspaper down. That’s if I have picked it up at all.

I am finding that my scrolling time on Twitter is shorter than ever, and that the levels of overt censorship are disturbing. When I dig down into the comments, it seems that the trolls have been more active than ever, and that comments that dissent from the opinions of the trolls are harder to find.

Some sub-reddits on Reddit are even worse.

On the good news side, there are valiant people writing blogs and sharing links to breaking news. May God bless them, encourage them, and help them to keep on going.

On the downside, trying to determine what is fact and what is nutcase conspiracy theory is exhausting.

There’s a massive battle going on to determine whether our future will be under the great global reset (totalitarian socialism) or under God’s divine reset. Yet so many are still asleep to the reality of the battle and the far-reaching consequences of the outcome.

Therefore my hunger for truth is growing, and my tolerance for banality is decreasing.

Where can truth be found? In the Psalms, and in the accounts in the Bible that display God’s unchanging character.

In every age there is a time of reckoning, where God goes through the accounts of communities and nations, and where judgement comes upon nations that have flouted His laws and reward and advancement comes upon nations that have kept respect for His laws and decrees.

When God decrees against a nation, it is a forever decree. Pick up your bible, read through Ezekiel 29, especially verse 15, and ponder it seriously. ‘Egypt will be the weakest of kingdoms and no longer dominate other nations; I shall reduce her, and she will not rule any more over the nations.’ This is still true today. Does this not induce awe?

2 Peter 3:9 reminds us, ‘The Lord is not being slow to carry out His promises, as anybody else might be called slow; but He is being patient with you all, wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought to change his ways’.

In recent times we have seen nation after nation introduce laws completely at odds with God’s eternal laws (eg abortion, euthanasia, laws against God’s plan for marriage and family, laws against God’s plan for biological gender, laws that permit experimentation and alteration to DNA etc), we have seen corruption in the judicial and political systems, and in the means of communication.

God is still God. There are times when the leniency of mercy ends, and the day of reckoning and the day of judgement begins. God is not to be mocked. Even if the punishment is delayed, it still arrives; and the longer it is delayed, the more severe the balancing of God’s scales of justice will be.

That time of reckoning is soon.

The heinous injustice of firstly the electoral fraud and corruption in the U.S.A presidential election, and secondly the refusal to acknowledge the electoral fraud and corruption, and the refusal to co-operate in changing the unjust outcome, is tipping the scales towards the day of reckoning. Since if the Lord of all justice permits this gross injustice to stand, it calls into question the very nature and character of God. Will the Lord of all justice not see justice done on earth, and done speedily?

But the ultimate outcome rests with us.

If we do nothing, then the reckoning will happen through the persecution of the good; increased darkness, blatant evil and horror will be our punishment.
If we take God more seriously than ever before, and plead for mercy together with true repentance, then He will purge the world of the sources of corruption, if we have sufficient resolve to co-operate with Him in ridding the world of it.

It takes something like this for a nation to get sufficient resolve to do the necessary painful work of change. For example, the electoral methods in the U.S.A. have been different between counties and between states, with no political will to standardize them and remove the openings for corruption, because from time to time each side benefits from the possibilities for such corruption.

During these difficult weeks following 3 Nov 2020, the flaws have been glaringly obvious. This is a once-in-a-lifetime, maybe even a once-in-several-centuries opportunity to clean the system up once and for all. Woe to the U.S.A. and to the rest of the world, if this opportunity isn’t taken with resolve and gusto.

So how hungry are you for truth?

Are you willing to do what it takes to stand up for truth?
How much are you praying about it?
How much are you adding in a bit of self-denial to those prayers?
Have you been independently investigating the available evidence, and weighing up what both sides have been saying, and seeking God’s gift of discernment?
Have you been liking and sharing sources of truth?
Have you been telling those in positions of authority that you expect them to stand up for truth, no matter what?

Jesus Christ is the same today, as He was yesterday, and as He will be forever.
He is the one who transforms Saul the persecutor into Paul the intrepid apostle.
He is the one who does not tolerate the fraud of Ananias and Sapphira; and punished them with immediate death.
He is the one who makes the cripple at the Beautiful Gate whole.
He is the one who warns the seven churches that none of them are measuring up to His will for them, and that there will be dire and major consequences if they don’t respond positively to His warnings.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

May God grant that you learn this the easier way, than the hard way.
​
Hunger for truth! 

... then you need to find sources of news other than the traditional sources of news media.

Here are some you might like to investigate:

richards-watch.org/
Is a very good compendium of both news media and input from tested prophetic sources

themarshallreport.wordpress.com/
Is another blog worth reading with good reports on the USA electoral chaos

www.thegatewaypundit.com/
This is a very clunky website, with a lot of annoying pop-ups, but it is normally first with any breaking investigative news. It does sometimes drift into conspiracy theories, but you should be able to spot the few and filter them out.

But God has also been speaking to His prophets, and there are some who have been earning increasing respect from me.

www.facebook.com/veroinka.west.3
Outstanding among them is Veronica West, although it is a pity that it gets broadcast over Facebook, and often gets censored.

wandaalger.me/
​Is next on that list.

mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/ 
Has also been giving valuable reflections upon the electoral situation

So next, if you read any of them, you will want to pray.
Unified prayer is more powerful than personal prayer, so these two intercessors are worth following on a regular basis:

www.givehim15.com/
With Dutch Sheets setting out daily reasons for prayer, and starter prayers, is very good

www.youtube.com/channel/UCdeznInNtlfNVLqkN48B_fw
Is the YouTube link for Lou Engle's channel. He is praying through this time of electoral chaos with an eye firmly fixed on overturning Roe v Wade. His calls to prayer are usually short, 7-10 mins, and help keep the fire going.

You might legitimately ask me, 'where are the Catholic voices?', to which I must answer, I don't know, but wish I did.

I do know that it is getting a lot nastier on social media.
Prayer is all important, but we do also need to do our bit to help the alternative news sources get heard, and to let a chink of light in, that God can do a lot with. So, please, stay online, pray, and like and share anything useful that comes across your screens.

The issues at hand in America are much, much, much bigger than anyone realises, involving a gigantic clash between the forces of good and evil for the soul of America (and therefore for the soul of the world). If America doesn't take this opportunity to cleanse its electoral system of all fraud and corruption, then democracy itself is at stake, and with it any hope of being able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet.

This isn't to discount the massive internal clean ups needed through out the world at diocesan level and Catholic education facilities, which likewise need assiduous prayer, but perhaps the American domino of grace needs to fall first before the others can receive the infilling of grace.

O God, arise 
Let Your enemies be scattered
Let those who hate You flee before You
As smoke is driven, so drive them away
As wax melts before the fire.
                                    Psalm 67(68):1-2a

All American Saints and Angels, please intercede that God's complete will is fulfilled at this time in American History. Amen.

Yes, I have read the McCarrick report, especially the footnotes, and skimming over those places in the main text that were obviously repeating previous information. It is 461 PDF pages long, prepared over at least 2 years by people working at the Vatican, with the aim to determine who knew what about Cardinal McCarrick and when.

I do recommend that you read it, because as they say, those who do not learn the lessons from history and doomed to repeat it.
​
http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_rapporto-card-mccarrick_20201110_en.pdf

There are sections of the report that have lodged in my memory for various reasons, and deserve comment. I will try to go through those sections in chronological order. Many of these things have already been mentioned in online analyses.

Lest we be tempted to judge anyone mentioned in the report too harshly, we must recall that they had to view everything that came to them with the presumption of McCarrick being innocent. We read this report with the hindsight of knowing that he was guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of exploiting power over minors, vulnerable adults, and maybe more besides, and that these activities were pre-meditated.

And it is difficult to keep this in mind.

As you would expect, I am reading the McCarrick Report through my own lens, which includes observed behaviour of at least one convicted priest, and the dodgy behaviour of many others.

A previous, particularly strict, parish priest had a policy of ignoring any information he was given unless it was attributable to a real person. Anything anonymous went straight into the bin.
In the light of the McCarrick report, such a policy must be completely re-thought.

The agonies Mother 1 went through, knowing that she had to alert the church authorities, yet being legitimately fearful of reprisals towards herself and her family, are real. Taking the only option she had, she sent her concerns in an anonymous manner.

The 1992 and 1993 letters which appear in the report in all capitals, are as we know now, telling the truth. Thankfully someone didn’t throw these ones away, but others were thrown away. But no investigation into the merits of these accusations was done. The excuse was the anonymity of the writer.

None of them should ever have been thrown away, but kept by an independent body, until fully investigated. Not that such investigations are easy, because no one wants to become the whistleblower or scapegoat or to be retaliated against for speaking up.  

In the report, persons in authority took the stance that if allegations were credible, then the persons alleging should provide details. No one put themselves in the shoes of a possible seminarian or ex-seminarian or ‘nephew’ and considered that providing details would be the same as agreeing to martyrdom.

I recall a blog I read a few years back where an ex-seminarian shared his story. He had been out of public view for several years, yet he was still tracked down, and subjected to the most vile reprisals for having spoken out, both by former friends and colleagues as well as the general public, so much so that he couldn’t leave the house.

The court of public opinion normally sides with the very clever, very charming, perpetrators, who have only ever shown their best side to the vast majority of people.  

I put it to you, that when it comes to the abuse of power, expecting a whistleblower to expose himself or herself to that kind of public martyrdom is completely unreasonable. Therefore all allegations, especially the anonymous ones, must be investigated.

Yes, there may be some unfounded accusations made for malicious purposes, but in the main, if someone has gone through the kind of soul searching that Mother 1 did, and that the writers of the 1992 and 1993 letters did, and have risked quite a lot to even put those thoughts in writing, then it is far better to take them seriously than to ignore them.

Yet, I really feel for Mother 1, because when you have a known problem at curial and therefore bishop level in your own diocese, where do you go, where should you go, to report it and ask for it to be fixed?

Our sacramental programme for children had major theological errors in it (it still does). Who do you write to? How are us people in the pews supposed to know which Vatican dicastery is the correct one to contact? I recall sending a full dossier to a retired cardinal, who sent it back. Not his bailiwick. And that is the same general response if you try and ask another bishop or higher, for assistance in fixing something in another bishop’s diocese.

The more I think about this problem, the more I want to see an independent body set up, one that does not contain any hierarchy, one that is only answerable to the Pope, but one which has real investigative expertise, and one that has sufficient authority to take real action, and to persevere until the issues are truly resolved. It may need to be a new order of religious, who not only work through the problems entrusted to them, but also pray through them too. Due to the long-term nature of many situations, I lean in favour of a new religious order.

Since as we read in the McCarrick report, part of the problem was how frequently the position of Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America was replaced with a new person.
The lack of full handover from predecessor to new incumbent was also a significant factor. Not only with the Nuncio, but also with the bishops and archbishops. If you have known situations that may or may not explode during the reign of the new incumbent, then the new incumbent should be warned.

But the standard procedure with the clergy seems to be dropping one’s fellow clergy member in it. I see it all the time. Cleric A agrees to fill in at a Mass for Cleric B, in Cleric B’s parish. But does Cleric B inform Cleric A that the particular Mass he is helping out at also has associated commitments for the sacrament of reconciliation, or for benediction etc, or how to find the list for the roster of Mass offerings, or how to work the complicated sound system? No.

95%, if not more, clergy drop their brother priests in it without any handover of relevant information.

If the habit forms at priest level, a habit like that it isn’t going to be undone at bishop, archbishop or nuncio level. This standard operating procedure just has to change. First of all it isn’t a loving thing to do. Secondly, it does permit sub-optimal transfers of authority to take place.

As we have seen in the McCarrisk report, it is very easy for the hierarchy to get compromised. They, like the rest of us, are vulnerable to flattery, and vulnerable to manipulation through favours, gifts, and inside information. Vigano is getting a bad rap in the report, because at times he was looking into McCarrick’s errors, and at times he was ignoring and not following up on them. As Nuncio, he was a sitting duck, because McCarrick went out of his way to be charming, take him out to dinner, and provide him with useful contacts, inside information and reports. None of us are immune. But if you are outside the hierarchy, you have more chance of not being compromised.

However, it is what is lacking in the McCarrick report that really fills me with dismay. We see that the only things that motivated the hierarchy to action were loss of reputation, and public scandal. Please, God, may that change, and be forever changed. At no point is there any reference to concern or care for those who had been abused or mistreated. To me, this is the greatest problem of all, because it shows that a shepherd’s primary concern is for the welfare of other shepherds, and that there is no concern for the sheep at all.

If there had been concern for the sheep, then proper investigations would have happened when the first anonymous allegations arrived, because the thought that the sheep were being preyed on, that any sheep was being preyed on, should have been motivation enough for action.

Up until this point, the release of the McCarrick report, most of us lived under the illusion that it was a duty of the bishop to protect and safeguard the members of his diocese from predators of all kinds.

I’d like for a moment to talk about glamour and holiness. Secular glamour is easy for us to pick up on. I remember being at an event when Bob Hawke and Blanche D’Alpuget walked in. The physical impact of their presence dimmed the impact of everyone else at the event. All of us have encountered people like this from time to time. Holiness is similar, but different. True holiness makes a similar impact, however it doesn’t draw us to the person, but it draws us to God.

When glamour is seen in a member of the clergy, it is easy for us to mistake it for holiness. Any of you who have met Cardinal Wuerl would acknowledge that he makes an impact that makes you pay immediate attention. How much of that is glamour, and how much is holiness, I don’t know; all I know is that I couldn’t put a finger on why I was unsettled by it. But it does make those in the inner circle look like the ‘haves’ and everyone else feel like the ‘have nots’. I suspect that McCarrick was similar. The thing is, that when someone is part showman, that they can pull a magician’s trick and redirect your attention elsewhere while they do deeds of darkness. It is only the extremely likeable people who get away with heinous crimes. Whereas if that attraction isn’t present, we easily go after and investigate the people we don’t like.

There’s yet another reason why an independent investigative body is necessary. It goes like this. The average diocesan curia develops a sense of elitism. Maybe that’s the wrong word, but the net effect is, that of you don’t approach them according to their unwritten protocols, then whatever you try to communicate with them gets discarded. Maybe an analogy would help. At the time that I was attempting to deal with a diocesan curia on what I considered important stuff, I was also playing an online game, and the parallels were striking. In the game there was a regular level of play, but then there were other upper echelons as well, where deals were done in alliances with regard to ownership of territory. On the face of it, if a territory was vacant, it should be up for grabs to all comers. But in this upper echelon, certain areas of territory ‘traditionally’ belonged to certain tribes from certain alliances. If you had been part of the upper echelons for a while, you knew these unwritten rules. Those who didn’t know or comply with these unwritten, non-publicly declared rules, were jumped on from a great height. The curia was working in a similar way, if you didn’t abide by the unwritten rules, there was no comeback. Pew dwellers like me, and like most of the people who may need to pass crucial information up the food chain from time to time, don’t know these rules. However, an independent body shouldn’t be nearly so precious, and should act on any piece of information, no matter how crudely or how unsophisticatedly it was presented.
 
The McCarrick report does show that we do everyone a disservice if we break existing protocols. At the beginning the only red flag showing for McCarrick’s candidacy for the episcopate was ambition. That flag should have been enough to sideline him. When you read through Church history, and through the lives of the Saints, it was those who did not want to become bishops who were the best bishops. Anyone who sets a true store on the value of his soul would shudder and dread being given the responsibility for the welfare of so many souls, because he knows God will call him to account for the eternal destination of all of them. I also recall the story of a man who called at the door of a monastery and said that he wanted to be a priest. He was sent away forthwith. Some time later, the same man returned with a degree of fear and trembling and said, I believe God wants me to be a priest. This time he was admitted.

I also want to ask how McCarrick could possibly have been considered a candidate for the episcopacy when he didn’t have any time as parish priest in a parish. Yes, you need the further advanced degrees, but observed success in pastoring a parish is another normal requirement, under the biblical tradition of being promoted to higher things after having been successful and faithful at smaller things.

The protocols for investigation prior to elevation to an archdiocese that carries a Cardinal's hat should not have been waived. They were there for this precise reason.

The waiving the protocols of the canonical punishments for ordaining without due permissions, should never have been done either.

I am also struck at how astute McCarrick was from the get-go. The wisdom that made him alert to participation in projects that would make him noticed by the higher-ups. It would be good to have answered where the funds for the finishing school in Switzerland were obtained, by gift, by own funds, by scholarship or award, and who the benefactors were and what the criteria for selection were. I am only making an hypothesis here, but McCarrick could have had a mentor during these years, presumably a mentor well aware of McCarrick’s weaknesses, perhaps more than one mentor.

Given this fixation on ‘uncle’ and ‘nephew’, a further hypothesis is that McCarrick had some predators in his formative years, and with whom touchy-feely activities were just ‘normal’.

Fundraising, administrative paperwork and the odd bit of head-kicking (a.k.a. having disciplinary conversations), are things that the majority of clergy shy away from. Someone who likes doing those unpleasant tasks will win favour, even if they don’t win trust.

The few references to lack of candor in the responses that were part of the investigation before being made an auxiliary bishop do take on a whole new light in hindsight. Again I come up against this reluctance to speak the whole truth, lest there be some kind of retribution. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence suspects that these confidential reports may one day find themselves in the hands of the person about whom they were written. Lack of candor means an ability to deftly steer conversation away from its intended trajectory, and an ability to perhaps disclose part of the truth, but not the full truth that should have been disclosed.

We can only hope that in the light of the McCarrick report that those on the selection teams will ask further questions of any respondent who has the slightest reservation about a candidate, and seek details of the incident/s which led the respondent to make those judgements.

We can only hope that the protocols of no sleepovers, and of only sending out seminarians in pairs will continue. But to this should also be added a ban on alcohol. Far too many stories in decades past of seminary antics have reached me, and even within the last 12 months rumours of lateness at important functions due to celebrations including alcohol have reached me. As Mother 1 noted, alcohol decreases inhibitions, and exposes drinkers to the risk of some kind of predator taking advantage.

Risk taking behaviour comes in many forms, and all of us need to be aware of the need to speak out when we notice it. Take for example a parish priest who seeks out the company of vulnerable women; older single women of marriageable age, and single mothers. Spending time close to the thrill of temptation is always a risky strategy, and it never ends well. Either the temptation gets given in to, or hearts get too involved and broken, or both.

It looks like McCarrick also lived a high risk, ‘close to the wind’ life. It was, after all, the 'work hard, play hard' era. He sought opportunities to be close to vulnerable young men, and was known to be touchy-feely (other people would call it groping). But if you have a predilection for young adult male company, getting a feel for whether there is a flight, fight, freeze or welcome response, is a selection process. He made sure that he only went ‘so far’ and ‘no further’, other than the times he forgot and expunged from memory, so that he could in good conscience make the Clinton-Lewinski defence, ‘I never had sexual relations with that woman’ – using a definition that only included completion of the act, and not the many preludes prior to the act.

What we must realize is that as soon as you overstep someone’s sexual boundaries without permission, that you cause trauma. There will be many degrees within the levels of overstepping those boundaries, but they will all cause levels of trauma, of discomfort, of trust being violated. Being repeatedly molested in pre-adult years damages a person, and the more sensitive and vulnerable they are, the worse the trauma will be, even if there was no deposit of bodily fluids.

Yet any of us who have watched enough detective shows on TV will know, over time a predator will seek higher risks because the lower risks don’t satisfy any more. They call it ‘escalation’. We can see this progression up until the time the sleepover ban came in and the episcopal request to stop whatever he was up to, which all ceased as the possibilities for episcopal advancement increased.

However, the little hidden apartment speaks to me of pre-mediation, as does the cancelling of beach house visits if there were insufficient guests to provide bed-sharing.

What gets to me is that such high risk behaviour normally doesn’t cease as much as it morphs. Perhaps it morphed into more consensual arrangements, but I worry that it may have morphed into high risk activities conducted only when he was in third world countries. This is only an hypothesis, but if it is hard to bring forward an allegation in English, how much harder would it be to bring forward an allegation in a third world language?

Another predatory behaviour is the going on the offensive, and the re-framing of the narrative. I’ve seen this in action; the plea to feel sorry for the predator and to plea to believe in his innocence, and the belittling of those who have made allegations. It begs others to see the predator as a victim, and one that needs protecting, thus inviting others to unwittingly join in the cover up. To call something an indiscretion or lapse of judgement when it was premeditated and had traumatic consequences for others, is part of the iniquity of sin, where we keep telling ourselves that what we did was excusable, and not so bad after all.

As always, the litmus test of holiness is obedience. To be asked by the reigning pontiff to retire to a life of prayer and penance for the good of the church is serious stuff. True obedience doesn’t require a formal order, the request made, and made for such a particular purpose, should have been sufficient. Instead what do we hear? Echoes of the serpent, ‘Did God really say?’, ‘Did the pope really mean me to curtail everything?’ Not only that, flaunting disobedience at every opportunity, even at World Youth Day, knowing that no one likes to create a public scene of conflict. This flaunting of the papal request alone should have been enough for further investigations of the sexual misconduct allegations to be made. ‘I will not obey’ is the mantra of the evil one.

I do maintain a concern that many of these unauthorized international trips had more than their outward agenda. Yes, there was the perceived personal need to remain seen, and active, and relevant, by gathering inside information and sharing it. But what if there was some spy craft afoot as well? Hypothesis only, at this stage. And/or the freedom to engage in high risk behaviour? (And we know this didn’t cease, because even in his 80s living in seminary quarters he was still perceived as touchy feely (ie grope-y).

“The cardinal is always agitated, nervous; he does not feel himself if he does not travel and if he does not have people around him”. This report bothers me. A moving target is always harder to hit than a stationary one. It is this report that makes me hypothesize that there was more to these international trips than we realise.

Are there other McCarrick’s out there? Probably.

Here’s why. I vividly recall in the mid 80’s, when some religious orders were already being called to account for sexual abuse-tour, visiting the mother house of an order, and being so proud of these men because there hadn’t been any scandal attached to them. Now several are serving custodial sentences. So I put it to you that the easy cases get found first, and that the more difficult cases get found second, and that the most heinous cases only get found out last.

Here’s another why. No one is yet investigating the other clergy problems, gambling, inappropriate relationships with women, alcohol, homosexuality, abuse of power. Very few people have the stomach to start draining the swamp, because they are legitimately afraid of what they will uncover. Very few don’t have their own private secrets.

Here’s a third why. There are many rumours of these high risk behaviours being organized and of intricate networks of rings of corruption. I can point to two elusive situations, one where I felt my siblings and I being watched and evaluated by an unknown third party; the other when a visiting international priest got a bit touchy-feely (my unproven gut feel on this, in hindsight, is that such actions wouldn’t have happened unless a previous predator had bragged/shared in a network). None of these kinds of rings and networks have been exposed yet. May God grant that they will be, that those in authority will be given the guts to deal with it, and that these levels of corruption in the Church be expunged forever.

Will there be further McCarrick’s? Probably. But they will be even cleverer at hiding their high risk behaviours, and even more astute at dealing with dysfunctional hierarchies.

​May God have mercy on us, and upon His Church, even if it needs to be a severe mercy. Amen.

Obviously I have a particular organization, and a particular online event, in mind as I write. But these thoughts are applicable across the board, in parishes, dioceses, religious organisations etc.

So I dare you to come and do a pulse check on your church culture.

Some of you may have participated in the Pilgrimage to Pentecost that happened this year in the 6 weeks leading up to Pentecost 2020. Each week 2 tranches of talks were released, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday. You had to sign into a website portal to gain access to these talks, most of which were in the 20-30 minute range, from a wide range of international speakers, and a diversity of vocations. Each talk had a page with a brief description of the talk and the speaker, the link, and a place to leave comments. Participants left a healthy number of comments, 30 comments seemed to be about average for each talk, and the subset of commentators varied significantly from talk to talk (it wasn’t just the same people leaving the same comments). This is a healthy level of engagement.

Compare this to the final talk of a conference, shared on a religious organisation’s Facebook page, bearing in mind that the organisation would have to have upwards of 400 members. Admittedly the holding image for the video recording was uninspiring, but zero comments, 2 likes and 1 share? That is definitely Not a healthy level of engagement!

On the week after the conference the number of likes on YouTube for the talks were in single digits, and now three weeks later they are in the teens, and only one or two comments. Again, this is a very low level of engagement.

If you have proportionately low levels of engagement on social media for your major events, that means there is something amiss with your organisation’s culture.

If something is good, the natural response is to share it, and to share it with as many people as possible.
So either the event didn’t touch a chord with your people,
or your people are ignorant about social media,
or your people are not alert to the easy ways of promoting a message,
or a combination of all of them.

Organisations that value the means of social communication will automatically include a final note which says, ‘If you found this useful or valuable to you, please like and share this ….(insert type of media)… or leave a comment or subscribe so that you don’t miss out on future content”.

Because people do look at the number of views, reviews, likes and comments before committing themselves to watching something on YouTube, or downloading a game or app, or buying a book.

The next thing to remember is that when you post online content, be it website, Facebook, or anywhere else, the whole world is watching. This means that you need to rethink any member only information, and how things look to an outsider.

For example, doing a lovely 30 countdown to a major event as an encouragement for members to pray and fast for the event is great. But to then have radio silence as the event is happening is not great at all. If you want to make it even worse, barely refer to the event after it concludes. Those outsiders who have been watching your countdown on social media will now be completely baffled as to what all the fuss was about, and as a result will consider unfriending or unfollowing your organisation.

At a minimum you should be inviting online discussion after each talk of your event, and/or posting a brief video clip from each session as a discussion starter.

Do you realise that at secular events and at many religious events, that people choose to live tweet during the event? They do, it is a really good thing to do, and it should be encouraged. Not only because they capture the most important points of a talk/presentation, but because they also provide access for those unable to attend, and because it documents your event. These days it is true, if it didn’t make it to social media, then it didn’t happen (even if it did!).

If you don’t have ‘roving reporters’ sharing the best of your event, then you need to find the people you already have who are capable, training them up, and activating them. It will be harder if the event is online, but just as necessary. Screen shots are easy to produce and package for social media, if you know how. Encourage them to always add text, because an photo/image on its own says ‘we were having a great time, and you missed it’ whereas adding text says ‘we were having a great time, this is why, and I don’t want you to miss out on this part that touched my heart’.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to online events where a registration fee is paid.
The first school says only those who paid should have access. In that case, you need to set up some kind of simple login procedure to give access. Pilgrimage to Pentecost did it with a website link that required email address for access.
The second school of thought sees the registration fees as seed for harvest; the fees enable the event to happen (technical equipment, labour, administration, marketing, talent), but once the event is live and recorded, the expectation is that it gets shared to as many people as possible, so that the maximum number of people benefit.

If it is an event that has the capacity to bring someone closer to Jesus, surely you want to maximize those who experience it (in person and/or via recording).

There are hybrid models, where only the plenary sessions of an event get shared publicly, and the non-plenary sessions get recorded but not put online, and later the recordings get packaged for sale.

Or where a temporary YouTube channel is set up for an online event, permitting people to get to all the sessions in their own time, and re-watch them if desired. For this one, by its very nature, if it is on YouTube and not login protected, then anyone can share it. If the content is good, then such sharing should be encouraged.

Isn’t it better if 650 people or 830 people or 2000 people see the fruits of the hard work and many prayers rather than only the 400 who registered?

Some may object, ‘Why bother paying a registration fee if I can get it for free?’, but most will be happy to pay a registration fee (if it is reasonable and not exorbitant) if it is presented as seed money to get the event possible and happening, and even happier to pay that seed money if there are plans to share the good content of the event as widely as possible, and to enable those who could never afford it to participate.

Here's the pulse check:
*Do you have healthy levels of online engagement for your organisation’s size?
*Do you have reminders somewhere in the content, to like and share if they found it valuable?
*Do you encourage people to leave comments on your online content?
*Do you encourage your people to engage with your online content?
*Do you have enough members online?
*Do you encourage or discourage social media use in your organisation? (not talking about it at all is passive discouragement, talking about social media negatively is active discouragement)
*Are you on social media yourself? (lead by good example)
*Does your online content remember that it isn’t a members only forum?
*Do you promote online discussion after special events?
*Do you have any ‘roving reporters’ or ‘social media natives’?
*If so, have you activated them and given them a vision for this kind of ministry?
*Do you include text with your photos, or do you leave people to guess why you posted them?
*Do you have a plan and a vision for maximizing the number of people who can access your events, your content and your message?

Now is the time to start doing something about it, if you weren't able to answer Yes (honestly, and with evidence to back it up) to just about all of them. A great number of the people you want to reach with the Gospel message are online, but you have to be intentional in your online activities in order to reach them.