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FTR #559 The Opus Dei Code – The Vatican Rag Pt. III

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Intro­duc­tion: The movie “The Da Vin­ci Code” has focused pub­lic atten­tion on the Opus Dei order, a reac­tionary Catholic orga­ni­za­tion with strong his­tor­i­cal links to fas­cism. High­light­ing its influ­ence on the cur­rent pope and his pre­de­ces­sor, this pro­gram sets forth some of the areas of influ­ence of this secre­tive orga­ni­za­tion. Play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in the rise of John Paul II through the Vat­i­can hier­ar­chy, Opus Dei was accord­ed spe­cial stature by the Pope once he was in office. Like­wise, Opus Dei appears to have heav­i­ly influ­enced the ele­va­tion of Car­di­nal Ratzinger to the papa­cy and appears to be wield­ing great influ­ence over access to the Pope. In addi­tion to review­ing Opus Dei’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, the broad­cast sets forth the sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of Opus Dei on the U.S. Sen­ate debate on the same-sex mar­riage bill. An area of spec­u­la­tion con­cerns the Opus Dei role in the Vat­i­can Bank­ing scan­dals of the ear­ly 1980’s, and the pos­si­ble influ­ence of P‑2 Lodge Grand Mas­ter Licio Gel­li on the “inves­ti­ga­tion” of the shoot­ing of John Paul II. Opus Dei was appar­ent­ly involved in the maneu­ver­ing around the col­lapse of the Ban­co Ambrosiano. The re-open­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mur­der of Ambrosiano chair­man and P‑2 Lodge mem­ber Rober­to Calvi has fea­tured the indict­ment of Lico Gel­li. Short­ly after Gelli’s tes­ti­mo­ny in the Calvi case, the would-be assas­sin of the Pope was released from prison, and Italy and Poland res­ur­rect­ed the dis­cred­it­ed “Bul­gar­i­an Con­nec­tion,” alleg­ing that the for­mer Sovi­et Union shot the Pope.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: John Paul II’s beat­i­fi­ca­tion of the founder of Opus Dei, as well as Arch­bish­op Stepinac (a mem­ber of the fas­cist Croa­t­ian par­lia­ment dur­ing World War II); the influ­ence of Opus Dei on reac­tionary gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca; the influ­ence of Opus Dei on Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty; the strik­ing influ­ence of Bene­dict XVI’s per­son­al assis­tant Georg Gan­swein (an Opus Dei pro­fes­sor) on the papa­cy. Be sure to check out the influ­ence of Opus Dei on the fam­i­ly of Maria Shriv­er, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife. This is doc­u­ment­ed in FTR#422.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Ratzinger’s close rela­tion­ship with his papal pre­de­ces­sor. The broad­cast notes their strong affin­i­ty through reac­tionary the­o­log­i­cal prin­ci­ples. As we shall see, both John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI have been great­ly influ­enced by Opus Dei. Note the nick­name ‘Panz­erkar­di­nal’ bestowed on Ratzinger by fel­low priests.

“ . . . The Pole and the Ger­man have been called intel­lec­tu­al bed­fel­lows. For almost 20 years, the two met at least once a week, usu­al­ly Fri­days, for a 90-minute dis­cus­sion of doc­trine and dis­ci­pline. A work­ing lunch fol­lowed, last­ing often until late in the after­noon. A the­o­log­i­cal lib­er­al of sorts in his youth, Ratzinger was lat­er nick­named the ‘Panz­erkar­di­nal’ for his iron hand in bring­ing Marx­ist priests in Latin Amer­i­ca and cler­ics with mushy views on sex­u­al ethics to heel. . .”
(“Analy­sis: Ratzinger in the Ascen­dance” by Uwe Siemon-Net­to; [Unit­ed Press Inter­na­tion­al]; The Wash­ing­ton Times.)

2. The broad­cast reviews some of the fas­cist con­nec­tions of Opus Dei.

“But it was not only the inevitable intrigue in Rome that left its mark. Back in Spain, Opus Dei mem­bers were mak­ing rapid advances in the Fran­co gov­ern­ment under Admi­ral Luis Car­rero Blan­co, an Opus Dei sym­pa­thiz­er who, as pre­mier, vir­tu­al­ly ran the coun­try. Until Carrero’s assas­si­na­tion in 1973, Opus Dei lead­ers were arguably the strongest con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal influ­ence in Spain.”
(Peo­ple of God; by Pen­ny Lernoux; Copy­right 1989 by Pen­ny Lernoux; [HC] Viking [Viking Pen­guin Pub­lish­ing Inc.]; ISNB 0–670-81529–2; p. 314.)

3. As men­tioned above, John Paul II was pro­found­ly influ­enced by Opus Dei. More about John Paul II’s inti­mate rela­tion­ship with Opus Dei can be found in para­graph #10. “Mat­ters changed rad­i­cal­ly when John Paul became pope. Opus Dei had court­ed the pope since his days as arch­bish­op of Krakow. He had been invit­ed to speak at var­i­ous Opus Dei cen­ters in Europe and at an event in Rome. The speech­es were lat­er made into a book, copies of which were sent by Wojty­la to the Vat­i­can Sec­re­tari­at of State. In 1978, when he was in Rome for the funer­al of John Paul I, Wojty­la vis­it­ed Opus Dei’s man­sion to pray at the black mar­ble crypt of ‘El Padre,’ who had died three years ear­li­er. Mon­sign­or Por­tillo, his suc­ces­sor and, by some accounts, the brains of Opus Dei, was wel­comed at the Vat­i­can by the new pope, who in turn was invit­ed to vis­it Opus Dei’s house and cen­ters.” (Ibid.; p. 315.)

4. Among the many shores upon which the waters of Opus Dei have lapped is that of the Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal and the P‑2 Lodge. As will be seen below, the Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal and the oth­er Vat­i­can bank­ing scan­dals are on the front burn­er once again, with a mur­der tri­al now under­way for the killers of Rober­to Calvi. (For more about the Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal, see—among oth­er pro­grams—AFA#’s 17–21, 32, 34, and Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M60, M61, avail­able from Spit­fire, as well as FTR#’s #‘s 43, 59, 70, 71, 80, 81, 98, 185, 213, 217, 221, 229, 237. For dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion of the P‑2 milieu with that of Al Qae­da, see FTR#’s 342, 359, 360, 377.)

“Opus Dei was drawn into that imbroglio [the P‑2 lodge scan­dal] by asser­tions that it had been nego­ti­at­ing with Rober­to Calvi, head of Milan’s Ambrosiano Bank and a key fig­ure in P‑2, regard­ing a pos­si­ble bailout for Ambrosiano that would save the Vat­i­can Bank finan­cial loss­es and embar­rass­ment aris­ing from its deal­ings with Calvi. The banker’s body, either mur­dered or a sui­cide, was lat­er found hang­ing from Black­fri­ars Bridge in Lon­don. His wid­ow main­tained that he had been in touch with Car­di­nal Palazz­i­ni, the Opus Dei sym­pa­thiz­er in charge of Escriva’s beat­i­fi­ca­tion process, about the res­cue oper­a­tion, pre­sum­ably to be car­ried out with the help of Opus Dei mem­bers who owned or con­trolled banks in Spain. The trade-off, accord­ing to Vat­i­can observers, was to have been a takeover by Opus Dei mem­bers of the Vat­i­can Bank and the Vat­i­can Radio con­trolled by the more pro­gres­sive Jesuits. Let­ters were found on Calvi from Francesco Pazien­za, a Calvi aide with links to Ital­ian and U.S. intel­li­gence, in which Pazien­za referred to con­tacts between Palazz­i­ni and Calvi.” (Ibid.; pp. 317–318.)

5. Opus Dei wields great influ­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca.

“At the start of 1983, Opus seemed poised for a major expan­sion based on papal favor and its new sta­tus as a prela­ture. Its main base remained in Spain, where it raised the largest con­tri­bu­tions and enjoyed the most sub­stan­tial polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic influ­ence, but the move­ment also gained mem­bers and influ­ence in Italy . . .It was also strong in Latin Amer­i­ca, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Mex­i­co, Colom­bia, Peru, and Chile. Opus Dei mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers sup­port­ed the CIA-backed coup that over­threw Chilean pres­i­dent Allende, and one of them Her­nan Cubil­los, became Gen­er­al Pinochet’s for­eign min­is­ter. Cubil­los, who found­ed Que Pasa, a mag­a­zine under Opus Dei influ­ence, was lat­er iden­ti­fied as an ‘impor­tant’ CIA agent by the Los Ange­les Times.” (Ibid.; p. 318.)

6. “In Chile, Peru, and El Sal­vador, Opus Dei pro­vides invalu­able sup­port to right-wing polit­i­cal groups through its reli­gious cours­es and schools, and through news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and tele­vi­sion out­lets influ­enced or owned by mem­bers. ‘It serves a func­tion for the polit­i­cal right and pow­er hold­ers,’ said a stu­dent of Opus Dei activ­i­ties in Latin Amer­i­ca. . . .A Span­ish priest made a sim­i­lar obser­va­tion about the influ­ence of Opus Dei bankers and indus­tri­al­ists in Europe: ‘They want to stop the growth of social­ism and paci­fy the labor move­ment through reli­gion.” (Ibid.; p. 319.)

7. One of the indi­ca­tions that the late Pope John Paul II’s alleged anti-Nazi sen­ti­ments are mytho­log­i­cal is the fact that he beat­i­fied Arch­bish­op Alois Stepinac (a mem­ber of the fas­cist Ustachi par­lia­ment in Croa­t­ia dur­ing World War II), as well as Father Escri­va de Bal­a­guer, the founder of the Opus Dei sect. (For more about the fas­cist con­nec­tions of Opus Dei, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#422.) As dis­cussed in FTR#422, Opus Dei was involved with the afore­men­tioned Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal as well. “Pope John Paul II has cre­at­ed a record num­ber of saints dur­ing the 22 years he has reigned as head of the Catholic Church. He has bestowed saint­hood on almost 300 respect­ed fig­ures from the Church’s long his­to­ry who dis­played ‘hero­ic virtue’ dur­ing their lives. He has beat­i­fied about 800 more, putting them on the road to becom­ing saints.”
(“Remov­ing the Pol­i­tics from Saint­hood” by David Lloyd; Vision: Foun­da­tion for a New World; 3/9/2000; p. 1.)

8. “Often his choic­es have been con­tro­ver­sial and viewed as polit­i­cal state­ments. In 1998, his deci­sion to beat­i­fy the Croa­t­ian Car­di­nal Aloy­sius Stepinac received much crit­i­cism from Ortho­dox Serbs and Jews. Stepinac was arch­bish­op for Zagreb dur­ing World War II and after­wards was accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Nazis in their mas­sacre of Serbs, Jews and Gyp­sies in Croa­t­ia. In 1992, he beat­i­fied Jose­maria Escri­va, the Span­ish founder of the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Opus Dei—a move­ment wide­ly viewed with sus­pi­cion as a secret soci­ety. . . .” (Idem.)

9. Opus Dei, whose founder, Father Escri­va de Bal­a­guer, praised Hitler and was an ardent admir­er of Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co, appears to have been a major play­er in the elec­tion of Ratzinger. “ . . . Sev­er­al Euro­pean car­di­nals are sym­pa­thet­ic to Opus Dei, among the Car­di­nal Camil­lo Rui­ni, the Ital­ian prelate who runs the Dio­cese of Rome on behalf of the pope, and a con­tender to suc­ceed John Paul. Rui­ni last year opened pro­ceed­ings to declare Opus Dei’s Del Por­tillo a saint. But recent­ly, sev­er­al Ital­ian news­pa­pers breath­less­ly report­ed that the two Opus Dei car­di­nals were throw­ing their sup­port behind the can­di­da­cy of Car­di­nal Joseph Ratzinger, a Ger­man-born tra­di­tion­al­ist who has served as chief enforcer of church doc­trine for two decades.”
(“Con­tro­ver­sial Opus Dei Has Stake in Papal Vote” by Lar­ry B. Stam­mer and Tra­cy Wilkin­son; The Los Ange­les Times; 4/19/2005; p. 2.)

10. Ratzinger/Benedict’s friend and pre­de­ces­sor John Paul II ele­vat­ed opus Dei. More about John Paul II’s close rela­tion­ship to Opus Dei is con­tained in para­graph #3.

“Opus Dei flour­ished dur­ing John Paul’s pon­tif­i­cate. In 1982, he took the unprece­dent­ed step of mak­ing Opus Dei a per­son­al prela­ture of the church, answer­able not to local bish­ops in the dio­ce­ses where it oper­at­ed, but to the pope alone. In anoth­er sign of the group’s influ­ence, the pope placed Opus Dei’s founder, the Span­ish priest Jose­maria Escri­va de Bal­a­guer, on the fast track to saint­hood in 1992, leapfrog­ging over Pope John XXIII. In 2002, Escri­va was can­on­ized before a crowd of 300,000 in St. Peter’s Square, becom­ing St. Jose­maria a mere 27 years after he died. . . .” (Idem.)

11. Next, the pro­gram access­es an arti­cle that indi­cates that Opus Dei wields a pro­found influ­ence on Bene­dict XVI. His per­son­al secretary—who appears to be some­thing of a gate­keep­er or “gray eminence”—is a teacher at an Opus Dei the­o­log­i­cal col­lege. Georg Gan­swein appears to effec­tive­ly con­trol access to Bene­dict XVI. Note the “Aryan” looks of Gan­swein. Is he “Under­ground Reich”? (For infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Benedict/Ratzinger may very well be Under­ground Reich, see FTR #508. For an overview of the fascist/Vatican con­nec­tion, see FTR#532.)

“As Bene­dict XVI trun­dled through the nar­row streets of Cologne last week, many of his admir­ers found them­selves dis­tract­ed by the extrav­a­gant­ly hand­some man sit­ting in the back of the Pope­mo­bile. The thou­sands of ador­ing young Catholics had come to Ger­many to get a glimpse of the new Pope, vis­it­ing his native coun­try on his first trip abroad as pon­tiff. But they could­n’t help notic­ing the Pope’s new — and rather dishy — pri­vate sec­re­tary, Mon­sign­or Georg Gän­swein. ‘As he jumped on to the Pope­mo­bile for the first time,’ one Ger­man mag­a­zine remarked, ‘we women held our breath. There, where for the past 27 years the grim and pale Stanis­law Dzi­wisz had sat behind the Pope, a tall, blond, ath­let­ic young man had tak­en his place.’”
(“Thou Shalt Not Drool” by Luke Hard­ing and Bar­bara McMa­hon; The Guardian; 8/23/2005.)

12. “Over the past four months, the Ital­ian press has also swooned over the 49-year-old Ger­man priest, who is known in Italy as Don Geor­gio. In the gray and elder­ly world of the Vat­i­can, it is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that Gän­swein — a keen ten­nis play­er and excel­lent ski­er who even has a pilot’s license — has become the cen­ter of atten­tion. Last month, the Ital­ian edi­tion of Van­i­ty Fair com­pared Gän­swein to the actor George Clooney, while the mag­a­zine Chi opened that he was ‘as fas­ci­nat­ing as Hugh Grant’. The Ital­ian pres­i­den­t’s wife Fran­ca was very tak­en with him when she first met him. ‘He’s very, very young. And he speaks excel­lent Ital­ian,’ she was report­ed as say­ing. Anoth­er woman liv­ing close to the Vat­i­can recent­ly told Ger­many’s ARD TV that Gän­swein was ‘an inter­est­ing man with a deep gaze’, adding: ‘Shame that he is taboo for us women.’” (Idem.)

13. “Some Vat­i­can-watch­ers, how­ev­er, are already mut­ter­ing about Gän­swein’s influ­ence over Pope Bene­dict, the first Ger­man to sit on the chair of St Peter for near­ly 500 years. Born on July 30 1956, Gän­swein grew up in Riedern am Wald, a tiny Bavar­i­an vil­lage. He was ordained in 1984 and is a doc­tor of canon law from Munich Uni­ver­si­ty. He came to Rome in 1995 and was quick­ly on the Vat­i­can fast track. In 1996, the then Car­di­nal Ratzinger asked him to join his staff, and he became a pro­fes­sor of canon law at the Pon­tif­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of the Holy Cross, an insti­tu­tion affil­i­at­ed to the secre­tive Catholic move­ment Opus Dei. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

14. “Those who know him praise his effi­cien­cy and ana­lyt­i­cal abil­i­ty. ‘He under­stands com­pli­cat­ed issues with­in about 10 sec­onds and can give a clear and imme­di­ate answer,’ one Vat­i­can source said. Gän­swein is, though, more than just an impres­sive the­olo­gian. He is, like the man he serves, extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. ‘I think he is very dan­ger­ous,’ Daniel Deck­ers, the author of a biog­ra­phy of Ger­many’s lead­ing lib­er­al car­di­nal, Karl Lehmann, said. ‘He’s part of a small but very pow­er­ful group with­in the Catholic church. He will use his pow­er to push Ratzinger in a cer­tain direc­tion.’ Deck­ers recalls trav­el­ling to Rome to meet Gän­swein. ‘He’s a good guy. He’s very elo­quent and can be very charm­ing. But he came right up to me and said: ‘Oh, you don’t like us.’ He referred to him­self and Ratzinger as ‘us’, as if the two of them were an insti­tu­tion.’” (Idem.)

15. “With Gän­swein as pri­vate sec­re­tary, there seems lit­tle hope that Bene­dict XVI will offer con­ces­sions on issues that alien­ate many from the Catholic church — the use of con­doms, gay rela­tion­ships or pre-mar­i­tal sex. ‘You can for­get it,’ one reli­gious affairs writer said blunt­ly. A trust­ed con­fi­dant of the last Pope, who made him a chap­lain in 2000, Gän­swein has worked as Ratzinger’s sec­re­tary since 2003, and was one of the few aides allowed to give out press state­ments on John Paul’s con­di­tion. In the Vat­i­can, Gän­swein and Ratzinger dine togeth­er, recent­ly enter­tain­ing Princess Glo­ria von Thurn und Taxis, the Ger­man socialite, accord­ing to reports in the Ital­ian press. In Cologne last week, Gän­swein was nev­er far away from his boss — hand­ing the 78-year-old Pope his read­ing glass­es, or trav­el­ing with him on a cruise down the Rhine. He was there, too, when the Pope appeared on a hill beneath a fly­ing saucer-shaped dome, for a vast open-air mass. (In his address to near­ly 1 mil­lion pil­grims who had spent the night camped out in a mud­dy field, the Pope remind­ed the young Catholics that they had to obey all of the church’s rules — not just the bits they liked. ‘That basi­cal­ly means no sex, does­n’t it?’ Ger­man pil­grim Malte Schuburt, 19, point­ed out.)” (Idem.)

16. “Gän­swein’s crit­ics even accuse him of turn­ing the Pope into a fash­ion vic­tim. This sum­mer, Ratzinger and his sec­re­tary went on hol­i­day to the papal res­i­dence at Cas­tel Gan­dol­fo, near Rome, as well as to the Ital­ian Alps at Valle D’Aos­ta. While both men were hik­ing in the hills, the Pope appeared in pub­lic wear­ing a Nike hat, design­er Serengeti sun­glass­es and a Carti­er watch. ‘This is Gän­swein’s style. It’s his hand­writ­ing,’ one reli­gious affairs writer said. ‘This is some­thing I don’t under­stand.’ Gän­swein’s pow­er derives part­ly from his place in the Pope’s very small per­son­al staff. Bene­dic­t’s long-time assis­tant is Ingrid Stam­pa and he has four women — Carmela, Loredana, Emanuela and Cristi­na — who do domes­tic duties. They have tak­en nun’s vows but do not wear habits. Pope Bene­dict writes every­thing in Ger­man in very small script, and Gän­swein is one of the few who can read his writ­ing.” (Idem.)

17. It appears that Gan­swein embod­ies the reac­tionary ide­ol­o­gy of Opus Dei and that he will use his influ­ence with Bene­dict XVI to fur­ther that ide­ol­o­gy.

“So far, Gän­swein does not enjoy the same pow­er as Stanis­law Dzi­wisz, who spent 40 years at Pope John Paul II’s side. Some have even dis­missed him as the ‘Black For­est Ado­nis’. Yet it is Gän­swein who decides who gets to see the Pope, and who does­n’t. [Empha­sis added.] He also pro­tects his boss from the mound of papers on Bene­dic­t’s desk. ‘He is the Pope’s gate­keep­er. This makes him a very pow­er­ful man,’ Deck­ers said. It is not sur­pris­ing, then, that the Pope’s pri­vate sec­re­tary is already begin­ning to inspire dread in lib­er­al Catholic cir­cles. In Ger­many, the Catholic Church is divid­ed more or less between two fig­ures — the lib­er­al-con­ser­v­a­tive Car­di­nal Lehmann, the head of the Ger­man arch­bish­op’s con­fer­ence, and the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Car­di­nal Joachim Meis­ner, the Arch­bish­op of Cologne. Both men were with the Pope last week. But it is no secret as to which Bish­op the Vat­i­can favours. ‘Gän­swein is an oppo­nent of Lehmann,’ one source in the Ger­man Catholic Church said. ‘One of Ratzinger’s great weak­ness­es is that his judg­ment of peo­ple isn’t always suf­fi­cient. He has a small out-reach.’ Last week’s papal tour of Ger­many was an undoubt­ed suc­cess for the Bavar­i­an Bene­dict. A far less flam­boy­ant fig­ure than his pre­de­ces­sor, Bene­dict was often embar­rassed by the euphor­ic crowds. But he is a for­mi­da­ble intel­lec­tu­al, able to deliv­er his ideas with flu­en­cy and rig­or in numer­ous lan­guages. The ques­tion remains though — how long will he last? The Pope has already suf­fered two strokes — one of which slight­ly impaired his eye­sight — and he has a heart con­di­tion. Don Geor­gio is said to be very pro­tec­tive of the Pope, par­tic­u­lar­ly about his health. But if there is bad news to trans­mit, it will be Gän­swein, the priest with the film-star looks, who will be there to deliv­er it.” (Idem.)

18. Next, the pro­gram access­es infor­ma­tion about Opus Dei influ­ence on the recent U.S. Sen­ate debate about a Con­sti­tu­tion­al ban on same-sex mar­riage. Opus Dei con­vert Sen­a­tor Sam Brown­back (Repub­li­can from Kansas), intro­duced into Sen­ate debate on same-sex mar­riage some talk­ing points from a paper craft­ed by an Opus Dei affil­i­ate at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.

“The Unit­ed States Sen­ate is often called ‘the great­est delib­er­a­tive body in the world’ which usu­al­ly rais­es the bar on the tenor and intel­lec­tu­al con­tent of speech­es giv­en on the floor and for the offi­cial record. Not so for Sen­a­tor Sam Brown­back (R‑KS) who took to the Sen­ate floor last week to deliv­er a stri­dent push for the big­ot­ed Mar­riage Pro­tec­tion Amend­ment, with mas­sive dis­tor­tions of the issue and an argu­ment that was based almost sole­ly on the opin­ion of a lit­tle-known, con­ser­v­a­tive think tank affil­i­at­ed with the Roman Catholic orga­ni­za­tion, Opus Dei .”
(“Is Brown­back Bring­ing Opus Dei Into The Sen­ate?” By Bob Geiger.)

19. “‘The prob­lem we have in front of us is the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage has been weak­ened, and the effort to rede­fine it on this vast social exper­i­ment that we have going on, redefin­ing mar­riage dif­fer­ent­ly than it has ever been defined before,’ the Kansas Sen­a­tor grim­ly intoned last week. ‘This effort of this vast social exper­i­ment, the ear­ly data that we see from oth­er places, harms the insti­tu­tion of the fam­i­ly, the rais­ing of the next gen­er­a­tion. And it is harm­ful to the future of the Repub­lic.’ Brown­back then went on to give fig­ures for how var­i­ous states have shown their hatred of gay peo­ple with their own pro­hi­bi­tions on same-sex mar­riage and used that as his ratio­nale for a sim­i­lar amend­ment to the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. But Brown­back real­ly hit his stride when he described a paper, called ‘Ten Prin­ci­ples on Mar­riage and the Pub­lic Good,’ pub­lished by a fair­ly new and extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive group at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. Accord­ing to Brown­back, the paper is an ‘… impor­tant state­ment of prin­ci­ples from top Amer­i­can schol­ars [to] be con­sid­ered care­ful­ly by my col­leagues.’ He then added that the sen­ti­ments expressed in the non-sci­en­tif­ic trea­tise were so vital to our nation­al dia­log that they should ‘. . . help guide our debate on this issue.’ The paper, spon­sored by the With­er­spoon Insti­tute at Prince­ton, makes a case for ban­ning same-sex mar­riage alto­geth­er. What’s extra­or­di­nary, is the idea of a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor attempt­ing to sway opin­ion on an amend­ment that would have altered our Con­sti­tu­tion (had it not been defeat­ed last Wednes­day) by using a paper from an orga­ni­za­tion linked to Opus Dei, a strict, reli­gious group that some for­mer mem­bers have described as a cult.’” (Idem.)

20. Brown­back accessed infor­ma­tion from a paper issued by the With­er­spoon Insti­tute, whose pres­i­dent (Luis Tellez) is the head of Opus Dei at Prince­ton. “Brown­back spent a good part of his lengthy Sen­ate speech last week cit­ing the study and attribut­ing it to ‘this Prince­ton group of schol­ars’ while nev­er men­tion­ing that all of the find­ings were based on the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive With­er­spoon Insti­tute bol­stered by the involve­ment — direct­ly or indi­rect­ly — of a non­prof­it, tax-exempt reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion in Opus Dei. So what exact­ly is the With­er­spoon Insti­tute, whose paper formed the foun­da­tion of Brown­back­’s anti-gay argu­ment? The Insti­tute, which has only been around since 2003, has close ties to Tony Perkins and the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, but is also tight­ly aligned with Opus Dei. Indeed, Luis Tellez, the pres­i­dent of the With­er­spoon Insti­tute is also the direc­tor and lead cler­ic of Opus Dei in Prince­ton. Since its found­ing in 1928, Opus Dei has been known for its tra­di­tion­al­ist val­ues and right-wing polit­i­cal stances. And crit­ics in acad­e­mia — which include for­mer mem­bers who some­times go through ‘depro­gram­ming’ upon exit­ing Opus Dei — charge that orga­ni­za­tions like the With­er­spoon Insti­tute are just veiled attempts by Opus Dei to spread its influ­ence in top-tier aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles. So why then, is a U.S. Sen­a­tor offer­ing to Con­gress ‘research’ linked to Opus Dei on some­thing as vital as amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion? It turns out that Brown­back, who was for­mer­ly an evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant, con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism by way of Opus Dei in 2002 and was spon­sored in that con­ver­sion by Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum (R‑PA), a vocal Opus Dei advo­cate.” (Idem.)

21. Tellez–the head of Opus Dei at Princeton—is among that reac­tionary organization’s most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers.

“Tellez, the leader of Opus Dei in Prince­ton, is a ‘numer­ary,’ con­sid­ered the most con­ser­v­a­tive of the sec­t’s mem­bers — they are unmar­ried, celi­bate, devote every aspect of their lives to their spir­i­tu­al beliefs and turn over their salaries from sec­u­lar jobs to Opus Dei. Again, it bears repeat­ing that Tellez is also the head of the With­er­spoon Insti­tute, the group Brown­back cit­ed at great length as his pri­ma­ry argu­ment against gay mar­riage. And remem­ber also, it is Brown­back, as an Opus Dei con­vert, who also leads the charge on Capi­tol Hill against abor­tion and stem cell research and who, along with San­to­rum, is seen by the Reli­gious Right’s as a point man on ‘cul­ture war’ issues. The oth­er cen­tral fig­ure in the With­er­spoon orbit is Dr. Robert George, a Prince­ton pro­fes­sor and a board mem­ber in the Insti­tute who, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, helped draft the fed­er­al gay-mar­riage ban that was just defeat­ed in the Sen­ate. George chaired a meet­ing of reli­gious lead­ers in late 2005, which includ­ed Dr. James Dob­son and oth­er mem­bers of the extreme Reli­gious Right. In fact, in addi­tion to his piv­otal role in the With­er­spoon Insti­tute, George is also a board mem­ber at Perkins’ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, a group known for its big­ot­ed posi­tions on the gay com­mu­ni­ty. And, via Brown­back, all of this is ulti­mate­ly find­ing its way into the halls of Con­gress.” (Idem.)

22. “While it may not be tech­ni­cal­ly ille­gal for Brown­back to be so clear­ly mix­ing hard-right reli­gious ide­ol­o­gy — and faux-aca­d­e­m­ic papers pro­mot­ed by reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions like Opus Dei — with debate on the Sen­ate floor, it should cer­tain­ly raise some eye­brows. In a coun­try where strict sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is man­dat­ed, it seems Brown­back is freely blend­ing the two, attempt­ing to use reli­gious dog­ma to influ­ence pub­lic pol­i­cy — all the while not dis­clos­ing to his Sen­ate col­leagues the back­ground sources of the research he is cit­ing. But this should not be sur­pris­ing com­ing from Brown­back. In a Jan­u­ary 2006 Rolling Stone arti­cle, ‘God’s Sen­a­tor,’ Brown­back is described as a reli­gious zealot with a view for Amer­i­ca’s future that could almost be described as medieval. ‘In his dream Amer­i­ca, the one he believes both the Bible and the Con­sti­tu­tion promise, the state will sim­ply with­er away. In its place will be a coun­try so suf­fused with God and the free mar­ket that the social fab­ric of the last hun­dred years — schools, Social Secu­ri­ty, wel­fare — will be pri­va­tized or sim­ply done away with,’ reads the arti­cle. ‘There will be no abor­tions; sex will be con­fined to het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage. Men will lead fam­i­lies, moth­ers will tend chil­dren, and big busi­ness and the church will take care of all.’ After all, it was Brown­back, who came to Con­gress in 1994 and refused to sign Newt Gin­grich’s ‘Con­tract With Amer­i­ca’ because he felt it was­n’t con­ser­v­a­tive enough. Even then, as a new­com­er to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Brown­back believed that the vast major­i­ty of what he saw as Big Gov­ern­ment should sim­ply be elim­i­nat­ed, includ­ing the depart­ments of edu­ca­tion, ener­gy and com­merce.” (Idem.)

23. Opus Dei con­vert Brown­back has been lead­ing the charge on “fam­i­ly val­ues” in the Sen­ate.

“And, yes, it was also Brown­back who was so out­raged at the split-sec­ond glimpse of Janet Jack­son’s nip­ple dur­ing the 2004 Super Bowl, that he intro­duced the Broad­cast Decen­cy Enforce­ment Act, which sub­stan­tial­ly raised fines for such sim­ple on-air dis­plays of nudi­ty. Final­ly, in addi­tion to being brought into Catholi­cism by the likes of Opus Dei and using laun­dered research by an affil­i­at­ed group on the Sen­ate floor, Brown­back chairs a meet­ing every Tues­day night with the ‘Val­ues Action Team,’ con­sist­ing of reli­gious lead­ers like Dob­son who help the Sen­a­tor for­mu­late his thoughts on pub­lic pol­i­cy issues. Accord­ing to Time mag­a­zine , Opus Dei has assets in the neigh­bor­hood of $2.8 bil­lion and, with John McCain unlike­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly rouse the Reli­gious Right in 2008, look for Brown­back to be the guy that Opus Dei, Focus on the Fam­i­ly and the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil turn to as their pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. . . .” (Idem.)

24. Updat­ing a sto­ry Mr. Emory has cov­ered for more than two decades, the pro­gram notes that P‑2 Lodge grand mas­ter Licio Gel­li has been indict­ed for the mur­der of Rober­to Calvi, the head of the Ban­co Ambrosiano. For more about the P‑2 Lodge, the Vat­i­can bank­ing scan­dals and the Vatican/fascist con­nec­tion, use the search func­tion on this page, tak­ing par­tic­u­lar note of AFA#’s 17–21—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 504, 508.) In para­graph , we not­ed the alleged role of Opus Dei in the Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal.

What influ­ence might Gelli’s tes­ti­mo­ny have had on sub­se­quent events? Might the res­ur­rec­tion of the Bul­gar­i­an hypoth­e­sis have had some­thing to do with Gelli’s tes­ti­mo­ny? (The Bul­gar­i­an hypothesis—long dis­cred­it­ed but res­ur­rect­ed in Italy and Poland ear­li­er this year—alleges that the Sovi­et Union had the pope shot, in order to negate his activism on behalf of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Union in Poland.)

“Mag­is­trates inves­ti­gat­ing the death of the Ital­ian banker Rober­to Calvi under Black­fri­ars Bridge in Lon­don in 1982 are focus­ing on Licio Gel­li the for­mer ‘grand mas­ter’ of the ille­gal P2 Mason­ic lodge that plot­ted against Ital­ian democ­ra­cy in the 1970s. Mr Gel­li denies he was involved but has acknowl­edged that the financier, known as ‘God’s banker’ because of his links with the Vat­i­can, was mur­dered. He said the killing was com­mis­sioned in Poland.”
(“Mason Indict­ed over Mur­der of ‘God’s Banker’” By John Phillips; The Inde­pen­dent; 7/22/05.)

25. In the after­math of Gelli’s tes­ti­mo­ny about the Ban­co Ambrosiano scan­dal, Mehmet Ali Agca—convicted would-be assas­sin of the Pope –was released from prison. Agca was a mem­ber of the Pan-Turk­ist fas­cist group the Grey Wolves. (For more about the fas­cist influ­ence on the Pan-Turk­ist move­ment, see FTR#549.) “After 25 years behind bars for try­ing to assas­si­nate Pope John Paul II and fatal­ly gun­ning down a jour­nal­ist, Mehmet Ali Agca was released from prison — and prompt­ly gave his sup­port­ers and his ene­mies the slip. With­in hours of tast­ing free­dom Thurs­day for the first time since wound­ing John Paul in 1981, Agca dis­ap­peared out the back door of a mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal. He left behind hordes of jour­nal­ists, along with ques­tions about whether he will be forced to com­plete the manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice he dodged as a young man. Scores of ultra­na­tion­al­ist right-wing sup­port­ers cheered his release and tossed flow­ers at the sedan that whisked him through the gates of a high-secu­ri­ty prison. But many Turks expressed dis­may that Agca, 48, served just five years for the slay­ing of news­pa­per colum­nist Abdi Ipekci in 1979, dur­ing a time of street vio­lence between right­ists and left­ists. Jus­tice Min­is­ter Cemil Cicek ordered a review to see whether any errors were com­mit­ted in releas­ing him. He said Agca would remain free until an appeals court reviewed the case. ‘If there is an error, that would dam­age Turkey’s image’ as the nation push­es to join the Euro­pean Union, said Ilter Turan, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Istan­bul’s Bil­gi Uni­ver­si­ty.”
(“Turk Who Shot Pope John Paul II is Released from Prison” [AP] 1/12/2006.)

26. “‘Day of shame,’ head­lined the dai­ly Mil­liyet, Ipekci’s news­pa­per. Cicek said Agca’s release was not ‘a guar­an­teed right,’ not­ing there have been sev­er­al cas­es in which con­victs freed by mis­take were returned to prison. He said Agca ben­e­fit­ed from amnesties, passed by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments, which have freed tens of thou­sands of crim­i­nals over the past decades. Agca, white-haired and wear­ing a bright blue sweater and jeans, was freed five years after he was par­doned by Italy and extra­dit­ed to Turkey. He had served 20 years in Italy, where John Paul for­gave him in a vis­it to his prison cell in 1983. . . .” (Idem.)

27. Short­ly after Agca’s release from prison, an Ital­ian par­lia­men­tary body endorsed the long-dis­cred­it­ed Bul­gar­i­an hypoth­e­sis. Note that the com­mis­sion was head­ed by an ally of Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni. Berlus­coni was a for­mer mem­ber of the P‑2 Lodge, head­ed by Licio Gel­li.

“It has per­sist­ed as one of the most mys­te­ri­ous cas­es of inter­na­tion­al intrigue in recent times: Who shot the pope? A com­mit­tee of Italy’s Par­lia­ment inves­ti­gat­ing the 1981 attempt to assas­si­nate John Paul II released its con­clu­sion Thurs­day that ‘beyond any rea­son­able doubt’ the Sovi­et Union ordered the attack that seri­ous­ly wound­ed the pope as he greet­ed crowds in St. Peter’s Square. The Turk­ish gun­man, Mehmet Ali Agca, was long ago con­demned in the shoot­ing and served 19 years in jail. But for whom he worked has nev­er been def­i­nite­ly estab­lished. His own con­fes­sions have been all over the map; he has var­i­ous­ly impli­cat­ed the Sovi­ets, the Bul­gar­i­ans and oth­ers.”
(“Sovi­ets Behind Pope’s Shoot­ing, Italy Pan­el Says” by Tra­cy Wilkin­son; Los Ange­les Times; 3/3/2006.)

28. “Rumors about the intel­lec­tu­al authors of the attack have cir­cu­lat­ed for years, but pin­ning it direct­ly and final­ly on the Sovi­et Union would be a first. Sen. Pao­lo Guz­zan­ti, pres­i­dent of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee, told reporters that the Sovi­et mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, the GRU, ‘took the ini­tia­tive to elim­i­nate’ the pope. Accord­ing to Ital­ian media, the report says the Sovi­ets had decid­ed that Jon Paul, a fer­vent anti-com­mu­nist, had become dan­ger­ous in his out­spo­ken sup­port for the Sol­i­dar­i­ty protest move­ment in his native Poland. Solidarity’s activ­i­ties even­tu­al­ly helped pre­cip­i­tate the fall of com­mu­nism there in 1989. In those Cold War years of intrigue and decep­tion, the shoot­ing of the pope was tan­gled in a web of secret agents, proxy gun­men and the life-or-death strug­gle who would dom­i­nate the world.” (Idem.)

29. It is alleged that the inter­ro­ga­tion of Car­los the Jack­al yield­ed some infor­ma­tion about the shoot­ing of the Pope. Car­los the Jackal—as dis­cussed in FTR#453—is a pro­tégé of Nazi oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud. Might the far right have influ­enced this res­ur­rec­tion of the Bul­gar­i­an hypoth­e­sis, uti­liz­ing the milieu of Car­los? (Genoud died in 1996.) Note also that the head of this commission—Mr. Guzzanti—is a polit­i­cal ally of for­mer P‑2 mem­ber Sil­vio Berlus­coni.

“Com­mit­tee staff mem­bers said the report was based on evi­dence pre­sent­ed at a host of Ital­ian tri­als through the years con­nect­ed with the shoot­ing, includ­ing one that probed the Turk­ish mafia and anoth­er the pur­port­ed involve­ment of the Bul­gar­i­an secret ser­vice. In addi­tion, France’s not­ed anti-ter­ror­ism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, report­ed­ly shared evi­dence with the Ital­ians that sprang from the pros­e­cu­tion of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Car­los the Jack­al, the noto­ri­ous ter­ror­ist held in France since his cap­ture in Africa in 1994. . . . Guz­zan­ti, a mem­ber of Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia (Go, Italy) par­ty, said he launched the new inves­ti­ga­tion after John Paul’s last book before his death spoke of the assas­si­na­tion attempt and his con­vic­tion that some­one beyond Agca had ‘mas­ter­mind­ed and com­mis­sioned’ the attack. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

30. Short­ly after the Ital­ian inves­ti­ga­tion, a Pol­ish inquiry head­ed in the same direc­tion. Again, what influ­ence might Licio Gelli’s tes­ti­mo­ny have had on the res­ur­rec­tion of the Bul­gar­i­an hypoth­e­sis? What might Gel­li –dubbed the “Pup­pet Mas­ter” by the Ital­ian media—have dis­closed or threat­ened to dis­close? If any­one could be said to know “where the bod­ies are buried”—literally in this case—it is Gel­li.

“Inves­ti­ga­tors in Poland said Mon­day they have opened an inquiry into a sus­pect­ed plot behind an assas­si­na­tion attempt on late Pol­ish-born Pope John Paul II in 1981. ‘The inquiry is not into the attack itself but into a plot by com­mu­nist (secret) ser­vices,’ said Ewa Koj of Poland’s Nation­al Remem­brance Insti­tute (IPN), which is charged with pros­e­cut­ing Com­mu­nist and Nazi crimes. Koj, head of the IPN’s inves­tiga­tive depart­ment in the south­ern city of Katow­ice, told the PAP news agency the inquiry aimed to probe sus­pect­ed involve­ment by sev­er­al coun­tries in plan­ning the assas­si­na­tion attempt on the pope. The IPN has pre­vi­ous­ly said that it does not have direct proof that Pol­ish Com­mu­nist-era secret police took part in the attack. Charges that the Sovi­et Union and then-com­mu­nist Bul­gar­ia orga­nized the attack over John Paul’s sup­port for the Sol­i­dar­i­ty trade union move­ment in his native Poland were nev­er proved. In March, the head of an Ital­ian par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion accused lead­ers of the for­mer Sovi­et Union of order­ing the assas­si­na­tion bid.”
(“Poland Opens Inquiry into 1981 John Paul II Death Plot”; TurkishPress.com; 6/12/2006.)

Discussion

6 comments for “FTR #559 The Opus Dei Code – The Vatican Rag Pt. III”

  1. You have to love it when sleazy attempts at his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism and right­eous indig­na­tion become unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 26, 2012, 5:59 pm
  2. Rick is show­ing him­self to be quite the his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist! Keep it up Ricky! One of these days one of your revi­sions might actu­al­ly be in the right direc­tion. Prac­tice makes per­fect.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 27, 2012, 9:15 pm
  3. [...] FTR #559: The Opus Dei Code This entry was post­ed in Reli­gion, Sab­o­tage, Sex­u­al Repres­sion and tagged Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Bene­dict XVI, Catholic Church, Enlight­en­ment, Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al, Father Jose­maria Escri­va de Bal­a­guer, Georg Gan­swein, Hasan al-Ban­na, Hitler, Islam, Jean-Paul II, Licio Gel­li, Maria Shriv­er, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Mus­soli­ni, Opus Dei, P2 Lodge, Rober­to Calvi, Sam Brown­back, The Da Vin­ci Code, The Secret War Against The Jews, Under­ground Reich, Unholy Trin­i­ty: The Vat­i­can The Nazis and The Swiss Banks, Vat­i­can. Book­mark the perma­link. ← Mis­cel­la­neous arti­cles for – Arti­cles divers pour 02-29-2012 [...]

    Posted by 1928: The year fascist bigots prepared the sinking of the Enlightenment | Lys-d'Or | February 29, 2012, 7:34 pm
  4. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/23/vatican-hires-fox-news-reporter-as-media-advisor/

    Vat­i­can hires Fox News reporter as media advi­sor

    By Jonathan Ter­bush
    Sat­ur­day, June 23, 2012 18:16 EDT

    The Vat­i­can has hired a Fox News cor­re­spon­dent [and mem­ber of Opus Dei] to help improve the Catholic church’s media rela­tions, Reuters report­ed Sat­ur­day.

    Cit­ing a church source, the news agency report­ed that Gerg Burke, a Fox cor­re­spon­dant for Europe and the Mid­dle East and a mem­ber of the right-wing Catholic group Opus Dei, had been hired as a “senior com­mu­ni­ca­tions advi­sor” to the Vatican’s polit­i­cal arm, the Sec­re­tari­at of State. The Vat­i­can has yet to for­mal­ly announce Burke’s hir­ing, though the church offi­cial said they are expect­ed to do so short­ly.

    In an inter­view with the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Burke likened his role to that of a White House com­mu­ni­ca­tions advi­sor, say­ing he would be respon­si­ble for defin­ing and craft­ing a well-honed media strat­e­gy, and then ensur­ing that every­one with­in the Vat­i­can stays on mes­sage.

    Burke’s appoint­ment is some­what unusu­al in the clois­tered world of the Vat­i­can, as he will become the only mem­ber on the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team with exten­sive report­ing expe­ri­ence out­side the realm of Catholic media.

    Posted by R. Wilson | June 23, 2012, 9:28 pm
  5. The Shad­ow­Pope cometh:

    Pope Bene­dict XVI gives emo­tion­al farewell, while Vat­i­can reveals he hit head dur­ing 2012 trip to Mex­i­co

    Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 14, 2013

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    VATICAN CITY – Pope Bene­dict XVI’s emo­tion­al farewell took an inti­mate turn Thurs­day as he held off-the-cuff rem­i­nis­cences with Roman priests. In the back­ground, ques­tions kept mount­ing about the true state of Bene­dic­t’s health and his influ­ence over the next pon­tiff.

    For a sec­ond day, Bene­dict sent very point­ed mes­sages to his suc­ces­sor and to the car­di­nals who will elect that man about the direc­tion the Catholic Church must take once he is no longer pope. While these remarks have been clear­ly labeled as Bene­dic­t’s swan­song before retir­ing, his influ­ence after retire­ment remains the sub­ject of intense debate.

    Bene­dic­t’s res­ig­na­tion Feb. 28 cre­ates an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion — the first in 600 years — in which the Catholic Church will have both a reign­ing pope and a retired one. The Vat­i­can has insist­ed that Bene­dict will cease to be pope at exact­ly 8 p.m. on the his­toric day, devot­ing him­self entire­ly to a life of prayer.

    But the Vat­i­can con­firmed Thurs­day that Bene­dic­t’s trust­ed pri­vate sec­re­tary, the 56-year-old Mon­sign­or Georg Gaenswein, would remain as his sec­re­tary and live with Bene­dict in his retire­ment home in the Vat­i­can gar­dens — as well as remain pre­fect of the new pope’s house­hold.

    That dual role would seem to bol­ster con­cerns expressed pri­vate­ly by some car­di­nals that Bene­dict — by liv­ing inside the Vat­i­can and hav­ing his aide also work­ing for his suc­ces­sor — would con­tin­ue to exert at least some influ­ence on the Vat­i­can.

    Asked about this appar­ent con­flict of inter­est, the Vat­i­can spokesman, the Rev. Fed­eri­co Lom­bar­di said the pre­fec­t’s job is very tech­ni­cal, orga­niz­ing the pope’s audi­ences.

    “In this sense it is not a very pro­found prob­lem,” he said.

    ...

    In his homi­ly, Bene­dict lament­ed the inter­nal church rival­ries that he said had “defiled the face of the church” — a not-too-sub­tle mes­sage to his suc­ces­sor and the con­clave that will elect him.

    Those rival­ries came to the fore last year with the leaks of inter­nal papal doc­u­ments by the pope’s own but­ler. The doc­u­men­ta­tion revealed bit­ter infight­ing with­in the high­est ranks of the Catholic Church, along with alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment of the Holy See’s affairs.

    Bene­dict took the scan­dal as a per­son­al betray­al and a wound on the entire church. In a sign of his desire to get to the bot­tom of the leaks, he appoint­ed a com­mis­sion of car­di­nals to inves­ti­gate along­side Vat­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors.

    His but­ler, Pao­lo Gabriele, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 18 months in prison, although Bene­dict ulti­mate­ly par­doned him

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 14, 2013, 8:52 am
  6. Now that Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Barr is engag­ing in a legal show­down with Con­gress and poten­tial­ly fac­ing con­tempt of Con­gress charges over his refusal to tes­ti­fy before Con­gress, here’s a series of arti­cles that pro­vide some back­ground infor­ma­tion about Barr that could become par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant if we’re look­ing at a major fight before branch­es of gov­ern­ment: It appears that Barr is a bit of theo­crat who believes that the US gov­ern­ment has strayed from its man­date to enforce strict reli­gious moral­i­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, Barr wants to see con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion sub­si­dized by the gov­ern­ment and laws passed that “restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” a ref­er­ence to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and extra­mar­i­tal sex. And as the sec­ond arti­cle below hints, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble Barr is either a mem­ber of Opus Dei or at least a fel­low trav­el­er.

    As we’re also going to see, one of the orga­ni­za­tions Barr used to sit on the board of, the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, hap­pens to be one of Opus Dei’s DC-based orga­ni­za­tions. It was promi­nent­ly direct­ed by the now dis­graced Opus Dei mem­ber Rev. John McCloskey. Anoth­er cur­rent mem­ber of the board is Leonard Leo, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. Recall how Leo is behind the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work and a series of oth­er enti­ties that played a major role in back­ing the the Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions of Neil Gor­such and Brett Kavanaugh. Also recall how the financ­ing for the Leo’s orga­ni­za­tions was heav­i­ly financed by the bil­lion­aire Cork­ery fam­i­ly who are Opus Dei mem­bers. So, at a min­i­mum, Barr is a mem­ber of Opus Dei in spir­it. White House coun­sel Pat Cip­polone is also a for­mer board mem­ber Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, high­light­ing the pow­er­ful influ­ence Opus Dei-affil­i­at­ed indi­vid­u­als have on the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Ok, first, here’s a Dai­ly Beast arti­cle about Bar­r’s views on gov­ern­ment and reli­gion dur­ing the 1990’s. His high­ly puri­tan­i­cal Opus Dei-like views that he felt should be enforced by the gov­ern­ment:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    William Barr, Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pick, Want­ed Gov­ern­ment to ‘Restrain Sex­u­al Immoral­i­ty’
    In 1995, he blamed ‘sec­u­lar’ gov­ern­ment for every­thing from ris­ing crime to STDs and called for sub­si­diz­ing reli­gious schools to turn back ‘assault’ on ‘tra­di­tion­al val­ues.’

    Jay Michael­son
    12.09.18 8:41 PM ET

    William Barr, Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for attor­ney gen­er­al, is wide­ly regard­ed as a respect­ed, expe­ri­enced mod­er­ate like­ly to win sup­port from Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike.

    But in a 1995 essay, Barr expressed an extreme view that Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment should not be sec­u­lar, but instead should impose “a tran­scen­dent moral order with objec­tive stan­dards of right and wrong that… flows from God’s eter­nal law.”

    Barr went on to blame every­thing from crime to sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases on a gov­ern­ment-led attack on “tra­di­tion­al val­ues.” He explic­it­ly called for the gov­ern­ment to sub­si­dize Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion and to pro­mote laws which “restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” a ref­er­ence to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and extra­mar­i­tal sex.

    These views are no longer those of a pri­vate cit­i­zen. As attor­ney gen­er­al, Barr would have more influ­ence than any­one else in the coun­try in how laws deal­ing with reli­gion, LGBT rights, civ­il rights, and women’s rights are enforced or not.

    Barr served as attor­ney gen­er­al from 1991 to 1993. After he left gov­ern­ment, he laid out his views in an essay, “Legal Issues in a New Polit­i­cal Order” pub­lished in the St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty Law School jour­nal The Catholic Lawyer.

    “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment,” he wrote, “was pred­i­cat­ed pre­cise­ly on [the] Judeo-Chris­t­ian sys­tem” that “flows from God’s eter­nal law.” But since the 1960s, Barr wrote, “the state no longer sees itself as a moral insti­tu­tion, but a sec­u­lar one.”

    Specif­i­cal­ly, Barr con­tin­ued, “through leg­isla­tive action, lit­i­ga­tion, or judi­cial inter­pre­ta­tion, sec­u­lar­ists con­tin­u­al­ly seek to elim­i­nate laws that reflect’ tra­di­tion­al moral norms. Decades ago, we saw the bar­ri­ers to divorce elim­i­nat­ed. Twen­ty years ago, we saw the laws against abor­tion swept away. Today, we are see­ing the con­stant chip­ping away at laws designed to restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, obscen­i­ty, or euthana­sia.”

    In fact, those “bar­ri­ers to divorce” often forced women to remain in abu­sive or mis­er­able mar­riages, and treat­ed men as the “head and mas­ter” of the house­hold with near absolute pow­er, espe­cial­ly over shared prop­er­ty. And the “laws designed to restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty” crim­i­nal­ized gay sex, con­demn­ing mil­lions of les­bian and gay peo­ple to lives of mis­ery, iso­la­tion, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and vio­lence.

    In anoth­er spe­cif­ic exam­ple, Barr bemoaned the fact that “laws are pro­posed that treat a cohab­i­tat­ing cou­ple exact­ly as one would a mar­ried cou­ple. Land­lords can­not make the dis­tinc­tion, and must rent to the for­mer just as they would to the lat­ter.” In oth­er words, it would be bet­ter to allow hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against unmar­ried cou­ples, gay or straight (and all gay peo­ple, if same-sex mar­riage were not an option).

    All of these posi­tions would have pro­found effects on the Depart­ment of Jus­tice.

    If Barr wish­es laws to “reflect tra­di­tion­al moral norms” or “restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty” he can decline to enforce those which, in his view, do not. As we have already seen, vast “reli­gious exemp­tions” have already been imple­ment­ed by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice under Jeff Ses­sions that pro­tect land­lords (and restau­rant own­ers, hote­liers, and every­one else) from pros­e­cu­tion for dis­crim­i­na­tion. An entire DOJ office—head­ed by Roger Sev­eri­no, the author of the recent memo claim­ing trans­gen­der peo­ple don’t exist—has been cre­at­ed to pro­tect such indi­vid­u­als.

    Barr’s view of gov­ern­ment rais­es a num­ber of impor­tant questions—questions that should be asked dur­ing Barr’s con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings.

    Does Barr still believe that the state should become (or per­haps become again) a non-sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion? Does Barr believe that the Unit­ed States is a Chris­t­ian nation? Should it, like Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, enforce reli­gious law?

    Will Barr enforce fed­er­al anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, or ignore those that con­flict with the Catholic con­cep­tion of “nat­ur­al law,” as he defines it in his essay?

    What alter­na­tives does Barr see to a “pow­er­ful state that sees itself as a sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion alle­vi­at­ing the con­se­quences of mis­con­duct and often pro­mot­ing moral rel­a­tivism?”

    Is same-sex mar­riage a form of “sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” and if so, how would a Barr-led Jus­tice Depart­ment act to pro­tect or under­mine it?

    Does Barr still think that “the state is called upon to remove the incon­ve­nience and the costs asso­ci­at­ed with per­son­al misconduct”—and what are some spe­cif­ic exam­ples of laws that do so, and that he would thus leave unen­forced?

    Barr also has a dis­turbing­ly puri­tan­i­cal view of the last 50 years of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. In his essay, he com­plains that “since the mid-1960s, there has been a steady and mount­ing assault on tra­di­tion­al val­ues.” As a result of that “assault,” Barr writes, “we have lived through thir­ty years of per­mis­sive­ness, the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, and the drug cul­ture…. We have had unprece­dent­ed vio­lence. We have had soar­ing juve­nile crime, wide­spread drug addic­tion, and sky­rock­et­ing vene­re­al dis­eases.”

    Of course, we’ve also lived through the civ­il rights move­ment, the cul­tur­al flow­er­ing of the 1960s and 1970s, and the par­tial lib­er­a­tion of women and LGBT people—but these are unmen­tioned. Barr’s jere­mi­ad reads like some­thing out of Foot­loose or, again, The Handmaid’s Tale.

    And Barr has a high­ly dual­is­tic, sim­plis­tic, and moral­is­tic view of con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als. His essay describes a “his­toric strug­gle between two fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent sys­tems of val­ues.” On the one hand is the “tra­di­tion­al Judeo-Chris­t­ian moral sys­tem.” On the oth­er is “sec­u­lar­ism and the doc­trine of moral rel­a­tivism.”

    This is obvi­ous­ly false: in fact, mod­er­ate reli­gion­ists and the ‘spir­i­tu­al but not reli­gious’ com­prise a large plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, and they are nei­ther wed­ded to tra­di­tion­al­ist doc­trines nor to rel­a­tivism. They under­stand that prin­ci­ples such as treat­ing peo­ple fair­ly, min­i­miz­ing suf­fer­ing, and pro­vid­ing access to jus­tice are indeed fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal val­ues. Lib­er­als do not believe, as Barr alleges, that “every­one writes their own rule book.” They sim­ply do not believe that moral­i­ty depends on God-giv­en nat­ur­al law.

    Once again, these are not per­son­al state­ments of faith, but polit­i­cal state­ments as well. The pos­si­bil­i­ty is real that the next attor­ney gen­er­al may actu­al­ly believe that the state should become a non-sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion. That world­view is pro­found­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic. If laws are decid­ed by God, what’s the point of a leg­is­la­ture? Can vot­ers legit­i­mate­ly over­turn God’s will? And if not, what is the job of an attor­ney gen­er­al?

    The con­clu­sion of Barr’s essay is per­haps the most trou­bling part of all.

    “The real mes­sage,” Barr wrote to his puta­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic audi­ence, “is that we are going to have to do more than joust around the mar­gins. We must reen­ter the fray in an effec­tive way; take the bat­tle­field and enter the strug­gle.”

    That is a mil­i­taris­tic, us-ver­sus-them mes­sage. And the essay’s pro­pos­al for undo­ing the sec­u­lar state is to sub­si­dize Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion so that Catholics can “reassem­ble the flock” and fight on the polit­i­cal bat­tle­field as true believ­ers: “This means vouch­ers at the state lev­el and ulti­mate­ly at the fed­er­al lev­el to sup­port parental choice in edu­ca­tion. We should press at every turn for the inclu­sion of reli­gious insti­tu­tions. We need to fight those cas­es in the states up to the Supreme Court. Whether or not we pre­vail on pro­grams should make no dif­fer­ence. The mes­sage will get stronger.”

    The views that Barr has expressed are not those of a mod­er­ate as he is being por­trayed but of an arch-con­ser­v­a­tive with an extreme, hos­tile view of most of Amer­i­can soci­ety. In his world, the Chris­t­ian nation has been cor­rupt­ed by decades of post-1960s rel­a­tivism and sec­u­lar­ism. Unless he has revised his posi­tions in recent years, Barr’s appoint­ment would be a dis­as­ter for the civ­il rights of women, LGBTs, non-reli­gious peo­ple, and oth­ers.

    ...

    ———-

    “William Barr, Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pick, Want­ed Gov­ern­ment to ‘Restrain Sex­u­al Immoral­i­ty’” by Jay Michael­son; The Dai­ly Beast; 12/09/2018

    “But in a 1995 essay, Barr expressed an extreme view that Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment should not be sec­u­lar, but instead should impose “a tran­scen­dent moral order with objec­tive stan­dards of right and wrong that… flows from God’s eter­nal law.”

    Gov­ern­ment should­n’t be sec­u­lar. Instead, it should impose “a tran­scen­dent moral order with objec­tive stan­dards of right and wrong that… flows from God’s eter­nal law. And that includes gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion and laws that pun­ish homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and extra­mar­i­tal sex. These were the views he shared in the 1995 essay pub­lished in the St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty Law School jour­nal The Catholic Lawyer:

    ...
    Barr went on to blame every­thing from crime to sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases on a gov­ern­ment-led attack on “tra­di­tion­al val­ues.” He explic­it­ly called for the gov­ern­ment to sub­si­dize Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion and to pro­mote laws which “restrain sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” a ref­er­ence to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and extra­mar­i­tal sex.

    ...

    Barr served as attor­ney gen­er­al from 1991 to 1993. After he left gov­ern­ment, he laid out his views in an essay, “Legal Issues in a New Polit­i­cal Order” pub­lished in the St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty Law School jour­nal The Catholic Lawyer.

    “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment,” he wrote, “was pred­i­cat­ed pre­cise­ly on [the] Judeo-Chris­t­ian sys­tem” that “flows from God’s eter­nal law.” But since the 1960s, Barr wrote, “the state no longer sees itself as a moral insti­tu­tion, but a sec­u­lar one.”

    ...

    And Barr has a high­ly dual­is­tic, sim­plis­tic, and moral­is­tic view of con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als. His essay describes a “his­toric strug­gle between two fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent sys­tems of val­ues.” On the one hand is the “tra­di­tion­al Judeo-Chris­t­ian moral sys­tem.” On the oth­er is “sec­u­lar­ism and the doc­trine of moral rel­a­tivism.”

    This is obvi­ous­ly false: in fact, mod­er­ate reli­gion­ists and the ‘spir­i­tu­al but not reli­gious’ com­prise a large plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, and they are nei­ther wed­ded to tra­di­tion­al­ist doc­trines nor to rel­a­tivism. They under­stand that prin­ci­ples such as treat­ing peo­ple fair­ly, min­i­miz­ing suf­fer­ing, and pro­vid­ing access to jus­tice are indeed fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal val­ues. Lib­er­als do not believe, as Barr alleges, that “every­one writes their own rule book.” They sim­ply do not believe that moral­i­ty depends on God-giv­en nat­ur­al law.

    Once again, these are not per­son­al state­ments of faith, but polit­i­cal state­ments as well. The pos­si­bil­i­ty is real that the next attor­ney gen­er­al may actu­al­ly believe that the state should become a non-sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion. That world­view is pro­found­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic. If laws are decid­ed by God, what’s the point of a leg­is­la­ture? Can vot­ers legit­i­mate­ly over­turn God’s will? And if not, what is the job of an attor­ney gen­er­al?
    ...

    Beyond that, Barr tells his con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic audi­ence in this essay that, “we are going to have to do more than joust around the mar­gins. We must reen­ter the fray in an effec­tive way; take the bat­tle­field and enter the strug­gle,” in ref­er­ence to a polit­i­cal bat­tle­field:

    ...
    The con­clu­sion of Barr’s essay is per­haps the most trou­bling part of all.

    “The real mes­sage,” Barr wrote to his puta­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic audi­ence, “is that we are going to have to do more than joust around the mar­gins. We must reen­ter the fray in an effec­tive way; take the bat­tle­field and enter the strug­gle.”

    That is a mil­i­taris­tic, us-ver­sus-them mes­sage. And the essay’s pro­pos­al for undo­ing the sec­u­lar state is to sub­si­dize Catholic reli­gious edu­ca­tion so that Catholics can “reassem­ble the flock” and fight on the polit­i­cal bat­tle­field as true believ­ers: “This means vouch­ers at the state lev­el and ulti­mate­ly at the fed­er­al lev­el to sup­port parental choice in edu­ca­tion. We should press at every turn for the inclu­sion of reli­gious insti­tu­tions. We need to fight those cas­es in the states up to the Supreme Court. Whether or not we pre­vail on pro­grams should make no dif­fer­ence. The mes­sage will get stronger.”

    The views that Barr has expressed are not those of a mod­er­ate as he is being por­trayed but of an arch-con­ser­v­a­tive with an extreme, hos­tile view of most of Amer­i­can soci­ety. In his world, the Chris­t­ian nation has been cor­rupt­ed by decades of post-1960s rel­a­tivism and sec­u­lar­ism. Unless he has revised his posi­tions in recent years, Barr’s appoint­ment would be a dis­as­ter for the civ­il rights of women, LGBTs, non-reli­gious peo­ple, and oth­ers.
    ...

    So that gives us an idea of who Bill Barr was in 1995: an arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic with a theo­crat­ic world­view. And when you learn about polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics with a theo­crat­ic world­view, one of the first obvi­ous ques­tions to ask is whether or not this per­son is a secret mem­ber of Opus Dei.

    And while we don’t yet have a con­fir­ma­tion of Bar­r’s Opus Dei mem­ber, here’s a pair of arti­cles from Jan­u­ary of this year about a now-dis­graced Opus Dei mem­ber who Barr appears to have been close to. Rev. C. John McCloskey was a high-pro­file Catholic priest dur­ing ear­ly 2000’s who would rou­tine­ly show up on polit­i­cal shows like NBC’s Meet the Press. McCloskey is also an open mem­ber of Opus Dei.

    McCloskey con­vert­ed some polit­i­cal fig­ures to Catholi­cism dur­ing this time, includ­ing Newt Gin­grich, Sam Brown­back, and Lar­ry Kud­low. Note that Kud­low replaced Gary Cohn as Pres­i­dent Trump’s chief eco­nom­ic advis­er last year and appears to be cur­rent­ly try­ing to stack the Fed­er­al Reserve for far right lunatics who pro­mote the gold stan­dard. And recall how Brown­back does­n’t just have ties to Opus Dei. He’s also a mem­ber of “The Fel­low­ship”. It’s a reminder that there’s prob­a­bly a great deal of over­lap between the mem­ber­ship and activ­i­ties of these two theo­crat­ic groups.

    But then, in 2003, McCloskey sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared from the spot­light for mys­te­ri­ous rea­sons. We learned in Jan­u­ary of this year the rea­son: mul­ti­ple women had accused McCloskey of sex­u­al harass­ment.

    Where does Bill Barr fit into the rise and fall of Rev. McCloskey? Well, one of McCloskey’s endur­ing lega­cies is the trans­for­ma­tion he made to Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter. When McCloskey arrived in 1998 to be the new direc­tor of the cen­ter he had the goal of trans­form­ing it was a sleepy oper­a­tion into a spir­i­tu­al hub in DC and he large­ly suc­ceed­ed. As the arti­cle puts it, the “small cen­ter — its mem­bers and its lead­ers — con­tin­ue to have an out­size impact on pol­i­cy and pol­i­tics. It is the con­ser­v­a­tive spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al cen­ter that McCloskey had imag­ined and its influ­ence is felt in all of Washington’s cor­ri­dors of pow­er.” Sit­ting today on the board of the cen­ter today is Leonard Leo. And White House coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone and Bill Barr are both for­mer board mem­bers:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    ‘Quite a shock’: The priest was a D.C. lumi­nary. Then he had a dis­turb­ing fall from grace.

    By Joe Heim
    Jan­u­ary 14, 2019

    When the Rev. C. John McCloskey returned to his home­town of Wash­ing­ton in 1998 at age 44, he had a mis­sion. As the new­ly appoint­ed direc­tor of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, he want­ed to trans­form it from a sleepy oper­a­tion down­town to a vibrant spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al hub. He want­ed to com­mu­ni­cate his enthu­si­asm for his faith and bring oth­ers to it. And he want­ed to do this, not just for ordi­nary Catholics, but for the capital’s movers and shak­ers, Catholic or not.

    In what seemed like no time at all, McCloskey — a mem­ber of Opus Dei, a small, ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive and con­tro­ver­sial Catholic com­mu­ni­ty — made his mark. The cen­ter moved to its cur­rent K Street NW loca­tion, just two blocks from the White House, and became a bustling gath­er­ing place for con­ser­v­a­tive aca­d­e­mics, politi­cians, jour­nal­ists and young pro­fes­sion­als. Week­day Mass­es in the center’s chapel were always packed. McCloskey was an ener­getic evan­ge­list for his unyield­ing vision of the church, wel­com­ing strangers and polit­i­cal celebri­ties alike to com­mit to its rad­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive beliefs.

    Soon, the telegenic priest was shar­ing his views as a reg­u­lar on polit­i­cal talk shows such as “Cross­fire” and “Meet the Press,” and on the Eter­nal Word Tele­vi­sion Net­work, a Catholic cable chan­nel. Polit­i­cal Wash­ing­ton didn’t just take notice, it embraced him. He kept com­pa­ny with a rotat­ing cast of right-of-cen­ter big­wigs, includ­ing Judge Robert H. Bork, Sen. Sam Brown­back (R‑Kan.), econ­o­mist Lar­ry Kud­low and for­mer House speak­er Newt Gin­grich (R‑Ga.), all of whom he helped con­vert to Catholi­cism. Arti­cles described him as the “Catholic Church’s K Street lob­by­ist,” “a firm voice, fos­ter­ing faith” and a “cru­sad­er.”

    But what no one envi­sioned was his rapid fall just five years after arriv­ing in Wash­ing­ton for rea­sons that weren’t dis­closed until last week.

    At his peak, McCloskey was a cen­tral fig­ure in polit­i­cal Wash­ing­ton.

    “There’s no ques­tion that he was the chap­lain of Wash­ing­ton con­ser­v­a­tives and he held a real appeal for them,” said jour­nal­ist Mark Shields, who met McCloskey only a few times, but knew him through his friend and long­time polit­i­cal spar­ring part­ner, Robert Novak. Shields, a lib­er­al Catholic, said he often joust­ed over faith issues with Novak, who was drawn to McCloskey’s tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism and was lat­er bap­tized and con­firmed by him.

    As his rep­u­ta­tion grew, McCloskey opined often on mat­ters of faith and church and cul­ture. He crit­i­cized lay groups that want­ed more con­trol over inves­ti­ga­tions of cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. He advo­cat­ed force­ful­ly against abor­tion and said mar­ried Catholic cou­ples using birth con­trol should refrain from tak­ing Com­mu­nion. He argued that Amer­i­can men suf­fered from “Friend­ship Deficit Syn­drome” and said wives should encour­age their hus­bands to spend more time with their male friends and less time at home. He added that men were afraid to go out in groups in big cities, because observers would think they were gay.

    If oth­er Catholic cler­gy mem­bers were cir­cum­spect about shar­ing their views, McCloskey didn’t hold back. “A lib­er­al Catholic is oxy­moron­ic,” he told Slate in 2002. “The def­i­n­i­tion of a per­son who dis­agrees with what the Catholic Church is teach­ing is called a Protes­tant.”

    For friends and fol­low­ers, McCloskey’s approach was over­due. And his mes­sage was one they want­ed offi­cial Wash­ing­ton to hear.

    “I’d like to unleash him on Capi­tol Hill,” Kud­low told the Wash­ing­ton Times in 2001. “A few dos­es of Father McCloskey, and we’ll turn this coun­try around. He’s an old-fash­ioned evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor. In some ways, the Catholic Church has fall­en short in its evan­ge­liz­ing mis­sion, and I think Father John is awak­en­ing that.”

    And then in late 2003, as his pro­file grew ever larg­er, McCloskey was gone. Not dis­ap­peared exact­ly, but nowhere to be seen, at least in any offi­cial capac­i­ty. He left, he told some friends and asso­ciates, for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to study in Eng­land. The work of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter would con­tin­ue, but with­out the direc­tion of the man who had reignit­ed its flame.

    ‘Quite a shock’

    McCloskey’s abrupt depar­ture left some scratch­ing their heads, but they assumed he had good rea­sons for giv­ing up on the Wash­ing­ton grind of green rooms and galas. Last week, the real expla­na­tion for McCloskey’s hasty exit from Wash­ing­ton was revealed.

    A woman who had gone to him in 2002 for spir­i­tu­al guid­ance told The Wash­ing­ton Post that the pop­u­lar prelate had vic­tim­ized her. On sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing and after pri­vate spir­i­tu­al coun­sel­ing ses­sions in his office to dis­cuss her trou­bled mar­riage, he put his hands on her hips and pressed him­self against her, kissed her hair and caressed her, the woman said. She said she had smelled alco­hol on his breath.

    The glob­al Opus Dei com­mu­ni­ty con­firmed last week that it ordered McCloskey to leave Wash­ing­ton in 2003 and said his priest­ly duties were restrict­ed. Sub­se­quent reports have raised ques­tions about whether his duties were restrict­ed and in which ways. He was lat­er sent to Chica­go and Cal­i­for­nia. Opus Dei paid the woman a $977,000 sex­u­al mis­con­duct set­tle­ment in 2005.

    For her, McCloskey’s actions were a deep and humil­i­at­ing betray­al.

    “He absolute­ly radi­at­ed holi­ness and kind­ness and car­ing and charis­ma,” the woman said Thurs­day in an inter­view. “He per­suad­ed me that I need­ed to be hugged, which of course I did, but I need­ed to be hugged by my hus­band, not by him.” The Post does not name vic­tims of sex­u­al assault with­out their con­sent.

    Anoth­er woman told Opus Dei that she was “made uncom­fort­able” by the way McCloskey hugged her, the group told The Post. The com­mu­ni­ty says it is inves­ti­gat­ing a third claim described by an Opus Dei spokesman as poten­tial­ly seri­ous. In a state­ment, Mon­sign­or Thomas Bohlin, the Opus Dei vic­ar, said McCloskey’s actions at the cen­ter were “deeply painful for the woman” who made the ini­tial com­plaint “and we are very sor­ry for all she suf­fered.”

    McCloskey, 65, is once again liv­ing in the Wash­ing­ton area and has advanced Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Opus Dei offi­cials said.

    The rev­e­la­tion about McCloskey’s actions and the rea­son he was sent away stunned many who knew him at the height of his pow­ers in the cap­i­tal.

    “This whole thing has come as quite a shock to me,” said Rus­sell Shaw, who co-wrote a book with McCloskey, “Good News, Bad News: Evan­ge­liza­tion, Con­ver­sion and the Cri­sis of Faith.” “I thought it was abrupt when he left and now I won­der why I didn’t dream of any­thing like this.”

    Hele­na Met­zger, a long­time vol­un­teer and for­mer board mem­ber at the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, said she was sur­prised when McCloskey left and shocked when she found out the rea­son a few years lat­er from anoth­er Opus Dei priest.

    “He was a very vis­i­ble priest and I knew him quite well, and there were nev­er any signs that any­thing like this was tak­ing place,” she said.

    Many of those clos­est to McCloskey when he was in Wash­ing­ton — includ­ing Brown­back, Gin­grich and Kud­low — did not return mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

    ‘A brash­ness about him’

    McCloskey did not take a typ­i­cal path to the priest­hood. After grad­u­at­ing from St. John’s Col­lege High School in North­west Wash­ing­ton, he went to Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he majored in eco­nom­ics. With his Ivy League degree in hand, he head­ed not to the sem­i­nary, but to Wall Street, where he worked for Citibank and Mer­rill Lynch. A few years lat­er, he moved to Rome to begin his train­ing to become a priest.

    After his ordi­na­tion in 1981, McCloskey returned to the Unit­ed States and with­in a few years was installed as the Catholic chap­lain at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He soon became enmeshed in cam­pus con­tro­ver­sies. Crit­ics said he told Catholic stu­dents to steer away from cer­tain class­es he con­sid­ered insuf­fi­cient­ly Chris­t­ian, reports at the time said. Oth­ers were angered by his uncom­pro­mis­ing posi­tions on birth con­trol and pre­mar­i­tal sex. McCloskey had a way of find­ing con­tro­ver­sy and atten­tion no mat­ter where he went.

    “There was a brash­ness about him that I always asso­ci­at­ed with the Wall Street ethos,” the Rev. John Paul Wauck, an Opus Dei priest who knew McCloskey, wrote in an email. “You could say that, as a priest, he main­tained an entre­pre­neur­ial atti­tude. For some, this was off-putting; for oth­ers, it was, I’d say, invig­o­rat­ing and even enter­tain­ing.”

    McCloskey har­nessed that entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it to per­suade peo­ple, most­ly men, to become Catholics. In New York in 1997, he con­vert­ed Kud­low, who was recov­er­ing from addic­tion. Mark Bel­nick, a for­mer gen­er­al coun­sel of Tyco Inter­na­tion­al, who described McCloskey as a “great friend” in a New York mag­a­zine arti­cle, soon fol­lowed. They would be among the first in a long line of high-pro­file con­ver­sions that McCloskey facil­i­tat­ed.

    “It’s just like the bro­ker­age busi­ness or any busi­ness of sales,” McCloskey told the Nation­al Catholic Reporter in 2003. “You get a rep­u­ta­tion, you deal with one per­son and they men­tion you to anoth­er per­son .?.?. and all of a sud­den you have a string of peo­ple.”

    The con­ver­sions came nat­u­ral­ly to McCloskey because “he just had an absolute cer­tain­ty about what he was propos­ing, and he had no hes­i­ta­tion at all about unapolo­get­i­cal­ly offer­ing Catholi­cism as an option,” said Shaw, his co-author.

    Although he left Wash­ing­ton at per­haps the height of his fame, McCloskey’s lega­cy is the ongo­ing influ­ence of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter. The center’s board includes Leonard Leo, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, which helped shep­herd the Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gor­such. White House coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone is a for­mer board mem­ber, as is William P. Barr, who served as attor­ney gen­er­al under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and is now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee for the same posi­tion.

    The small cen­ter — its mem­bers and its lead­ers — con­tin­ue to have an out­size impact on pol­i­cy and pol­i­tics. It is the con­ser­v­a­tive spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al cen­ter that McCloskey had imag­ined and its influ­ence is felt in all of Washington’s cor­ri­dors of pow­er.

    ...

    ———-

    “‘Quite a shock’: The priest was a D.C. lumi­nary. Then he had a dis­turb­ing fall from grace.” by Joe Heim; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/14/2019

    “Although he left Wash­ing­ton at per­haps the height of his fame, McCloskey’s lega­cy is the ongo­ing influ­ence of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter. The center’s board includes Leonard Leo, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, which helped shep­herd the Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gor­such. White House coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone is a for­mer board mem­ber, as is William P. Barr, who served as attor­ney gen­er­al under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and is now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee for the same posi­tion.”

    So on top of pen­ning that 1995 essay where he basi­cal­ly called for a Catholic theoc­ra­cy, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Barr is also a for­mer board mem­ber of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter which was start­ed by the now-dis­graced Opus Dei mem­ber John McCloskey. Accord­ing to Bar­r’s own answers to a Sen­ate ques­tion­naire, he was serv­ing on the board from from 2014–2017. So Barr was serv­ing in a high lev­el posi­tion in an Opus Dei enti­ty short­ly before tak­ing his cur­rent job.

    It’s also rather inter­est­ing that McCloskey start­ed off work­ing for Wall Street before train­ing to become a priest:

    ...
    ‘A brash­ness about him’

    McCloskey did not take a typ­i­cal path to the priest­hood. After grad­u­at­ing from St. John’s Col­lege High School in North­west Wash­ing­ton, he went to Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he majored in eco­nom­ics. With his Ivy League degree in hand, he head­ed not to the sem­i­nary, but to Wall Street, where he worked for Citibank and Mer­rill Lynch. A few years lat­er, he moved to Rome to begin his train­ing to become a priest.
    ...

    So it prob­a­bly should­n’t come as a sur­prise that McCloskey is appar­ent­ly a hard core free-mar­ke­teer who defends the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of pro-busi­ness poli­cies with Catholic the­ol­o­gy. In oth­er words, he’s the per­fect reli­gious leader for the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

    Or at least was a per­fect reli­gious leader until the mul­ti­ple sex­u­al harass­ment charges. He would pre­sum­ably still be in good stand­ing in the Age of Trump. But, alas, it does­n’t sound like McCloskey has time to make a come­back due to advanced Alzheimer’s dis­ease at the age fo 65. Although, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, McCloskey has been pub­lish­ing a num­ber of arti­cles in recent years, includ­ing one in 2018. So either some­one else write those arti­cles or the church is lying about McCloskey’s Alzheimer’s:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Did Opus Dei Lie to Pro­tect Priest Who Bap­tized Newt Gin­grich?
    The secret order of Catholic elite paid near­ly $1 mil­lion to set­tle with the vic­tim of Father-to-the-stars John McCloskey, and con­tin­ues to lie about remov­ing him from min­istry.

    Bar­bie Latza Nadeau
    01.10.19 10:28 AM ET

    For many years, Father John McCloskey was a sort of priest to the stars, espe­cial­ly to high-pro­file and often Repub­li­can con­verts to Catholi­cism like Newt Gin­grich and the cur­rent White House eco­nom­ic advis­er Lar­ry Kud­low.

    ...

    Opus Dei says McCloskey left active min­istry in ear­ly 2017 when they say it became clear he was suc­cumb­ing to “advanced Alzheimer’s” dis­ease and could no longer serve the pub­lic or, for that mat­ter, com­ment on the alle­ga­tions against him.

    Accord­ing to a state­ment by Mon­sign­or Thomas Bohlin, the vic­ar of Opus Dei, pub­lished Jan­u­ary 7, “Father McCloskey cur­rent­ly suf­fers from advanced Alzheimer’s. He is large­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed and needs assis­tance for rou­tine dai­ly tasks. He has not had any pas­toral assign­ments for a num­ber of years and is no longer able to cel­e­brate Mass, even pri­vate­ly.”

    But The Dai­ly Beast found dozens of com­plex arti­cles he wrote in 2017 and at least one arti­cle he authored as late as 2018—a book review of Aquinas and Evo­lu­tion titled “How Does St. Thomas Aquinas Approach Evo­lu­tion?” in Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter in which McCloskey is iden­ti­fied as a “church his­to­ri­an who writes from Vir­ginia.”

    If Father McCloskey is tru­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed, as his reli­gious order says he is, it is noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle that he can write about such com­plex top­ics. And if he’s not, it is noth­ing short of a lie.

    ...
    ———-

    “Did Opus Dei Lie to Pro­tect Priest Who Bap­tized Newt Gin­grich?” by Bar­bie Latza Nadeau; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/10/2019

    “If Father McCloskey is tru­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed, as his reli­gious order says he is, it is noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle that he can write about such com­plex top­ics. And if he’s not, it is noth­ing short of a lie.”

    So over 15 years after he basi­cal­ly dis­ap­pears, we learn that McCloskey was forced to leave pub­lic life due to sex­u­al harass­ment. And now that this is known, Opus Dei is telling us that McCloskey has dis­ease that just hap­pens to waste away his mem­o­ries. But they appear to be lying. Imag­ine that.

    And this is the cir­cle Bill Barr runs in: the DC Opus Dei cir­cle. So as we watch­ing the bat­tles between Con­gress and the White House play out, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Barr would like to see a fun­da­men­tal over­haul of the US gov­ern­ment in the direc­tion of a fas­cist theoc­ra­cy and has a lot of pow­er­ful allies that share those goals. So if it seems like Barr is behav­ing like he active­ly wants to break the gov­ern­ment, maybe that’s because he actu­al­ly does.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 8, 2019, 2:41 pm

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