Time for a little righteous anger

Bankruptcy judge rules parish assets available to victims
The Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. — A federal bankruptcy judge ruled today that all the parish churches, parochial schools and other property of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane can be liquidated to pay victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Little surprise here to anyone who's been following the Spokane and Portland bankruptcy cases. No doubt the "victims" lawyers and Judge Patricia Williams are vying for good seats in Hell, maybe the ones with those who sent the Carmelites of Compeigne and thousands of other priests and religious to the guillotine after the French revolution on their right, and the Canadian parliament on their left. And let's not forget the secularist press and the SNAP crowd cheering as tens of thousands of Catholics get robbed.

All this was foretold in an article I ran across somewhere a few weeks ago in which a Spokane attorney laid out exactly what was going to happen in the case and the steps he'd taken to stop it. I'll post a link when I find it. It was right on target.

Well, we can expect such treatment from such scoundrels and enemies of the Church, can't we? The Pollyannaish response to this news is to point out that it could be worse . . . that it is nothing compared to the wholesale expropriation of goods that occurred during the Protestant rebellions, or the persecutions following the French Revolution, or the destruction and transfer of Ukranian churches by the Bolsheviks. Not yet, baby!

And what a pity the Grace of the Episcopacy was bestowed on Skylstad. He's managed to lose in a few months what faithful Catholics in western Washington have built up over more than a century. Let's hope, for the sake of his soul, that he's a food and not one of the scoundrel bishops who are intentionally trying to destroy the church from within. And what a pity the other bishops of the United States voted for this man to represent them as USCCB president.

Lemmesee, what was that quote from St. John Eudes that I've heard oft repeated these last three years? Oh yeah, it was invoked about priests who diddled teenage boys and the bishops that sheltered them. But it seems to apply just as well to men like Skylstad who (intentionally or not) are squandering the matierial patrimony of collected from generations of faithful Catholics and are allowing souls of this generation to wander off to ruin (or are perhaps actively leading them there):

The most evident mark of God's anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them.

May God have mercy on the Catholics of the US (and for Spokane in particular) for all that we/they did to bring men like Skylstad down on our/themselves. May God have mercy on Skylstad for betraying his trust and discouraging and scandalizing so many souls. May God have mercy on the rest of the bishops conference for electing him to head the USCCB. And finally (for the moment), may God have mercy on the lawyers, agitators and judge that were the instruments of this latest castigation. As hard as it is, we need to pray that they repent soon enough to save their immortal souls, if not soon enough to undo this temporal injustice.