Benedict XVI blames 60s culture, sexual revolution, for scandals, moral decline of Catholic Church

I have often written, here and in other publications, and told anyone who will listen, that the decline of the Roman Catholic Church and Christian (Western) society in general started in the hippy-dippy sixties. Our religion and our culture was killed by secularism and the counter-culture. So I enjoyed something of a "told ya so" moment yesterday when "Pope Emeritus" Benedict XVI released an essay on sexual abuse in the Church, which he blames on the "absence of God".

In the introduction to his "notes", the ex-Holy Father [Can there be such a thing? Ed.] writes: In the first part, I aim to present briefly the wider social context of the question, without which the problem cannot be understood. I try to show that in the 1960s an egregious event occurred, on a scale unprecedented in history.... In the second part, I aim to point out the effects of this situation on the formation of priests and on the lives of priests. Finally, in the third part, I would like to develop some perspectives for a proper response on the part of the Church."

In the 6000-world essay, which originally appeared in Klerusblatt, a German-language magazine for the clergy, Pope Ratzinger blames the Church's sexual abuse scandal on the 1960s sexual revolution, growing secularization and weak church laws that made prosecution of guilty priests difficult. "Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom.... Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of `68 was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate." What an amazing admission! How dismaying for faithful Catholics, to hear this from no less a personage than the former Vicar of Christ. But there's more...

"Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?", Pope Ratzinger asks. "Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God," he answers, noting failed attempts to include a reference to God in European Union treaties as a negative example of Western secularization. He also cited the appearance of sex in films in the 60s in his native Bavaria and the formation in seminaries of "homosexual cliques" in seminaries "which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate." He also attributes the moral corruption of the Catholic clergy and the Church as a whole to "failures in moral theology".

Benedict also faulted Church laws that protected accused priests. He wrote that during the 80s and 90s "the right to a defence (for priests) was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible." In 1981 Pope John Paul II named Cardinal Ratzinger (as he then was) Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office and, especially around the 16th century, as the Roman Inquisition.

But did he do anything to excise the rotten and diseased members of Christ's Church? He tried in 2001 to reforms of those laws to make it easier to remove priests who abused children, and later, as Pope, defrocked 100s of priests accused of raping and molesting children. But he was opposed by powerful forces -- "the lavender Mafia" -- within the Vatican itself. Some say his unprecedented "resignation" was engineered by those same evil men, who succeeded in replacing him with the more tolerant and merciful Jorge Bergoglio.

Compared with Pope Francis, Benedict XVI emerges in this essay as a voice calling Catholics to turn away from the excesses of Vatican II, and back to the values of traditional Catholicism. Of course he does not suggest that Vatican II was in error or anything like the "anti-council" which many traditionalists now claim it was.

He writes: "The Second Vatican Council was rightly focused on returning this sacrament of the Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ...to the centre of Christian life and the very existence of the Church. In part, this really has come about, and we should be most grateful to the Lord for it. [But] what predominates [now] is not a new reverence for the presence of Christ's death and resurrection, but a way of dealing with Him that destroys the greatness of the Mystery." The reference is to declining participation in Sunday Mass and treatment of the Eucharist as "a mere ceremonial gesture."

"We do not need another Church of our own design," Benedict concludes. "Rather, what is required first and foremost is the renewal of the Faith in the Reality of Jesus Christ given to us in the Blessed Sacrament." A pity he didn't tell us sooner, but let us hope and pray for a Catholic Counter-Revolution, before Christ's Church disintegrates completely. Amen.

Further reading: "Benedict XVI addresses sex abuse scandal", Catholic Herald, 11/4/19.

UPDATED: VIDEO: Why Al Franken has to quit and POTUS doesn't

I saw clips from soon-to-be-ex-Senator Al Franken's churlish and mean-spirited announcement that he would be leaving the Senate at some unspecified time in the future. The New York Times described the Democratic Senator from Minnesota as "emotional...defiant and mournful but hardly contrite" as he denied allegations of having groped and made improper advances towards "at least" six women.

Mr Franken again denied the allegations but said he'd resign anyway -- a strange position for a lawmaker of the US of A, where everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Why didn't he insist on having his day in court, so he could confront his accusers mano-a-womano and show them up for the Trumpian conspirators that they undoubtedly are?

Instead, as his Democratic colleagues -- the ones who threw him under the bus -- looked on, the SNL alumnus took a parting shot at President Trump and Judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate in today's special election in Alabama. (Walt predicts Judge Moore will win by a comfortable margin. Lifetime pct .989.)

Groping for words (this time), Mr Franken told the meeja "I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party."

What Mr Franken really meant is: "How come I have to quit and the other two don't?" Walt will explain four words: It's that picture, stupid! Unlike President Trump or Judge Moore, Mr Franken has been caught red-handed, so to speak.

The allegations of misbehaviour against Judge Moore are decades old, and the only "evidence" that has been produced is an inscription alleged to be in the high school yearbook belong to one of the accusers, of which only a photo has been made public. The lawyer for the offended woman refuses to produce the actual yearbook so the authenticity of the not-very-damning writing can be verified.

The case against President Trump is even weaker, weak to the point of being non-existent. There is only the little Billy Bush video clip in which (if you believe it hasn't been tampered with) you can hear Mr Trump saying that, because of his celebrity status, he could, if he wanted to, grab a woman by the pussy and get away with it. If he wanted to! He didn't say he did that, and no-one -- no-one! -- has come forward to say he did that, or anything like it.

Compare that with the numerous allegation of sexual harassment and misconduct made against Mr Franken's political crony, Bill Clinton, for crimes and misdemeanours which he committed while he was in office as Governor of Arkansas or President of the Excited States of America. In spite of the shitload of evidence against him, Hellery's husband was never impeached and never resigned, so if and when Mr Franken actually leaves the Senate, we'll give him that one. Resigning would show that, at last, he gets it!

BREAKING NEWS: UPDATED AT 1000 today: Beverly Young Nelson has finally admitted that she forged a portion of the infamous high school yearbook that she and attorney Gloria Allred used as proof of her accusations against US Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore. Click here to read the story on Breitbart News. Great timing, eh, since the special election is less than a week away.

With his usual impeccable timing, our good friend Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant, has just posted a video in which he  discusses sexual harassment in politics and entertainment, and asks the question: Where is the media's newfound moral indignation coming from? What did they expect after 50 years of sexual revolution, classroom sex education, free love, and women demanding to be treated just like men? Plus, is there a connection between all of this and the total breakdown of modesty in dress in our culture?

Walt remembers well the hippy-dippy 60s, in which all this started. The middle of that decade coincided with the Second Vatican Council, the beginning of the suicide of the Roman Catholic Church. The steady decline of Western society started in those years. I expect that decline to end -- in the total collapse of western civilization -- any day now.

Paul Harvey's 1965 prediction of America's future proves all too true

Do you remember Paul Harvey? Paul Harvey Aurandt (his full name) was an American radio broadcaster who was heard for many years on the ABC radio network. He voiced News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments throughout the day, from the 1950s through the 1990s. Mr. Harvey was listened to by as many as 24 million people a week on 1200 radio stations and 400 AFN (Armed Forces Network) stations. His columns appeared in 300 newspapers.

Paul Harvey was a social conservative, who was clearly -- and rightly -- dismayed by the cultural revolution that engulfed the Excited States of America in the hippy-dippy 60s. With the folk-song army and leftist elites leading the great "civil rights" charade ["crusade", shurely! Ed.] and the likes of Abbie Hoffman urging Amerikan yoof to "tune in, turn on and drop out", the lamestream media proclaimed the dawn of a new and brighter tomorrow -- LBJ's "Great Society".

Very few commentators had the foresight or the guts to predict that it would all end in tears. Paul Harvey was one who foresaw a dark future (adjective chosen deliberately) for the USA and had the courage to say so. On 3 April 1965 he broadcast a piece called "If I Were the Devil" in which he described the sad state of the nation as we see it today, half a century later. Here is an updated version, recorded (audio only) in 1996. Running time 2:47.



Paul Harvey died on 28 February 2009, at the age of 90. Walt wonders how he was able to refrain from saying "I told you so!" Walt also wonders if, in his last days, Mr. Harvey consoled himself that he wouldn't be around to see things get even worse. Because they have!

Today, following Donald Trump's win in the Nevada Republican caucuses, the meeja have suddenly figured out that "Americans want change". That very headline appeared ina so-called "national newspaper" this morning. Well, DUH! But it may be too late for us to revert to the status quo ante. The Devil's forces rule the Western world. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to put the genie back in the bottle. Let us pray!

Are we making any progress?

Just reread The B.S. Factor, by Arthur Herzog (Simon & Schuster, 1973). The subtitle of the book is "The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America". It's about "thought pollution" -- the fakery and hypocrisy that pervades American communications. In the conclusion, Mr. Herzog calls for a new breed of "radical skeptics" who, he hopes, will clear away the bullshit that is now engulfing the USA.

Writing in 1973 -- not long after the "flower power" revolution -- the author poses an excellent question: did the social upheaval of the hippy-dippy `60s result in any real progress towards making America a better society? Here's a quote.

Among the things a asociety might want to conceal from itself -- because the realization might be too painful, or imply a need for changes that the society did not want to, or was afraid to make -- would be the failure to achieve its own stated goals. Progress, for instance.

Americans work, and work hard, but do they in any fundamental sense progress? And in a time-frame small enough so that progress is clearly focused? How do we measure progress? Greater personal security? Shorter work week? Better education? Improved medical protection? Higher culture? More happiness? In none of these ways does there seem to be progress commensurate with the enormous effort Americans have been putting out.

In a footnote to the quoted passage, Mr. Herzog says: "For a chronicle of our 'progress', see William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion (Random House, 1970). The remarkable (or perhaps unremarkable aspect of Douglas' depressing findings is that the conditions he reports are so persistent. In other words, years have passed and nothing has been done about them."

Walt hastens to add the the William O. Douglas whose book Mr. Herzog recommends is the same William O. Douglas who was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. He survived two attempts at impeachment before retiring in 1975, having served the longest term in the history of the court.

In 1975 Time magazine called Justice Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court". He appeared to have little regard for judicial consistency or stare decisis when deciding cases. And what were the fruits of the liberal judicial activism for which he became so well known? Was any progress made? Errr, no.

Bad English - Who cares?

In reviewing Michael Savage's Stop the Coming Civil War, Walt complained that the book is poorly written. I called it "not so much a piece of writing as a collage of transcriptions of Mr. Savage's radio rants." That doesn't mean it's hard to read. Quite the opposite. It's written and edited (?) to a level which is comfortable for a reader of the New York Post or National Enquirer. You know. The ones whose lips move as they read.

If I were to calculate Stop the Coming Civil War 's Fog Index, I'd bet that the book would prove to have been edited to a reading ease level of Grade 7. That, sadly, is about right for your average American or Canadian. (It's hard to tell about the Brits. The gap between the educated and uneducated in the UK is much wider than that of English-speaking North America.)

Thoughtful people like Dr. Rudolf Flesch have been bemoaning the decline of educational standards in general, and reading in particular, for decades. Dr. Flesch's seminal work Why Johnny Can't Read appeared in 1955. He argued for a return to the phonetic (as opposed to ideographic) method of learning to read. But instead of teaching people to read better, our "educators" are now teaching people to write worse!

This thesis is put forward -- with qualified approval -- by Dr. John H. McWhorter, of UC Berkeley (where else?) in Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (Gotham Books, 2003) -- winner of the Walt Whiteman Prize for Longest Book Title of that year.

Dr. John (as I'm sure he'd like to be known) is a musician cum linguist, or linguist cum musician, take your pick. He makes a good case that, in the hippy-dippy 60s, American English changed from being a written language to an oral language, written down the way it's spoken.

An extreme example -- Walt's, not Dr. John's -- would be the comparison of Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1960 with Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail `72. Just the style used to denote the year in the two titles makes the point. Since 1965 -- Dr. McWhorter is very precise about the year -- authors have started to write the way Americans talk... for better or worse.

Dr. McWhorter pinpoints 1965, the year following the passing of the Civil Rights Act. That landmark legislation made it suddenly not just OK, but cool to be black. "African-Americans" (a term which would only come years later) no longer had to "act white" or "talk white" to be successful, particularly in the field of popular music. Nat King Cole was out; Aretha Franklin was in. "Black English" or "ebonics" (as progressives like Dr. John would have it) became not just acceptable but emulated by the white majority.

The result? People stopped trying to write stylish, grammatical English and started writing as they talk. This is particularly so with popular music. Try writing down the lyrics of hit songs of the last two decades, and comparing them with the words turned out by even the poorer Tin Pan Alley hacks of yesteryear.

Dr. McWhorter flirts with the notion (if not the word) of the degradation of American English. Walt would say "blackification", but of course that's not politically correct. The fact remains that even educated people, like the Prez, have adopted a less grammatical, more folksy style of speech -- "We's all jes folks heah in Nawlins!" -- and that style is reflected in much American writing, including that of Michael Savage, Ph.D.

Dr. McWhorter does not condemn the degradation of American English. He merely identifies the trend and predicts that it will continue. He's all, like, wassup wit dat? He's OK with it, y'know? Walt is not. Walt doesn't speak (or write) WalMart.

Footnote: Like Michael Savage (Ph.D.), John McWhorter (Ph.D.) could do with the services of an editor and fact-checker. "Dr. Suess" should be "Dr. Seuss", but then, "Suess" sounds more like the way the name is pronounced. Dr. McWhorter doesn't write very well either, but he would probably say that just proves his point.

Further reading: "Book Review: John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing", Wordorigins, June 2004.

One positive change

I take back what I said in the previous post about everything having changed for the worse since the 60s. There has been one small but significant improvement in our lives, one exception to the general degradation of our society and culture.

I refer to the revolution in women's underwear. To this observer, the state of the art now is infinitely preferable to what it was 50 years ago. Those who wear the more natural undergarments of today must be much more comfortable than their mothers and grandmothers were back in the straight-laced 50s.

Let us be thankful, then, for the demise of Dagmars and the Frederick's of Hollywood bustline. Let us celebrate the falling from favour of pantyhose, which were singlehandedly [Is that the right word? Ed.] responsible for the alarming decline in the western birthrate.

Let joy -- and Anne and Yvonne and Maureen -- be unconfined.

50 years later

North American society started to disintegrate in the hippy-dippy 60s. I have expressed that opinion before. Just about every aspect of our lives has gotten worse. A list of what's wrong with our countries, our communities and our families would make a long book. Indeed, many such books have already been written.

It must have been about 50 years ago, the date when everything turned to shit. TV, health care, fast food, cars, politics, air travel... it's all shit! Compare the state of any of those things 50 years ago with that of the present day, and you can't help but think that the good old days really were better.

It's not just a case of looking backward through rose-coloured glasses. It's true.

Yesterday I got to think that we should be able to pinpoint a precise date when the rot set in. It's important that we do so in order to celebrate properly the 50th anniversary of the Reverse Midas Touch. Exactly when did everything start to go pear-shaped?

I nominate November 8, 1960 -- the day John F. Kennedy was elected. Those who said the world would never be the same again were right. Unfortunately, they were wrong in predicting the direction of change. Instead of marching bravely into a new Camelot, we took the first step down the long and slippery slope into the Inferno.

Readers are invited to name their own Day the World Changed Forever. Comments to walt.whiteman@yahoo.com.

Toronto: the new Detroit?

Walt's been away for a couple of days, emerging timidly from his woodland retreat to prowl the streets of three cities on the shores of the lower Great Lakes: Toronto, Detroit and Buffalo. It used to be fairly easy to tell which side of the border you were on. Now, I'm not so sure.

Just after WWII, Toronto was a small, sleepy, provincial city -- a collection of towns, really. People used to go to Buffalo for a good time. (Can you imagine?) The American border cities were where you found the nightlife and the excitement.

And the business. Detroit's booming auto plants turned out millions of exciting new cars every year, and people bought them. Canada's "Little Three" went along for the ride. Even Buffalo had businesses of some sort, not just dollar stores and pawn shops.

Then came the 60s and 70s. Toronto grew like Topsy and reorganized itself as "Metro" -- the city that worked. Torontonians started thinking of their city as "the Little Apple" -- Canada's answer to New York. Peter Ustinov called Toronto "like New York, if New York were run by the Swiss".

At the same time, the American cities of the rust belt fell apart, or, in the case of Detroit, got burned down in the race riots which marked the "civil rights" era of Kennedy, Johnson and, yes, Nixon. In my view, America has never recovered from the impact of the social engineering policies of that time and the economic turmoil of that time.

Detroit is a hollow shell. Buffalo is, by one recent estimate, the third-poorest city in the U.S.A. You can trace the beginning of the end back to the Kennedy-Johnson era and the liberal humanist economic and social policies of that time. See America in Our Time, by Godfrey Hodgson (Vintage Books, 1976).

What happened to Toronto? See following post.

The distemper of our times

Apologies to Peter Newman for borrowing the title of his excellent book on Canada in the 60s -- the Diefenbaker years. Click here to find out more about the book and where you can buy it. No, Walt doesn't get a commission, but commends it to you as a good commentary on the malaise of the hippy-dippy 60s. That decade was when the rot set it.

Fast forward to 1995, and the gentle, implacable warning of Father Gilbert Simard, a priest from St. Joachim, Ontario.

"To me, there is a longing in the heart of the people...to find what held our communities together thirty or forty years ago, and is not there now.

"There has been, in government, in the past ten, fifteen, even twenty years, a shift away from the Judaeo-Christian values that have always been the basis of our legislation, our conduct with each other, and our conduct with the community. We have lost the sense of that. We have lost the sense of values that our predecessors gave to us."

Father Simard said that to Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson 15 years ago. Today his words seem even more wise ... and sadly prescient.