Joseph Schmidt brought my attention to this slobbery article about B-16.
The author of the slobber-fest is John Stephenson, a seminary professor at St. Catherine's, eh?
Adding his three-fold Amen! to the article is LCMS Pastor W. Weedon, whose praise is constantly sounded by Concordia's book blogger, Paul McCain, MDiv.
I will provide a little background, although I am not one of those 24/7 Vatican watchers.
Pope John Paul II did nothing except cover-up the global scandal of homosexual priests. One of JP's top officials was a predator. JP II moved Cardinal Law upstairs from Boston after it was shown how many deviant priests were protected by Law. The only one who lost his priestly office was one poor fellow who said the Church of Rome was wrong.
Ratzinger, before he was B-16, made all these cases strictly secret, so it is said that personal files were moved to the Vatican, where they could no longer be ordered open by court officials.
The first exposure of priests as repeat offenders, who moved around to cover up the crimes, began in the 1980s. There were cases before that, but a series of criminal misdeeds by prelates blossomed in the newspapers around 1987.
Cardinal Law was promoted to the Vatican in 2002, at the peak of the second feeding frenzy, based on Catholics networking and media coverage. Boston was notorious, but so were Phoenix, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, et al.
There is a current round of scandals in Ireland and other countries. Ireland probably set some records for abusing children. Notice that the Vatican did nothing about this for the last 20 years. Fortunately for them, people forget quickly.
Long ago I bought a book written by the mistress and cousin of one Irish bishop, Eamon Casey. He reminds me of Luther's quip, "They worship as gods those cardinals who are satisfied with a woman." Homosexuality in the priesthood is not news.
Ironically, WELS' favorite Roman prelate, Archbishop Weakland, is serving as a source for the anti-B-16 material from the NY Times. Unlike WELS, Rome threw him under the bus, so Weakland is getting even.
Robert Preus wrote Justification and Rome because of his alarm over Lutherans sinuflecting to the Vatican. The Missouri Synod Preus faction has gone overboard to praise Iscariots like Neuhaus while calling themselves "confessional Lutherans." Perhap McCain means they will soon be hearing confessions as priests. He and his faction are among the worst.
Someone asked me why Rolf Preus, son of Robert, son of Governor Jake Preus, broke with his ex-ELS faction, aka the Church of the Defenestration, which formed after Pope John the Malefactor extended the Left Hobnailed-Boot of Fellowship to them.
No one has told me, but I suspect his coolness toward that group may stem from its association with ELDONA, the tiny group with the Big Name. ELDONA seems to be ga-ga over Eastern Orthodoxy.
Archbishop James Heiser, ELDONA, professes a great admiration for Robert Preus. In fact, that seminary seemed to generate personality cults: Preus, Marquart, Scaer, Werning. (I added Werning for chuckles. He was the only known member of that cult.) Now the seminary is known for its Romanism, somewhat buffered by Eastern Orthodoxy. As one student there wrote, "It's just a difference in polity."
And this is not even an April Fools post!
