Kasper makes more threats

There are wicked journalists who for a few pence will lie there heads off and distort the truth, who like the unscrupulous Bill Gardner, who after his time in Brighton got a job working for the Daily Telegraph - though I did hear he might be sacked. Fortunately there are also brave courageous journalists like Edward Pentin who hearing a Cardinal make statements which are horrendous publishes them. If journalism is not to be left to the plain wicked, journalist like theologians, and bishops and priests have to be on the side of truth. Sometimes reporting the truth they have to embrace the Cross.

In the Kasper affair it is a Cardinal lies his head off and distorts the truth, then goes on to utter threats and menaces, There is that bit in the Gospels about rotten trees producing rotten fruit, grace after all works on nature, or doesn't. Catholics have a right to good and holy Bishops, who tell the truth.

Pentin heard something incredibly important from Kasper's own lips that revealed how the Synod was being manipulated. He did his duty, he reported it. Kaspar revealed himself as unscrupulous scoundrel and denied it accusing, Pentin of having made it up, in fact of having lied and invented the story. Pentin then released the recording. Kasper was forced to admit they were his words and apologized, not to Pentin but in one one of those meaningless apologies. not for the offense, but only IF people took offense at his words about African Bishops. His meaning that obviously it was their fault if they were offended.

Now he talks about a “deliberate dirty trick”, presumably on Pentin's part. He goes on, "The fact that Catholic media (and unfortunately a cardinal in person) should participate in it, in order to tear down another position morally, is shameful,” Kasper opined. When Kath.net asked as a follow-up question who that cardinal was, Kasper unfortunately gave no answer. The retired Curial Cardinal announced, however, that “other journalists” are going to take action against such “undignified machinations”.

It is the "other journalists" who are going to take action that sounds truly worrying. Are these the same two journalists who were happy to listen to Kasper's "the only good African is silent African" soliloquy but did not themselves think it worth publicising, or are they other house-trained journalists of his party, remember the German Bishops don't just publish pornography, the are major holders in other publishing ventures. Whoever these journalists are Kasper's tone is meant to be menacing.

There is a very dark side to the present Papal Court, which was so evident in the Synod, some are calling it the 'Robber Synod', one of my parishioners referred to it as the 'Dark Synod' because of the way in the Bishops and the outcome were manipulated. We were promised transparency and we got opaiquism, light but received darkness: bread but instead stones.

The previous Papacy treated journalists with great reserve, in this one there is a great reliance on them; all those odd interviews with elderly atheists, allowing private phone calls to trickle out, the giving of Synod documents to journalist before the Bishops. Many people even journalists themselves can be forgiven for assuming that this is a Papacy, like the Blair or Obama administrations, that is primarily aimed at the media and like Blair and Obama will come crashing down leaving many disillusioned, and as my old gran used to say, "you can tell a man by the company he keeps.