No, Cardinal Okogie, Homosexuals Deserve No Respect!

            by Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi

Francis I listening to a question from a journalist aboard the

return flight to Rome from the World Youth Day celebrations

where he commented particularly about the divorced and

remarried, women and homosexuals. Francis answered

questions from 21 journalists over a period of 80

minutes on his return from Brazil.

I read with a keen interest Anthony Cardinal Okogie’s article entitled, Homosexuality: Nothing has Changed in the Church, which was published on page 51 of the Guardian newspaper on the 12th of August, 2013. Cardinal Okogie wrote the article to defend Pope Francis’ statement that he, the Pope, would not judge homosexuals. The Pope’s statement, says the Cardinal, “must be read and understood through the lenses of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the concern of the Church for those on the fringes, and the mercy, tenderness and forgiveness of a pastor who walks among his people”. The Cardinal accuses the media of having “given their classic coverage of this interview: sensationalism!” and tries to explain what the Pope meant by the statement.

The subject matter is the following:  Pope Francis, when asked by a journalist about the Vatican's alleged "gay lobby", answered that while a lobby might be an issue, he does not have any problem with the inclination to homosexuality itself: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

It should be noted that his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with “deep-rooted homosexual tendencies” should not be priests. Thus Francis, just as he recently contradicted Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum—by banning some priests from saying the Tridentine Mass—is here doing the same thing again.

But Cardinal Okogie—himself also an anti-Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum—does not share this view. To understand the Pope’s reply above, states the Cardinal, “one must grasp adequately the context in which the question was asked. As is often the case, contexts shape and influence greatly our responses…” The context, according to the Cardinal, is the following: 

“On June 15, 2013 Pope Francis named Mons. Battista Ricca to one of the key posts in the overall effort to reform the Curia; the Pope’s representative at the Vatican bank, with the critical but sensitive task of overseeing every aspect of the management and reform of the bank. This appointment led to the searchlight being turned on the life of this prelate; as a result, unsavory details of a gay past came to limelight, leading to the appointment being viewed in some quarters as the result of “gay lobby mischief”. While others raised eyebrows on the sincerity of the new pope’s proposed reformation of the curia.” 

After citing the above as the “context” which led to the Pope’s reply, the Cardinal goes on to accuse the press of having “a habit of searching out the “sins of youth” to discredit or condemn an individual. A classic biblical allusion would be the case of the woman caught in adultery, while she had sinned against her own body and God, the creator of that body, the crowd tried to exact justice on an action that was not committed against them, it was the exclusive reserve of God, and God chose to forgive this repentant sinner. “…I do not condemn you, go and sin no more.”

First of all, as the Cardinal himself confirms, there was a serious issue at stake: the Pope appointed a man known to be a homosexual (or, if you like, call him a former homosexual) to be his “representative at the Vatican bank, with the critical but sensitive task of overseeing every aspect of the management and reform of the bank.” This very action, on Catholic principle, is a scandal on the part of the Pope and if the journalists had come to question him because of this, as indeed they had done, then they were doing the work of God. Do you agree, Your Eminence?

Aside this, Your Eminence, I consider your “biblical allusion” above simply intolerable. How can you liken the pope’s statement to our Lord’s saying in the Gospel that He would not condemn the sinful woman?

As we saw above, Cardinal Okogie states in his article that, to understand the pope’s reply to the journalist one must grasp adequately the context in which the question was asked—and he goes on to cite the case of Msgr. Battista Ricca. Well, Your Eminence, to understand Jesus’ reply to the Jews on this woman’s case, one must also grasp adequately the context in which that question was asked. We notice that in the Gospel stories, when people came to Jesus with questions, He, being God, would always first of all read the heart of the person asking the question to know if he was asking with a good intention or with a bad one. When people asked Him question with a good intention, he answered them with all sincerity, but when they asked with a bad intention, most of the times He would not answer. For instance, in the Gospel according to Luke, when Jesus was sent to King Herod, we are told that Herod was glad to see Him, simply because he “hoped to see some miracle done by Him” (Luke 23:8). Now when Herod questioned Him, Jesus Christ, knowing his bad intention, answered him not a word. As we read: “Then he questioned Him with many words, but He answered him nothing.” (Luke 23:9).

Now, on the case of the woman caught in adultery, we read the following:

“And the scribes and Pharisees bring unto Him a woman taken in adultery: and they set her in the midst, and said to Him: “Master, this woman was even now taken in adultery. Now Moses in the law commanded us to stone such a one. But what sayest thou? And this they said tempting Him, that they might accuse Him. But Jesus bowing Himself down, wrote with His finger on the ground. When therefore they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself, and said to them: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8: 3).

Thus, just like the case of Herod cited above, when the Jews came to Jesus Christ to complain about this woman, they did not come with the intention of learning from Him but merely in order to tempt Him—these people had already conditioned their minds against Jesus and were looking for one thing or the other to use against Him. Hence Jesus did not care to talk about this woman’s sin, not because He felt that her sin did not matter much—which is always the impression given by modern preachers—but because He knew that those who were accusing her were themselves sinners, in fact, perhaps even more splendid sinners than the woman—men who cared less about the beams in their own eyes but more about the motes in other people’s eyes (Matt. 7:3).

Your Eminence, that was the “context” which led to Jesus’ “cold” reaction to the Jews’ question. Our Lord felt there was no need to denounce the sinful woman because really there was no need to do so. Yet, He detested her sin. When Jesus said he would not condemn her, he meant that He would not support putting her to death, not that He would not judge her as a sinner if she continued sinning—hence He said to the woman, “Go and sin no more”.

Now, as I said, it is intolerable to liken this incident to Pope Francis’ encounter with the journalists. The Jews, as we have seen, asked their question in order to tempt Jesus. Did the journalists ask the question in order to tempt Pope Francis? The honest answer is NO! Also, the Jews expected Jesus to either support them to put the sinful woman to death or be against that. Your Eminence, do you think that those journalists, like the Jews, expected Pope Francis to declare that all homosexuals should be put to death? Certainly not! On the contrary, they expected him, as a moral teacher, to condemn the sin of homosexuality. He did not do that at all; on the contrary, he said he would not judge the sinner! Francis’ use of “judge” here is simply incompatible with Jesus’ use of ‘condemnation” in the Gospel. Jesus said to the woman, “Go and sin no more”. Did Pope Francis say that homosexuals should stop sinning? Again, the honest answer is NO!

Your Eminence, your “context” principle, if applied here, renders your argument not only baseless, but also useless.

Again, we consider the Cardinal’s assertion that the Pope’s statement “must be read and understood through the lenses of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the concern of the Church for those on the fringes, and the mercy, tenderness and forgiveness of a pastor who walks among his people”.

Well, I truly do not know which Gospel the Cardinal is talking about, neither do I know the church he is referring to, therefore I will rather assume the Cardinal meant to say: The Pope’s statement must be read and understood as “…the mercy, tenderness and forgiveness of a pastor who walks among his people”.

Now, even for the above statement, it is true that the pope is infallible, for, as Christ promised him in Blessed Peter, ‘‘…I will give to thee the keys (τὰς κλεῖδας) of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven” (Matt.16:19)—meaning that whatever Peter, who was the first Pope, binds or looses on earth, his act will receive divine ratification. It is also true that the Pope, as a high priest, was promised by Christ, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20: 21-23; cf. Heb. 5:1-3), which means that the Pope has authority to forgive sins—he can have mercy or compassion on a sinner. But this authority is conditional and cannot just be exercised anyhow. The Pope cannot, for instance, wake up one morning and declares: “Now is a time of mercy! All abortionists in the United States, all homosexuals in England, and all Boko-Haramites in Nigeria have been forgiven their sins!” He has no authority from Christ to do that. On the contrary, he can only grant forgiveness to a repentant sinner, to repentant sinners. Thus one of the strongest accusations launched against the popes by Martin Luther and other enemies of Catholicism in the sixteenth century—which were mere lies anyway—was that they were granting indulgences to sinners who had not truly repented.

Now, on Pope Francis and the homosexual, or rather, the “suspected homosexual”, Msgr. Battista Ricca: did Francis say that Msgr. Battista Ricca truly repented and has been forgiven by the Church? The honest answer is NO! On the contrary, he confirms that the man, in fact, is still a sinner, is still a homosexual. In his own words: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

Your Eminence, what exactly then, are you talking about?

More intolerable still, is the Cardinal’s saying that homosexuals should be respected. As I will show below, Cardinal Okogie is here going against Catholicism. He cites the following from the so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church to support his liberal view:

“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not eligible (sic.). This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unity (sic.) to the sacrifice of the Lord’s cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

Well, Your Eminence, your above quotation has errors and omissions and I hereby quote the same passage from my own copy of the Catechism:

“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”(CCC. 2358).

Now it must be noted that this Catechism is faulty on many issues, including our subject of discussion. In fact, people must note very well that, since the Masonic Second Vatican Council, held in the 1960s, all the documents coming from the so-called magisterium of the Catholic Church have always been full of errors and not all Catholics—including Priests, Bishops and Cardinals—believe in them. Notice for instance, the above statement, “They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial”—as if the Church is now an advocate of homosexuals! Now how did the writers of this “catechism” know that homosexuals do not choose their homosexual condition? Who told them?

In fact, the statement is just as absurd as saying that adulterers do not choose their adulterous condition! The Cardinal himself must have observed this, hence he omitted the statement in his quotation!

Now to say that some men and women have “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” is not only an error noticeable to all human beings, but in fact a blasphemy against human nature. It is, put simply, a sin to utter such impious words, because it is a subtle way of saying that God is ultimately responsible for the sin of homosexuality:  if some men and women have such tendencies, it logically means they were born with such, and if so, then who should be blamed? God! 

Before we go to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church with respect to homosexuality, let us first of all look at the Sacred Scripture. Contrary to the liberal views of Bergoglio and Okogie, in the Old Testament, Scripture refers to the vice of homosexuality with special severity:

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, because it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22). “If any one lie with a man as with a woman, both have committed an abomination, let them be put to death: their blood be upon them” (Lev. 20:13).

Again, we read: “And the Lord said: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is multiplied, and their sin is become exceedingly grievous” (Gen. 18:20). The angels arrived at Lot’s house, under the appearance of two handsome men. “But before they went to bed, the men of the city beset the house both young and old, all the people together. And they called Lot, and said to him: Where are the men that came in to thee at night? Bring them out hither that we may know them. . . . And they pressed very violently upon Lot; and they were even at the point of breaking open the doors. And behold the men [angels] put out their hand, and drew in Lot unto them, and shut the door. And them that were without, they struck with blindness from the least to the greatest, so that they could not find the door” (Gen. 19:4-11). “And they [the angels] said to Lot: Hast thou here any of thine?...all that are thine bring them out of this city, for we will destroy this place, because their cry [of their crimes] is grown loud before the Lord, who hath sent us to destroy them” (Gen. 19:12-13). “And they brought him forth, and set him without the city: and there they spoke to him, saying: Save thy life; look not back, neither stay thou in all the country about, but save thyself in the mountain, lest thou be also consumed” (Gen. 19:17). “And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth. And his wife looking behind her, was turned into a statue of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning, and . . . looked towards Sodom and Gomorrha, and the whole land of that country, and he saw the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace” (Gen. 19:24-28).

My dear Cardinal, how can you say we should respect evil men whom the Creator Himself cursed and ordered to be put to death?

Again, on the punishment that God prepared for the Jews, we read: “And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them . . . the shew of their countenance hath answered them: and they have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it: woe to their souls, for evils are rendered to them. . . . The Lord standeth to judge the people” (Is. 3:4-13). Vague references to sodomites, without special interest for our exposition, are found in 1 Tim. 1:8-10. For other references to Sodom and Gomorrha, without express mention of the vice of homosexuality, see: Deut. 29:23; 32:32; Jer. 23:13-14; 49:18; 50:40; Ezech. 16:55-56; Matt. 10:15; Rom. 9:29; Apoc. 11:8. 

How can one not relate the fulfillment of these threats to the AIDS epidemic now ravaging Sodomites?

In the New Testament, Saint Paul indignantly castigates this vice against nature: “Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind [sodomites] . . . shall possess the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10). In the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle of the Gentiles threatens perverts with punishments even on this earth: “Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error” (Rom. 1:24-27).

Saint Peter, the first Pope, stresses the infamy of the sin of sodomy and the chastisement God reserves for it: “For if God . . . reducing the cities of the Sodomites, and of the Gomorrhites, into ashes, condemned them to be overthrown, making them an example to those that should after act wickedly, and delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked . . . [then] the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation, but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented” (2 Peter 2:4-9).

Saint Jude is no less severe: “As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighboring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire, in like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion [of Christ], and blaspheme majesty” (Jude 7-8).

Of course the Bible, as any good historian knows, is a product of the Catholic Church. From the above quotations therefore, one can see the Church’s severe stance on the sin of homosexuality. The first statement of a Church council on homosexual practices was issued by the Council of Elvira (305-306). The decree excludes from communion, even in articulo mortis (at the moment of death), the stupratores puerorum (defilers of boys). The decree of the Council of Ancyra, held in Asia Minor in 314, strongly influenced the Western Church, and it was often cited as authoritative in later enactments against homosexual practices. Canon 17 speaks about those “who . . . commit [acts of] defilement with animals or males.” The Council of Ancyra established for these crimes a series of punishments according to the age and state of life of the infractors: “Those who have committed such crimes before age twenty, after fifteen years of penance, will be readmitted to the communion of prayer. Then, after remaining five years in that communion, let them receive the sacraments of oblation. However, let their lives be analyzed to establish how long a period of penance they should sustain in order to obtain mercy. For if they unrestrainedly gave themselves over to these crimes, let them devote more time to doing penance. However, those aged twenty and over and married who fall into these crimes, let them do penance for twenty-five years and [then] be received in the communion of prayer; and, remaining in it for five years, let them finally receive the sacraments of oblation. Moreover, if those who are married and over fifty years of age commit these crimes, let them obtain the grace of communion only at the end of their lives.”

Pope Saint Siricius (384-399) issued norms for admission into the priestly state. They apply indirectly to homosexuality: “We deem it advisable to establish that, just as not everyone should be allowed to do a penance reserved for clerics, so also a layman should never be allowed to ascend to clerical honor after penance and reconciliation. Because although they have been purified of the contagion of all sins, those who formerly indulged in a multitude of vices should not receive the instruments to administer the Sacraments.”

In the opening speech of the XVI Council of Toledo in 693, Egica, the Gothic King of Spain, exhorts the clergy to fight against homosexual practices: “See that you determine to extirpate that obscene crime committed by those who lie with males, whose fearful conduct defiles the charm of honest living and provokes from heaven the wrath of the Supreme Judge.”

The most complete set of norms against homosexual practices in the medieval era is contained in the canons approved at the Council of Naplouse, assembled on January 23, 1120 under the direction of Garmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Baldwin, King of the same city. On that occasion, a sermon was preached about the evils that had befallen the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Earthquakes, plagues, and attacks by the Saracens were judged as a punishment from Heaven for the sins of the people. As a consequence, the Council issued twenty-five canons against the sins of the flesh, four of which related to homosexual practices. Death at the stake was decreed for those convicted of those specific crimes.

The Third Lateran Council (1179) establishes: “Anyone caught in the practice of the sin against nature, on account of which the wrath of God was unleashed upon the children of disobedience (Eph. 5:6), if he is a cleric, let him be demoted from his state and kept in reclusion in a monastery to do penance; if he is a layman, let him be excommunicated and kept rigorously distant from the communion of the faithful.”

Such was the horror that surrounded the sin against nature that, by the late twelfth century, sodomy was a reserved sin for which absolution was reserved to the Pope and, in some cases, to the Bishop.

Nevertheless, with the Renaissance this vice surfaced again. Homosexuality was a matter of grave concern to Saint Pius V. As the well-known historian von Pastor narrates, “In the first year of his pontificate, the Pope had two preponderant concerns: zeal for the Inquisition and the struggle against ‘this horrendous sin whereby the justice of God caused the cities contaminated by it to be consumed in flames.’ On April 1, 1566, he ordered that sodomites be turned over to the secular arm. . . . The various imprisonments of sodomites . . . impressed Rome and frightened especially well-established people, for it was known that the Pope wanted his laws enforced even against the powerful. Indeed, to punish for vices against nature, the torment of the stake was applied throughout the pontificate of Saint Pius V. . . . An earlier papal Brief mandated that clerics who were guilty of that crime be stripped of all their posts, dignities, and income, and, after degradation, be handed over to the secular arm.” The Holy Inquisitor promulgated two Constitutions in which he castigates and punishes the sin against nature.

In the Constitution Cum Primum of April 1, 1566, Saint Pius V solemnly established: “Having set our minds to remove everything that may in some way offend the Divine Majesty, We resolve to punish, above all and without indulgence, those things which, by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures or by most grievous examples, are most repugnant to God and elicit His wrath; that is, negligence in divine worship, ruinous simony, the crime of blasphemy, and the execrable libidinous vice against nature. For which faults peoples and nations are scourged by God, according to His just condemnation, with catastrophes, wars, famine and plagues. . . . Let the judges know that, if even after this Our Constitution, they are negligent in punishing these crimes, they will be guilty of them at Divine Judgment and will also incur Our indignation. . . . If someone commits that nefarious crime against nature that caused divine wrath to be unleashed against the children of iniquity, he will be given over to the secular arm for punishment; and if he is a cleric, he will be subject to analogous punishment after having been stripped of all his degrees [of ecclesiastical dignity].”

Saint Pius V is no less rigorous in the Constitution Horrendum Illud Scelus of August 30, 1568. He teaches: “That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were burned by virtue of divine condemnation, causes Us most bitter sorrow and shocks Our mind, impelling it to repress such a crime with the highest possible zeal.

Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] decrees: “Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature . . . be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery, so that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity, taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, We determine that they should be handed over to the secular authority, which enforces civil law. Therefore, wishing to pursue with the greatest rigor that which We have decreed since the beginning of Our Pontificate, We establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be executed as mandated by law, according to the appropriate punishment for laymen plunged in this abyss” (chap. 4, X, V, 31).

The Code of Canon Law undertaken at the initiative and encouragement of Saint Pius X, and published in 1917 by his successor Pope Benedict XV, says this: “So far as laymen are concerned, the sin of sodomy is punished ipso facto with the pain of infamy and other sanctions to be applied according to the prudent judgment of the Bishop depending on the gravity of each case (Can. 2357). As for ecclesiastics and religious, if they are clerici minoris [that is, of a degree lower than deacon], let them be punished with various measures, proportional to the gravity of the fault, that can even include dismissal from the clerical state (Can. 2358); if they are clerici maiores [that is, deacons, priests or bishops], let them ‘be declared infamous and suspended from every post, benefit, dignity, deprived of their eventual stipend and, in the gravest cases, let them be deposed’ (Can. 2359, par. 2).”

So many saints and doctors of the Church such as St Augustine, Saint Basil of Caesarea, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Peter Damian, Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Bernardine of Siena and Saint Peter Canisius have denounced the sin of homosexuality.

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in an SBT interview about homosexuality in Brazil (not broadcast) on October 29, 1992, stated: “The sexual act exists in the natural order of things for the fecundity of the family and, through the fecundity of the family, for the expansion of mankind. The precept of Our Lord Jesus Christ to men . . . is ‘Multiply and fill the earth.’ It is necessary, therefore, to do this and by all means to favour the fecundity of sexual intercourse, which is legitimately exercised only in Matrimony. Now then, as for homosexuality, there is no Matrimony, and, above all, there can be no fecundity. . . . “For many centuries,” Prof. Corrêa de Oliveira continued, “homosexuality was the object of real aversion on the part of successive generations. And this was not because of a whim . . . but by virtue of the doctrinal principles I have just enunciated, which are principles of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic doctrine. . . . This rejection [of homosexuality] is a preservation of society against that which of itself threatens it. Everything that is alive rejects what destroys it. Thus, by a similar movement of the instinct of self-preservation, human societies modeled upon Catholic doctrine . . . have been profoundly anti-homosexual.”

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira was asked: “Why, in your view, are homosexuals discriminated against in Brazilian society?”

Answer: “Brazil is a son of Portugal, and Portugal and Spain were always very strong bulwarks of the Catholic Church. We received from our Portuguese ancestors rigidity and consistency in the Catholic Faith, which was the model for the customs of colonial Brazil, the United Kingdom [of Brazil and Portugal], the Brazilian Empire and the Brazilian Republic until some time ago. Hence Catholic aversion for homosexuality impregnated our customs and constituted a tradition.”

And I will add that it is not just the Brazilians. The sin of homosexuality is, put simply, anti-human, just as humans have been “profoundly anti-homosexual.”

The truth is that, Cardinal Okogie is among the Church’s leaders with liberal views on many issues, including our subject of discussion. Such also is the former Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. Shortly after he was elected Pope, Marcelo González of Panorama Católico Internacional, a journalist who knows the Church of Argentina as well as the palm of his hand, described Cardinal Bergoglio as follows:

“Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him…A sworn enemy of the Traditional Mass, he has only allowed imitations of it in the hands of declared enemies of the ancient liturgy. He has persecuted every single priest who made an effort to wear a cassock, preach with firmness, or that was simply interested in Summorum Pontificum…This election is incomprehensible: he is not a polyglot, he has no Curial experience, he does not shine for his sanctity, he is loose in doctrine and liturgy, he has not fought against abortion and only very weakly against homosexual "marriage" [approved with practically no opposition from the episcopate], he has no manners to honor the Pontifical Throne. He has never fought for anything else than to remain in positions of power…It really cannot be what Benedict wanted for the Church. And he does not seem to have any of the conditions required to continue his work…May God help His Church. One can never dismiss, as humanly hard as it may seem, the possibility of a conversion... and, nonetheless, the future terrifies us.” (Rorate caeli.blogspot.com, 2013).

Certainly, Cardinal Okogie has his good sides, but his flaws are numerous and simply fatal. He shares many things in common with Bergoglio. As the former Archbishop of Lagos, his episcopate was simply a disaster and “Christian” life in his Cathedral was a scandal. Just like Bergoglio, Cardinal Okogie never ceased persecuting the poor faithful who rejected the new Mass and wanted to go back to the Catholic Tridentine Mass. These Catholics lived, under the Cardinal, like the children of Israel under Pharaoh. He also persecuted priests who made an effort to preach with firmness, or who were simply interested in the Tridentine Mass which Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum aimed at restoring. Now on homosexuality, I am personally aware of a member of his own parish who was a well known homosexual. The Cardinal knew the man, who was even a communicant and one of the strongest pillars of his cathedral. He knew the man, a well known homosexual, yet he did absolutely nothing about that.

It is only the truth, Jesus said, that will set us free.

Source: This piece was first published by eaglereporters.com in 2013.