For your discernment, I wanted to share the thoughts of noted scholar and author, Desmond A. Birch.

Here it is …

“I was just on an ‘Aussie’ web page – which was lamenting the fact that there is amongst the legal establishment and the media in Australia – a “lynch mob mentality” against Australian Cardinal Pell. But that article by pointed out that a rising number of Australian members of the Media were beginning to wake up to the fact that there isn’t any real evidence that Cardinal Pell ever did anything wrong. The unstated question seemed to be WHY? What was the cause of the ‘witch hunt’ against Pell?

I responded with the following post. It suddenly dawned on me that most of my American and other readers are equally unaware of dynamic events in the recent history of the hierarchy in the U.S. So here it is for all of you to peruse and enjoy:

Interestingly, the very exact same kind of ‘lynch mob’ mentality against the Church and Her priests pervades the U.S. today, and for the last decade.

Were there serious problems vis-a-vis priestly child abuse by a very small percentage of Catholic priests in the U.S. over a number of years? Yes. Absolutely yes.

Here in the U.S. – a significant number of lay Catholics were aware of it by the mid-1980’s. In 1987 – a group of Catholic laymen – led by a heroic Catholic named Michael Schwartz held a news conference in the U.S. Virtually all of the major media outlets were there. There they exposed the fact that there was a horrific trafficking in boys – for paedophile priests. The Conference even named two dioceses in the U.S. as the worst offenders, those of Seattle Washington, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

They had witnesses, incontrovertible proof. Guess how much of that conference reached the American Press? Zip, Zero, Nada!

The American Media in general was not going to announce anything which exposed the American Catholic Hierarchy to scandal or even minor damage. Why? Because up till that time the American Heirarchy had been hand-in-hand with the Left Wing in the U.S. over social issues. The moral prestige of the American Heirarchy – in the minds of the American people – was unmatched by any other group in the country. They were the most powerful allies of the American ‘Left’.

But – in the background – Pope John Paul II and his Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, had been putting together a network of faithful Catholics in the U.S. who could tell them exactly who was a faithful Catholic amongst the nominees for Episcopal Office here in the U.S. Once that very unofficial network was in place – the good old boy system of recommending only men who were of the left – that was done for. This was fully in place by the late 1980s’s. And Pope John Paul II was picking some of the brightest young faithful/orthodox men studying for the priesthood in the U.S. and bringing them to Rome for their studies. After they were ordained, they were appointed to work in one Vatican/Roman venue or another to learn how to work within the Church in a faithful way. Then they were sent home – though the best of the best were made Bishops right in Rome – and then sent to troubled Dioceses in the U.S. to begin the Re-Evangelization of the Church in the U.S.

Beginning around 1990, those kinds of faithful men were being put in charge of Dioceses all over the U.S. But it took years to place enough of those kinds of men in Episcopal Office in sufficient Dioceses in the U.S. to begin to turn things around on a National level.

By the year 2,000, enough of those kinds of men were Bishops in the U.S., for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to put out a directive to Catholics in the U.S.A., that the ‘LIFE ISSUES’ had to be of paramount importance for voting Catholics. I.e., you couldn’t vote for a pro-abort candidate if there was an alternative.

Most people simply cannot imagine the shock wave that sent through the American Media, and the Leftist Establishment in this country. They were baby killers virtually one and all. Not to put too fine a point on it – Satan had, and still has the lions share of them by the throat.

I told many of my colleagues right then and there, including stating it on the Internet — that;

1) they had just seen the end of the ‘honeymoon’ between the American Catholic Heirarchy and the American Left-wing Establishment, AND,

2) They had better get set for a major persecution of the Catholic Church in the U.S. by the Media and Leftist Establishment.

Within two years, when the scandal was then broken by the media in Boston 2002, the persecution was on. While the media was aware that there were over twice as many public school teachers and other employees who had been involved in child abuse than alleged Catholic priests, and almost twice as many Protestant clergy and employees — They only attacked the Catholic clergy. WHY? Because the Bishops had publicly opposed the pro-abort policies of the Militant Left here in the U.S. And the collective public voice of the American Heirarchy could tear them apart if the Leftist Establishment could not discredit the American Bishops.

I don’t know, but it would be my educated guess that; some sort of a similar process occurred in your country of Australia. Perhaps you could inform me on that score.”

[That was the post I put on the Australian web-page.]

All my love in Christ,

Desmond A. Birch