According to sources within the Vatican, the Secretariat of State of the Holy See — under the direction of Pietro Cardinal Parolin — has communicated an instruction to its internal and external security services to use its "intelligence resources" to locate the physical whereabouts of Abp. Viganò. This request has been communicated not only in order to prevent more unpredictable damage to the image of Pope Francis and the Holy See on the world stage, but also to "prepare the terrain" for the former apostolic nuncio-turned-whistleblower to be prosecuted for alleged multiple crimes against Vatican and Church law.
The urgency with which the location of Abp. Viganò is being sought is all the more palpable since, according to canon 1507 of the Code of Canon Law and other procedural and penal norms of the Holy See and Vatican City State, Abp. Viganò cannot be prosecuted or even punished unless he first be given the opportunity to be officially notified in writing of the specific canonical and Vatican crimes he is alleged to have committed and be given the opportunity to defend himself against them.
Abp. Viganò cannot be prosecuted or even punished unless he first be given the opportunity to be officially notified in writing.
As first reported by the very well-informed Baron Roberto de Mattei (Corrispondenza Romana, September 5), criminal counts are said to be in the process of being researched and drafted in a libellus accusatorius (canonical criminal complaint) for Viganò having allegedly committed perjury for his having breached pontifical and other forms of state secrecy in violation of, among other norms, the Instruction Secreta continere on the Pontifical Secret issued on February 4, 1974 by John Cardinal Villot, Secretary of State of the Vatican.
The specific Norms of Secreta being researched for applicability and evidence in support of potential prosecution include:
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Art. I-4 for Abp. Viganò’s alleged divulgation of extrajudicial denunciations received by him during his service of the Holy See regarding crimes against faith and morals and the Sacrament of Penance, and the process and decision pertaining to the handling of these denunciations regarding Theodore Cardinal McCarrick and other clerics referenced by Viganò in his testimony and in the articles of journalists to whom the archbishop is alleged to have disseminated such classified information;
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Art. I-7 for his alleged dissemination of Vatican secrets gained by reason of office pertaining to appointments of bishops, specifically regarding the appointment of Cdl. Blase Cupich as archbishop of Chicago, Illinois;
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Art. I-9 for his alleged divulgation of the electronically encrypted order transmitted by the Secretariat of State to Abp. Viganò regarding the appointment of Bp. Robert McElroy to the see of San Diego, California;
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Art. I-10 for his breaching of "business or matters which are so grave in nature that they are placed under the Pontifical Secret by the Supreme Pontiff or a Cardinal of the relevant Dicastery."
News of the Vatican deploying its vast international resources to track down and prosecute Abp. Viganò are consistent with his assertions made to Aldo Maria Valli on their final encounter: that Viganò had "purchased a plane ticket," that he was "traveling abroad," that he "could not tell [Valli] where," that Valli "should not try to find him," that "his old cellular number will no longer be functioning," and that they "saluted each other one last time."
Viganò, in saying goodbye to Valli, appears to have known exactly what the worst elements of the Vatican and its agents are capable of. Let us hope he has taken every necessary precaution from falling into the hands of those who would wish him ill.
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1Iron_Curtain ago
They are trying to control things far too much and being vulnerable should be the first thing they should be doing rather then sneaking around things and beating around the bush and creating a perimeter around which to manipulate the public and enforce their will. This testifies to how tyrannical the Vatican has become.
They are not helping themselves and only proving themselves to be extremely, extremely corrupt. I feel bad for Catholics, because they deserve better. They should never have elected a Jesuit Latin American as Pope. Never. Its just bad for business and why this is all happening.
Vindicator ago
Unfortunately, lay Catholics have no say in the selection of bishops, cardinals or the pope. Or even of their parish priests, for that matter. This is a governance structure that goes back to the Roman Empire...all the plebs can do is riot in the streets.
1Iron_Curtain ago
Why should they be allowed to? I think the Catholic Church's rigid structuralism is not only going to get them, but get them hard with all the deconstructive madness they have embraced. I think this is what happens when you ground your truth as the only truth and it becomes very troublesome to say the least.
Its hard to do this kind of stuff and why a certain kind of "Unitarian Nietszcheanism" is needed to at least put things in context for not only the individual, but also family and group structures in society. The main question is does God exist and does the current standing of Christianity have validity.
It seems Jesus existed, although some question it, which makes it very difficult to say. What do you think of Anslem's Ontological Proof? I have looked through others and they are not that convincing. God of the Gaps argument is about as stupid as it gets and Pascal's Wager is fraudulent and a way to send you broke.
Vindicator ago
I wish I had time for a deep dive into these theological and philosophical topics, 1Iron. :-)
I will say that I think it would be illogical and foolish to scoff at any set of teachings that millions of human beings have found valuable enough that they have chosen to live their lives by them across numerous cultures over millennia, despite often extreme challenges.
Truth is generally troublesome, LOL. Conversation is utterly pointless, though, if we all have our own truth. I will never understand the point of relativism; it makes no sense, other than to confuse and pacify people and make them easier to control.
What does "the current standing of Christianity" mean and by what criteria would you judge it's validity?
There is a piece of physical evidence strongly supporting both the historical reality of Jesus, and his claims of supernatural power. It's the single most scientifically studied artifact in human history, a point on which there is almost a total media blackout (including within most of the Catholic church) which many have tried and failed to debunk, and yet none have been able to reproduce it. It's worth researching.
1Iron_Curtain ago
I don't think the argument of public consensus generates enough reasoning to validate a system of belief. I think it is justifiable when there are grounds for it and based on certain symbolism and language structure. I understand the importance of Christianity as an anthropomorphic and materialistic structure that is inverted into a general schemata of thought that just can't be explained(the irrationalist aspect of Christianity is central to it and feeds back into a kind of Third-Worldism).
That said this is quite complex and not to be understood in this kind of manner, because of how essential it is for humans to have all things tied down to needing to have something anthropomorphized and materialized, but the main thing is how does one swing it back to a certain mode of truth and then go about describing that truth. I think ultimately it comes down to a certain of instinctualism, animalism, and obviously dependency on language constructs that relegates itself to the concept, so there is an appreciation of the abstract in the material and the Trinitarian even in the material, but I don't know how to explain it and certainly that is why I stressed Anslem's Cosmological Argument. I think the Truth is pretty obvious at times, but how do you tie it back into a higher logic of thought/intelligent design? I don't think we can that is where the faith part comes into handy. I'd say its safer and better to believe it because of how enriching it can be to one's life and how it can lead one to live a moral life and live a life tied down to reality. In this sense and when you fit things into a rewired Cosmological Argument then you have a chance to make things work, so I think a proof for God can be rendered in this context in an indirect/"symbolic" and referential sense.
It does not need to be formulated though, but constantly referenced to and which we work our knowledge around in a context that fits into a kind of appreciation of the objective as perceived from the point of the subjective and the "subjective" being worked towards the objective. Truth is pretty easy at this point, but it is paradoxical, but we use simple terms to explain it and then we retreat from it and let it work in the silence of our hearts. Relativism is flawed too, because its the belief that things revolve around reason, but reason is supposed to be the engine of faith and faith should work around reason and reason should always attempt to point back at it.
I think the current standing of Christianity is that it is too open to Third-Worldism, rather then taking a more open-ended approach and it is about a kind of bleeding heart mentality where everything needs to profess their guilt for being white in a certain sense. I think Christian theology is extraordinarily tyrannical and this allows it to be socially engineered at will in my opinion. I ultimately think its best to have a multi-integrative and multi-dimensional approach to truth, where truth is simple, but there are many ways to it and each has its own unique salvational trek. God is a God of love in this context and pours his grace out on the whole of humanity, but they all must work for it and do so in some sense in their daily living and their daily being. Somethings can be quite relativistic to be honest. I don't think Christianity is invalid in terms of what it represents, nor when we consider the message of Jesus/Gospels the Catholic Church would represent the core of the truth, but it seems rather mysterious like for something like this to be considered the grounds of truth. Maybe God works this way? I don't know.
I am not God and all I can do is have faith, but having father in the reason of others is not something that is acceptable, but dare I remove myself from it either. I say not. In this context, I think Catholicism is pretty legitimate and valid, but the fact that it validates itself as true because formally and spiritually it is correct or valid does make it sound in terms of structure, dynamics, and the general natural cycle and the spiritualities that have arisen out of that. I suppose one could say Jesus/The Gospels were meant for everyone in this context and indeed he might have been, but how does this explain the categories of people's religious experience does not conform to this particular form of Jesus existence, but represents him in a multitude of ways that distort or corrupt Jesus' existence? It does not mean Jesus does not exist or is not valid, but ultimately at the end of the day it does not correspond appropriately with common sense and our general understanding of nature. I guess we will leave this one up to the Gods/Trinitarian form. It is not something for me to answer, just like the question of God, although I think that it is simpler and clearer and I assert it to be true within myself and try my best to radiate this back to humanity in my good works, being gracious, and being charitable. I think this is all how it should work. I have some other ideas, if you want to hear them, but I think in many ways they are more of practical purport and work back into that structure and ground themselves on the non-I(God) and the denial of the I, as part of a process of internal resistance.
The main thing we need not do is project ourselves as God back into the realm of God and this can be hard to do and I think its called the process of life and recognizing ourselves as mere mortals, as mere humans, as all too much like animals. One must be a machine for God in the end and all work in the direction of conceptualizing the whole faith/reason argument in a procedural manner, but one that engages the larger community and Christianity has Balkanized and lost its communalism. Can you give me the link to the site? I think acknowledging Jesus' power is important, but I think personalism, interpersonalism, intersubjectivity, emergentism, and expressionism are not good things, but rather see Jesus as the grand artist and have an impressionistic understanding of him that ties back into reality, but from within that standpoint points back to something greater than ourselves and that those ideas we conceive are in fact embodied in ideas that we can neither categorize or relate back to the forms of existence, but in fact embodies the process and civilization of humanity in a form that emanates back to a primordial form of existence and then back to what Teilhard Du Chardin called the Omega Point, but the Omega point always comes back to the person/the individual and works back into the greater humanity and back there to some great distant and scattered nothingness. This is interesting though to me and I guess if we have some sort of consolation it is that Goethe said that all points back to the Cross(what he is meant by this is anything, but certainly a kind of figurative pointing back in ancient Germanic cultures to the form of Jesus' actual existence in some form of divination and almost extraterrestrial terrain).
In the end, it comes down to Divine Revelation and Teleological concerns and that is something that only the Trinitarian form can reveal to us and ultimately Jesus, which is the crux of it. I don't think its worth debunking Christianity or God or either breaking it down to an either/or kind of scenario, I think it is far more complicated than that and if it is not true then one might as well live a good life trying to believe in it and incorporate it into their practical/pragmatic considerations in life.
I prefer a kind of integrative Emergentism of consciousness to test where things are to work, along with a certain kind of Remotism and working it from that direction towards a greater Cosmotology.
Vindicator ago
Well, I doubt you will ever get to the meat of Christianity with the ship of your intellect encrusted with such a reef of barnacles as all of these -isms and words. Christ was quite clear. He said "I Am the Way." "Pick up the Cross and follow me."
You know one thing I've never seen mentioned in any article about the inexplicable Shroud of Turin? The fact that the cloth is soiled with dirt from the skinned knees and the bottoms of the feet of the tortured body it once covered. How do I know? Because I went to see it, with my own eyes. You should research it. It's quite intriguing -- especially the lengths they have gone to to keep it from the public.
1Iron_Curtain ago
Well, good analogy, and the whole approach to defining Christianity, by certain terminologies does not help explain it whatsoever. That said, there is always a higher order logic at work that we cannot fit into an anthropomorphized understanding of Christianity and when it becomes materialized it becomes problematic, but there is a complex kind of symbolism at stake and the conceptualization of it can be only grounded in a certain kind active and internal pursuit of representational understanding of reality from the perspective of the other and Jesus serves as this medium, or so they say and from a point where there is a desire to sacrifice oneself for the other, which can only be remediated through a certain kind of practicality.
You are right that trying to conceptualize it out is null and void, but trying to fit into the inner life and then working it out towards a kind of interpretative model that grounds the forms of the mind and reality is indeed an important thing, but we maybe will never come to a crystallized understanding of how it works which is why I believe in a certain kind of process epistemology and any kind of canonical form that evolves outside of it should arise not to meet specific circumstances or a broader group categorization, but rather a kind of appreciation of the schemata in the form of an appreciation for the otherworldly and nature arching towards the heavenly heights, and a kind of appreciation for non-categorization of the categorical(sort of a Nietszchean in reverse directed towards finding God in the anthropomorphic, in the events, situations, and laws of the past, and a kind of philosophizing of the rational and how it fits back into metaphysical and theological understandings and how this revolves around the anthropomorphic, and finally an appreciation for the sublime and working this towards a more communal understanding of humanity and that things such as ecclesiology and intersubjectivity are not necessary for grounding it, but rather a complex form of symbolism that one can only interpret as they will.
I think the Cross is important but more so should be a projection of the mind towards which we work towards in the undulating and scattered process of time and our working towards this should help to mediate such a phenomenon towards the horizon of being and this should be ineffable and workable no matter what. The Shroud of Turin is interesting. They say that it came supposedly from Syria/The Middle-East into Italy during the period of Humanism, or perhaps I am wrong. They say the clothe came from a variety of different places, which means that whoever the person that was tied to this clothe was considered a very important person in fact, because usually people that were crucified were generally not buried after they were crucified. This seems to fit into the person of Jesus as mentioned in the Bible. They did find out that the carbon dating done on it had tested it as existing going back to the 4th century to Medieval period(I forget which), but then they retested it and found out that it was mistaken and found out it probably went back to the time of Jesus. Its so hard to say who Jesus represented though. The Gospels shed some light, but how authoritative are the Gospels and if they are why should we place such a high authoritative place on them. I don't know and its good as a medium of interpretation and living the right life and it seems to have a very high universal value system, but I am not sure what greater practical or metaphysical value that it could have, except at a very brutish kind of level and then things could get spun out of control.
I think the most important thing about Christianity is its emphasis on love, mercy, and grace and the need to transform all the faith over to a system of nomological logic that we can only have faith in, but which should conform to a certain kind of rational approach as I said. What do you think of Bruno Bauer and the Christos Mythos book? I don't see why there is such an emphasis on denying Jesus, because it serves no purpose, but ultimately can we believe in Jesus said who he was and at that point we can only have faith. I think that is a matter of faith and a kind of Ontologicism that can only be worked in a process metaphysics/theology.
I see the epistemological reasoning behind why people believe in it, and that it even works behind a kind of of protectionism and imaginative sphere(not reduced to a psychologism), but rather meets the holistic person in a kind of face to face within oneself that reaches deep into a kind of trans physical world that is worked back into the grand design of human consciousness and this reflects back on a teleological order and a kind of eschatological working/final cause towards which things are working. Again, faith is the saving grace and grace must be worked towards and converted over to truth through a kind a naturalistic process and ultimately it must ground itself towards a moral ends, as best as we can do as it relates to the human other and the faith should be guided towards a kind of appreciation of the transcendental at works in reality and a desire to convert the grace present in it over into a kind of holistic form and understanding/approach to morality, which should be based on a simple approach to survival and have the rest, such as the intuitiveness of it all fit into a kind of conformism with the sublime in nature in a non-naturalistic manner and where our traditional understanding of truth conforms to a new kind multi-dimensional form of self-perception regenerating itself back to the categories found within nature and reality.
I'll have to read more about the Shroud of Turin, but there has got to be something out there that supplies the nail in the coffin to Jesus' existence. I think it could have lay in the Library of Alexandria before the Arabs burned it down. I could have seen something else getting to some place like Constantinople and being stolen or burned there when the Turks conquered it in 1453.
Otherwise, I am at a loss and think faith, a kind of acceptance of our lowliness, and the realization that some mysteries are outside our comprehension is an utmost necessity. It carries its own weight and that combined with the universal values that Jesus cherished makes him a pivotal and axial figure that in itself we should seek to replicate.