Rupnik, Barbarism, And The Coming Restoration

Rupnik Lupus Canis

[ 8 minute read ]

Pray for Marko Rupnik. Pray especially for the consolation and healing of his victims. Pray, also, for those who have protected him when they should have listened to and consoled his victims, and should have been investigating and trying his case.

Rupnik - Slovenian: topographic name derived from rupa, 'hole in a limestone karst'; dialectally also 'hollow basin'.

Rupestral. adjective. composed of or inscribed on rock.

Marko Rupnik well deserves the title of posterboy for the corruption and misplaced allegiances dominating the shadowed hallways of dioceses.

(I)t was a veritable earthquake in Rome when, in November 2022, it was reported that there were a long series of allegations of sacrilegious and repellant sexual abuse against various religious sisters over whom Rupnik had spiritual and professional authority.

The Jesuits knew in January 2020 that Father Rupnik had committed one of the most serious canonical crimes, offering sacramental absolution to someone with whom he had had illicit sexual contact. Despite being in a state of automatic excommunication, the Society of Jesus permitted Pope Francis to invite him to preach a Lenten recollection to the Pope himself and the Roman Curia. - Fr. Raymond de Souza, NCRegister

A man cast out of his order, the Jesuits, due to 30 years of documented misbehavior, landed after the fact in a diocese as an incardinated priest. A man who has violated the dignity of the confessional, who violated the dignity of women and who, it seems, has enjoyed protection from prosecution by his superiors in the Church, has been given haven while his victims languish in their sorrows. Where, too, have the secular authorities been?

The Jesuits finally did the right thing and cast out a predator. Sadly, there was no one there to cage the impenitent wolf after his release.

Rupnik and his mosaics are partners in fouling the precincts of the Church. His mosaics are a mirror of his disordered passions set in stone, a flag waving his disordered inclinations in the face of anyone with the eyes to see and mind enough to discern the hollowness of heart that produced his caricatures of the Lord, the Mother of God, and the saints. Rupnik's cartoonish works, his disordered inclinations "inscribed on rock," convey an obvious low view of human nature and of the divine to the point of contempt for what is good and holy.

Rupnik's abusive behavior toward women reminds one of Picasso whose works shout a hatred of the beautiful. Picasso's hatred of women and insatiable sexual appetite, which fueled his serial philandery, is confirmed by his surgical dismemberment of the female form in his cubist paintings. While Marko Rupnik's skill is hardly equal to the (misused) talent of Pablo Picasso, Rupnik's disordered inclinations tessellated in glass, tile or stone, have earned him fame and fortune enough to be able to con the uninformed or similarly disoriented into calling him an artist. Like many a pop star who possesses more determination than artistic talent, Rupnik rode a well-timed wave to popularity. Bad taste like socialism loves a spiritual vacuum, and Rupnik poured his energies into that hollow space created by an iconoclasm born of modernist trends in the Church.

Moving Forward

To slam shut this era, an era of intense and obstinate self-righteousness and narcissism, of the exploitation of innocence, of aggressive relativism and its violent woke offspring, we must throw ourselves on the mercy of God and call upon the authority of Christ given to His Church to protect the flock. That same flock must be challenged to keep Jesus' commandments.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. - St John 14:15

We each have a place, and the place of a layman is not that of a bishop. A bishop, an apostle of the Church, is by virtue of his office responsible for teaching, governing, and sanctifying the faithful of his diocese. We layfolk are ministers in the world and to the world, and our simplest, truest and greatest effort is to be faithful to Jesus, to keep His commandments and to pray and labour for the salvation of souls. We would do well to remember that to suffer for the sake of Christ is to be united with Christ. The Christian way is to embrace the Cross of Christ (St Matthew 16:24-26) and to love with the love of Christ.

The best is yet to come, but we must first endure additional evil machinations of men.

A wise history professor of mine once said that when a nation reaches a saturation point of single males with little else to do but be used as canon fodder, indeed that nation will amass an army and condition the populace to accept the absolute need to acquire living space. Its people are enticed into a lie. A will to dominate structures its agenda. Scapegoats are identified and the threat they supposedly represent adds to the urgency to conquer. That nation will go on the offensive, testing boundaries and provoking crises in an effort to satisfy its leader's or leaders' lust for power. Sound familiar? Think Third Reich, or Stalinist Russia (The Great Purge or the Great Terror), or Mao Tse-tung and the Socialist Education Movement (1963) and the Cultural Revolution, or The French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, or the Armenian Genocide (the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia by Turkish forces), and the current Chinese Communist regime, the current Russian regime, the current North Korean regime, the current Iranian regime... and so on.

Nations are building up their arsenals (again), and it would be naive to assume that non-aggressive nations can relax in their relative affluence while aggressors pursue expansionist (some might say neocolonial) policies and investments that seek to establish influence in an attempt to expedite financial dependency and to facilitate alliances and takeovers.

Barbarism

China, Russia and North Korea are challenging national boundaries established by international law. Ukraine, the Philippines and Africa are being impacted by the threats of ambitious men who do not respect basic human rights nor culture nor a host of other concerns. Despite protests to the contrary, socialists are not naturally disposed to defending inalienable rights. Their ideology is bound up in the commodification of human beings. When all one has is the hammer of a disordered economic ideology, then the rest of the world looks like a socialist nail to be exploited in order to pin people to their basest instincts and to keep them functioning as servants of a soulless state. History is our witness to that.

There will be wars, and rumours of wars (St Matthew 24:6-13), but during times when men are tested, and entire societies and cultures are threatened and/or destroyed, people will rise through crises of one kind or another to discover their better selves and the need to defend the innocent (St John 15:13). They will embrace once again the only way to hope and contentment in this life.

The Gospel awaits an audience. God needs actors - dedicated disciples - willing to embody the Gospel to share the message that only in Jesus Christ is there truth, goodness, joy and everlasting life.

And where does one find the One Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life? The Mass.

When empty-headed priests and laity play loosely with the sacred Liturgy, anyone sincerely interested in what the Church has to offer is more than likely going to be turned off by what they find. Young people, those Pope Francis has called upon to make a mess in the Church, are voting with their feet and attending tradition-minded parishes, and they are marrying and having many children. They want what the Church truly is and always has been - the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

Young women are not afraid to wear veils and be loving moms, and young men, their spouses, do not hesitate to behave with honour and virtue and strive to be good dads. They keep the Faith. Together, husband and wife, they model a restored Eden. Is the Holy Father - are bishops?! - observing the witness of these young people, or do they cast them aside as anomalies who do not fit a caricature of the Second Vatican Council? Surely a vigorous sign such as the growing migration of young people to Ordinariate Masses, Eastern Catholic liturgies and Latin Masses merits at least a glancing consideration that the Holy Spirit might be at work, drawing people toward the True, the Good and the Beautiful. An honest mission-minded Catholic would acknowledge the Holy Spirit at work in such circumstances.

Praise-and-worship style services offer little substance. Sure, charismatic communities enjoy the occasional surge in attendance, but mega-service gatherings are not known for their deep formation of disciples and retention of parishioners. "Entertainmass" offers little but emotional euphoria (a common pseudo-spiritual drug) that temporarily disengages one from reality, and shallow social acceptance rather than growing Christian fellowship. Yes, Christ dwells at the heart of every valid Mass. However, too many liturgies practically place Jesus back in a tomb of stage theatrics, mindless homilies, and banal "worship spaces". Devoid of authentic Eucharistic spirituality and worship, i.e., the worship of God that causes the devil and demons to flee, is it any wonder that orgies and abuse are taking place under parish roofs? Homosexual and heterosexual clergy are paying for sex workers to fornicate with them on parish altars!

• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/europe/polish-bishop-orgy-resigns.html
• https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/priest-who-filmed-sex-on-altar-criminally
• https://cathcon.blogspot.com/2017/10/erotic-mass-for-youth-organised-by.html

The current pope seems stuck in his generation's iconoclastic and anarchic mindset. Those of us who are of the same generation yet can recognize beauty when we see beauty, faith when we see faith, and truth when we see and hear truth, must remind our cohort that the Holy Ghost does not obey any individual's or group's demand for conformity to the ways and means of mediocrity. The Holy Ghost provides the nudge to move us out into the deep (St. Luke 5:4), beyond comfortable religion. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter of those who leave behind the comfort of armchair religion and of abhorrent cultural norms that detract from and defy God's design for humankind.

Why is worshipping God in the beauty of holiness such a threat to those who, stuck in their cult of newness à la the 1960s and 1970s, cannot appreciate that people are attracted to the liturgical and devotional forms that have nourished saints since the dawn of Christianity?