Cletus--Have you read the book? I believe the case was handled correctly by the Church and you cannot seperate the Pope from the actions of everyone else because it was Pius who who ordered the child resued.

The Christian faith was explained to the boy and it was his own free will to stay with the Pope--period. How this can be described as a tragedy is beyond me.

It is my recommendation that all read mr Kertzers books. His father was a friend of rabbi Zoli's and defended him against other judaics when Zolli converted to Catholicism. The twist here is that I suspect Zolli to have been a Marrano.

I don't remember if I read a book on this subject. I think I did. It's hard to keep track.

I'm using the word tragedy in a loose, old softie sense. There was obviously a lot of heartbreak involved on all sides.

I agree that the case was handled properly as to the bottom line. What I object to is bringing in dubious statements about infantile theologizing and subsequent bloody murder in order to demonize the Jєωιѕн side and attribute an unlikely purity to the Catholic side.

Did the Lord Pope's trusty knights come a calling at a decent hour? Did they brandish swords at screaming brothers and sisters?

Do we know? Do we care?

Even Jєωιѕн mothers have the right to want to be with their kids. I don't see the point in showing a dogmatic callousness towards a mother's anguish. The general tragedy is the unbelief of the Jєωιѕн people. And whose fault is that? JUST the Jews'? I doubt it.

I hope that no one is going to start putting Signor Mortara's name up there with the Duke of Clarence's on the Jack the Ripper suspect short list.

What I would expect if I were to read about this case is to find some enterprising cardinal toting the kid around Italy giving speeches against Liberalism, with the cardinal's ambitious brother, in the role of agent and promoter, realizing a tidy little profit from the whole deal.

Maybe it seems perverse to say that I don't know what the case was, but presuppose the worst, and would be happy to be shown otherwise. I would say that someone who comes out with something like that, someone who is that confident about his ability to toss out a likely "mutatis mutandis", (the way it was with A was probably the way it was with B and C and D and E etc...) had better have a wide experience with delving into the nitty-gritty of Church History. I think that I do: It has given me what I consider a holy cynicism about the "human side of the Church."

Generally, the behavior of Catholic clerics and prelates in this world has stunk. Notably.

That's Wisdom of the Saints 101.

The general orders of superiors are one thing. The way in which their flunkeys execute them are often very much another.

The names of Msg Jouin and Mrs Martinez have to be added to those confused over the Card Rampolla case--although some of the v2ers are more than likely a little more complicit than simply being confused.

And the names of the Catholic authors who do understand the Card Rampolla case have to be noted; Francis McNutt, Francis Sugrue and Robert Sencourt.

Cletus--there were never any heavy handed tactics involved in taking the child. Edgardo's mother did indeed want to be with her son but the child made the decision on his own when he was of the age of consent. He could have returned to his family at any time but never did.

Your statement about expecting to find 'some enterprising cardinal toting the child around giving speeches on liberalism' is based on speculation and I do not agree with your unqualified statement that the behaviour of Catholic clerics in this world has stunk notably; are you talking about the entire last 2000 yrs?

If little Edgaro was spirited off with all due decorum and consideration I'm glad to hear it.

You said almost seven.

Six is not the "age of consent."

It's a commonplace in all kinds of Catholic writing over the centuries that "most priests and bishops lose their souls." (Of course, according to a related commonplace most people in general lose their souls.)

I concede that it may be unwise and in bad taste to invent a colorful scenario of misbehavior in the Mortara case when I have no reason to believe that there was any.

What makes me think that the above is a legitimate rhetorical exercise is that I am confessing my ignorance of the details of this particular case and saying that no matter WHAT they were Pope Pius IX cannot be faulted for the bottom line of what he did in the case. He had the Christian child raised by Christians.

If I concede to the critics of Pope Pius IX that the worst of what they say about the Mortara case may be true, and yet insist on the Catholic principle involved, it's a way of cutting to the chase and getting to the eternal essentials.

What is the worst that they say? It's not what they think it is. If what they are saying is that the pope saw that a baptized Jєωιѕн child was raised by Catholics, they are not saying anything bad at all.

My sarcastic statements about what this or that cardinal may have done in the Mortara case are not based on pure speculation. Using the Church to gain money and power for one's family is as commonly Catholic among clerical muckety-mucks as holy water. I would not be rash and claim that it was ever as common as clerical concubinage.

What's this all about now?

Biden was bad on Iraq. He's much better now.

So what?

How does mixing his badness on Iraq with the Catholic Church's imagined badness on infallibility and the temporal sword in the 19th century make any sense?

Seriously and with all respect, I strongly recommend a return to the "Home Alone method." Work and family obligations aside, not a second should be wasted away from home on activities that do not relate directly to developing some kind of Catholic Sense from reading old Catholic books.

The autobiography of St Anthony Mary Claret would be good start.

And just for the record, Biden's statements about Catholicism are stupid and hypocritical and disgustingly carnal. What a low-minded man.

There is no abuse of power more outrageous than the general abuse that led to Vatican II and sustains the New Pentecost. (Not that the villains involved have any real power in my "sedevacantist" book.)

Modernist and Liberal priests and prelates want people to question God. Why? Because, being Men of Sin, they give THEMSELVES out as God. They cannot bear even the "accent of reproof." God is a rival. They want to dissolve His power base in this world. That is, people of faith.

"You're just an ignorant, untrained layman! You have no right to an opinion! Hans Kung is a great scholar! He knows better!"

No, the Vatican II cult does not encourage questioning in general. It encourages only apostasy. It is a just the main hideous head on the ten-headed Beast of wicked totalitarianism.

How does Biden stack up on Life issues? A little worse than Pope Pius IX did, maybe?

That was not a Cletus quote. That was Cletus epitomizing the way in which Novus Ordo clerics put down laymen who in any way resist the Novus Ordo.

The reason why I brought up the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Novus Ordo tyrants is that the ungodly comments of the Bad Novus Ordo Catholic Biden are being accorded approval here in an odd, back door way.

Biden certainly does not share the ecclesiological views of "Mr. Infallible."

So in that respect is Biden a better Catholic than Pius IX?

The Church of Christ offered Catholic souls a lot more than worldly politics in Biden's formative years, the 1940s and 1950s. That's not what people tuned in to Fulton J Sheen for.

We have to try to be clear on what we believe and what our gripes are and with whom we have those gripes. We can't just be confused and unhappy as Catholics and start lashing out in all directions. Sooner rather than later, the Father of Lies directs us in ONE direction. And then we declare open season on Pius IX and start finding nice things to say about Hans Kung, insofar as Hans Kung does not share this or that theological defect of Pius IX.

Could there be ways in which certain theological and pious trends in, say, the Counter-Reformation period ironically lent themselves to the evil doings of the false Vatican Council of the early 1960s?

I believe that that's exactly what happened. A certain "prophetic" sense was excommunicated from the Church in favor of a prissy, fussy, Baroquely unctious fear of "scandal", of rocking the official Catholic boat.

This is how the unorthodox likes of Cardinal Newman were allowed to become Big Catholic Noises as the orthodox sat on their hands. Newman made a mockery of Biblical Inerrancy. His clerical Catholic opponents  squawked a bit and then backed down. Under pressure from their superiors, no doubt. Criticizing a bona fide Catholic big shot such as Newman was bad for Catholic business. Dirty politics have always been a big part of how the Catholic Church operates even insofar as doctrine and the salvation of souls are concerned, "humanly speaking". Absolutely.

It is sickening to compare what such "prophets" as Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Bernard said and did in the case of corrupt Churchmen to what even some of the greatest saints of the fussy, old maidish post-Trent era said and did.

But Jesus Christ Almighty was wrong to make His Vicar infallible because...? Because....? Because....?

It's mere "street sense" to view the Dogma of Infallibility in terms of Church politics.

There is no such thing as a "prophetic" role in the official Catholic scheme of things.

There are Supreme Pontiffs. There are defined dogmas. There are canonized saints. There are seven Sacraments. There is a body of theology from Doctors and Approved Authors about certain dread possibilities where the Roman Pontiff (or the semblance of one) is concerned.

There are no prophets.

Except for the prophets in the Old Testament and for the King and the Queen of Prophets.

Let's all put aside our various colorful quirks and kinks and shticks and admit to this simple Catholic fact.

Then, if we want to let loose for what we think good reason with our own personal theologies and apocalypses, let's do that. But let's be honest about it and make the distinction.

For example.

I find it useful to term St Bridget of Sweden ("This pope was a murderer of souls!") a prophet and, say, St Robert Bellarmine (the stupid laity are better off being misled by clerics than being left to their own devices) a Baroque fussbudget because there is something that I think needs to be said as mordantly and memorably as possible against a growing clericalism among Traditionalists whereby, for example, Catholic parents who write letters to their Modernist Yet Valid Local Ordinaries protesting the Satanistic debauching of their children are piously chided by fellow Traditionalists for lacking respect for the Cloth and the Crook.

Could Classicom give us his source for the prophesies of Leo XIII and St Pius( not that I am doubting them).