An African Cardinal Pushes Back Against Raymond Arroyo

Raymond Arroyo (pictured here failing yet another audition for FOX News, where he dreams of working full-time)…

(I love the way Ingraham just abandons him to his fate–a finely honed skill for FOX “journalists” when their colleagues fall.)

Anyway… Raymond Arroyo got chewed out by South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier:

Should read:
“The World Over” hosted by Raymond Aroyo is like a throwback to the 1960’s & 70’s, when Ian Paisley & his ilk fulminated against Catholic Faith in general, & Pope in particular! I’ve still to hear a programme that doesn’t report negatively on or attack Pope Francis!

— Cardinal Napier (@CardinalNapier) December 3, 2018

Anyone who has watched the Papal Posse knows that Arroyo has been laboring for years to poison his audience against Pope Francis (and that the project has been highly successful). The Francis-hating, Trump-adoring cult of white conservative Catholics now hates Francis so deeply that literally everything he says or does is only used as more evidence to hate him more deeply. This weekend he remarked, with utter predictability, that he thought same-sex attracted men should not be priests and that ordained gay men, like ordained straight men, should, you know, honor their vows of celibacy. The only people surprised by this are the Cult of Francis Haters.

Because he’s the pope and duh.

Nothing daunted, his enemies and critics were immediately accusing him anyway. Because they hate his living guts and so anything he says is evidence against him. This statement was, of course, evidence that he was lying and that he thinks sexually active gay priests are awesome and he’s gay himself and anything else the Cult could think to add.

Similarly, this weekend I watched as the Cult attacked him for releasing Lumen Fidei in 2013. Why? Because much of it is the work of Benedict XVI. I know. You who don’t hate his living guts may wonder why giving his stamp of approval (and finishing touches) to the work of his predecessor is obvious evidence for the prosecution. Well obviously because it shows that Benedict’s work (of which Francis fully approves) is gracious and good, but Francis’ contributions are the work of a mean, bitter old man.

In short, we are now at the “Heads, his enemies win; tails, Francis loses” phase of the Cult of Francis-hating Trump adorers. And a huge part of the brainwashing can be credited to Raymond Arroyo, who has taught that Cult to see the Holy Father and successor of Peter, not as the universal shepherd and teacher of the Church, but as the greatest enemy of the Faith on the planet–and themselves, not Jesus, as the saviors of the Church from him. For those of you not up on the inflammatory rhetoric of the Orangemen, the Catholic Herald explains:

Raymond Arroyo has achieved prominence with his weekly EWTN talk show, which takes a largely conservative line and has been critical of Pope Francis and his allies.

His interview with Bishop Martin Holley, who was removed from the Diocese of Memphis earlier this year, was criticised by another bishop, who described the show as “deplorable” and “fake news”.

Cardinal Napier’s comparison of Arroyo with former Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley is particularly severe.

Paisley founded and led Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, and also led the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. Throughout the Troubles he was regarded as a firebrand, both politically and theologically.

In 1988, he interrupted a speech by Pope John Paul II in the European Parliament, denouncing him as the “Antichrist”. He had previously criticised the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret for meeting Pope John XXIII in 1958, saying they had committed “spiritual fornication and adultery” by meeting the Pope.

Some are complaining that Napier is “inflammatory” to make the comparison.  But the gripers are themselves people who were passionately screaming for nothing less than the resignation of the pope three months ago on the basis of evidence-free accusations by a man who attacked the one pope who had acted against McCarrick. And who did Vigano turn to in an effort to gin up the Cult of the pope’s enemies? Arroyo, the Register, Liesite, 1Peter5 and other cultic vendors of Francis-hatred. They immediately and gladly went into overdrive to covering for the fact that Vigano himself had wined and dined and feted McCarrick instead of acting. He knew they would throw themselves willingly into the Palace Coup because they already hated him.  Now, having failed, they hate Francis even more.  Because in their titanic pride it is unthinkable to them that they could be wrong. When your first and only response to victims of sexual abuse is not to think of them, but to think of covering your ass and grabbing for power, all while screaming for the destruction of the Holy Father, you are not thinking of victims.

It will be fascinating to watch how the Cult pushes back against an African cardinal. African clerics tend to be hailed as heroes by right wing American Catholic media when they talk about sex or liturgy, but then told to sit down and be quiet as simple backward primitives if they cross the white conservative Catholic Francis-hater or push back when those white conservatives when they go to bat for calling their homelands “shithole countries”. When Trump’s racist rhetoric and knuckle-dragging colonialism needs to be defended by white American conservative Christians, they have no trouble telling the savages of the Dark Continent that we know what’s best for them. This brave man has just crossed the most FOX-newsified dispenser of Francis-hatred and culture war agitprop in all of Catholic media. The comboxes at the Register are about to light up.  He will be vilified for certain.  But for all that, he is not wrong.