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ITALIAN PRIEST (40) STOLE £ 257,000 TO SPEND ON DRUGS AND GAY LIFESTYLE.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10293067/Italian-priest-stole-church-funds-buy-drugs-gay-sex-parties-jailed-three-years.html

Father Francesco Spagnesi
At court

Father Spagnesi is 40.

He is gay.

He is HIV +

He had sex with other men and withheld his HIV status.

He is into drugs and drug fuelled orgies.

His nickname is the “pusher priest”.

He stole £ 257,000 from his parish to finance his lifestyle.

His boyfriend, 40-year-old Alessio Regina, was given three years and two months in jail for complicity in the buying and selling of drugs, also as part of a plea deal.

The parties organised by Spagnesi typically involved the priest, his drug-dealing flatmate and at least one other person, whom they would find through gay dating sites, according to detectives.

However, on occasion, the weekly parties would involve much larger groups of up to 20 or 30 participants. 

Investigations into Spagnesi began after police reportedly discovered that his flatmate had imported a litre of GHB from The Netherlands. The drug is often referred to as a ‘date-rape’ drug as it has been used to incapacitate victims of sexual assault.

He will serve part of his sentence in a rehab unit.

He must pay back the £ 257,000.

I find it hard to believe that the priesthood and religious life has always been so corrupt and decadent.

Men, women, children, sex, drugs, money, orgies, saunas Satanic sex gatherings etc.

Everyday you hear a new shocker from the Vatican, dioceses and monasteries.

Where will it all end?

As a seminarian and young priest I saw none of that.

I knew that there was human weakness and sinfulness.

But I never knew it was so universal, planned, cynical and “the norm”.

Have things got worse and why?

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137 replies on “ITALIAN PRIEST (40) STOLE £ 257,000 TO SPEND ON DRUGS AND GAY LIFESTYLE.”

This is yet another story about horrendous abuse and complete dishonesty, deceit and immoral recklessness. This priest cannot have been suitable for priesthood from the beginning. When I was a student in 70’s I never saw anything like this. The last 30 years have presented innumerable scandals among clerics, some involving theft, orgies, drug abuse, sex abuse..What can be the reason for this from a psychological analysis? I am lost for answers and it frightens me that we seem incapable of understanding or realising the enormity of the problem. Is there any definitive research to elucidate the reasons for this crisis, apart from Sipe?

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I don’t know of research but every time I hear someone say what you say I think about Pope John XXIII meeting Fr Fitzgerald to discuss how bad the abuse was then and not taking his advice, with the results we see. I honestly think what is different in the past thirty years is the internet – this story would only have been reported in Italian language newspapers before then.

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Fr Gerald Fitzgerald SP wanted not to take pederast priests considering them incorrigible, but was prevailed upon to keep taking them. Others involved in treatment of delinquent priests consider them treatable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeOSRUczqXY dates from when Fr Spangesi was accused. Spagnesi was a med student who dropped his studies to be a priest aged 26. Crack was one of his things. A parish accountant noticed withdrawal of 100k, and when he no longer has access he took money from the collection plate and started getting money from parishioners allegedly for low income family. The Youtuber only goes into the church for weddings and funerals.
Basically a COCAINE VORTEX is responsible for the stealing and HIV, according to the priest.
COCAINE VORTEX is great phrase, garbage made up by a ‘sick freak’ but good, I’ll give him that.

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Just today I came across this quote from an 1899 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII:
‘God has no need of our lies, as we are told in the book of Job. The Church historian will be all the better equipped to bring out her divine origin, superior as this is to all conceptions of a merely terrestrial and natural order, the more loyal he is in naught extenuating of the trials which the fault of her children, and at times even of her ministers, have brought upon the Spouse of Christ during the course of centuries. Studied in this way, the history of the Church constitutes by itself a magnificent and conclusive demonstration of the truth and divinity of Christianity’.
Bet you didn’t think Leo XIII would agree with fearlessly exposing the corruption! He could not of course have foreseen the communication allowed by the internet and for me the exposure of truth the internet allows merely points to the simple fact that the Church is not divine in origin. If it were, it would hit you in the face.

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The highly charged power structure a.k.a organisational sacramental system minus belief, which was replaced from 1954 (through the agency of Montini) by Rahnerism (fundamentalism) and Teilhardism (Swedenborgian “angelism”, a.k.a “white heat”). Jansenism to keep us down and Jesuitry to keep them up. Abolition of prayer in 1959. The cynical blackmail (“we’re nearly as degenerate as you”), the Muscular Christianity and the low education of seminary faculty and VDs. Theology now as no more than the replication of body language, and morals as no more than ingratiating and pincer movements, well there we have it.
Not enough belief, not enough agency or subsidiarity (the Workers’ Pope is Public Enemy No. 1), not enough responsibility, not enough individuality in thought and psychological personality. The archetype of clone “catholics” is more reality than before. Seminarians have to have aesthetic reasons and want to be alter JPs. They have to be doing it because there is no other way for them (is this a euphemism for having had their wealth stolen from them?)
The delayed effect didn’t engulf most of your peers in the RCC at the time. As a fringe Roman I know two excellent priests in my district (but too far to be in touch with), I knew another one now retired, I knew one in my former district. I even knew a Benedictine who wasn’t hysterical, I hear of a semi-rural suffragan bishop whose management is to high standard. There are a number of dazed, seemingly absent minded priests, whose preaching is sometimes meaningless, but not of bad behaviour.
The apparent attitude among archbishops and the bloated national and international apparatus of henchpeople, is alarming. Now we hear of Father Jeffries one of Cormac’s as usual, whom the brave Mr O’Connell has been trying to report to police for decades. England becoming a “catholic country”?

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Jansenism to keep us down and Jesuitry to keep them up. Theology now as no more than the replication of body language, and morals as no more than ingratiating and pincer movements.

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Pat @ 9.36am For personal use on your own I see no problem. Isn’t cigarettes and alcohol for ones use in your own room legal also? I don’t think you or I need to beat people up about what they get up to on their own behind closed doors. I don’t think you would like others doing that about what you get up to and judging you on it.

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‘I even knew a Benedictine who wasn’t hysterical’
You have never met a real Benedictine or you wouldn’t make that preposterous claim, let alone set foot in a monastery. If you had you would know all Benedictines are hysterical and a monastery is like AHS Asylum.

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It’s the stalker who repeatedly tells this lie/fantasy, plus lots of other creepy, stalkerish lies. You’re wasting your time, @3.11pm.

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https://wisecatholic.blogspot.com/2018/06/bdsm-and-maynooth.html

The ‘strange goings on’ suggest to me a mistake was made in folding priestly training into Maynooth. If a larger part of it could not to farmed out to the dioceses where most would be working, a sort of master and apprentice effort, perhaps All Hallows (I know it ‘went mad’ according to one old priest) and some of the seminaries could have continued in smaller premises. A good many presbyteries could provide bed and board for a seminary. A barracks model can only work where a military-like culture of discipline exists, if not it becomes an incubator of every sort of vice.

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Oh my word Pat. This is scandalous but actually not even surprising anymore sure it isn’t? This is the typical headlines we now expect from the RCC.

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This lifestyle is rife in clergy around the world. I have partied with a Lisburn area priest for years and we have attended many orgies, with which there were other clergy men. I myself do not take drugs but the clergy I have participated with have loved the pure MDMA and Cocaine. One priest from Antrim area use to even celebrate mass while high from the night before.

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@ 7:41am

It is your duty to name and shame them as for a priest celebrating The Holy Mass while high on drugs. It is absolutely your duty to inform his Ordinary so that he is dismissed and has his faculties removed immediately. You shouldn’t be partying with these lowlifes in the first place.

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Listen to Mr high and mighty @9.51am. Would love to know what you get up to on the quiet Mr Moralistic.

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The Reds have covered up for years the behaviour of Fr Gerry Reynolds. He eventually died of AIDS related illness and it has been long kept under the radar.

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Pat, they don’t know that. It’s a cathbot troll having a go at Fr Reynolds for telling people to pray for Paisley, and at you. When will you stop publishing rubbish?

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@ 9.58: There is nothing high and mighty about being scandalised by any priest being high on drugs or coming down from a high whilst celebrating Mass. Any right thinking person would sense how wrong and inappropriate this is. If any priest has this little respect or reverence he should not even be a priest. The hardship of addiction is no excuse either.

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Gosh I wonder how they caught him out? Why didn’t he just leave the priest hood and live the life he clearly wanted to live.

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Absolutely right 8:21am. He’s a very attractive guy. I have no doubt that this priest just couldn’t cope with the celibate life and, got into other things to meet his struggle. I am not excusing his behaviour but , unfortunately the Church, by insisting on celibacy is denying those who join, an integral part of their humanity. The expression of love and intimacy, as well as being sexually active is a part of every human being. It is not possible to simply deny this to those who enter seminary and expect that there won’t be consequences. The requirement of celibacy is not a gift…….if it were then not every man entering seminary would have received such a gift. It is simply a man made law which has been used to control those who take it on and sadly, it is now being seen as not fit for purpose. Every person has sexual needs and urges, and prayer and fasting will not meet those needs. It’s really too late for the Church in the western world to do anything about it…….the Church is dying on its feet and will soon be comprised elderly priests and laity. Everyone else has walked away.

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Yes, it’s remarkable how often you read of real people stealing €625,000 because they can’t get their rocks off.
I particularly like your implication that priests won’t be thieves and deviants if they’re allowed to have sex.
No, that shoe goes on the other foot.

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It was all underground for those in the know 😜. Social media has made it much easier to meet fellow travellers.

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Why are most gays obsessed with orgies? They must have some of the best concentration skills on planet Mother Earth, it’s hard enough to make love with one person never mind an entire host of people.

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Gay Orgies are not uncommon in the South Belfast and clergy do attend. Perhaps the earlier poster mentioning clergy from the Lisburn and Antrim area may be thinking of the regular orgy I refer to. Drugs are very much part and parcel of such group activity. Are people really that niaive to think these things don’t happen in the villages, towns and cities we all live in. Men of the cloth have been having sex for centuries, it’s hardly a secret. It may not be right for a host of reasons but I don’t think we should feign faux outrage and disgust. It happens, get over it. Married men who took serious vows are just as worse if not more worse having sex with others particularly gay men. The majority of guys attending the south Belfast group are married men, some only newly married. They go back to wives carrying God knows what including Covid.

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‘it’s hard enough to make love with one person never mind an entire host of people.’
If you find that difficult it’s not because the gays have good concentration it’s because you don’t. Ask your doctor for an ADHD test.
Actually sex with more than one other person is very different and you start feeling the sensations of things being done to other people but not to you. It’s strange and I can see how you get hooked.

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Hey, tell me something new ! I think we already know that these things in varying degrees take place in rectories, presbyteries, bishops’ houses, religious houses, monasteries etc. throughout the country – sex in the monastic kitchen, sex on the altar, drug fuelled sex parties in the presbytery…. Money going missing, being diverted from the parish / diocesan coffers, well nothing new there. These are indications of a clerical culture that is in moral, ethical and religious meltdown, inhabited by men who are duplicitous and living a lie. Somebody needs to dismantle it, and pay little regard to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Start from scratch again. If that doesn’t happen the priesthood will continue to disintegrate in to the primordial slime from which it came.

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@9.05am You totally misrepresent what I’ve posted earlier. When I say all sorts of sex takes place in villages, towns etc I didn’t specifically say just only gay sex which you seem to have latched on to. There is a lot more sexual activity in Ireland other than just gay sex. When I mentioned the South Belfast orgy and other group sex meets I never once said it was in a religious or clergy house. In fact most take place in ordinary peoples flats, houses, farms etc. The South Belfast one in particular is in a very swish luxury pad with hot tub in the garden.

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@1020 – And…..? This doesn’t take away from the fact that most clergy sex these days is gay sex because most clergy are gay and active. So, they are shagging around, in lay-bys, at gay cruising sites, on gay beaches, in saunas, in dark rooms, on internet pick up sites etc. etc. They are alcohol and drug fuelled, most particularly with poppers, and sometimes with stronger stuff. That’s how it works in the gay clergy world. Just stating the facts, the obvious and what we all know. It would be interesting to know how many of these gay clergy are on PrEP so that they can get up to what they want without too much bother ?

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It’s so easy now with smartphones and apps set up for so-called “sexual hookups” arranged from the comfort of the presbytery, monastic cell, or seminary. In the past, it was public toilets, public cruising areas or gay saunas. Someone had to have a lot of courage to visit those places as they were often raided by police and arrested – as a member of the Salford Chapter and East Anglia chapter of canons could vouch. Their arrests were announced in the local papers at the time – mercifully for them, there is no permanent online record as there are these days.

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@ 9.51: Homosexuality (nor heterosexuality) is wrong. They are simply orientations/ attractions. How these inclinations are acted upon is a different matter.

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Society has street angels and house devils. The Church has altar angels and boilerhouse devils. The Church community is part of society and is not immune from the problems of society.
If the subject of today’s blog was an ordinary member of society, the story would not have received so much publicity. The individual’s moral hypocrisy is the story here, along with his criminal behaviour.
Will bishops have to start carrying out random drug tests??
Pax.

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How did that priest escape Italian seminary screening process and got ordained??? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
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What’s the odds of similar priests like him, who would pass the seminary screening process in irish dioceses and get ordained in Ireland 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🙈.
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I might say 50/1🤑

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Here we go with deaf guy again with his sweeping outlandish statements. H
How did you possibly arrive at those odds? Please explain

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Anon at 10.14am

Outlandish sweeping statement, could you expand this and thanks 🤓
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My odd re 50/1 are an estimated guess as its 1st attempt of what has happened in Italy. Its just a stab re my odd.

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The more of this of this happening would reduce my odds to say 8/1 or less. Plus using Bayes theorem would give us more or less accurate odds.

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Anyway I should have known better re my holiday in Rome many years ago.
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Its because I noticed Italian men waiters were handsome as my ex gay friend was drooling all over him. I didn’t get it later until Martel book.

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Randy Engel in her ‘Rite of Sodomy’ contended that homosexual priestly recruits were deliberately chosen and when they gained rank they chose other priests like them. It was probably the case with Cardinal Cushing of Boston who gave Fr Shanley a permanent apostolate to street youth, a little before his death, after multiple complaints of abuses by Shanley, his association with the founding of NAMBLA, a report from another priest and a mother. Now the intent might have been to add a good looking gay man to the ranks, not a crack addicted thief, but it can come with the territory.

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Randy Engel in her Rite of Sodomy merely proves that she is a paranoid homophobic conspiracy theorist. We’re talking about an organization that can’t even get it together to recognize its priests shouldn’t be raping children – organised recruitment is beyond it

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04:23 her essential contention was that gay bishops favoured the careers of gay priests. Her book could do with severe editing, but it does make the case, which of itself obvious. People like people like them. I notice an article on hers on a scandal from a while back, ‘St Sebastian’s angel’ a sort of priestly Grindr avant la lettre. Cardinal Napier, according to her, would not look at the site which had some of his priests on it, as it would be an occasion of sin. Her writing also covered the abuse of young priests by bishops before it was noticed.
She has a few threads in Rite but a big idea, and useful, is the AmChurch feeling itself too important for the rest of the Church, giving itself to self perpetuating and ineffectual lobbying over abortion and whatnot, which served little purpose except to give employment to priests who wanted away from icky parishioner, priests with a love of the desk, no smell of the sheep for them, to use words of Pope Francis.
I don’t agree with her thrust on Francis Cardinal Spellman, that his promotions or selections were corrupting. Likely gay, but +Spellman showed kindness to priests cast adrift by V2. For instance Fr Gommar de Pauw a peritus at V2, became severely alienated from it. +Spellman ensured Fr de Pauw could incardinate and offer the traditional Mass and remain in good standing. His videos of the old Mass were a precious resource before the traditional Mass became somewhat more widespread.
It is a while since I read her. I skipped to what I thought were relevant parts. Perhaps the AmChurch aspect could have been usefully separated out, as it has connection to gay bishops helping gay priests, but a limited one. An arrogantly national minded Church is maybe too dull for most.

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I wonder if Kirby has / had a swish secret pad. Hopefully it is nothing more than accounting mistakes or bad investment, but men who act have on their sexual urges towards young men in their authority, or the womaniser or lecher who preys on women who resort to a priest for counselling (like oould Eamon Casey or the ex Abp of Paris) also struggle with money temptations, and invariably lose the fight. Maybe there’s a secret pad under Silverstream.

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Things have taken a turn for the worst. A new priest and former Oscotian, Jolley, attempted to meet a toddler online to abuse him sexually. An Abbott having unprotected sex in the boiler house – A Cardinal arrested for financial corruption; another one defrocked for the sexual abuse of minors. Another cardinal unjustly imprisoned and possibly set up by his colleagues in the Vatican. A young conservative Spanish bishop leaves to marry an erotic Satanic novelist—London property scandals and embezzlement. I remember the Bishops Eamon Casey and Roderick Wright scandals breaking in the early 1990s and believing them to be utterly shocking and scandalous. They seem tame now.

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Confounded – not to forget Cardinal Kitty O’Brien and her gay escapades whilst publicly condemning gays.

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Anon2811, bashing the bishop, apart from being a mortal sin, is still not being celibate. Celibate means not doing it at all.
Rather than have the wankers’ confession queue in seminary before mass the thing to do is require celibacy.
Rather than saying you require it and finding ways round it.

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2.28
You’re confusing celibacy with chastity. The etymology is caelebs ‘unmarried.’

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Why couldn’t they just confine themselves to ‘bashing the bishop’ so to speak, if they cannot control themselves? I think unsuitable recruits are a part, but misconduct might spread to otherwise orderly priests who lack good formation and prayer life. Far too many priests neglect saying the Office which with the LOTH is now a relatively light burden, but still a worthwhile way of centring a priest. A thought is that McCarrick was one for confessing his sins to someone who might be on to him, but not willing to look the other way, and those priests who therefore bound by the seal of confession. I wonder if that was at issue here, but Spagnesi seemed disorderly and not cunning like McCarrick.

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‘Far too many priests neglect saying the Office which with the LOTH is now a relatively light burden’
Successive revisions starting with Pius X’s revision of the psalter, have all had the bizarre mindset that too much prayer is difficult for a priest, or he doesn’t have time for it, or has something better to do.
No wonder we’ve arrived here today.
The psalter in the Roman office before 1910 was basically the monastic psalter, all the Psalms in a week. There was also a lot of repetition of Psalms in the little hours – presumably St Benedict made them like that to allow recitation from memory if working outside the monastery.
Nowadays not even many monasteries use the full Benedictine psalter.
Frankly you would think people entering priesthood or religious life would be up for the prayer, but obviously not.

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The Liturgia Horarum has found users amongst Orthodox and Eastern Catholic priests who appreciate its arrangement of scriptural and patristic matter. Rumor also has it that the SSPX makes use of the patristic lections although they would vehemently deny it.

While I’m on this topic I should mention that some folks have published Compline according to the Leo XIII rubricks which is a tribute to Pope Francis’s release of the stranglehold of the 1962 books on liturgy.

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3.22pm
In one of his nauseating “look at me” articles, Darcy describes a typical day in which he runs about doing good, including putting on the heating in the church, making coffee for the brethren, Mass, confessions and visiting six houses. He says that late at night he gets back home, exhausted, and sits in his chair in his bedroom and prays. He describes it as closing his eyes and saying nothing. No mention of the LOTH.

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I didn’t know either of those things, Seraphim. Imagine having to deny what liturgical books you’re using!

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@3:22 It can seem a situation where the only pray a priest offers is the public liturgy. A priest should be like our Lord teaching the disciples how to pray. St Pius X faced the issue that the heavily burdened Roman calendar saw too many Feasts of high rank distorting the Office, preventing a full recital of the Psalter each week, leaving many features of the Office barely used, but cutting down and introducing what seemed like good ideas took on its own momentum. Now LOTH can be a bit forgotten. A priest should be formed by prayer and LOTH is a very useful way to do it. Some of the ambitions of its creators or revisers came to nothing and it was like 1974 before the relevant chant notation was published by Solesmes, I think.
@seraphim I would think so. The proverbial wheel shouldn’t be re-invented.
https://sicutincensum.wordpress.com/ have published a booklet for the traditional compline with musical settings. They don’t give the UK Amazon link which is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Traditional-Roman-Compline-Gerhard-Eger/dp/B09LWGV9JM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Traditional+Roman+Compline&qid=1639335443&sr=8-1.

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@11:22pm
There are plenty like that who wear the other type of vestments starting with McCarrick,Ledworth.and McCammily I could go on and on. So before you make your foul insinuations look to you own, people in glass houses etc. etc.

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Clearly a prima donna, look at me kind of priest. Not dissimilar to the get up of some of the new Oscott priests.

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Fiddlebacks are common in Italy and signify nothing. They have better taste than to wear the floaty kaftans favoured by Dom Richard, Roaree, Fr McCamley, the ex-PP of Pomeroy, Cardinals Tobin, Cupich, Cocco, McCarrick, CMOC etc etc (you know the long list of blog stars at this stage)

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12.45
Soup pitch was one of Mc Carraigs boys. He is also a cat a might to his emptiness. Watch what happens next.

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I’m 11:22 and really you could have said ‘We know you’re joking’ but you’re all just too caught up in yourselves…

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3:13 Hanlon’s rule says never to attribute to malice anything adequately explained by stupidity.

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3:28 Thank you for the frank admission that the preoccupation with the old rite is about tat. There will be a Netflix documentary about you when your body is found. X

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I once heard from a student in the NUI Maynooth that one evening she saw a young lad scale a wall near the seminary and a bit later he returned with another lad, and both scaled the wall. She certainly thought they seemed affectionate with each other, although hurried.
‘Strange Goings On’ would make a grand title for a movie short.

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1.53
Rubbish. Reading in to something most light not there. Scaling the wall was a very common experience when the gates were locked at 11:00 or when tou wanted the shorter route to avoid having to walk around to the front gate and sign in. A fertile imagination.

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2:14 The part of your comment which is not gibberish says that breaking the rules was normal.

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Yes, breaking the rules was normal in Maynooth. The deans knew it went on and did nothing about it and they presented to Orders a Clogher sem who broke his ankle when scaling the wall.
This unpunished rule breaking embedded in seminarians’ heads the notion that rather than following the rules, or openly advocating for changing them, you simply broke them without retort from the authorities.
Such a lax mindset in a lax seminary such as Maynooth – though it wasn’t really a seminary, just a hall of residence with a bit of prayer thrown in – got carried into priesthood.

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The Clogher seminarian who broke his ankle didn’t last long in priesthood, to no great surprise to his classmates.

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3:00
More rubbish.
A black-and-white approach to morality in general and to rules in particular is indicative of arrested moral development and of a super-ego (conscience of childhood) enduring into adulthood. A seminary is a third level institution not a creche. The Clogher seminarian and priest is and was an upright person and a man of integrity. You don’t speak for his classmates.

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Clerical exceptionalism from 7.22pm.
Seminarians are funded at great cost by the laity, and humble folk send them money. Integrity means that you follow rules, or be honest in breaking them. If you are out on the lash from Maynooth, have the integrity and honesty to come in through the front gate, sign the book and have a conversation with the dean, either to defend yourself or to urge the easing of the rule. No sneaking about and no climbing over walls (and thereby scandalising lay students in the process). That’s the mature, honest approach.

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7.22
Sems are not ordinary students who can behave as such. They are effectively employees of the laity during their laity-subsidised training and should act appropriately. I cannt imagine Presbyterian ministry students climbing walls. A layperson would be dimissed by their employer if they did this.

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‘A black-and-white approach to morality in general and to rules in particular is indicative of arrested moral development and of a super-ego (conscience of childhood) enduring into adulthood. ‘
7:22
I am giving my students a lecture tomorrow on psychopathy and will quote from you. Thank you for the wonderful illustration of lack of conscience. Don’t worry, I will maintain your confidentiality, since that’s a black and white rule.

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8.37
A list of do’s and don’t’s that would be at home in any pre-school and junior school. The fees of all third level students, including seminarians, for their primary degree are subsidised by the tax payer. It doesn’t follow they should remain at the basic level of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

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8.37
The idea of clerical exceptionalism – whatever that means – is the trigger which pushes your buttons. Get over the fact that morality is a complex reality and seek professional help. Better still, have a session or two with Pat. He’ll put you right.

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11.17pm

No mature adult of integrity climbs seminary walls. They man up and walk through the front gate. No slinking, no hiding, no covering up.

Also, you know nothing about the fees situation in Maynooth. Most sems there don’t study for secular degrees so they don’t get fees paid. At most, they might do the BD, but RoI students don’t get fees paid by the state for purely theology degrees.

Finally, by far the biggest charge for sems in Maynooth is the diocesan maintenance charge per seminarian, to cover the seminary running costs. Evenbin my time in the 1980s that was £15k, but it will be a lot more now that the staff/student ratio is so high and economies of scale have been lost. That diocesan charge is not paid by taxpayers.

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@11.20pm. The notion that “morality is a grey area” has given us CSA, strange goings on, abbots in saunas, priests cottaging, McCarrick etc. How many of them started off by climbing over walls?

Clerical exceptionalism is the widespread view of priests that the rules and mature behaviours that lay people follow aren’t really applicable to priests.

Is that why Francis unceasingly denounces priests for clericalism? He suggests that it is more or less universal and he feels that it is necessary to raise it every time he addresses a gathering of priests.

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‘one night in Maynooth’, the main protagonist Byrne in his Sailor boy attire or Stephen Wilson in his Cabin crew uniform or maybe Hughie Connolly in his LGBT Stole.

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How did a seminarian ever thing it might be appropriate to wear and be photographed in a Sailor Boy outfit and then put the photo on social media?

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@3:00pm that’s the thing.
A seminarian who from year to year encounters rules as things to be ignored, can end up as a priest with severely distorted set of values (and ankle too!)
A recent, say 2013, version of Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma is not much different from a pre V2 version, gaining mostly quotations from the V2 Constitutions, which largely support what was there, but we have a Church which has mostly left all the rules in places, but patently ignores them, or ignores what doesn’t suit.
If some rule is so unreasonable, the student of some decades ago was to campaign for a change.
One benefit of the COVID times is that with most pubs at least nominally closing at 12, or closing to non regulars, who are then locked in, there might be less reason for the country boys to scale the wall at 11. Less danger for their poor ankles.

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Seeking advice from Anglicans on this would be like asking a vegan how to cook steak.

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Well I’m a vegan and know perfectly well how to cook steak. You are referring to, and showing, wilful ignorance, 4:43.

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Police in Dundee are guarding the statue of Desperate Dan amid reports that a mob of angry vegans tried to tear it down last night but didn’t have the energy.

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5:36
Do try not to exaggerate. It’s well known the entire population of Scotland eats nothing but square sausage.

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The ‘traddy’and particularly explicitly sedevacantist blogosphere are ranting that the Holy Father is going to forbid the old mass completely this coming year and shut down all the groups which celebrate it. I think he has the right idea, they can flounce off taking their tat with them and we who remain can hold the Catholic faith.

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Ould gossip Alert @ 7:34pm
Nettie if anybody’s ranting its you as usual. Oul Fanny can rant all he likes he has no idea at all he can flounce off and worship his amazonian earth godess with you and all the rest of the heretics and polyester queens. Those of us who still hold The Catholic Faith will remain to save it until the present situation in Rome is removed.

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A sede won’t care too much about Francis except the more strident Francis is, the easier to lure people into whichever cult is most local to them, or send money, which some prefer. I would suggest a Mass loved by so many saints, essentially fixed in form by the first printing of 1477, but largely fixed when Pope St Gregory the Great gave the Canon the form it has now, a variant on the codification seen at Trent in 1570. The New Order of Mass is barely over fifty years old and it remains to be seen if it will last or just fade like the many local liturgical Uses which survived in some form until V1. The traditional Mass is at least 1400 years in existence as something recognisable and possibly older.
Traditionis Custodis is a deeply unimpressive and unfair document and for the most part it has not resulted in any notable change where a bishop was mindful that no form of the liturgy was illegal, that Paul VI had no suppressed anything, the way Pius X had ended use of the Pius V Divine Office.
Some of the tie dye efforts by the ‘spirit of V2’ rads are tat. The best is where the priest and people follow the moderate and middle course in aesthetics, liturgy and Catholic action. If Francis lives for much longer, TC will be the most he will do. A certain class of professional trad blog profits off fear. What they say doesn’t matter ultimately. They are as delusional as the Praytell blog, which locks things the moment commenters make too many telling points the editors dislike.

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Oul Gossip Alert @ 7:34pm
OMG Netty you’re off on one of your rants again rushing to defend oul Fanny who’d be better off worshiping his amazonian earth godess and spouting his usual heresies, flouncing about in the usual polyester tat he habitually wears. We who still hold to The Catholic Faith will keep the lamp burning until Rome returns to the truth.

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“He stole £257,000 from his parish to finance his lifestyle.”
On today, the 12th of December, we are halfway through the Advent reading of the 24 chapters from the Gospel of Luke.
“12:39 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
12:40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
…
12:58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison.”
Pax.

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To the angel of the community in Philadelphia write this:
“These are the words of him or her who are holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he or she opens no one can shut; and what he or she shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.”
Revelation 3: 7-8

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Another vintage day of the holy priests demonstrating what they’re made of, thank you Pat. Actually I should refer to them as clergy men after the howl the phrase elicited yesterday and let’s face it, they’re boys not men.

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