Cleansing Fire

Defending Truth and Tradition in the Roman Catholic Church

Deacon Sciolino broadens smear campaign to include pre-conciliar Catholicism

September 12th, 2013, Promulgated by b a

Deacon Sciolino recently landed some more publicity in CITY Newspaper for his self-published book smearing Venerable Pope Pius XII. We reported on the deacon and his book a few months ago. This latest article can be found here:

Unholy alliance: The Catholic Church and the Holocaust by Ron Netsky

You can get a glimpse of the unbiased and objective interviewing capabilities of Mr. Netsky with questions like this:

Does the church fear knowledge?

I’m not sure if the teaching faculty at St. Bernard’s would be proud of his attack against Pope Pius XII, but I bet they’d stand behind his endorsement of the hermeneutic of rupture. Although, he seems inclined to take the hermeneutic of rupture one step further – that the Church prior to the council was not only wrong, but harmful.

As recently noted in the comments of that previous post, Deacon Sciolino is now promoting his insights and his work to DOR parishioners through official parish channels.

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25 Responses to “Deacon Sciolino broadens smear campaign to include pre-conciliar Catholicism”

  1. Dominick Anthony Zarcone says:

    In EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM author George Weigel makes references to ‘baptized pagans’ and ‘those who physically are identified with the Church but already have experienced a psychological schism’. He makes the point that the Church is in need of reform emphasizing that within the Church there are both clergy and laity who are not friends of Jesus, who have yet to encounter the risen Lord personally are not converted and have yet to become disciples committed to Christ’s truth and mission revealed to Christ’s Catholic Church.

    Whether or not I ever read Sciolino’s book, I cannot help but wonder in amazement at the things he reportedly says and allows to be made public. I have read Netsky’s questions and the deacon’s answers.

    Vergogneti, Sciolino! The Church you claim to love as you deem it should be is not the Church of which Christ Jesus is both Lord and Savior.

  2. Monk says:

    Deacon Sciolino collaborated with late term abortionist Morris Wortman in hosting the conference The 2000 Year Road
    to the Holocaust. While he blames the Church for the Holocaust, he allies himself with someone perpetuating the
    ongoing holocaust against the innocent unborn . The hypocrisy and lack of understanding is glaring.

  3. Nerina says:

    I am so tired of this man and his never-ending smear of our former Holy Father. Shame on him. Really. Shame. On. Him.

  4. Richard Thomas says:

    His ignorance is also present concerning birth control.

    “It’s the same with birth control; modern science disproves the natural law rationale for forbidding it. Times have changed.”

    Hogwsh. Modern science proved natural family planning. He has no idea or is in denial of all the medical, emotional and social ills of birth control.

  5. Ron says:

    Has anyone mailed a copy of the article to Bishop Cunningham yet?

  6. Scott W. says:

    Has anyone mailed a copy of the article to Bishop Cunningham yet?

    +1. A habit I picked up in office jobs with co-workers who make trouble: document everything. 9/10 out of ten it never comes of anything, but that 10th time you will be glad you did.

    Meanwhile over in Buffalo, Bp. Malone has been preparing us in Who Moved My Cheese? style for lay administrators. The only silver lining is that he is (so far) doctrinally solid and not out to saddle parishes with dissenters unlike a certain former neighboring bishop.

  7. Scott W. says:

    P.S. No I didn’t mail Bp. Cunningham. It should come from DOR laity.

  8. Ron says:

    I mailed a copy to Bishop Cunningham. But that’s just one voice – maybe if several people mail copies or links to the article it will get some attention – http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/unholy-alliance/Content?oid=2266527

  9. raymondfrice says:

    I decided to come out of retirement and make a rare comment. In the judge’s article in CITY newspaper he tends to question the intentions of Pope Pius XII towards the Jews in Europe during WW2. This is still being debated, is open to still open to discussion and consequently many people seems to be climbing all over Sciolino about has so called “picking” on PPII. Am I the only one who seems to think that that he is actually, baldly in the article, DENYING PAPAL INFALLIBILITY which is galaxies away from not liking a particualr pope.? Infallibility is a dogma of the Church and is required to be believed in order for one to be a Catholic. His Honor states that popes are not infallible. So instead of having a nit-picker, we have a heretic ??

  10. Ron says:

    Ramondfrice – no, you are not alone. In my note accompanying the copy of the article I sent to Bishop Cunningham I specifically cited the comments about infallibility and birth control as being problematic. (I was being “polite” in the note!)Deacon S has a number of other views I’ve seen on line about other issues, such as electing bishops! If you want to see him in action, and if you are on Twitter, check his posts and his arguments with other people.

  11. Eliza10 says:

    Deacon Sciolino? Wow, It just goes to show you can be very well-educated and have a successful place in the world and still be a ignorant and bigoted. And also you can be Catholic and a Deacon and be a slanderer and detractor, actively betraying Holy Mother Church, the very one to whom you have made vows of allegiance to – before God himself.

    Well he is in our Diocese, and he did go to St. Bernards.

    And it does help to remember that our Blessed Mother loves him and prays for him in earnest love, just as she prayed for the betrayer Judas.

    Sciolino is probably just an unknowing victim of St. Bernards. He drank to much of their koolaid. Having by God’s grace not been steeped in that myself its hard to understand how an intelligent mind can fall into that fru-fru.

    I am organizing papers this week and stumbled on an article I saved, and I re-read it, by Cardinal Charles Journet, titled, “The Church Contains Sinners, But She Does Not Contain Sin”. This very short article is an excerpt from his book. But really the title says it all, and God-willing, with His grace, I would die for that truth.

    I think St. Bernard’s must make sure its students do not read the real Catholic words of the many great Catholic theologians, contemporary or of old, mostly likely by detracting the greats, and also by stuffing them full of fluff so they have no time for the real stuff. Like too much candy. Attending St. Bernards you can truly begin to believe the Catholic Church is a place for those of poverty of mind, a place that desparately needs the input of your own mind to set it straight! And the staff encourages you to think so.

    But St. Bernard’s graduates have long been the official DoR catechists, which explains a LOT. As a convert, to me, DoR Catholics were rather a shockign surprise, they are like very poor people living in poverty, spiritual poverty, thinking they had to be happy to live on table scraps, even smiling at those poor scraps! They don’t even know that they are in fact truly, truly rich. Rolling in riches!

    I feel sure that when we get a new Bishop who will take steps to ensure there is a right turnaround in teaching here in the DoR, the starved people will respond with amazement and gratitude to truth. Only the ones in the little exclusive club of Bernard’s will drag their feet in protest. But the people will recognize true food and they will want more when they get a taste of it. The meanness of the Bernard’s scraps will be seen for what they are, and ignored. And there will be a Catholic revival in the DoR.

  12. BigE says:

    @Eliza
    1) Based on his undergraduate degree from Columbia, and a Law degree from Cornell; I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Deacon Sciolino is a big boy, who can think for himself and takes full responsibility for his actions and views. This idea that those with conserative views are strong willed and able to think critically while those with liberal views are weak minded, brainwashed products of St. Bernerd’s is so silly I don’t even know how to respond to it.
    2) I also don’t think you have any idea of what Catholic theologians are studied or not studied at St. Bernard’s other than from the anecdotal observations of a biased few from this site. And since part of the role of education to expand knowledge and expose students to a variety of thinkers, “poverty of mind” would only incur by limiting students to learning only what you believe is important. That would truly be the scraps of a wide range of theological thinking within our Church.

  13. Eliza10 says:

    BigE,
    1) I am not as impressed as you by his degrees. I am, however, impressed with the minds of Albert Einstein, and of Golda Meir (who attended University of Zurich and Milwaukee Normal School, respectively). They have a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT VIEW than Sciolino on the role of the Church and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. What they have said on this issue will always be far more widely and respected than Sciolino’s anti-Catholic, anti-Church revisionist theories.

    I am certain Sciolino agrees with you that he can think for himself. I cannot agree with you that going to St. Bernard’s makes you weak-willed. But the brainwashed part – yes. I also feel that it would pander to a person’s narcissism to be a big fish in a small pond, and to the narcissism and the elitism of others there to have what they consider to be a big fish in their little pond.

    2) You are wrong that my idea of what is studied at St. Bernard’s has to do with the opinions of others on this site. Its all about the fruit – fruit which is so evident, and in such obvious contrast to Catholicity.

    It is Catholic teaching and values that will make the local Church grow because people thirst for the real thing. Real Catholicism. In contrast, everything else, like St. Bernard-think, is SMALL. People thirst and yearn for the truth. When real Catholic truth is finally taught here under the supervision of a Bishop who loves and submits to the sacred teaching of the Holy Catholic Church, the DoR Church will revive and grow.

  14. Ben Anderson says:

    BigE said

    And since part of the role of education to expand knowledge and expose students to a variety of thinkers, “poverty of mind” would only incur by limiting students to learning only what you believe is important.

    We believe in the truth. The role of education is to teach truth. Those thinkers who teach truth should be learned from. Those who teach falsehoods should be learned only to be refuted, and only once the student has a good grasp on the truth first. And even if they did claim teach a wide variety… BigE, can you tell me if they teach JP2’s Theology of the Body, Fr. Garrigou Lagrange and the neo-scholastics, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and above all St. Thomas?

  15. Scott W. says:

    Bishop D’Arcy said it well when Notre Dame was staging The Vagina Monologues:

    Catholic universities cannot present things that imply that Catholic teaching is one option competing among many……what makes a Catholic university distinctive is the conviction that in the search for truth, we do not start from scratch; we start from the truth that has been revealed to us in the Word of God, the person of Jesus Christ, and the teaching of his church. The notion that truth will emerge from a discussion in which many points of view are represented both disrespects revealed truth and separates the search for truth from the certainty of faith…

  16. BigE says:

    @Eliza
    1)Interesting. So you are impressed with the minds/critical thinking of Albert Einstein and Golda Meir. Cool (me too btw). However, you do realize that both of them reject the core truth you (we) have come to believe – that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior (Einstein was an agnostic/atheist, Meir Jewish). A truth btw, that Deacon Sciolino fully embraces. So who has the better mind then? Or does someone only have a good mind/good thinking skills when they agree with you?

  17. Richard Thomas says:

    The tone of some of these comments and rebuttals is not Christian. They are personal attacks on the thoughts and ideas of people, regardless of their opinions. It would be nice tio see fraternal discussion and correction on a more christian tone. When the personal trashing comes, so does hardened heards, emotional hurts and the uslessness of dicuussion. When Christ said “love your enemies”, I think he wanted people to be civil when discussing contraversial topics.

  18. BigE says:

    @Richard
    Good thought for us all to keep in mind (especially me).

  19. BigE says:

    @Ben
    1) St. Bernard’s is a school of Theology (and Ministry). Theology is defined as “faith seeking understanding” and not just “faith as understood” (altough this is certainly a component of theology). And truth is no doubt truth, but it’s perspective can change base on the lens through with which we view it. So we all believe in the truth, and I don’t know of any professor, at St. Bernard’s or elsewhere, who is committed to teaching lies.

    2) As far as what St. Bernard’s teaches – it’s width and depth would be impossible for me to summarize. If you truly are interested, go to their website, look at the courses that interest you, and check out the course description, objectives, learning outcomes and required reading. Better yet -> take a class and see for yourself. Your voice would be a welcome addition to any of their classes.

  20. Rich Leonardi says:

    I also don’t think you have any idea of what Catholic theologians are studied or not studied at St. Bernard’s other than from the anecdotal observations of a biased few from this site.

    You don’t have to drink the whole gallon to know the milk is spoiled.

  21. Richard Thomas says:

    It’s been stated prior to this but faithful deacons have said that they simply regurgitate the stuff they learn to pass the test. This is not real study. And it seems that these candadates are not being exposed to the true theology of the majesterium but this modernist stuff

  22. Ron says:

    Deacon Sciolino recently commented that he’s taking some heat for his City interview. I wonder if it’s just folks like us speaking up, or if Bishop Cunningham/diocesan officials have said something to him?

  23. Ben Anderson says:

    maybe Pope Francis called him 🙂

  24. Dominick Anthony Zarcone says:

    That the Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church
    in communion with Rome are one and the same thing is
    a doctrine based on revealed truth.”
    Pope Pius XII

  25. Ron says:

    I just saw this posted on his Deacon Sciolino’s Twitter site: “This is the article that resulted in the revocation of my faculty to preach and teach as deacon in 2013”

    Apparently it was done by Bishop Cunningham, as Deacon Sciolino notes on his book’s Facebook site:

    “This is the article that resulted in the revocation of my faculty to preach and teach as a deacon in 2013, summarily issued by the then Apostolic Administrator of Rochester, Bishop Robert J. Cunningham.”

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