Even as the Roman Catholic Church continues to play a leading role in efforts to thwart marriage equality in New York State - using the cry that gay marriage is a "threat to religious freedom" as its disingenuous rallying cry - a new article in Philadelphia Magazine looks at the true cesspool nature of the Church hierarchy. While the article focuses on crimes and obstruction of justice in Philadelphia, the problems discussed are endemic to the Church and include figures like Timothy "Porky Pig" Dolan, Archbishop of New York and head of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Looking at the seamy and criminal actions of the Church hierarchy in Philadelphia and elsewhere, the question ought to be why aren't GOP legislators in New York calling for Dolan's criminal prosecution rather than kissing his very wide ass? Here are some story highlights:
*
As the Archdiocese reels from a second grand jury report detailing its cover-up of sexual abuse by priests, the local church faces the biggest crisis in its history. How could a spiritual institution turn a blind eye to evil not just once, but twice? The answer lies in the story of the two men who’ve led the Catholic Church in Philadelphia for the past 25 years.
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[T]his second grand jury report, six years later, was much shorter than the first, yet in some ways it was more devastating, because the central charge was the same: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia still allowed alleged pedophile priests —37 of them, the report said—to continue ministering to children. What’s more, the DA’s office was charging a monsignor, William Lynn, along with three priests and a parish teacher, with crimes related to sexual abuse.
*
Lynn reported directly to Cardinal Bevilacqua, and he was the first member of Church hierarchy in this country to be indicted as part of the sexual-abuse scandal. The point was inescapable: Something was very wrong with the way the archdiocese had been run. And with how it is still being run.
*
The Church’s protection of priests who sexually abuse children is a testament to its completely insular control and power apart from civil society. The Church takes care of its own, in other words, and that fact leads to a cruel bottom line: Maintaining the institution’s standing in the world is more important than taking care of victims of sexual abuse.
*
The crisis can best be understood not just through the victims, but through the two men who have led the archdiocese through the past quarter century. Anthony Bevilacqua, arrogant and cocksure, and Justin Rigali, timid and duty-bound, reflect quite different sides of the institution and how it operates. Through them, the story of the local Church’s crisis unfolds, and it raises yet another question: Will the Catholic Church as we know it survive in Philadelphia?
*
Father Schmeer brought Joe into his office and stood behind him. His fingers dug into Joe’s shoulders. He pressed against Joe. Then he reached into the front of Joe’s pants and tried to masturbate him. A month later, Joe was called down to Father Schmeer’s office again. This time, standing behind him, the priest pulled Joe’s pants down, and his underwear, and pushed his penis into Joe’s anus, and kept at it until he was satisfied. The next day, in English class, Joe’s teacher—a lay teacher—asked him if he was all right. He said he was. The teacher knew what had happened. So did his classmates. One of them said, “You got it, didn’t you?” From Schmeer the Queer. That’s what students called him.
*
The Church prefers that we think sexually abusive priests are a relatively new phenomenon, that Rome and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia first learned of it when the general public did, in the past decade or so. In various ways, however, the Church has known about, avoided, and sometimes tried to actually deal with sexual abuse by clergy for centuries.
*
WHEN ANTHONY BEVILACQUA came to this city from Pittsburgh in 1988, he offered something that Cardinal Krol, the iron fist who preceded him, could not: charisma. . . . . And he was a very clever man—both a canon and civil lawyer—and very ambitious.
*
Shuffling Ferraro around was unconscionable, yet Bevilacqua was operating exactly as Church authorities do all over the world: Protect a priest’s job; protect the Church from scandal; move the priest to another unsuspecting parish. But how could Bevilacqua operate that way while championing Tom Doyle’s reforms? “The only virtue is obedience,” says Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and an ex-priest who has spent the past few decades trying to understand the collision of sex and power in his church. “As long as you’re obedient to the Church, as long as you protect and embrace it, you are justified.”
*
Bevilacqua did want the Church to deal with sexual abuse in a more responsible way; meanwhile, though, Bevilacqua would move sex perps to some other parish. Because he was being obedient to, and protecting, his Church.
*
Those working under Bevilacqua in Philadelphia, however, say he was a royal prick as a boss. He would scream at his chauffeur over what route they took; he would demand that no mortals smudge the polished brass rails leading from the front door of his City Avenue mansion. Bevilacqua created an atmosphere in the archdiocesan offices in which underlings tiptoed about on tenterhooks as they did the cardinal’s bidding.
*
Doyle [Tom Doyle—by this time a widely sought expert on sexual-abuse issues] now believes that Cardinal Bevilacqua—who’s 88 years old and said to be infirm—should be in prison.
*
HERE WAS A general feeling among Philadelphia’s Catholic parishioners that, as bad as the 2005 grand jury report was, the Church would get past it. The Church would clean up the mess and move on.
But Justin Rigali, it turns out, is particularly unsuited to deal with a problem so scandalous and unseemly. . . . or nine years, before coming to Philadelphia to replace Bevilacqua in 2003, Rigali was archbishop of St. Louis, and he once described the sexual-abuse scandal there as the worst problem of his tenure. For a period, he would meet with victims, but his solution to their rage and pain and wrecked lives was prayer; he soon stopped meeting with victims altogether, according to SNAP.
*
RICHARD SIPE, THE psychotherapist and ex-priest, as well as Tom Doyle, notes that most of the serious trouble the Church has gotten into for 2,000 years somehow involves sex, and that the strictures of celibacy and utter control a cleric is supposed to exhibit over both mind and body lead to problems—not sexual abuse, per se, but almost inevitably a certain degree of hypocrisy. It is time, they believe, for the Church to fully emerge from the fourth century. . .
*
“The organization is corrupt,” Sipe says, “if you think of hypocrisy and double-dealing as corrupt. I’ve been in on depositions of cardinals in sex-abuse cases, and they lie with tremendous abandon,. . . . The one necessary ingredient—the thing that keeps those in power morally afloat—is total fealty to the Church. Bevilacqua, in arrogance, and Rigali, in fear, came at their churchly duty through diametrically opposed prisms. But it amounts to the same thing: obedience. And it bears repeating: “The only virtue is obedience,” Sipe says. “You are not beholden to charity or truth or anything else. Everything can be sacrificed to obedience.”
*
THERE IS SERIOUS anger now among Catholic parishioners in Philadelphia. They are talking and organizing. The top-down hierarchy they’ve been beholden to no longer holds sway. Yet that, ironically, may be the Church’s hope for long-term survival: voices on a grassroots level forcing the powers that be to at least listen.
*
Given this pattern of lies, treachery and hypocrisy, why does anyone listen to Dolan or any other members of the Church hierarchy? Are they so afraid of having to think for themselves that they are willing to be de facto accessories to sexual abuse of children and youths? Like it or not, that's what they are if they continue to meekly kiss the ass of porcine hypocrites like Dolan. Are you all listen in Albany?
*
As the Archdiocese reels from a second grand jury report detailing its cover-up of sexual abuse by priests, the local church faces the biggest crisis in its history. How could a spiritual institution turn a blind eye to evil not just once, but twice? The answer lies in the story of the two men who’ve led the Catholic Church in Philadelphia for the past 25 years.
*
[T]his second grand jury report, six years later, was much shorter than the first, yet in some ways it was more devastating, because the central charge was the same: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia still allowed alleged pedophile priests —37 of them, the report said—to continue ministering to children. What’s more, the DA’s office was charging a monsignor, William Lynn, along with three priests and a parish teacher, with crimes related to sexual abuse.
*
Lynn reported directly to Cardinal Bevilacqua, and he was the first member of Church hierarchy in this country to be indicted as part of the sexual-abuse scandal. The point was inescapable: Something was very wrong with the way the archdiocese had been run. And with how it is still being run.
*
The Church’s protection of priests who sexually abuse children is a testament to its completely insular control and power apart from civil society. The Church takes care of its own, in other words, and that fact leads to a cruel bottom line: Maintaining the institution’s standing in the world is more important than taking care of victims of sexual abuse.
*
The crisis can best be understood not just through the victims, but through the two men who have led the archdiocese through the past quarter century. Anthony Bevilacqua, arrogant and cocksure, and Justin Rigali, timid and duty-bound, reflect quite different sides of the institution and how it operates. Through them, the story of the local Church’s crisis unfolds, and it raises yet another question: Will the Catholic Church as we know it survive in Philadelphia?
*
Father Schmeer brought Joe into his office and stood behind him. His fingers dug into Joe’s shoulders. He pressed against Joe. Then he reached into the front of Joe’s pants and tried to masturbate him. A month later, Joe was called down to Father Schmeer’s office again. This time, standing behind him, the priest pulled Joe’s pants down, and his underwear, and pushed his penis into Joe’s anus, and kept at it until he was satisfied. The next day, in English class, Joe’s teacher—a lay teacher—asked him if he was all right. He said he was. The teacher knew what had happened. So did his classmates. One of them said, “You got it, didn’t you?” From Schmeer the Queer. That’s what students called him.
*
The Church prefers that we think sexually abusive priests are a relatively new phenomenon, that Rome and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia first learned of it when the general public did, in the past decade or so. In various ways, however, the Church has known about, avoided, and sometimes tried to actually deal with sexual abuse by clergy for centuries.
*
WHEN ANTHONY BEVILACQUA came to this city from Pittsburgh in 1988, he offered something that Cardinal Krol, the iron fist who preceded him, could not: charisma. . . . . And he was a very clever man—both a canon and civil lawyer—and very ambitious.
*
Shuffling Ferraro around was unconscionable, yet Bevilacqua was operating exactly as Church authorities do all over the world: Protect a priest’s job; protect the Church from scandal; move the priest to another unsuspecting parish. But how could Bevilacqua operate that way while championing Tom Doyle’s reforms? “The only virtue is obedience,” says Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and an ex-priest who has spent the past few decades trying to understand the collision of sex and power in his church. “As long as you’re obedient to the Church, as long as you protect and embrace it, you are justified.”
*
Bevilacqua did want the Church to deal with sexual abuse in a more responsible way; meanwhile, though, Bevilacqua would move sex perps to some other parish. Because he was being obedient to, and protecting, his Church.
*
Those working under Bevilacqua in Philadelphia, however, say he was a royal prick as a boss. He would scream at his chauffeur over what route they took; he would demand that no mortals smudge the polished brass rails leading from the front door of his City Avenue mansion. Bevilacqua created an atmosphere in the archdiocesan offices in which underlings tiptoed about on tenterhooks as they did the cardinal’s bidding.
*
Doyle [Tom Doyle—by this time a widely sought expert on sexual-abuse issues] now believes that Cardinal Bevilacqua—who’s 88 years old and said to be infirm—should be in prison.
*
HERE WAS A general feeling among Philadelphia’s Catholic parishioners that, as bad as the 2005 grand jury report was, the Church would get past it. The Church would clean up the mess and move on.
But Justin Rigali, it turns out, is particularly unsuited to deal with a problem so scandalous and unseemly. . . . or nine years, before coming to Philadelphia to replace Bevilacqua in 2003, Rigali was archbishop of St. Louis, and he once described the sexual-abuse scandal there as the worst problem of his tenure. For a period, he would meet with victims, but his solution to their rage and pain and wrecked lives was prayer; he soon stopped meeting with victims altogether, according to SNAP.
*
RICHARD SIPE, THE psychotherapist and ex-priest, as well as Tom Doyle, notes that most of the serious trouble the Church has gotten into for 2,000 years somehow involves sex, and that the strictures of celibacy and utter control a cleric is supposed to exhibit over both mind and body lead to problems—not sexual abuse, per se, but almost inevitably a certain degree of hypocrisy. It is time, they believe, for the Church to fully emerge from the fourth century. . .
*
“The organization is corrupt,” Sipe says, “if you think of hypocrisy and double-dealing as corrupt. I’ve been in on depositions of cardinals in sex-abuse cases, and they lie with tremendous abandon,. . . . The one necessary ingredient—the thing that keeps those in power morally afloat—is total fealty to the Church. Bevilacqua, in arrogance, and Rigali, in fear, came at their churchly duty through diametrically opposed prisms. But it amounts to the same thing: obedience. And it bears repeating: “The only virtue is obedience,” Sipe says. “You are not beholden to charity or truth or anything else. Everything can be sacrificed to obedience.”
*
THERE IS SERIOUS anger now among Catholic parishioners in Philadelphia. They are talking and organizing. The top-down hierarchy they’ve been beholden to no longer holds sway. Yet that, ironically, may be the Church’s hope for long-term survival: voices on a grassroots level forcing the powers that be to at least listen.
*
Given this pattern of lies, treachery and hypocrisy, why does anyone listen to Dolan or any other members of the Church hierarchy? Are they so afraid of having to think for themselves that they are willing to be de facto accessories to sexual abuse of children and youths? Like it or not, that's what they are if they continue to meekly kiss the ass of porcine hypocrites like Dolan. Are you all listen in Albany?
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