Thae Catholic Church's Misplaced Priorities

This blog has repeatedly reported om the world wide criminal conspiracy by the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and many of its clergy to aid, abet and cover up for sexual predatory priest who globally have likely molested hundreds of thousands of children and minors. Even securing grudging and disingenuous apologies for these horrific crimes and the deliberate obstruction of justice has been difficult.  And in terms of going unpunished, individuals like Cardinal Bernard Law end up rewarded with plum positions at the Vatican outside the reach of law enforcement officials.  But let a member of the Catholic laity voice support for marriage equality and the retribution is fast and furious.  Numerous blogs and news outlets have looked at the situation of 16 year old Lennon Cihak, a high school junior in the Minnesota town of Barnesville, who experienced the full wrath of the child rapist protectors for a Facebook posting in opposition to the Minnesota anti-gay marriage initiative, but the story is worth revisiting because it underscores the moral bankruptcy and misplaced priorities of the Vatican and its sycophants throughout the clergy. Here are some highlights from a story in the Los Angeles Times:

It's a fight straight from the Vatican now landed on the wind-swept prairie of western Minnesota — all because of a Magic Marker, a yard sign and a 16-year-old boy with an iPhone.

Lennon Cihak, a high school junior in the Minnesota town of Barnesville — population about 2,500 — was raised Roman Catholic like his parents and grandparents. His mother and father, Shana and Doug Cihak, were baptized, confirmed and married in Barnesville's century-old Assumption Church, the same one where Lennon had been attending confirmation classes since spring.

Then on Oct. 24 — 13 days before the vote on a proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman — everything changed.

That night, Lennon attended a run-through for the ceremony of his confirmation, the sacrament in which believers reaffirm their faith. Lennon, who was named after Beatles member John Lennon, says nothing special happened at church to set the fateful events in motion, but for weeks he had been thinking about the marriage amendment. A lot of his friends were opposed, saying it didn't seem fair.

"In the Constitution it says all men are created equal. If they can't get married, they aren't equal," he remembers thinking.

So that night he took a pro-amendment yard sign, changed "Vote Yes" to "Vote No" with a black marker and scrawled the words "Equal Marriage Rights." He then posed with the sign, snapped a photo with his phone, and posted the picture on his Facebook page.  That's when things got messy.

Shana Cihak  .  .  .  .  she says, [Father Gary]  LaMoine told her that Lennon's opinions on same-sex marriage were in conflict with the church and that her son could not be confirmed.

She was stunned. Lennon had only expressed an opinion. He wasn't even old enough to vote. Why should he be denied a sacrament when others who break church rules are not?   "Do you mean to tell me," Shana Cihak says she told LaMoine, "that when you stand up there on Sunday and you see all of those families with two or three kids, you don't know they are using birth control?" She says she was told she could no longer serve as sponsor of one of the kids in the confirmation class. She came home in tears.

LaMoine and Bishop Michael Hoeppner, who oversees the Diocese of Crookston, which includes Assumption Church, did not respond to requests for an interview. But in a strongly worded letter LaMoine sent to church members on Nov. 15, the priest tells a very different story:

"It is to my dismay that what should have been kept an internal church matter has now become a public controversy," LaMoine wrote, adding that he knew nothing about the Facebook posting until his secretary found it the day after his meeting with the Cihaks to talk about issues he did not specify. He called Lennon's Facebook picture — which was "liked" by several members of the confirmation class — a "defacement" and apologized to the parish for the Cihaks' behavior.

As for the rape and molestation of thousands and thousands of children?   It is not even on the Church's radar screen other than to try to avoid paying compensation to sexual abuse victims.  As for the starving children in the image above, the image below shows what the horrid old men in dresses at the Vatican really value: disgusting levels of wealth and the ability to condemn others while acting in the most heinous ways.  Christ must be sickened by what is claimed to be done in his name.