Pope Francis Fails the Test on Sexual Abuse

Pope Francis' visit to south America has not been well received by many.  True, large crowds of lemming like Catholics have turned out for his appearances, but many are unmoved by Francis' crocodile tears and false pleas of sorrow for the rampant sexual abuse that the Vatican and the Church hierarchy have allowed for many decades, if not longer.  There has been no real repentance and no real action to punish those who allowed this attitude that sexual abuse was a case of droit du seigneur for the hypocrisy filled priesthood.  In Chile, as CBS New notes, violence greeted Francis:

Overnight three more Catholic churches were torched, including one burned to the ground in the southern Araucania region where Francis will visit on Wednesday to meet with Chile's indigenous peoples. While not causing any injuries, the nine church firebombings in the past few days have marked an unprecedented level of protest against history's first Latin American pope on his home turf.

Sadly, no reform will come from within the Church and decent people should walk away.  If the fail to do so and continue to support the Church, they are complicit in abuse and continued cover ups.   An editorial in the New York Times rightly takes Francis to task for his continued failure to take decisive action.  Here are highlights:

 Pope Francis arrived in Chile with the right message: He was “pained and ashamed,” he said on Tuesday, about the irreparable damage abusive priests have inflicted on minors. Yet he refused to meet with victims of the country’s most nefarious sexual abuser, and when pressed about his support of a bishop linked to that priest, he dismissed the accusations as slander.

For all his professions of horror at the revelations about predatory priests whose activities were covered up by the hierarchy — and for all his other admirably enlightened and pastoral actions — it seems the pope has yet to fully appreciate that the abuse of minors is not simply a matter of a few deviant priests protected by overzealous prelates but of his church’s acceptance of a horrible violation of a most sacred trust: that of a devout and questioning youth and a spiritual guide.

Acknowledging and regretting the damage is not enough. If the Catholic Church is ever to lift the deep stain of child sex abuse, the pope must take every opportunity to reject not only clear violations but also the slightest appearance of tolerance for such behavior.

He missed that opportunity by attending the funeral last month for Cardinal Bernard Law, the powerful former archbishop of Boston who resigned after revelations that he protected abusive priests for years and became, in effect, the image of a hierarchy that concealed and thereby enabled sexual abuse. He missed it in the failure of the Vatican so far to appoint a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors after the commissioners’ terms expired in December.

And Pope Francis missed it again in Chile. One of Latin America’s most staunchly Catholic countries, Chile had been shaken by revelations about the sexual crimes of Fernando Karadima, once one of Chile’s most respected and influential priests. It took years for the church to act on complaints about him, but a Vatican investigation in 2011 finally found Father Karadima guilty of sexual abuse and restricted him to a life of isolated penitence. A Chilean judge later determined that the allegations against the priest were truthful, but the statute of limitations had expired.

Among those accused of turning a blind eye to Father Karadima’s behavior was a priest and longtime member of Father Karadima’s entourage, Juan Barros Madrid. Yet Pope Francis made him a bishop in 2015 and, despite protests from victims of Father Karadima and from many priests and laypeople in the diocese, Bishop Barros participated in the pope’s official ceremonies in Chile. When reporters raised the subject on Thursday, Pope Francis answered sharply that there was “not one single piece of evidence” against the bishop. “It is all slander,” he declared. “Is that clear?”

Victims of sexual abuse may have only their tortured memories as evidence, and these have been dismissed for far too long as slander by a hierarchy intent on protecting the church’s reputation. Pope Francis has repeatedly pledged action to end the abuse and the cover-up, . . . . . . But too often he and his church raise doubts that they’re fully committed.

Fallen Kings - Cardinal Law, Sexual Abuse and the Decline of Catholicism

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By coincidence I began "coming out" in the fall of 2001.  Of the many hard things involved in the process was overcoming the brainwashing that I had received growing up Roman Catholic which have fueled my decades long effort to "pray away the gay."  Years of daily mass and other efforts proved utterly fruitless and "the gay" never went away.  Then, within a few months of my initial coming out efforts, the Boston Globe broke the explosive story of the sex abuse scandal in Boston which subsequently went world wide - all Hell continues to break loose in Australia and there are rumblings in Africa and even India. For me, all of it made me realize that the Church leadership was morally bankrupt and in no position to direct anyone on sexual mores. Rather, all that seemingly mattered to the senior hierarchy was power, influence, money - especially money - and control over the lives of others.  In America, no one better exemplified the problem of the Church more than Cardinal Bernard Law who died this past week at the Vatican to which he fled to avoid the reach of law enforcement and prosecutors in Boston.  Tellingly, Law was given a plum position and continued to live in surroundings fit for royalty.  A piece in NPR looks at Law's fall from power which is reflective of the decline of Catholicism in general as rank and file Catholics come to the realization that Christ's gospel message and the agenda of the hierarchy are all too often mutually exclusive.  Here are article excerpts:

When the cardinal's residence was built in the 1920s atop a hill in the leafy, most western outpost of Boston, it was modeled after an Italian palazzo. The grand mansion, replete with ornate mahogany and marble appointments, stood as a testament to the Boston Archdiocese's stature in the very Catholic city of Boston. Political candidates — local and national — would come calling, and even the pope came to visit.

When Cardinal Bernard Law took up residence in the Renaissance Revival mansion, Boston's Roman Catholic movers and shakers would flock to the backyard for his garden party fundraisers.

Today, a steady stream of students hauling backpacks and members of the public traipse across that same property. The mansion, now owned by Boston College, has been gutted and converted to an art museum and meeting rooms — a remarkable fall from grace that parallels that of the Boston Archdiocese itself.

A total of 65 acres of prime church property — possibly its most valuable in Massachusetts — was sold in a fire sale after the clergy sexual abuse crisis, when the church was struggling to pay some $85 million in settlements to victims. In the years since, the cost of settling claims surpassed $200 million, and the church's declining fortunes have been more than just financial.

Law's death this week reawakened a flood of emotion and anger over the decades of sexual abuse that finally came to light in 2002 and at the archbishop's role in allowing predator priests to move to new parishes, where they would prey on more victims. The revelations that began in Boston eventually engulfed the church worldwide, and the reverberations continue to be felt, nowhere more so than in the once all-powerful Boston Archdiocese. It's a far cry from the old days, when the church was almighty and the cardinal was closer to a king, according to Thomas P. O'Neill III, former Massachusetts state legislator and lieutenant governor. He is the son of the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill. As one of the most senior American prelates, he [Law] was as well-connected as he was well-regarded outside Boston. He had the ear of Pope John Paul II and was talked about as the man who might become the first American pope. He was in regular conversation with President George H.W. Bush and was a player on the world stage, instrumental in arranging the pope's first visit to Cuba. [T]he Catholic Church's influence was on a slow decline that had begun under Law's immediate predecessor, Cardinal Humberto Sousa Medeiros, who largely refrained from politics. By the time Law came to town, shifting demographics and changing social mores had significantly altered the landscape, further diminishing the church's authority. And much as he wanted to reclaim the clout wielded by Cushing, Law never quite could. The election of 1986, O'Toole says, already revealed how the cardinal's rigid Roman orthodoxy and rightward leaning wasn't flying with his Massachusetts flock. Law lobbied for two referendum questions: one to ban state funding for abortion and the other to permit some state support of parochial schools.  "Cardinal Law campaigned very strongly on both of those issues, and he lost both of them decisively," O'Toole says.

By the time another decade passed, the gap had so swollen between Boston's Catholic Church and Boston Catholics on social issues, leaving Law venting that both Massachusetts senators and the governor were wrong on the abortion issue.  "Only I am right," he [Law] said.  A few years later, the church would also falter in its efforts to block gay marriage, as lawmakers were paying more heed to the voice of their constituents than to the cardinal's.

Still, the institutional power of the Catholic Church in heavily Catholic Boston, would continue to earn Law a ranking by Boston Magazine as one of the three most powerful figures in Boston, even through the late 1990s.  Former Attorney General Martha Coakley says that sway was what enabled the archdiocese to keep the lid on the clergy abuse and on what higher-ups were doing that allowed the abuse to continue.

But when the 2002 sexual abuse crisis threw the church into turmoil and prompted a furious backlash, it was all over. With the church under siege, the balance of power shifted abruptly.

Law became the "poster boy" for the church's cover-up. The cardinal's mansion was surrounded every day by swarms of protesters calling for his resignation. From his mightiest perch, he was reduced to being grilled by victims' lawyers, under oath, about what he knew and when he knew it.

"The church lost all its influence," Rushing says. On Beacon Hill, the church's longtime lobbyist, who had been a fixture at the State House, didn't even dare show up.

At the same time, the church's financial clout took a nosedive as well. Angry, disillusioned parishioners were leaving in droves, and donations — from collection plates and from large institutions — were drying up. After the crisis, the annual Boston Catholic Appeal plummeted to half of what it was.  "Everything went right over the cliff," said one church official, not authorized to speak on the record. "We were basically in a freefall."

O'Neill says the Catholic faithful began to distinguish between the mission of the church and the institution of the church and found ways to support the former but not the latter.

Politically, the archdiocese is slowly recovering some of its voice but seems to be strategically picking and choosing its fights to stay more in sync with Boston Catholics. For example, O'Malley has been championing the cause of undocumented immigrants and speaking out on opioid addiction, violence prevention and education.

Catholic participation remains low; just about 20 percent attend weekly Mass, compared with 70 percent in the 1970s, according to the church. Money remains tight, and despite the softer tone coming from both Pope Francis and O'Malley, doctrine is not budging on issues like abortion, contraception or gay marriage. And so the chasm between the church and many of its parishioners on social issues is only widening.

Close to 70 parishes have been eliminated since 2004, a trend almost surely accelerated by the scandal but reflective of the broader shift of Catholic America from the old heartland of Boston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia to the South and Southwest.

The story of Law and the near collapse of Catholicism in Boston ought to be a cautionary tale to Christofascists and evangelicals who currently have the ear of Der Trumpenführer/Mike Pence.  Sooner or later the populace will realize that their agenda has nothing to do with Christ's message as these pompous and self-anointed folks replicate the quest for power and, of course, money just as the Boston Archdiocese did.  In fact, the younger generations appear to have already figured this out, hence the over 33% who have left religion. One can only hope that the next lesson the younger generations learn is that the number one way to defeat the hypocrisy and hate-filled Christofascists is to turn out in mass and vote Republicans out of every elected office possible.  

Spotlight: A Must See Movie

As long time readers know, I was raised Roman Catholic and once was a member of the Knights of Columbus and achieved the 4th Degree.  After the Boston Globe blew open the systemic, worldwide sex abuse scandal in 2002, I decided that I could be longer in good conscience be a part of such a corrupt and morally bankrupt institution.  In February 2002 I did a guest editorial in the Virginian Pilot in response a letter to the editor by then Bishop Richmond, Walter Sullivan's January 30, 2012, decrying a January 21 2002, editorial cartoon and claiming that the stories about the Church were "pure bigotry against the Catholic Church.''  The cartoon in question focused on the Catholic Church's track record in respect to pedophile clergy. Subsequently, I was attacked in letters to the editor, including a letter from a subordinate of Bishop Sullivan.  Time has proven the accuracy of the Globe story and sex abuse cover ups have been exposed virtually worldwide.  The ultimate hypocrisy is that subsequently Sullivan himself was implicated in the cover up of sexual abuse by a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Richmond that was among Sullivan's favorites.   The tenaciousness of a friend of mine and other victims of the priest in question finally resulted in a criminal prosecution against the priest and a plea deal.  

For me, the timing of the Globe bomb shell was especially unique because it occurred when I was coming out and trying to purge myself of the psychological poison that had been inculcated into me as a Catholic child and youth.   Seeing the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of an institution that preached anti-gay bigotry and which had fueled so much of my self-hatred was a huge part of my ability to finally find self-acceptance and comfort with my sexual orientation. 

Today, the husband and I went to see Spotlight, the movie that tells the story of how the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe exposed the truth and the opposition that they had to counter to tells story that desperately needed to be told.  The one of the big take away from the film is that no institution deserves unquestioning deference and that bad things happen when good people lack the courage to speak out.  Without the contrivance of attorneys, police officials, district attorneys, school heads and others, the Church would never have been able to so effectively cover up the sexual abuse of literally thousands and thousands of children and youth.  

What is also distressing is the reality that NONE of the bishops and cardinals who conspired in the cover ups of abuse has been removed from office and tossed out by the Vatican.  Even today Cardinal Law who figured in the movie holds a plum position at the Vatican where he is safe from extradition for criminal prosecution. 

This is a MUST see movie and those who most need to see it are the Catholics in the pews who (i) continue to bow and scrape to a Church hierarchy that deserves to respect or deference, and (ii) continue to support the criminal conspiracy orchestrated from the Vatican.  Pope Francis can shed crocodile tears and feign contrition, but until he removes ALL of the bishops and cardinals from office and who have participated in cover ups, his words will be meaningless.

For locals an added benefit is that Mark Ruffalo, a First Colonial High School (in Virginia Beach) grad has a major role.

Despite Vatican’s New Abuse Tribunal, Some Clergy Get a Free Pass

As noted yesterday, two bishops who were protectors of predatory priests have resigned in the diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.  While some have taken the Vatican's acceptance of the resignations as a sign that the Vatican is much belatedly going to hold accountable bishops and cardinals who aided and abetted sexual predatory priest - and who often threatened and intimidated victims - one figure indicates that such is not truly the case.  Who is this individual? Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston (pictured above), who continues to live the life of a prince at the Vatican.  Until Law faces dismissal and defrocking, Pope Francis' efforts will remain window dressing and mere PR control measures.  The Boston Globe looks at Law and his avoidance of any true punishment.  Here are highlights:

Even for an institution that measures its history in centuries, not decades, the Vatican’s move toward sanctions against bishops who cover up for pedophile priests seems glacial.

So when news arrived last week that Pope Francis has approved the creation of a church tribunal to do just that, embracing the recommendations of a papal commission led by Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, you could imagine a Greek chorus of abuse victims responding: “It’s about time.’’

Had the tribunal been in place back in 2002, when the clergy sexual abuse crisis exploded in Boston and quickly spread around the globe, there is little doubt who would have been the first bishop hauled before the panel.

That would be Bernard Francis Law, one of O’Malley’s predecessors who resigned in disgrace in late 2002 and continues to live in gilded retirement in Rome where he is regarded — if not quite a pariah — as an embarrassment, an archbishop whose silence, even after he knew kids were being assaulted, was beyond indefensible.

Blanchette told Law about his abuse by the parish priest. He warned Law that many other men, similarly abused, would need counseling. And then, stunningly, this: Law “laid his hands on my head for two to three minutes and then said, ‘I bind you by the power of the confessional never to speak about this to anyone else.’ ”

Tom Blanchette, 67, now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., where once a week he drives 45 miles to one of that state’s poorest counties, delivering food supplied by the federal government.

I wonder if Cardinal Law is doing something like that in Rome. I doubt it.

“The Bible tells me to love my enemy and to pray for those who persecute me,’’ Blanchette said. “Forgiveness is the act of the will. You can’t fake it.’’

But even he wonders about men whose first impulse was not to protect children, but an institution that routinely kept ugly and criminal secrets.

Those who have near orgasms over some of Pope Francis' statements would be wise to remember Law and the way he has escaped true punishment before they allow  themselves to get too carried away.  Better yet, they need to remember that there are a lot more like Law sit within the Church hierarchy.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan On John Paul II and His Defenders

John Paul II blessing the monster Maciel

It's no secret that I view the canonization of John Paul II as nothing less than a travesty and an illustration that liberal Catholics who want to believe that Pope Francis is substantively a breath of fresh air are deluding themselves.  In response to a piece by Peggy Noonan - who seems to have lost all reason - comparing Pope John Paul II to Barack Obama in terms of leadership, Andrew Sullivan lets loose with an honest assessment of John Paul II's reign that bares repeating and which ought to be mandatory reading for every churchgoing Catholic.  Here are the money quotes:

Under John Paul II and his orthodoxy-enforcer, Joseph Ratzinger, the scope for any dialogue within the church was essentially ended. Whole areas of theological debate were ruled impermissible; discussions about faith and morals were also discouraged and any hints of heterodoxy, i.e. thinking, were monitored and punished. John Paul II’s papacy was capable of detecting the most trivial form of theological dissent and punishing it relentlessly, while it found itself miraculously blind when it came to the endless rapes and abuse of children and adolescents that we know now were endemic.

This wasn’t leadership; it was the abdication of basic moral responsibility for the church John Paul II ran. And these were not only crimes of commission but also of omission. A monstrous figure like Marciel Macial was lionized by John Paul II even as he sold drugs, was a bigamist,  abused countless young men, and even raped his own son. Cardinal Bernard Law was rewarded for his own disgusting cover-up of child-rapists with a sinecure in Rome.

Open your eyes, Peggy. There is world outside your 1980s nostalgia-fest. And it’s as different from your reality as “seems” is from “is”.

I may not always agree with Andrew - who I did get to meet a few years ago - but when he lets loose on someone, few do it better.

Maureen Dowd: John Paul II Is No Saint

The Roman Catholic Church continues to suffer from twp huge PR problems: (i) the ongoing sexual abuse scandal that continues to show itself to be a global problem and (ii) the failure of the Vatican to take severe disciplinary action against any of the bishops and cardinals who engaged in deliberate cover ups and obstruction of justice.  The second problems may likely stem from the fact that these bishops and cardinals were following orders from the Vatican.  This conclusion is hard to escape when the Church in what I deem absolute idiocy has moved to canonize Pope John Paul II who oversaw the worst years of the sex abuse scandal explosion and did absolutely NOTHING to punish the high clerics involved (unless one considers being called to Rome, given a plum assignment and rendered outside the arm of extradition laws a punishment).  In a column in the New York Times Maureen Dowd lets loose on the canonization of the anything but saintly John Paul II.  Here are excerpts:

There were some disturbing elements to the Easter Mass I attended at Nativity, my childhood church.  The choral director sang “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “Danny Boy.” The pews were half-empty on the church’s most sacred day.

But it was most upsetting as a prelude to next Sunday. In an unprecedented double pontiff canonization, Pope John Paul II will be enshrined as a saint in a ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Vatican had a hard time drumming up the requisite two miracles when Pope Benedict XVI, known as John Paul’s Rasputin and enforcer of the orthodoxy, waived the traditional five-year waiting period and rushed to canonize his mentor. But the real miracle is that it will happen at all. John Paul was a charmer, and a great man in many ways. But given that he presided over the Catholic Church during nearly three decades of a gruesome pedophilia scandal and grotesque cover-up, he ain’t no saint.

John Paul deserves major credit for his role in the downfall of Communism. Even though neocon Catholics who idolize and whitewash John Paul don’t like to dwell on it, he also directed consistent and withering moral criticism at the excesses of capitalism long before Pope Francis did.

Perhaps trying to balance the choice of John Paul, who made conservatives jump for joy because he ran a Vatican that tolerated no dissent, the newly christened Pope Francis tried to placate progressives by cutting the miracle requirement from two to one to rush John XXIII’s canonization. 

One of John Paul’s great shames was giving Vatican sanctuary to Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, a horrendous enabler of child abuse who resigned in disgrace in 2002 as archbishop of Boston. Another unforgivable breach was the pope’s stubborn defense of the dastardly Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, a pedophile, womanizer, embezzler and drug addict.

As Jason Berry wrote last year in Newsweek, Father Maciel “was the greatest fund-raiser for the postwar Catholic Church and equally its greatest criminal.”  His order, the Legionaries of Christ, which he ran like a cult and ATM for himself and the Vatican for 65 years, denounced him posthumously in February for his “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior.”

The statement followed a United Nations report upbraiding the church for turning a blind eye to child abuse by priests and the sins of Father Maciel, who had serially abused adolescent seminarians, some as young as 12, and had several children with at least two women. His sons also claimed he abused them.

It is wonderful that John Paul told other societies, Communist and capitalist, to repent. But his tragedy is that he never corrected the failings of his own society, over which he ruled absolutely.

The church is giving its biggest prize to the person who could have fixed the spreading stain and did nothing. The buck, or in this case, the Communion wafer, doesn’t stop here. There is something wounding and ugly about the church signaling that those thousands of betrayed, damaged victims are now taken for granted as a slowly fading asterisk.

John Paul may be a revolutionary figure in the history of the church, but a man who looked away in a moral crisis cannot be described as a saint.

When the church elevates him, it is winking at the hell it caused for so many children and young people in its care.

Unless and until Pope Francis sacks countless bishops and cardinals his PR efforts will ultimately be little more than smoke and mirrors  and the Church leadership in the end will remain morally bankrupt.

The Fight to Reveal Abuses by Catholic Priests - and Hierarchy Coverups

The Roman Catholic Church despite the nice words of Pope Francis on a few occasions remains one of the most anti-gay churches on the planet.  In terms of official dogma, nothing has changed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to describe gays as "inherently disordered."  Paradoxically, the Church at the same time remains filled with gays, including gay prelates at the highest levels, and the Church hierarchy also has been shown to have conspired on a world wide basis to protect pedophiles and child molesters.  The disconnect between dogma and the pattern of knowing cover ups could not be more complete.  A lengthy article in the New York Times looks at the difficulty experienced by those seeking to identify  predator priest and to hold their protectors accountable.  Here are some excerpts:

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, is in no way the principal face of the sexual abuse scandals that have buffeted the church and its priesthood almost without pause for three decades. But he embodies a certain mind-set among some in the highest clerical ranks. It is an attitude that has led critics, who of late include the authors of a scathing United Nations committee report, to wonder about the depth of the church’s commitment to atone for past predations and to ensure that those sins of the fathers are visited on no one else.

The conditional nature of the apology, a style favored by innumerable politicians caught with hands in the till, was not lost on many listeners. Nor was the cardinal’s use of “mistakes” to describe a pattern routinely described by district attorneys as a cover-up. As if that were not enough, the reluctant penitent turned thoroughly unrepentant a decade later. By then retired, he withdrew his apology.

That sort of unyielding stance amid institutional promises of change continues to bedevil the American church, the Holy See in Rome and, no doubt, many among the faithful. 

By now, the story is amply familiar. Thousands of wayward clerics have been found to have sexually abused and emotionally scarred many more thousands of boys and girls. It is, too, a story of the church hierarchy as enabler: bishops who ignored the criminality, or evaded public exposure by shuffling abusers from parish to parish. The scandals have cost the church dearly, both in lost moral suasion and in its coffers. 

Nor is this a uniquely American peril. Similar scandals have erupted in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia.

For sure, sexual maltreatment of children and cover-up are not Catholic monopolies.  . . . . The existence of a website like StopBaptistPredators.org points to problems in other denominations. As for secular institutions, who could be unaware of abuses within the Boy Scouts of America and at Penn State?

But the Catholic Church has a hierarchical structure unlike any other, not to mention two millenniums of tradition and a claim to universality. 

Then again, the church in this country has plenty of concerns other than sexual misconduct. . . . The number of American priests, 39,600 last year, is two-thirds what it was at the time of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. Ordinations of new priests, 511 in 2013, amount to barely half the total of five decades ago. The painful closing of Catholic schools by financially burdened dioceses has become routine.

But it is the abuse scandals that loom ever-large. In early February, the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sternly took the Vatican to task for, in the panel’s view, not having acknowledged the extent of past criminality and not doing enough to protect today’s children. The relatively new pope, Francis, recognizes the problem. 

Yet as popular as Pope Francis is, he has left some skeptics wondering where his heart lies. He did not endear himself with support groups for abuse victims when, in an interview with two newspapers in early March, he said of the scandal: “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to have been attacked.”

To some ears, those remarks sounded almost Egan-like in defensiveness.

Let's be blunt.  Unless and until Francis sacks numerous current bishops and cardinals and ends the cushy retirements of men like Cardinal Egan, Cardinal Roger Mahony and Cardinal Bernard Law, his credibility will remain suspect.  Meanwhile, between the Vatican's refusal to end the anti-gay jihad being pushed by many bishops and cardinals and its failure to severely punish those who enabled predators, the Church's membership will continue to plummet in all but backward and ignorant areas such as Africa.  Hispanic immigration will help disguise the Church's decline in America for only so long.  And, with America providing some 60% of the Church's financial inflow, the decline will become catastrophic at some point. 

Cardinal Bernard Law Retires - May He One Day Face a Higher Law

I came out to my former wife in October 2001, just moths before the sex abuse scandal exploded in the Archdiocese of Boston. Subsequently, in February, 2002, I did a guest editorial in the Virginian Pilot when the then Bishop of Richmond, Virginia whined in a letter to the editor that the Catholic Church was being subjected to anti-Catholic bigotry. Even though my guest editorial laid out the statistics of sexual abuse by priests worldwide, I was roundly attacked by sheep like followers of the morally bankrupt Catholic bishops. Central to the sex abuse scandal in Boston was Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston. As things heated up and it became clear that Law had sent out henchmen (e/g. Bishop Daly, later Supreme Chaplain to the Knights of Columbus and Bishop Egan, later Archbishop of New York) to threaten and intimidate victims of abuse and their families, Cardinal Law resigned his archbishopric and fled to Rome - most likely to dodge the Boston police and court subpoenas.

Was Law punished in Rome? Not hardly. He was given a plum position and literally lived as a price in a palace. Would that all of us could be so severely punished. The upside of the scandal was that I realized that there was no reason for me to suffer from religious based guilt for being gay. With Law's retirement from his plum position in Rome, a column in the Boston Herald looks at Law's tawdry legacy. Here are highlights:

So Cardinal Bernard Law goes out, at worst, with but a gentle, subtle push. It’s hardly a satisfying end for the international “poster child for child clergy sex abuse,” as Vatican watcher Peter Borre called Law yesterday.

Law was never indicted. He was never tried. He never had to explain why in the world he wrote glowing letters of recommendation for priests accused of molesting hundreds of children, as he did for Father John Geoghan and Father Paul Shanley.

News flashes yesterday all referred to him as the “disgraced” cardinal. But that disgrace brought him a promotion, not punishment from the Vatican for aiding and abetting such crimes.

Remember how Suffolk Superior Court officials treated Law like royalty when, even as evidence mounted against him, they nonetheless let him and his dark-windowed sedan be whisked inside a garage, then up a back elevator. He never had to face the TV cameras or reporters’ questions.

And most people I’ve asked expect Law to stay in Rome, a city he reportedly adores [and which keeps him outside of the reach of U.S. police authorities]. A month ago I would’ve said well, at least we’ve all learned a lesson. Then Penn State came along.

Catholics who bucked the odds to remain Catholic can separate their faith from the corrupt cabal of cardinals. And many Catholics see justice around the corner as the 80-year-old Law inches ever closer to the ultimate higher authority.

New Hampshire GOP Llawmaker Calls Catholic Bishop "Pedophile Pimp"

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LOL! This is too funny! Typically, Republican elected officials engage in the equivalent of political fellatio when it comes to pandering to anti-gay hate groups and child rapist protecting members of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Never mind that many of the "princes of the Church" ought to be behind bars for obstruction of justice and covering up crimes against children and youths. Apparently, Rep. D.J. Bettencourt, the Republican leader of the New Hampshire House did not get the GOP memo on pandering. On Friday on his Facebook page (a screen shot is above via the Concord Monitor), Bettencourt called Roman Catholic Bishop John McCormack a “pedophile pimp” who should have been led from the Statehouse in handcuffs. Here's what Bettencourt said:

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“Bishop John McCormick (sic) of the Catholic Diocese of NH told the crowd, ‘It’s a moral concern (because) the vulnerable take priority in our society.’ Would the Bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the “vulnerable”? This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a rain coat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.”

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As both the Concord Monitor and the Youngstown News report, before being named bishop of Manchester in 1998, Bishop McCormack was a top aide to Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston - where the Catholic sex-abuse scandal first exploded in the USA - where McCormack was in charge of investigating sexual-misconduct allegations. We all know what kind of job McCormack did and it certainly did not involve giving a damn about the safety of children and youths.

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Here's this from the Youngstown News as to how McCormack avoided having his disgust ass hit with criminal charges:
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In 2002, McCormack averted criminal charges against the New Hampshire diocese by agreeing that it had harmed children by moving abusive priests from parish to parish.

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The Concord Monitor also has this:
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“Bishop McCormack was assigned, when he worked under Cardinal Law, reassigning priests who they had knowledge were sexually abusing children,” Bettencourt said. “What he did is he shuffled them from church to church, knowing that they had this history.”

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Kudos to Bettencourt. Would that there were more Catholics and Republicans who were willing to speak the truth about the Church hierarchy.

Pope Benedict, Catholic Church Need to Repent

The Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal continues to grow and adding to Pope Benedict XVI's problems is the fact that now a molestation charges has come forth for abuse that occurred while Benedict's brother, Georg Ratzinger, was head of the Regensburg Domspatzen choir in Bavaria during Georg Ratzinger's watch. Up until now, Ratzinger has claimed ignorance of sexual abuse issues, although he has admitted to physically abusing boys. Adding to the media free for all is a new Newsweek article that looks at the inadequacy of the Church's faux apology and its failure to take meaningful disciplinary action. Based on the Boston abuse explosion, I suspect that the expose in Europe is just beginning and may in the laity are about over looking the other way at a system wide cover up of child molestation. First, here are highlights from Newsweek that look at the Pope and the Church's failure to act, as well as the laughable punishment visited on Cardinal Law, former archbishop of Boston:

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I'm not sure I can take it anymore, my Catholic friend K. wrote to me in an e-mail. Maybe I should become an Episcopalian. Fury does not begin to describe her mood. More than 10,000 children in Europe smacked, tortured, and raped by priests who were supposed to protect them. Bishops and spokesmen denying or minimizing their role—appearing, for all the world, like old men who seem not to understand the seriousness of what they've done.
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In Germany the pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, confessed that he'd occasionally slapped boys in the choir at Regensburg, but that it always made him feel bad; he had no knowledge of sexual abuse at the school. In Rome, Vatican spokesmen denied that Pope Benedict XVI knew about the predatory activities of a pedophile priest under his jurisdiction when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982. His deputy from that period confessed it was he and not his boss, then Joseph Ratzinger, who reinstated the offending priest (post–remedial therapy) into a parish—where he proceeded to abuse more children.
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Reporters will continue to investigate the question, what did Benedict know and when did he know it? This is appropriate. But his continued complicity in the matter of Cardinal Bernard Law taints him already, no matter what is revealed in Munich.
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Law presided over the Boston Archdiocese for nearly 20 years. During that time he ignored repeated pleas from the mothers and aunts of abused children, coddled offending priests, and demanded silence from victims until—after the number of cases exceeded 500—he was forced in 2002 to resign his post. Today he is the archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, a position that, according to a 2004 New York Times article, earns him $12,000 a month. He reports "to no one but the pope," according to that story, and lives in "a palatial apartment." As an active member of the College of Cardinals, he can help elect the next pope and works on at least seven Vatican committees.
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But how can I continue to send my kid to church? insists K. To that, the most heart-wrenching of questions, there is no answer. Stay . . . Or walk away, and teach your child an independent justice. For an institution that protects itself above its children may not, after all, offer the best Sunday lesson.
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In terms of Benedict XVI's new problems with his brother's increasingly questionable denials, Timesonline has the following highlights:
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Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's brother, was drawn further into the paedophile scandal embroiling the Catholic Church yesterday after a former member of the school choir that he ran claimed to have been sexually abused.
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[S]ex abuse allegations against four priests and two nuns were being investigated and that one inquiry related to claims made by a former Domspatzen choirboy that a teacher abused him for months in 1971.
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The teacher, identified by German media as Father Sturmius W, had been a theology student and an assistant at the Cathedral boarding school attached to the Regensburg choir, and subsequently became a priest. . . . Father W, 61, was stripped of his duties last week after the former chorister came forward last week. The accuser, who was 11 at the time of the alleged abuse, was named by Stern magazine as Alexander Probst, now 50.

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Obviously, as more facts continue to come to light, it will be interesting to see what lies Georg Ratzinger and Benedict XVI may have told in their effort to save their own butts and effect damage control. The hubris of the Church hierarchy and the total lack of concern for children and minors is unbelievable.

Benedict XVI Continues to Coddle Those Who Covered Up Abuse

Bush Appoints Gay Foe To Vatican Ambassadorship

No surprise here. It sounds like the Chimperator would have had to look hard to find someone more in sync with the Vatican's drive to demonize gays and in general return to the 15th Century in terms of enlightenment (or lack thereof). If you have any doubts that she is a kool-aid drinker, she authored a book on Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston which describes him as follows: "This book provides valuable insight into the man whom many consider to be the quintessential post-Vatican II bishop--and into the role of the Catholic hierarchy in a time of social, political, and ecclesiastical turbulence." Meanwhile, all Hell was breaking loose and showing that Law had huge culpability in the sex abuse cover up in the Archdiocese of Boston. Instead of being punished, Law received a cushy appointment at the Vatican when he left Boston. Highlights from this 365gay.com story (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/11/110607vatican.htm) further describe Chimpy's appointee who also has ties to Mitt Romney:

(Washington) President Bush plans to nominate Harvard University law professor Mary Ann Glendon to be his new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Glendon, 69, is an anti-abortion scholar and an opponent of gay marriage who also has written on the effects of divorce and increased litigation on society. Her 1987 book "Abortion and Divorce in Western Law" was critical of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion.

Glendon has served as an adviser to the Vatican in several capacities. In 1995, she was the first woman to lead a delegation of the Holy See at the United Nations Women's Conference in Beijing. She has also served on the Pontifical Council for the Laity and as a consultant to the Pontifical Council on the Family. Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who last summer named Glendon to co-chair his campaign advisory committee on the constitution and courts, praised the choice.