Ex-Cardinal Allegedly Ran Sex Ring At Beach House

The Roman Catholic Church continues to demonize normal, well adjusted gays while still struggling to face the truth that the institution's priesthood was a hiding place for pedophiles and sexual predators - something I continue to blame on the Church's 12th century views on sex and sexuality that generated so many warped individuals.  Worse, yet, the problem reached to high levels within the Church and for decades - likely centuries - the Vatican turned a blind eye to what was right before it had anyone bothered to look and/or put the lives of children and youths ahead of protecting the Church's image.  The latest bombshell is a story reported by New York Daily News that reports on a new lawsuit filed in New Jersey. I remain amazed that anyone can remain Catholic given the Church leaderships stunning moral bankruptcy (my entire family has left it).  Here are story highlights:

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick allegedly ran a depraved sex ring of underage boys at a beach house on the Jersey Shore, a disturbing new lawsuit claims.

The suit, filed by a man using the pseudonym Doe 14, claims that in 1982 and 1983, when he was as young as 14 years old, he and other victims were taken on weekend overnight trips to a Sea Girt beach house.

“McCarrick assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys, seminarians and clerics present at the beach house,” according to the suit filed in state court under New Jersey’s Child Victims Act.

“On these occasions, minor boys were assigned to different rooms and paired with adult clerics.”

The victim claims that he fell into McCarrick’s clutches in 1982 through Brother Andrew Hewitt, who was then principal at Essex Catholic Boy’s High School. Hewitt allegedly abused Doe. He also introduced McCarrick to Doe as someone who could help pay the boy’s school tuition, the suit claims.

At the time, McCarrick was Bishop of the Archdiocese of Metuchen. He became a cardinal in February 2001. Hewitt died in 2002.

The suit names other members of the Catholic Church who also allegedly abused Doe. It alleges that McCarrick steadily climbed the hierarchy of the church despite being dogged by accusations of abuse for decades.

McCarrick, 90, in 2018 became the first cardinal in nearly a century to resign from his position following his suspension for a credible sexual abuse allegation involving an altar boy in New York. He’s denied wrongdoing.

The Daily News has previously reported on creepy postcards McCarrick sent to boys that experts say had the hallmarks of grooming.

The new suit is not the first to reference the beach house.

Catholic Hierarchy Continues to Abuse Clergy Abuse Victims

Cardinal Valasio De Paolis

Despite Pope Francis' conflicting efforts to move the Catholic Church out of the 12th century and to impose some minimal level of accountability for the global clergy sex abuse scandal, many in the Church hierarchy - the princes of the church, if you will - remain utterly oblivious to reality and the sensibilities of every day Catholics (my family has now fully left the Church largely in disgust over the sex abuse scandal plus the continuing anti-gay jihad).  Another prime example of this obtuseness and separation from everyday morality has come to light in the context of efforts to settle the lawsuits against the Legion of Christ whose founder was a sexual predator of the highest order who was protected by the late and less than saintly John Paul II.   In speaking to the mother of one of the sex abuse victims, Pope Benedict XVI's personal representative at the time conditioned a relatively meager settlement payment on the victim recanting his allegations - or, stated more bluntly, lying about what happened to him.  Thankfully, the conversation was wiretapped and the Vatican will not be able to claim the conversation never happened as the matter goes to court shortly.  Here are highlights from coverage of this incredibly foul action which was but a part of an elaborate, systematic effort to cover up abuse and crimes against children and youths:

The cardinal’s response was not what Yolanda Martínez had expected — or could abide. Her son had been sexually abused by a priest of the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order. And now she was calling Cardinal Valasio De Paolis -- the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion and to clean it up -- to report the settlement the group was offering, and to express her outrage.

The terms: Martínez’s family would receive 15,000 euros ($16,300) from the order. But in return, her son would have to recant the testimony he gave to Milan prosecutors that the priest had repeatedly assaulted him when he was a 12-year-old student at the order’s youth seminary in northern Italy. He would have to lie.

The cardinal did not seem shocked. He did not share her indignation.

Instead, he chuckled. He said she shouldn’t sign the deal, but should try to work out another agreement without attorneys: “Lawyers complicate things. Even Scripture says that among Christians we should find agreement.”

The conversation between the aggrieved mother and Pope Benedict XVI’s personal envoy was wiretapped. The tape — as well as the six-page settlement proposal — are key pieces of evidence in a criminal trial opening next month in Milan. Prosecutors allege that Legion lawyers and priests tried to obstruct justice, and extort Martínez’s family by offering them money to recant testimony to prosecutors in hopes of quashing a criminal investigation into the abusive priest, Vladimir Reséndiz Gutiérrez.
Lawyers for the five suspects declined to comment.

Benedict had entrusted De Paolis, one of the Vatican’s most respected canon lawyers, to turn the Legion around in 2010, after revelations that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had raped his seminarians, fathered three children and built a cult-like order to hide his crimes.

There had been calls for the Vatican to suppress the Legion. But Benedict decided against it, apparently determining in part that the order was too big and too rich to fail. Instead, he opted for a process of reform, giving De Paolis the broadest possible powers to rebuild the Legion from the ground up and saying it must undergo a profound process of “purification” and “renewal.”

But De Paolis refused from the start to remove any of Maciel’s old guard, who remain in power today. He refused to investigate the cover-up of Maciel’s crimes. He refused to reopen old allegations of abuse by other priests, even when serial rapists remained in the Legion’s ranks, unpunished.

More generally, he did not come to grips with the order’s deep-seated culture of sexual abuse, cover-up and secrecy — and its long record of avoiding law enforcement and dismissing, discrediting and silencing victims. As a result, even onetime Legion supporters now openly question his reform, which was dismissed as ineffective by the Legion’s longtime critics.

Now, victims of these other Legion priests are coming forward in droves with stories of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and how the Legion’s culture of secrecy and cover-up has remained intact.

Martínez, a 54-year-old mother of three, chokes up when she recalls the day she received the phone call from her son’s psychologist. It was March of 2013, and her eldest son had been receiving therapy on the advice of his high school girlfriend. Martínez thought she was about to learn that she would be a grandmother; she thought her boy had gotten the girl pregnant.

Instead, Dr. Gian Piero Guidetti told Martínez and her husband that during therapy, their son had revealed that he had been repeatedly sexually molested by Reséndiz starting in 2008, when he was a middle schooler at the Legion’s youth seminary in Gozzano, near Italy’s border with Switzerland. Guidetti, himself a priest, told them he was required by his medical profession to report the crime to prosecutors.

His complaint, and the testimony of Martínez’s son, sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Reséndiz’s 2019 conviction, which was upheld on appeal in January.

The investigation, however, netted evidence that went far beyond Reséndiz’s own wrongdoing. Documents seized by police and seen by AP in the court file showed a pattern of cover-up by the Legion and the pope’s envoy that stretched from Milan to Mexico, the Vatican to Venezuela and points in between.

Personnel files, for example, made clear Resendiz was known to the Legion as a risk even when he was a teenage seminarian in the 1990s, yet he was ordained a priest anyway in 2006 and immediately sent to oversee young boys at the Gozzano youth seminary.

When police finally did get wind of the case in March 2013, they uncovered elaborate efforts to keep Reséndiz’s crimes quiet. According to one email seized by Italian police — written March 16, 2011, or 10 days after the Austrian claim was first received by the order — a Legion lawyer recommended to one of the Legion’s senior behind-the-scenes bureaucrats, the Rev. Gabriel Sotres, that a Legion priest visit with the victim in Austria.

The aim of the visit, prosecutors wrote in summarizing the email exchanges, “was to speak to the (victim’s) older brother and convince him to not tell their parents and not go to police because this could cause serious problems not only for the Legion but also Father Vladimir, all the other priests involved and the victim and his family.”

The document the Legion wanted Martínez’s family to sign states that her son ruled out having been sexually abused by Reséndiz and regardless didn’t remember. It said he denied having any phone or text message contact with him, and that his ensuing problems were due to the fact that he left the seminary and was having trouble integrating socially into his new public high school.

The document set out payments for the son’s continuing education and therapy and required “absolute” secrecy. If the family were called to testify, they were to make the same declarations as contained in the settlement -- denying the abuse.

A few months later, the Legion realized it had erred in leaving the proposal with Martínez and proposed a revised settlement acknowledging the abuse occurred. Now, though, it required the family to pay back double the 15,000 euro ($16,300) settlement offer if they violated the confidentiality agreement.

The mother would have none of it. “It’s not a very nice agreement, signing a lie,” Martínez told the cardinal. “Aside from the fact that I don’t want any money, I’m not signing the letter.”

Multiply this outrage by the number of dioceses and Catholic orders around the world and one begins to get an inkling of just what a cesspool the Church hierarchy continues to be.  Indeed, thoughts of a crime syndicate spring to mind when one reads through the efforts to threaten and intimidate victims and their families. Thank god I and my children are no longer Catholics and that my grandchildren will not be at risk of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

Right-Wing Evangelicals are Driving Americans to Atheism

"Christian" hate group leader Tony Perkins.

This blog frequently looks at the hypocrisy of evangelical Christians - and far right Catholics - and the manner in which they are driving younger generations in particular away from religion entirely. But hypocrisy is only part of the behavior of these self-anointed "godly folk" and their professional Christian leaders engage in that increasingly makes the case that religion is a net evil in the world (my own personal view) and that "godly Christians" are actually not very nice people. Evangelicals' support of Donald Trump has merely served to underscore these attributes of "conservative Christians."  A piece in Raw Story looks at the exodus from religion and the ways evangelicals are driving more and more Americans to atheism or agnosticism.  Here are excerpts (Note the reference to The Black Collar Crime Blotter which is a must read):

If the Catholic Bishops, their Evangelical Protestant allies, and other Right-wing fundamentalists had the sole objective of decimating religious belief, they couldn’t be doing a better job of it.

Testimonials at sites like ExChristian.net show that people leave religion for a number of reasons, many of which religious leaders have very little control over. Sometimes, for example, people take one too many science classes. Sometimes they find their faith shattered by the suffering in the world – either because of a devastating injury or loss in their own lives or because they experience the realities of another person’s pain in a new way. Sometimes a believer gets intrigued by archaeology or symbology or the study of religion itself. Sometimes a believer simply picks up a copy of the Bible or Koran and discovers faith-shaking contradictions or immoralities there.

But if you read ExChristian testimonials you will notice that quite often church leaders or members do things that either trigger the deconversion process or help it along. They may turn a doubter into a skeptic or a quiet skeptic into an outspoken anti-theist, or as one former Christian calls himself, a de-vangelist.

Here are some top ways Christians push people out the Church door or shove secret skeptics out of the closet. Looking at the list, you can’t help but wonder if the Catholic Bishops and their Evangelical allies are working for the devil.

Gay Baiting. Because of sheer demographics, most gay people are born into religious families. In this country almost half are born into Bible-believing families, many of whom see homosexuality as an abomination.  The condemnation (and self-condemnation) can be excruciating, as we all know from the suicide rate.  Some emotionally battered gays spend their lives fighting or denying who they are, but many eventually find their way to open and affirming congregations or non-religious communities.

Ignorant and mean-spirited attitudes about homosexuality don’t drive just gays out of the Church, they are a huge deconversion issue for straight friends and family members. . . . . Since most people Gen X and younger recognize equal rights for gays as a matter of common humanity, gay baiting is a wedge issue that wedges young people right out of the church. 

Prooftexting.   People who think of the Bible as the literally perfect word of God love to quote excerpts to argue their points.  . . . They then proceed to quote whatever authoritarian, anti-gay, or anti-woman verse makes their point . . .Suppose such a Christian gets confronted with a verse that says, for example, Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17-18), or No man who has any defect may come near [to God in the temple]: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed;  no man with a crippled foot or hand,  or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, . . . (Leviticus 21:17-23).  . . . Biblical literalists, on the other hand give someone like me an excuse to talk about sexual slavery or bias against handicapped people in the Bible – in front of an audience who have been taught that the good book is uniformly good.  For a wavering believer, the dissonance can be too much. 

Misogyny. For psychological and social reasons females are more inclined toward religious belief than males.  They are more likely to attend church services and to insist on raising their children in a faith community.

Women are the Church’s base constituency, but fortunately for atheists, this fact hasn’t caused conservative Christians to back off of sexism that is justified by – you got it – prooftexting from the Old and New Testaments. . . . . Between 1991 and 2011 the percent of women attending church in a typical week dropped by eleven points, from 55 to 44 percent. 

Hypocrisy.  . . . High profile hypocrites like Ted Haggard or Rush Limbaugh may be loved by their acolytes, but for people who are teetering, they help to build a gut aversion to whatever they espouse.   But often as not, the hypocrisies that pose a threat to faith are small and internal to a single Bible-study or youth group.   Backbiting and social shunning are part of the church-lady stereotype for a reason.   They also leave a bitter taste that makes some church members stop drinking the Kool-aid.

Disgusting and Immoral Behavior.   The priest abuse scandal did more for the New Atheist movement than outspoken anti-theists like Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith) or Bill Maher (Religulous) ever could. To make matters worse—or better, depending on your point of view– Bill Donohue of the Catholic League seems to be doing everything possible to fan those flames:  On top of the abuse itself, followed by cover-ups, he is now insisting that the best defense of Church property is a good offense against the victims, and has vowed to fight them “one by one.”  The Freedom from Religion Foundation publishes a bi-monthly newspaper that includes a regular feature:  The Black Collar Crime Blotter.  It features fraud, drug abuse, sex crimes and more by Protestant as well as Catholic clergy.  The obvious purpose is to move readers from Religion isn’t true to Religion isn’t benign to Religion is abhorrent and needs fighting.  Moral outrage is a powerful emotion.

Science denial. . . . . science denial doesn’t just move believers to nonbelief.  It also rallies opposition ranging from cantankerous bloggers to legal advocates.   It provides fodder for comedians and critics: “If the world was created 6000 years ago, what’s fueling your car?” It may produce some of the most far reaching opposition to religious belief, because science advocates argue that faith, even socially benign faith, is a fundamentally flawed way of knowing.  The Catholic Church, perhaps still licking wounds about Galileo (they apologized finally in the 20^th Century), has managed to avoid embarrassing and easily disproven positions on evolutionary biology.  But one could argue that their atheism-fostering positions on conception and contraception similarly rely on ignorance about or denial of biological science –in this case embryology and the basic fact that most embryos never become persons.

Political meddling. . . . The Religious Right, and now the Catholic Bishops, have brought religion into politics in the ugliest possible way short of holy war, and people who care about the greater good have taken notice.  Lists of ugly Bible verses, articles about the psychology of religion, investigative exposes about Christian machinations in D.C. or rampant proselytizing in the military and public schools –all of these are popular among political progressives because it is impossible to drive progressive change without confronting religious fundamentalism.

Intrusion.  . . . Catholic and Evangelical conservatives have made a high stakes gamble that they can regain authoritarian control over their flocks and hold onto the next generation of believers (and tithers) by asserting orthodox dogmas, making Christian belief an all or nothing proposition.. . . .  the more they resort to strict authoritarianism, insularity and strict interpretation of Iron Age texts, the more people are wounded in the name of God and the more people are outraged.  By making Christian belief an all-or-nothing proposition – they force at least some would-be believers to choose “nothing.”  Anti-theists are all too glad to help.

Far Right Catholics Join Evangelicals in Favoring Trump Over the Gospel Message

This blog frequently looks at (i) the still raging sex abuse scandal and moral bankruptcy in the Roman Catholic Church and (ii) the rejection of the Gospel message - and, I would add, any shred of morality - by evangelical Christians who continue to embrace Donald Trump.  While seemingly two separate issues, the two are intersecting as far right Catholic "news" outlets continue to increasingly join evangelicals in their preference for enraging in political fellatio or Trump and members of his ministry of propaganda and an outright rejection of Christ's Gospel message.   A piece in the National Catholic Reporter - which is not controlled by the Vatican - looks at the manner in which Eternal Word Television Network ("EWTN") is rapidly becoming the Fox News of religious broadcasting networks, including fawning interviews of Trump sycophants and outright liars like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.   Here are article highlights: 

On Memorial Day, viewers who tuned into EWTN's News Nightly for "news from a Catholic perspective" were treated to two previously recorded one-on-one interviews by anchor Lauren Ashburn.

In the first, a 10-minute sit-down with Mike Pence during his March visit to Ave Maria University in Florida, the vice president bashed "media elites and Hollywood liberals," called Democrats "the party of abortion on demand, even the party of infanticide" and described President Donald Trump as "the most pro-life president in American history." 

In the second interview, Ashburn served up softball questions for 11 minutes with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. The EWTN anchor gushed about the latest unemployment numbers and asked why the mainstream media hasn't given more coverage to this accomplishment, held up a devotional book she learned Sanders reads daily before asking about religious liberty . . .

The segment was clear evidence of how a television outlet once devoted to expressions of Catholic piety and conservative catechesis and apologetics has grown into a truly influential media empire, well connected to Republican politicians and the Trump White House. EWTN, where the "Catholic perspective" is unabashedly partisan, has also become the media star in a web of connections including wealthy conservative Catholic donors and some of the most public anti-Pope Francis forces in the Catholic world. Those connections, traceable through a maze of non-profit organizations, helped fuel EWTN's development. It is a complex tale involving the matchup of a peculiar brand of U.S. style conservative Catholicism with conservative political ideology and economic theory.

Less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election — while Trump was still embroiled in the "Access Hollywood" controversy in which he was caught on tape joking about sexually assaulting women — EWTN news director and anchor Raymond Arroyo did an "exclusive" sit-down with the candidate at Trump's Miami hotel.

Arroyo asked about the tapes and gave Trump two chances to apologize or take back the extremely lewd comments about women, but the candidate insisted it was "all made up" and "just locker room talk," adding that "You can't go back. You have to look forward." In the end, he blamed the "nasty primary" and "nasty campaign."

During the 15-minute interview, Trump refused to talk about his prayer life and rambled about the Affordable Care Act being a "disaster" and religious liberty being "in tremendous trouble," but he gave clear, succinct answers when it came to an issue that is a central concern to the EWTN audience.

"Yes, I am pro-life," Trump affirmed. "You said you are going to appoint judges who are pro-life," Arroyo said, again in statement form. "Right," said Trump.

Although the network had been friendly in the past to the Republican party because of shared positions on abortion, gay marriage and religious liberty issues, EWTN's political partisanship has become more visible since Trump's election, most notably on its two news shows, "News Nightly" and "The World Over."

Both shows regularly include as guests political conservatives discussing domestic and international policies.

Since 2017, Arroyo has been a regular contributor to Fox News and has substituted for Laura Ingraham on her commentary show on Fox News. Ingraham has stirred considerable controversy for defending a white nationalist, mocking a Parkland school shooting survivor and calling immigrant detention facilities "summer camps."

While secular alternatives to Fox News exist — from its counterpart on the left, MSNBC, to more centrist major network broadcasts — no alternatives are available to EWTN in the Catholic world. Once it overtook an early and flawed attempt by the U.S. bishops to form their own network, EWTN quickly became the only major Catholic voice on the television landscape in the United States — and that voice has gone global.

[T]he network founded in 1981 in the monastery garage of a then-unknown Poor Clare nun named Mother Angelica, arguably has more influence than the official church leaders, especially since their authority, already in decline, was further diminished by their mishandling of the clergy sex abuse crisis.

The bishops themselves are now apparently shaped by the EWTN empire. According to a recent study of the U.S. episcopate, the EWTN-owned National Catholic Register is the religious publication read by the most bishops, with 61 percent saying they read it.

But what the bishops — and others, Catholic and non-Catholic alike — are getting is a very particular slice of Catholicism from EWTN and its affiliate organizations, one not necessarily representative of the U.S. church as a whole. Polling and ongoing studies of the Catholic population in the United States consistently finds a far greater diversity of views and tolerance for questions than is the case on EWTN broadcasts. EWTN has become the only regularly televised image of Catholicism in America.

The media portions of the organization — from EWTN to the Register to the Catholic News Agency — are hardly objective, doing a type of "journalism" expected on Fox News but not necessarily from what started as a devotional network where the homebound could find televised Mass and other spiritual programming.

In addition to its slanted political coverage, EWTN and its affiliate journalistic enterprises also have connections to economic libertarian ideologues, including EWTN governors' board member and major donor Timothy Busch, who has said he supports anti-union "right to work" laws, opposes minimum wage increases and advocates for free market capitalism as a tool for raising people out of poverty.

This merging of ideological and political causes with theological ones is concerning. Said Massa [Jesuit Fr. Mark Massa, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College]: "When religion links itself to political causes, it always turns out badly for religion."

Knowingly or not, EWTN may accelerate the exodus of younger generations from Catholicism.  It certainly is increasing the perception that Catholicism is a morally bankrupt tradition that cares only about abortion and persecuting gays while covering up for sexual predators. 

More and More U.S. Catholics Question Their Church Membership

As long time readers know, I left Catholicism even before I came out publicly.  One of the catalysts for me was the sex abuse scandal that exploded on Boston in 2002, which was the focus of the Academy Award winning movie, Spotlight.  That was 17 years ago and in the intervening years no part of the globe has been spared from Catholic clergy sex abuse scandals which as of this week culminated in the 6 year sentence handed down against Cardinal George Pell, the senior cleric in Australia and by some accounts the number three man at the Vatican until now.  Meanwhile, even as my other family members have abandoned the Catholic Church, countless American Catholics have kept their heads in the sand, refusing to admit that the institution they are supporting financially and attending is morally bankrupt and perhaps more akin to a criminal enterprise than a institution dedicated to God.   Now, a new Gallup survey suggest that 37% of American Catholics are belatedly questioning whether or not to remain members of the Catholic Church.  Here are highlight from from Gallup:

As the Catholic church responds to more allegations of sexual abuse of young people by priests, an increasing percentage of Catholics are re-examining their commitment to the religion. Thirty-seven percent of U.S. Catholics, up from 22% in 2002, say news of the abuse has led them to question whether they would remain in the church.

While the polling was being conducted, Pope Francis met with Catholic leaders from around the world at the Vatican to respond to a new wave of sex abuse allegations in numerous countries. The church dealt with a similar crisis in the U.S. in 2002, the last time Gallup polled about this. That polling came after The Boston Globe reported on widespread abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston area and church leaders' efforts to prevent the abuse from becoming public knowledge.

Gallup's latest findings show that the current scandal is affecting U.S. Catholics more than the one in 2002 did, in terms of their feelings about the church.

Substantial minorities of both practicing and nonpracticing Catholics say they are questioning their commitment to the church -- but, as might be expected, those less committed to their religion are more likely to be questioning it. Whereas 46% of Catholics who seldom or never attend church say they have questioned whether they would remain in the faith, 37% of those who attend church on a monthly basis and 22% who attend weekly say the same.

The same pattern existed in 2002, although both practicing and nonpracticing Catholics are more likely now than in 2002 to be questioning their place in the church. Seventeen years ago, only one in eight weekly churchgoers were re-examining their membership, as were 24% of semi-regular churchgoers and 29% of infrequent ones.

Catholics are less confident in priests in the U.S. more generally, and in U.S. bishops and other Catholic leaders. About one in four U.S. Catholics say they have very little or no confidence in those two groups. One in eight have little or no confidence in Pope Francis or their own priests.

While it is uncertain how many of the 37% of U.S. Catholics who say they're questioning remaining in the church will actually leave in response to the latest sex abuse scandal, any loss of adherents is certainly not welcome news -- especially when the church is dealing with larger societal trends moving away from formal religion. A decline in the number of Catholics would seem especially problematic if it were driven by practical matters such as how church leaders responded to a scandal rather than fundamental spiritual matters such as disagreement with church teachings or church members finding their faith to be unfulfilling.

Catholics shaken by the latest scandal could be affected in other ways besides leaving the church, including less frequent church attendance and being less willing to listen to church leaders' teachings on matters of faith.

In my view, the Catholic Church needs a major reformation that includes (i) removal of god knows how many bishops and cardinals involved in sex abuse themselves or in deliberate cover ups, and (ii) a rejection of the Church's idiotic 12th century views on sex and human sexuality and the role of women. If this doesn't happen, expect to see Church membership plummet in developed countries with the Church being destined to be an Africa based church relying on ignorant and uneducated populations to maintain its falling membership. 

Cardinal George Pell of Australia Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison

In other positive news, Cardinal George Pell of Australia has been sentenced to six years in prison for his sexual abuse of minors.  There are likely many more senior prelates who need to be jailed either for their own abuse of minors or their participation in the Catholic Church's worldwide conspiracy to protect predator priest and other clergy.  The New York Times looks at Pell's sentencing.  Note the judge's use of the word arrogance, which applies broadly across the ranks of the Catholic bishops and cardinals. They view themselves as princes while the rest of us are little better than serfs.  Here are article highlights:

MELBOURNE, Australia — George Pell, an Australian cardinal who was the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday, for molesting two boys after Sunday Mass in 1996.

The cardinal was convicted on five counts in December, making him the most senior Catholic official — and the first bishop — to be found guilty in a criminal court for sexually abusing minors, according to BishopAccountability.org, which tracks cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

Cardinal Pell, who stood stone-faced with lips pursed when his sentence was read aloud, will not be eligible for parole for three years and eight months.

“I would characterize these breaches and abuses as grave,” the chief judge in the case, Peter Kidd, said during the sentencing. Speaking directly to Cardinal Pell, he added: “Your conduct was permeated by staggering arrogance.”

The sentence, falling far short of the 50-year maximum, will be closely scrutinized around the world. The sentencing was broadcast live from the courtroom in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, where Cardinal Pell first rose to prominence as an archbishop.

It brings to a close two years of legal jockeying over evidence and accusations of sexual abuse, most of which were kept from public view by Australia’s legal system until recently. And for Catholics all over the world, it amounts to the toppling of a Vatican giant, a cleric of enormous power who will now reside behind bars.

“The importance of this case cannot be overstated,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org. “It will set a precedent.” . . . . Some called it a welcome if small dose of justice, while others said the sentence was far too lenient.

“Why should we take into account his age?” said Phil Nagle, an advocate for abuse victims from Ballarat, Cardinal Pell’s hometown. “He’s ruined lives.”

[H]e [Pell] is well known, in part, for protecting church finances from large payouts to abuse victims — and a culture warrior. He could frequently be found raising money for conservative causes in Australia, publicly condemning homosexuality and stepping into policy debates as well, opposing, for example, legislation to allow adoption by gay parents.

Note too Pell's breathtaking hypocrisy: sentenced for raping two 13 year old boys, yet railing against gays and gay parenting.   The Vatican is full of Cardinal Pell's.

The Corruption of the Vatican’s Elite Has Been Exposed

A previous post looked at a new book, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, that looked at some of the moral rot and rank hypocrisy that is the Vatican.  The picture wasn't pretty, but Andrew Sullivan's new review gives a much more detailed picture that is utterly shocking and makes me wonder how decent, moral Catholics will remain in the Church.  Yes, there are some who will always blindly follow the Church hierarchy since the seemingly need someone to tell them what to think and what to do so they can avoid making moral decisions on their own (we see the same in the Southern Baptist Convention where many will ignore the sex abuse bombshell that went off two weekends ago), but many Catholics have drifted far from the blind obedience that was more the norm in my childhood and teens. Given the immense damage the Church and its 12th century dogma on sexuality and the subordination of women has done over the centuries and today's 24/7 access to information, hopefully will find itself faced with fury over the widespread hypocrisy that seemingly is the norm and an inability to hide its very, very dirty laundry.  Some, such as a piece in National Review have  sought to dismiss the book:

The book is trash. The supposed justice meted to McCarrick amounts to a cover-up. The pope’s summit is trash and a coverup. These men do not fear the justice of God or men. All their training in theology, and their great insight about man’s depravity, is the schoolyard taunt “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.” To hell with them all. 

Yet, the book appears to be consistent with stories of a blogger friend who was once a priest stationed at the Vatican.  Power with no accountability of any kind in most instances is corrupting and here, the corruption is off the charts. When I think of the 37 years of self-hate and trying to "pray away the gay" because of what these hypocrites preached, it enrages me.  Even more maddening is knowing that young lives continue to be harmed by these foul individuals all across the globe through the toxic dogma of the Church. Here are excerpts from Sullivan's lengthy piece in New York Magazine:

It’s a bewildering and vast piece of reporting — Martel interviewed no fewer than “41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios, secretaries of nunciatures or foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss Guards and over 200 Catholic priests and seminarians.” He conducted more than 1,500 interviews over four years, is quite clear about his sources, and helps the reader weigh their credibility. He keeps the identity of many of the most egregiously hypocritical cardinals confidential, but is unsparing about the dead.

The picture Martel draws is jaw-dropping. Many of the Vatican gays — especially the most homophobic — treat their vows of celibacy with an insouciant contempt. Martel argues that many of these cardinals and officials have lively sex lives, operate within a “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture, constantly hit on young men, hire prostitutes, throw chem-sex parties, and even pay for sex with church money. How do we know this? Because, astonishingly, they tell us.

So much of the information in the book comes from sources deep within the Holy See. Named and unnamed, they expose their fellow cardinals and bishops and nuncios as hypocrites, without perhaps realizing that their very targets are doing the same to them.

Among the named sources: Francesco Lepore, a brilliant young gay Latin translator and priest. He soared through the ranks, directly serving Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, until, as a gay man, he found a way to quit his post because he couldn’t abide the double life he was forced to lead, or the rancid hypocrisy of the whole system.

I’m no naïf when it comes to the gayness of the church. I’ve lived in it as a gay man for all my adult life, and my eyes are open. And so the book did not surprise me, as such, but it still stunned, shocked, and disgusted me. You simply cannot unread it, or banish what is quite obviously true from your mind.

[A]s Martel probes deeper and deeper, one theme emerges very powerfully: “Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. The more vehemently opposed a cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something.” It’s a lesson I learned reporting my own recent essay on gay priests.

And so it’s not that huge a surprise to see how influenced Paul VI was by gay Catholic writers of the time. And it’s highly predictable that John Paul II’s pontificate, which launched a new war on homosexuals, turns out to be the gayest of them all — and the one most resistant to any inquiry into stories of sex abuse. His right-hand man and successor, Joseph Ratzinger, (the future Pope Benedict XVI) personally received notification of every claim of sex abuse in the church under John Paul II, ignoring most, and made the stigmatization and persecution of sane, adjusted non-abusive gay people across the globe his mission instead.

As for America, Martel notes what is already in the public record:

“Cardinal Wakefield Baum of Washington, recently deceased, lived for many years with his personal assistant … Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, … was well known for his ‘sleeping arrangements’ with seminarians and young priests whom he called his ‘nephews’ … Archbishop Rembert Weakland was ‘outed’ by a former boyfriend … One American cardinal has been banned from the Vatican and sent back to the United States for his improper conduct with a Swiss Guard. Another American cardinal, the bishop of a large city in the United States, ‘has lived for years with his boyfriend, a former priest’, while an archbishop of another city, a devotee of the Latin mass and a man much given to cruising, ‘lives surrounded by a flock of young seminarians’, a fact confirmed to me by Robert Carl Mickens, an American Vaticanologist familiar with the gay lifestyle of the senior Catholic hierarchy in the United States.”

Some of the most conservative clerics concede the truth of the book on the record. Or take Martel’s interaction with the Swiss Guards, one of whom vents: “The harassment is so insistent that I said to myself that I was going straight home. Many of us are exasperated by the usually rather indiscreet advances of the cardinals and bishops.” Or the prostitutes who keep elaborate records of their clients, and have already caused huge scandals in Italy.
 But critics of the book — and the defensive dismissals of it as mere salacious gossip are already out there — have to argue that Martel is a liar, a fabulist, a con artist, who faked these remarkable interviews. I don’t buy it.
 I’ve offered just a glimpse of the revelations in the book. I urge every Catholic to read it, however difficult that may be. It will also be fascinating to see how the various factions within Catholicism will respond to it. . . . . But if the Catholic right wants to weaponize the book, they’ll have to take on their own icons, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a whole range of their closest allies in the church. And the core thesis of the book — which is that it is the hypocrisy of the closet that is the real problem — is not one the right will be able easily to absorb.
 There can be no meaningful reform until this closet is ended, and the whole sick, twisted syndrome is unwound.

How do you do that? The crisis is so profound, the corruption so deep, the duplicity so brazen that only a radical change will help. Ending mandatory celibacy is no longer an option. It’s a necessity. Women need to be brought in to the full sacramental life of the church. Gay men need to be embraced not as some manifestation of “intrinsic moral evil” but as human beings made in the image of God and capable of mutual love, care, and support.

As for me, someone who has wrestled with the question of homosexuality and Catholicism for much of my adult life, this book has, to be honest, been gutting. All the painful, wounding Vatican documents on my “objective disorder” that I have tried to parse and sincerely engage … I find out they were written, in part, by tormented gay men, partly to deflect from their own nature. Everything I was taught growing up — to respect the priests and hierarchs, to trust them, to accept their moral authority — is in tatters.
 [I]n my view, the last drops of moral authority the Vatican might hope to have evaporate with this book. It is difficult to express the heartbroken rage so many of us in the pews now feel.

Unlike Sullivan who has remained Catholic - a form of masochism in my view - I left the Church when I came out and even had my name stricken from the membership rolls for the Diocese of Richmond. The remainder of my siblings and nieces and nephews have left the church.  Any who remain Catholic in my extended family will likely find it difficult to remain in the Church with the revelations of this book. 

Catholic Cardinal in Australia to Stand Trial for Sex Abuse

Cardinal George Pell has been committed to stand trial on multiple
 charges related to historical sexual assault.
Photo: Jason South

While the Vatican dilly dallies, sheds crocodile tears, and fails to hold senior Catholic Church clerics responsible for the world wide sex abuse scandal wracking the Church - Australia, Guam, Pennsylvania and New York State are current centers of  the scandal - civil authorities are stepping in to fill the gap.  In Australia, civil authorities are being especially aggressive after a scathing report by a royal commission which, among other things, found the western rite requirement of priestly celibacy to be a significant factor in creating the priestly abuse phenomenon.  Now, Australian authorities are set to proceed with a criminal trial of Cardinal George Pell, the highest Catholic cleric in Australia and arguably the number two office holder after the Pope.  The Sydney Morning Herald looks at this one unheard of development.  Here are excerpts:

George Pell will be the most senior Catholic leader to face a jury after being committed to stand trial on multiple historic sexual assault charges.

In a decision that will ring loud through the Vatican and around the religious world, Australia's most senior Catholic and the man who a year ago oversaw management of the Vatican's finances was on Tuesday committed to stand trial on half the charges he faced, involving multiple accusers.

[M]agistrate Belinda Wallington . . . committed the 76-year-old on charges against multiple complainants, involving alleged sexual offending at a swimming pool in the 1970s in Ballarat, where the accused man was then working as a priest; and at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne in 1990s, when he was the then Archbishop of Melbourne.

Asked to enter a plea, Cardinal Pell sat seated in a packed Melbourne Magistrates Court but said in a loud, clear voice: "Not guilty."

Magistrate Belinda Wallington said there was no evidence the two Ballarat accusers had colluded in their evidence.

Flanked by up to 40 police officers, Cardinal Pell arrived at the court in a white sedan just after 9am. He wore a dark coloured suit and white shirt.

The police separated the Cardinal’s path from the public as protesters arrived with laminated signs reading “every child deserves a safe and happy childhood”.

Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart released a statement saying he declined to make any comment about the decision to commit Cardinal Pell to face trial in the County Court.

 In addition, ABC News Australia has these highlights:

A number of onlookers applauded as the magistrate left the court room after delivering her 70-minute ruling.

Defence barrister Robert Richter QC said the most "vile" of the charges had been dismissed.

Cardinal Pell will face a directions hearing in the County Court tomorrow morning, when it's expected a date will be set for a trial before a jury. He is on bail and has already handed in his passport, the court heard. He is unable to leave Australia as a condition of his bail.

Today's ruling follows a month-long committal hearing in March.

Among the allegations, he is accused of sexual offending at Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral in the late 1990s when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.  Cardinal Pell is also accused of committing sexual offences at a Ballarat pool during the 1970s, when he was a priest in the area.

Ms Wallington told an earlier hearing she believed an accused person should be committed to stand trial unless there was a "fundamental defect" in the evidence.  "I think issues of credibility and reliability are matters for a jury, except where you get to a point where [a complainant's] credibility is effectively annihilated," she said.

As a child when I was indoctrinated by Catholic priests and nuns, I never imagined that a day would come when a "prince of the church" would be laid so low.  Sadly, given the Church hierarchy's arrogance and utter indifference to the lives of children and youths, not to mention the Vatican's refusal to punish the 1/3 or more of American bishops who protected predators, the Church's humiliation is deserved and long. long overdue.   

New Sex Abuse Scandals as US Catholic Bishops Back Federal Anti-Gay Law

Despite the crocodile tears of Pope Francis and other high Catholic hierarchs - some of whom looked the other way to protect predators - the Catholic Church leadership remains a moral cesspool.   Sex abuse of children and youths continue literally across the globe and far too many bishops and cardinals put "protecting the Church" and predators above the rights and lives of abuse victims.  Among the stories about sexual abuse by priests today, two stand out.  One involves police raiding Bishop Joseph Cistone's residence, the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan offices and St. Mary's Cathedral in Saginaw.  Why?  Because authorities grew frustrated with Bishop Cistone and the diocese's failure to cooperate in investigations of sexual abuse allegations.  Here are highlights from ABC News 12:

A contingent of law enforcement officials from multiple agencies raided Bishop Joseph Cistone's residence, the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw offices and St. Mary's Cathedral in Saginaw.

Police obtained the three search warrants that were being executed as part of the investigation that started Feb. 25 with the arrest of the Rev. Robert DeLand.

Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Mark Gaertner said Cistone and the diocese have not lived up to promises to support investigators looking into sexual abuse allegations against DeLand and other church officials.

"Contrary to the statements from the diocese and the bishop that they would fully cooperate with law enforcement, they did not," Gaertner said. "Therefore, it was necessary for law enforcement to utilize other investigative tools, including search warrants."

The second story focuses on the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo under pressure disclosing the names of 42 priests facing allegations of sex abuse, including 27 priests whose names had not previously been linked in public to molestation complaints.  The Buffalo News has details:  

Bishops for the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo refused to acknowledge anything about priests who were accused of molesting minors.

Bishop Richard J. Malone altered course Tuesday morning by disclosing the names of 42 priests facing allegations of sex abuse, including 27 priests whose names had not previously been linked in public to molestation complaints. The diocese joined about 30 other dioceses in the country that have disclosed the names of clergy accused of sexual misconduct.

Most of the priests on the list were never prosecuted on criminal charges or sued in civil courts. Some of the priests were quietly removed from ministry under the guise of early retirements or medical leaves. The diocese on Tuesday did not provide any information about the specific allegations against each priest, or disclose where the living priests are residing.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo News has this: 

Malone was in the state Capitol lobbying with other Catholic bishops from across the state against a provision in the proposed Child Victims Act that would allow victims of child sexual abuse to sue dioceses decades after the alleged abuse occurred.

These two stories are just part of the dozen plus stories from around the world that my Google search agent delivers to me each and every day.

But what are the Conference of Catholic Bishops focused on?  Not cleaning their own ranks of enablers and abetters of sexual predators or cleansing the priesthood of predators or justly compensating victims of abuse.  No, their focus is on backing a proposed federal law that would legalize discrimination against law abiding LGBT citizens under the ruse of "protecting religious liberty."   It's enough to make one want to vomit and certainly explains why the younger generations are walking away from Catholicism (and organized Christianity in general).  Here are highlights from blogger friend Joe Jervis' blog:

Via press release:  Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee for Religious Liberty, and Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, gave their strong support for the First Amendment Defense Act, which was recently introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in the U.S. Senate:

“We welcome and applaud the recent reintroduction of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). The USCCB has been vocal in support of the legislation since its inception. FADA is a modest and important measure that protects the rights of faith-based organizations and people of all faiths and of no faith who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“The Church will also continue to stand for the ability of all to exercise their religious beliefs and moral convictions in public life without fear of government discrimination. We are pleased to support the First Amendment Defense Act, and we urge Congress to pass this important legislation.”

 What of the civil rights and religious freedoms of those with differing beliefs?  To the bitter old men in dresses, they simply do not matter.  Only the beliefs of modern day Pharisees deserve protection. The hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy is staggering.

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

click image to enlarge

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.