Jesuits Defy Order from Indianapolis Archbishop to Fire a Gay Teacher

Both the less than saintly Pope John Paul II and his successor, former Hitler youth Pope Benedict XVI stacked bishoprics across the globe with reactionaries who desired to take the Catholic Church backwards in time and keep women subjugated to men and gays stigmatized and marginalized. The Church remains saddled with many of these reactionary bishops and cardinals who seemingly prefer to drive members from the Church than face new scientific and medical knowledge and social enlightenment.  These reactionaries also seek to wage war with the Church's religious orders that do not fall directly under their leadership but instead have their own independent leadership.  One order, the Jesuits, has for centuries been the home of the Church's intellectuals and also the most educated of the Church's religious orders.  Now, this dichotomy within the Church has collided in of all places, Mike Pence's state of Indiana where a Jesuit run high school is defying a reactionary archbishop's order to fire a gay teacher.  NBC News looks at the conflict.  Here are highlights:

A Jesuit-run prep school in Indianapolis is defying a demand by the local archbishop that it fire a veteran teacher who is in a same-sex marriage, prompting the archdiocese to revoke recognition for the school as a Catholic institution.

In a letter to parents, the leaders of the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School said Archbishop Charles Thompson’s “direct insertion into an employment matter of a school governed by a religious order is unprecedented.”

“After long and prayerful consideration, we determined that following the Archdiocese’s directive would not only violate our informed conscience on this particular matter, but also set a concerning precedent for future interference in the school’s operations,” school officials said.

The letter was signed by the school president, the Rev. William Verbryke, and the heads of the board of trustees, W. Patrick Bruen and Daniel M. Lechleiter.

They wrote that for 57 years, school leaders have decided who gets hired.

“Brebeuf Jesuit has respectfully declined the Archdiocese’s insistence and directive that we dismiss a highly capable and qualified teacher due to the teacher being a spouse within a civilly-recognized same-sex marriage,” they said in the letter.

The school leaders reassured parents that their stand “will not change the mission or operations of Brebeuf Jesuit” and insisted that “our identity as a Catholic Jesuit institution remains unchanged.”

“We will continue to offer a rigorous academic program that follows more than 450 years of Jesuit tradition and is committed to expansive and critical thinking, competent and compassionate ethical concern, creative and artistic expression, and excellence grounded in faith and the dignity of the human person,” they wrote.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said in a statement that a Catholic school is required to "clearly state in its contracts and ministerial job descriptions that all ministers must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church."

The battle over the gay teacher has been going on for two years.

Brian Paulson, who leads the Society of Jesus Midwest Province, which represents Jesuits in the Midwest, called the archdiocese’s move “disappointing.”

“In the summer of 2017, Brebeuf Jesuit became aware that one of its teachers entered into a civil marriage with a person of the same sex,” Paulson said in a statement. “This fact became publicly known via social media.”  When the archdiocese asked that the teacher’s contract not be renewed, Paulson said the school refused.  “The teacher in question does not teach religion and is a longtime valued employee of the school,” Paulson wrote.

Paulson said they will appeal the archdiocese's decision.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is one of the leading advocates for LGBT Catholics, called the move by Brebeuf's leadership "courageous."

One of the top private schools in the city, Brebeuf Jesuit serves about 800 students in grades 9-12.

The Catholic Church needs to leave its 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality behind or else, over time, it will find itself a much smaller, Africa centered church.  Kudos to the school leadership for saying "no" to ignorance and bigotry. 

"It’s a Gay Problem," and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

One of the continuing myths put out by right wing elements in the Roman Catholic Church - and which is happily further disseminated by Protestant Christofascists and the right wing media - is that gays in the Catholic priesthood is the reason for the Church's continued sex abuse crisis.  Pushing this myth is far preferable than facing up to the real causes: (i) the Church's bizarre 12th century views on human sexuality and a belief that all sex is essentially dirty and sinful, (ii) the stunted psycho-sexual development of priests brought up in the Church's all male seminary high schools and seminaries, and (iii) the Church hierarchy's preference to protect priests and avoid any exposure of clerical wrongdoing no matter who has to be sacrificed in the process.  A piece in Religious Dispatches at Rewire looks at the these true causes of the once again exploding sex abuse crisis.  Here are highlights that address certain myths put out by right wing elements:

Americans love intrigue. So when Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano recently issued a public letter alleging a wide-scale cover-up of child sexual abuse—one which reaches all the way to Pope Francis himself—the media and public were sucked right into the conspiracy.

Vigano’s letter opened the doors to the inner workings of the Vatican political and culture war—one culminating with accusations of liberal vs. conservative, gay vs. straight priests, and the power struggles between Popes Francis, Pope Emeritus Benedict, and the Roman Curia.

The problem? None of this has to do with the causes of the sexual abuse of children. By muddying the waters and shifting focus from the crimes and onto politics and the Vatican culture war, Vigano’s letter feeds into old stereotypes that silence victims, minimize abuse, and encourage the continued cover-up.

If we want to address the scope and scale of the problem and put an end to the crisis and those who enable it, we must first work to dispel the myths and stereotypes that aim to silence victims and normalize criminal sexual behavior.

A problem of “homosexual priests”

This is a complicated issue, though it’s not a murky one. It’s important to begin by noting that, according to experts, there is absolutely zero evidence that sexual orientation has anything to do with sexual abuse. Period. In fact, when it comes to adult men who sexually abuse boys, researchers have found that it doesn’t even make sense to label these men as “homosexual,” since they neither possess an adult sexual orientation nor do they tend to show a preference for gender.

When apologists cite “the gay problem” for the ongoing crisis—what Bishop Robert Molino recently called the “homosexual subculture”—their intention is to paint a picture of secretive and “deviant” groups of clergy and a wider Church culture that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it.

As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out that there is nothing about gay men in healthy situations that makes them more apt to sexually abuse others, Mickens argues that some of the abuse is due to the “homophobia that keeps gay men in the closet, bars them from growing up and results in distorted sexuality for many gay priests.”

In other words, the “homosexual subculture” isn’t the problem, though the demonization of queer sexualities could certainly contribute to the failure to develop a healthy adult sexuality.

Ask any victim of clergy sexual abuse—male or female—and they will tell you: child sexual abuse has no place in healthy adult sexuality, gay or straight. When apologists call the crisis a “gay problem,” they succeed in both silencing women victims and forcing a sexual identity onto male victims against their will.

Want the easiest way to silence and shame a male (straight or gay) victim of child rape and sanitize the crime? Call the crime “gay sex.” Make him question whether the abuse was an actual crime at all.

Child sex abuse is a crime of violence where those in positions of power prey upon the weak and vulnerable, using sex as a weapon. Apologists for the Catholic Church will do anything to make sure that this isn’t the focus.

“It happens everywhere”

Yes, child sexual abuse is a global problem, inside and outside of the Catholic Church. It happens in homes, schools, camps, sports programs, and any organization that caters to children or helps the vulnerable.

Apologists for the Catholic Church want you to believe that it is “just like any other institution.” It’s not.

Nowhere else in modern society have we seen the continued collusion to cover up decades of sex crimes on the macro or micro level as we see in the Catholic Church. They’ve spent billions of dollars lobbying against victim-friendly legislation; settling with victims; paying defense lawyers to shield abusers and their enablers; hiding and obfuscating evidence of child sexual abuse; shaming and silencing victims; and otherwise deceiving Catholics and the public about the crimes.

Add to that the fact that the church is supposed to have moral authority, and this is a crisis of monstrous proportions.

“It’s a problem of celibacy”

Celibacy is the vow requiring that priests abstain from marriage and adult sexual relations.

Is this suppression of adult sexuality healthy? That’s up for debate. In fact, former priest, psychotherapist and expert on priestly celibacy A.W. Richard Sipe concluded after years of research that no more than 50 percent of priests are celibate at any given time.

“It’s not really pedophilia”

Labeling victims because of their physical development minimizes and normalizes sexual assault.

Victims of “pedophilia” (children victimized pre-puberty), church defenders say, are different from victims of “ephebophilia,” those abused after puberty but before adulthood. Older victims are considered “less catastrophically damaged” by the church, implying that what happened to them was less abhorrent and caused less pain.

But let’s get down to the truth: Whether a 15-year-old or an 8-year-old is sexually abused, they are both victims of a horrific crime.

Sanitizing the crime and minimizing victims by saying their abuse “wasn’t as bad” because one particular victim is more physically developed than another—even though two victims may be the exact same age and emotional maturity—is reprehensible.

“The church and Pope Francis are too liberal”

A victim of child sexual abuse has no political leanings. Nor does a predator. Predators seek “easy targets”: at risk children who may lack family structure, self-esteem, or have other disadvantages that a predator can exploit.

Child sexual abuse and cover-up flourished in the Catholic Church during conservative papacies, just as it is continuing now. I’ve worked with victims pre-and post-Vatican II and their stories are similar.

The cover-up has nothing to do with politics. It’s about saving face, protecting priestly friends, and saving the Church from scandal. The political leanings of the pope or the predator have nothing to do with it. As John Gehring recently noted on Religion and Politics, “a top official from the Vatican’s secretary of state office acknowledged receiving allegations about [former Archbishop] McCarrick’s behavior with seminarians as far back as 2000, during the papacy of John Paul II.”

The only way we will be able to expose predators and those who covered for them is to maintain razor-sharp focus on the victims and to stop the crimes, not propagate myths that enable more abuse. It is the victims who empowered the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. And those same victims are the ones who have refused to give up the fight for justice, in spite of insurmountable odds.

In just the past week the attorneys general from at least a half dozen states have vowed to investigate the Church, and, according to the New York Times, “Pope Francis has summoned bishops from around the world to Rome for an unprecedented meeting focused on protecting minors.” 

It’s a good start. In addition, despite the cries of apologists, we must continue to demand robust laws that expose predators and hold the Church accountable for the cover-up and encourage law enforcement to do everything possible to ensure that this cycle of abuse is completely eradicated and wrongdoers punished.

Catholicism Comes to a Crossroads

Many of the bitter old men in dresses in bishoprics across the western world refuse to admit that times and people have changed and that the Roman Catholic Church is at a likely crossroads that requires that the Church come out of 13th century beliefs or face growing irrelevance.  It is a reality that man of these less than decent men don't want to accept, the arch-reactionary bishop of Richmond, Virginia (who was installed in office by the less than saintly John Paul II, a protector of child rapists) being a prime example.  Not only is he viciously anti-gay, but he still treats divorced and remarried Catholics as lepers and bars them from positions in Catholic schools.  A piece in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the crossroads before the Church:

Today’s rapidly changing social views are demanding some uncharacteristically hasty action from the Vatican. The issues of same-sex marriage and the role of homosexuals in the Catholic Church threaten to create seismic divisions within the church or perhaps even leave it in a position of irrelevance.

Currently, 22 nations have legalized same-sex marriage. Many of those are traditionally Catholic-majority countries. In May, Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. The predominantly Roman Catholic nation stood tall in its opposition to the church’s position, with 62 percent voting in favor of same-sex marriage.

And what was the Vatican’s response? Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state, called the vote “a defeat for humanity.” But the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, had a different take. He bluntly admitted that it was time for the Church to do a reality check and ask itself if it has drifted away from young people.

A little more than one month later, the United States Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. That same day, June 26, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued this statement: “Today is a tragic day for marriage and our nation. The Supreme Court has dealt a profound injustice to the American people by striking down in part the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Court got it wrong. The federal government ought to respect the truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, even where states fail to do so.”

So, what happens to the Catholic Church? How can the Roman pontiff continue to exercise supreme and full power within the universal church if its flock in the Western nations deliberately flouts Catholic teachings? Does the church remain rigid and unbending even if many of the faithful leave for other churches more welcoming to gay and lesbian family members and friends? How does the Church remain relevant to young men and women who are far, far more accepting of same-sex marriage then their parents?

Catholics in Western nations represent only a small portion of the church and the religion is not growing in Ireland or anywhere else in Europe. (Nor is it growing particularly fast in the U.S.)

Thanks to social media, we have seen the grim images of violence toward gays and lesbians in nations where homosexuality is considered a crime. Compare those to the joyful celebrations that took place across Ireland and the U.S. when gay marriage was legalized.

I wonder: Which of these attitudes has His fingerprints all over it?

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 United Nations Report on the Vatican’s Role in Global Sex Abuse

This blog has long been a critic of the Roman Catholic Church and the global conspiracy orchestrated from the Vatican to cover up the sexual abuse of likely hundreds of thousands of children and youths by Catholic clergy.  Sadly, to date, neither the Church as an institution nor the hierarchy has been held accountable.  Those who participated in the conspiracy remain for the most part as "princes of the church" given undue deference and respect when many ought to instead be behind bars for a long, long time.  This past week, the United Nations released a report that was nothing less than scathing toward the Vatican.  Andrew Sullivan reacts and makes the case why serious change is needed in the Catholic Church and also why this will be a litmus test for whether or not Pope Francis deserves any respect.  Here are excerpts:

The UN Report on the Vatican’s role as a global conspiracy to enable, abet and cover up crimes against humanity is a vital reminder of just how hideous the Catholic Church has been in violating the souls and bodies of so many innocents. Sometimes, the sheer scale of the abuse renders one mute. But it shouldn’t.

The scale of the criminality is important to keep in mind:

Last month, the Vatican acknowledged that close to 400 priests left the priesthood in 2011 and 2012 because of accusations that they had sexually abused children.

The number of victims is in the tens of thousands. And their agony never ends.
But the institution itself has never held itself fully accountable. And the crimes it presided over were legion and horrifying. Only today, for example, we read of the apology issued by the Legion of Christ – a neo-fascist, theocon cult – for the grotesque abuses of its founder, protected for years by Pope John Paul II:

The Legionaries of Christ, which former members said was run like a secretive cult, accused the founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in 2008, of “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior” as head of the order from its founding in 1941 until Pope Benedict XVI removed him in 2006.

The Dish’s long coverage of this scandal – well before the hierarchy began finally to take it seriously – can be found here. And when you absorb just how evil this cult was, just how depraved its leader was, and the psychic and spiritual toll it took on so many human beings, you come to one conclusion: there is no way this organization should still exist. The Vatican should shut it down. Period. Instead we have the former cronies and favorites of Maciel still calling the shots.
[W]hy does the church tolerate the continuation of such an organization? And yet it does. Similarly, why on earth is the Pope who presided over the sex abuse crisis – and protected Maciel to his death – even faintly considered for sainthood, far sooner than has ever been the case before? Sanctifying a Pope who presided over such crimes against humanity is an obscenity.

And why do we have to struggle to discover that more than 400 priests have been defrocked because of child rape in the last couple of years alone? Why aren’t their dismissals announced proudly by the Vatican? And why, for Pete’s sake, does the Vatican not enforce a simple rule: all accusations of child abuse should be referred immediately to secular law enforcement?

Francis has an opportunity here – perhaps the only opportunity the church will ever get – to turn a new page, to insist on complete transparency, to be fully accountable to law enforcement, and to atone and recant for the legacy of the past. There needs to be a purge not just of abusing priests but of every church official who played any part in the cover-up. Why, for example, has Cardinal Bernard Law not been defrocked and publicly shamed – instead of enjoying a cushy sinecure in Rome?

The truth is that the Catholic Church has committed a crime against humanity. Until every person implicated in that crime is removed, defrocked and disgraced, the entire moral credibility of the church will remain irreparably damaged.

Andrew's thoughts mirror my own.  Indeed, until the type of purge he describes occurs, I do not see how anyone who is decent and moral can remain an active member of the Church.  To remain a member is to be complicit in the crimes already committed and those likely still occurring.

Father Marcial Maciel And The Popes Who Protected Him

By now the worldwide pattern of sexual abuse of children and minors by Catholic Church clergy is all to well known: wanton abuse followed by superiors who engaged in cover ups and allowed the abuse to continue, often in a new unsuspecting venue.  What is unusual and shocking about the wanton sexual abuse perpetrated by Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ, is that his protectors were none other that Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  While Benedict XVI was ultimately forced to act against Maciel because the volume of evidence could no longer be covered up, he waited many years after it had become clear that Maciel was a dangerous predator.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this horrible picture of abuse and cover up motivated in part by the Catholic Church's true god: money and Maciel's ability to raise it in large quantities.  Here are some story excerpts:

Marcial Maciel Degollado, a priest from Mexico with an extravagant name, was the greatest fundraiser for the postwar Catholic Church and equally its greatest criminal.

“A life ... out of moral bounds,” is how Pope Benedict XVI described Maciel in a 2010 interview, two years after Maciel’s death. A “wasted, twisted life.”

And a life that exposed shocking flaws in the Vatican and the papacy. The saga of Father Maciel opens a rare view onto the flow of money in the Roman Curia across the last half century, a time during which his rise to power and late-life crash into scandal stained the campaign for John Paul II’s sainthood and became a quagmire for Benedict XVI.

In the late 1940s, Maciel began sexually plundering teenage seminarians in the religious order he founded, the Legion of Christ. He also shuttled between Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, courting benefactors like a senator with silk between the fingers, portraying his Legionaries as a force of resurgent orthodoxy, himself a fearless foe of communism.

That message had booming resonance in Mexico, a heavily Catholic country seared by memories of lethal anticlerical persecutions set in motion by the Calles regime in the 1930s, a milieu powerfully evoked in Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. Maciel won government support for seminary scholarships in Madrid, after the Spanish Civil War cemented ties between Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic hierarchy. Wealthy industrialists and patricians from the Spanish-speaking world poured money into Maciel’s fledgling order.

Legionaries called their leader Nuestro Padre (Our Father). They were taught that their founder was a living saint. They took private vows, swearing never to criticize Maciel or their superiors and to report on anyone who did. The cultlike insular culture Maciel molded would reward spying as an act of faith and shield Nuestro Padre from scrutiny as the youngest victims grew up and left the order, returning to Mexico and years of grappling with his traumatic impact on their lives.

In 1956 at the Legion seminary in Rome, Maciel spun out of control from an addiction to a morphine painkiller. A priest and older seminarian complained to the Vatican, which prompted an investigation that sent Maciel to a hospital briefly and removed him as superior general. But with no public notice of his suspension, Maciel kept traveling, raising money to complete construction on Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica in Rome. His victims, bound by the private vows, lied to defend him, as they would admit in interviews many years later.

  
In 1976 Vaca bolted to the Long Island diocese of Rockville Centre. He wrote a 12-page single-spaced letter to Maciel, identifying 20 other victims, “good and gifted young boys ... [subjected to] aberrant and sacrilegious abuse.” Bishop John Raymond McGann included Vaca’s letter in a dossier to the Vatican suggesting that it investigate. The letter was acknowledged; nothing happened. The bishop and Vaca wrote again in 1978, when John Paul II became pope.

In 1989 Vaca sent a long, detailed letter to John Paul in a dossier from his Long Island diocese, via Vatican diplomatic pouch, again including his original statement naming Maciel’s victims. This time he wrote more directly, telling John Paul that because of the abuse, he never should have been ordained. He was about to marry and wanted release from his vows. Several years later Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a document granting that, but on the Maciel charges—again, nothing.

As Legion money flowed through the Curia, seminarians drove across Rome in the days before Christmas, delivering baskets with fine wines and $1,000 Spanish hams to favored officials.

Barba, Vaca, and others found their way to me. Meanwhile, Gerald Renner of The Hartford Courant was reporting on men leaving a Legion seminary—an environment they found overly repressive—in Connecticut. Renner and I connected for a joint Courant assignment. The February 23, 1997, report exposed a history of pedophilia by Maciel through nine victims on the record. The Vatican refused comment. Maciel claimed innocence, but refused to be interviewed. The Legion counterattacked with a website denouncing the accusers as fomenting a conspiracy against Maciel.

Sodano pressured Ratzinger to overlook the charges. And John Paul ignored the allegations, continuing his praise of Maciel.   Not until 2004, when Maciel was 84 and John Paul was dying, did Ratzinger dispatch trusted canon lawyer Charles Scicluna to investigate the allegations.

At that point the Vatican, which had known about the daughter for four and a half years, announced an investigation of the Legion. In 2010 the Vatican took the scandal-battered order into receivership, something unique in the modern church. Benedict appointed a delegate (read: overseer), Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, a canon lawyer with a background in economics. Among his first duties, after the pope ordered the abolition of the private vows, was to rewrite the Legion’s constitution.

But by then, John Paul’s denial and Benedict’s soft-glove punishment became a liability as information began surfacing.

Why didn’t the Vatican release all the information on Maciel in 2006, when Benedict sent him off to a life of penance? Barba, who filed a 1998 case seeking Maciel’s ouster and has become a news celebrity in Mexico with his forceful analysis of breaking information, is convinced that Ratzinger, after becoming pope, wanted to minimize the damage done by John Paul’s failure, knowing Rome would push to make John Paul a saint. In spring 2011 Benedict beatified John Paul, the step before sainthood. It would be a dicey move for the next pope to take the final step. When Benedict flew to Mexico in spring 2012, he faced damaging media coverage for his failure to meet with Maciel’s victims. As long as those men live, any movement on the story of John Paul’s sainthood should be balanced with the reality of those, like Barba and Vaca, who sent John Paul all the messages he needed, but that he failed to heed, choosing instead to bless the myth of Nuestro Padre.

Farewell to a Horrible Pope

Not to beat a dead horse, but many are thrilled about the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI even if they have trepidation about what new reactionary may well be elected as his successor.  Throughout his reign - I use that term because Benedict XVI has acted as an absolute monarch - this Pope has fought modernity, sought to repress women, and participated in a criminal conspiracy that has subjected unknown thousands of children and youths to sexual abuse by priests.  And for all of his misdeeds, Benedict XVI has shown no real remorse - something I guess is to be expected from a former Hitler Youth.  An op-ed in the New York Times bids this foul Pope a dieu.  Here are excerpts:

POPE BENEDICT XVI quit. Good. He was utterly bereft of charm, tone-deaf and a protector of priests who abused children. He’d been a member of the Hitler Youth. In addition to this woeful résumé, he had no use for women. 

The Roman Catholic Church, which in so many ways has been a great boon to the City of New York, has been choked and bludgeoned into insignificance by a small group of men based in Italy. 

Priests cannot marry. Why? I will tell you why. Priests cannot marry because they would have to marry women. Women cannot be priests. 

Why? Women cannot become priests because of a bunch of old men. These old men justify their beliefs with a brace of ridiculous arguments that Jesus would have overturned in a minute. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” What about that is hard to understand? If you can become a priest, I can become a priest. Period. Equality. 

Benedict has not been idle. He has put in place a lot of other old guys who have no interest in sharing power with anyone outside the club. The last pope we had who showed signs of spiritual vision was John XXIII. That was a long time ago. He had humility and a good heart. These more recent appointments have been disheartening in the extreme.

I have watched the wealth of the Catholic Church turned into a subsidy for wrongdoing and a prop for the continuing campaign against women’s rights and homosexuality. Neighborhood churches, built with the hard-earned money of working-class people, are being sold off. The sacrifices that were made to build these churches were significant and local. The decision to close them has been made antiseptically, by remote control. The men who make these decisions are at a remove, very much involved in protecting their power and comfort. 

I have little reason to hope that the Church of Rome will suddenly realize that without women, the Catholic Church is doomed, and should be doomed. I think of those good nuns who educated me, of their lifelong devotion and sacrifice. They have been treated like cattle by a crowd of domineering fools. 

In Benedict, the Catholic Church got the pope it deserved. I can only hope, for the sake of my parents, who loved the church so much, that a miracle of divine grace alters the writing on the wall. If not, the Catholic Church will suffer the fate it deserves. 

Sadly, Benedict XVI and his equally foul predecessor, John Paul II have stacked the college of cardinals with equally foul men, so the likelihood of any wished for miracle is likely nonexistent.  I expect that the Church will continue its slide toward an African based church that has been abandoned by most of the modern world.

 

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Mea Maxima Culpa Promo

Tonight HBO premiered a documentary entitled "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" which investigates the secret crimes of Father Lawrence Murphy, a Roman Catholic priest who abused more than 200 deaf children in a school under his control.   Not surprisingly, the trail in the lies and cover ups that took place all the way to the Vatican and documents the involvement of Popes from Pope Paul VI onward, with the current Pope Benedict XVI bearing perhaps the most responsibility given his position as head of the dread Inquisition for over 20 years before his elevation to the papacy.   The picture revealed is hideous and chilling.  In any other context outside of religion and a large religious institution, the perpetrators and accessories would all have faced prosecution and lengthy prison sentences.  Yet, despite their crimes the current Pope and many of the Church's current cardinals and bishop have gone totally unpunished and remain the objects of deference and respect.  It is an indictment of not only the Catholic Church hierarchy but also every Catholic who has remained in the Church and continues to finance the Vatican orchestrated criminal enterprise.  Andrew Sullivan has some lengthy and telling commentary:

Alex Gibney’s new documentary on the child-rape epidemic in the Catholic Church that raged for decades (and maybe centuries), Mea Maxima Culpa, debuted tonight on HBO. I’ve watched it twice. It is both an inspiring testament to faith and truth – as well as a devastating indictment of pride, power, and lies. The former come from four boys who attended St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970s. The latter comes from the Vatican and everyone in its power structure then and ever since. 

The story begins as long ago as 1974 when four boys put fliers on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot of the church run by the man who raped them. They simply said “Wanted” with the priest’s name (the more explicit flyer in the video above came later). Instead of being listened to, the kids were disciplined. Eventually, in Murphy’s psychiatric record, Gibney finds Father Lawrence Murphy confessing to raping over 200 boys over a long period of time. He raped them in their dorm rooms; he raped them in the confessional, using the small window as a glory hole and granting absolution based on rape or masturbation. The detail I cannot quite recover from is that he picked out for abuse those deaf boys who had parents who could not use sign language – so that even if the boys had the courage to say what had happened to them, their parents would not understand. It’s things like that that simply chill you, haunt you, force you to confront the pre-meditated, profound assault on human souls that the Catholic Church, from the Pope on down, enabled, perpetuated, and lied about for so long – and still hasn’t been held fully accountable for.

And what this documentary proves beyond any reasonable doubt (like Gibney’s examination of the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to torture prisoners in “Taxi To The Dark Side”) is that all of it was known throughout the hierarchy for decades.

It has been a core problem with the “celibate” priesthood in the US for decades, and every single bishop and every single Pope knew it. Fitzgerald personally met with Pope Paul VI to try and get him to act. Yes, the good folks in the church tried to do something as early as the 1950s and were stopped in their tracks … by the Vatican. The number of souls violated by child-rape in the coming decades would not have happened if all the Popes since Paul VI had acted with more moral sense than most maximum security murderers. (Even the worst prisoners regard child-rapists as the lowest of the low. Popes? Not so much). We’re not talking about priests who are drunks, or priests who fall in love, or break their vows in fallible, victimless ways; we’re talking here about priests committing one of the most heinous felonies imaginable: the systematic rape of children using the authority of the Church as cover.

John Paul II emphatically cannot be somehow removed from this picture. He personally protected one of the worst offenders, Marcial Maciel, who was a serial rapist, drug trafficker, bigamist and rapist of his own son.

Joseph Ratzinger, when he was Archbishop of Munich, personally signed off on sending a priest to therapy, after that priest had raped several children, never notified the police, never told the parents of the children at the parish the priest was then assigned to, and because of this negligence, was, in my view, complicit in the rape of several more children before the priest was finally caught, arrested and sent to jail. Let me repeat that: the current Pope enabled and abetted the rape of children  .  .  .  .    More than that, no one else in the church knows more about this long record of child-rape than Ratzinger. From 2001 onwards, all cases of child rape or abuse were ordered to be sent to his personal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And all of it had to be kept completely hidden from the outside world. In the words of Hans Kung, Ratzinger’s former modernizing ally in the Second Vatican Council,

Ratzinger himself, in a letter on “grave sexual crimes” addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe “papal secrecy” in such cases.

He knew everything – and had the goods on every Cardinal, in whose dioceses thousands of complaints had been filed. And one wonders why it was a surprise he was elected Pope.

In the Catholic Church, mass rapists get retirement homes with maids. She confronts the rape victim. She keeps asking him: “Are you a Catholic?” He keeps replying that this has nothing to do with Catholicism and everything to do with rape. She just comes back at him with rapid-fire repetitions of “Are you a Catholic?” “Are you a Catholic?” “Are you a Catholic?“

Where are we now as a church if we vaunt one of the biggest enablers of child-rape, John Paul II, to the status of sainthood without a thorough investigation of these matters?

When will we Catholics insist in the prosecution of this Pope and this hierarchy for what can only be called – given its duration and gravity and sheer scale – a crime against humanity. When will we lose the deference to a clerical elite that has become its own self-perpetuating clique of sexual dysfunction, that has lost even the most basic moral authority, that even now refuses to hold itself to account.

Sadly, Sullivan continues to identify as a Catholic despite all of the known crimes of the Church leadership.  And this is part of the problem that he purports to decry.  Only by all moral people walking away from the Church - and I do not know how anyone moral can remain a Catholic given all that is now known - will the Church lose sufficient support to expose it to the criminal prosecutions that need to be undertaken.  Sadly, both law enforcement officials and politicians will in most cases be afraid to take need measures against the Church as longs as millions of members of the Catholic laity remain members of the Church and de facto accessories to these countless crimes against children.  I walked away from Catholicism over a decade ago.  My children and all but one of my siblings have done likewise.  But too many people out of laziness and a fear of thinking for themselves remain and allow the guilty to remain unpunished.

Australia: Crackdown on Sex Abuse by Priests Stymied by Vatican

Over the last few years the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has gone into a virtual free fall as government investigations of sex abuse of children and youths by Catholic clergy has revealed a moral cesspool of previously unimagined scope.  Now, a government commission in Australia is poised to begin a similar type of investigation and many expect that similar horrific details will be exposed and, once again details will likely reveal that the Vatican helped orchestrate the cover ups and coddling of sexual predators.  Personally, I left the Roman Catholic Church over a decade ago and joined the Evangelical Church in America - which I highly recommend to Catholics in search of a new church home - because I felt literally dirty and amoral being a part of a church so morally bankrupt at an institutional level, especially since a portion of each dollar dropped into the local parish collection plate helps to financially support the foul and malignant Church hierarchy.  A piece in the National Catholic Reporter (hardly a favored publication at the Vatican) looks at the situation in Australia and traces responsibility back to Rome.  Here are some article excerpts:

The Catholic church in Australia is about to be put under the spotlight of the most sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse ever conducted in this country.

Describing child abuse as "vile and evil," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said a national royal commission will examine the treatment of children in all churches, charities and private bodies. But it is clear that a major factor in her decision has been the mounting public outcry at ongoing scandals involving Catholic personnel and procedures.

These scandals include:

• Recent suicides of victims of sexual abuse by priests;
• Allegations of children dying in the care of Catholic institutions;
• Ongoing arrests and convictions of priests in relation to matters involving child sexual abuse;
• New allegations that some church authorities failed to report abusive priests;
• Claims by police in two state jurisdictions -- three states are currently conducting their own inquiries into child abuse in institutional care -- that existing church protocols fail to address the long-term interests of victims and that the Catholic church, in the words of one detective, "covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church."

"Beyond the evidence of abuse," Gillard told a press conference, "there is also cause for concern that other adults who could have done something to make a difference to the lives of these children didn't do what they should have done, either by becoming complicit in people being moved around, for example, or by averting their eyes and by acts of omission."

If what is to come proves extremely gut-wrenching for the Catholic church, it only has its leadership to blame: At a national level, the bishops were slow to respond to the mounting evidence of clerical sexual abuse through the 1980s and 1990s; at an even more senior level the Vatican has stymied the national response that eventually did emerge in the Australian church.

In 1996 the [Australian] bishops also undertook to commission a study into the factors inside the church that might produce abusive clergy.  .  .  .  .  .  It found that clerical sexual abuse was a "direct consequence" of the failure of the Catholic church to treat men and women equally. "As long as the culture of the Church does not put men and women on a basis of true equality, then women and children will remain vulnerable to abuse," it argued.

[I]t did find that the pattern of abuse was the "complete opposite" of that found in the general community, with boys more likely to be victims than girls.  .  .  .  .  it did acknowledge a consensus among those consulted in the study that the "arresting of human psycho-sexual and psychological development accompanied entry to the seminary or religious life directly from secondary school."

By implication, "Towards Understanding" was arguing that the culture of clericalism should be fundamentally reformed. Not surprisingly, the report was never made public, never acted upon in any serious manner, and, like a similar report into the priesthood -- with similar findings -- commissioned by the U.S. bishops in 1971, effectively buried.

What had happened between 1996 and 1999 was a meeting in Rome in 1998 in which 13 of the 38 Australian bishops attending the Synod for Oceania were summoned by Vatican officials responsible for matters of doctrine, clergy, worship and the sacraments, bishops, religious orders and Catholic education. Three weeks after the meeting, a summary of its deliberations, known as "The Statement of Conclusions," was presented to all the Australian bishops to sign. Under the circumstances, they had little choice.

The statement referred to a "crisis of faith" in Australia and presented a blueprint for responding to it. The church "does not create her own ordering and structure," that blueprint insisted, "but receives them from Christ himself." Many of the subsequent prescriptions laid out in the document entrenched the clerical culture "Towards Understanding" was to criticize. The statement also, by implication at the very least, dashed any hopes the bishops might have harbored that they were free to act in ways they saw necessary to respond comprehensively to the problem of clerical sexual abuse.

[I]t is no longer 1998, the royal commission has bipartisan political support, and the Australian public expects answers. Perhaps that will be enough to tilt the balance -- even in Rome.

As I have stated before, Pope Benedict XVI belongs behind bars for his role in the systematic burying of efforts to address and stop sexual abuse of minors.  As the head of the then name Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - it was formerly called the Inquisition -  he was aware of all of the abuse and effective worked to cover it.  Of course, it must be noted that John Paul II who some farcically seek to see canonized - was fully involved in the cover ups and criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice all across the globe.  These men are two very foul individuals.  They deserve no respect and absolutely no deference of any kind.  The same holds true for far too many of the Church's bishops and cardinals as well.

Nuns Challenge Romney To Spend A Day With Them To Learn About Plight Of America’s Poor

You know it's bad when Catholic nuns - some of the few Catholic Church clergy who seem to believe in the true Gospel message -  are deriding Mitt Romney for being insensitive and clueless about the plight of the poor.  Worse yet, they call the Paul Ryan GOP budget which Romney has endorsed to be immoral and contrary to Catholic social justice principles.  Romney may have resorted to running ads featuring the late Pope John Paul II as an attack of Obama - apparently forgetting that John Paul II's legacy includes massive cover ups of sexual abuse literally around the globe - but he's clueless on social justice issues.  Enter the nuns who have invited Romney to join their bus tour so that he can be educated about reality.  Will Romney accept the invitation?  I seriously doubt it.  Here are some excerpts from a Think Progress post:

The group behind the Nuns On A Bus tour that highlighted the ill-effects of the House Republican budget in congressional districts across the country is now setting its sights on the party’s presidential candidate, inviting Mitt Romney to spend a day with the nuns to learn about the plight of America’s poorest citizens.
.   .   .   .   The group is specifically targeting Romney a day after his campaign released a misleading ad about welfare reform that Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK’s executive director, said “demonize[s] families in poverty” and shows Romney’s “ignorance about the challenges” the poor face in America:

“Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times,” stated Sister Simone Campbell. .  .  .  . 

Romney has endorsed the House GOP budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). It was that plan, which includes deep cuts to food stamps and other safety net programs that benefit the middle class, that NETWORK’s Nuns On A Bus tour targeted, with Campbell and other sisters blasting it as “immoral” at the tour’s conclusion in Washington D.C. Romney has also proposed massive tax cuts for the rich that would likely come at the expense of lower- and middle-class families, which would see higher taxes or significant cuts to the programs they depend on.

Those policies, Campbell told ThinkProgress, show that Romney “doesn’t have clue” about the struggles the poor face. “The fact is, his policies shift wealth to the upper class,” she said. “Yes, it hurts the middle class, but it devastates those at the margins of our society.” If Romney were to accept their invitation, Campbell said she would take him to places like St. Augustine’s in Cleveland, where food programs “provide a hand up” to the community’s neediest members. “He thinks they’re lazy,” Campbell said, in reference to Romney’s misleading welfare reform ad. “It is hard work to keep things together when you’re poor. He doesn’t have a clue. Let him talk to them, and maybe they’ll touch his heart. And his mind too.”

Book on Legion of Christ Sex Abuse Scandal to Overshadow Pope's Visit to Mexico

I have long maintained that the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal epitomizes the moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church's utter moral bankruptcy. However, few of the disgusting vile stories track directly to the Vatican than that of Rev. Marciel Maciel, the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who was a drug addict and pedophile - and a protected favorite of the far less than saintly Pope John Paul II. The story of Marceil is an indictment of both John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI who as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a/k/a the Inquisition, knew full well about the horrible and tawdry behavior of Marceil. Thankfully, a new book on the sins and sexual abuse of Marceil is being released just in time for Pope Benedict XVI's disingenuous PR trip to Mexico. In my view, Benedict XVI needs to have Marceil hung around his neck. Yes, his apologists will try to shift blame to John Paul II, but Benedict XVI could have done more to stop Marceil and he chose not to do so. Failures to act can be just as damning as acts of malfeasance. Here are some highlights from Huffington Post on what is likely to greet the Nazi Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Mexico this week to a very public reminder of one of the Catholic Church's most egregious sex abuse scandals: A new book says internal Vatican documents show the Holy See knew decades ago of allegations that the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order was a drug addict and pedophile.

The documentation has been compiled in a book "La voluntad de no saber" ("The will to not know"), which is co-authored by Jose Barba, a former Legion priest who along with other priests in 1998 brought a church trial against the Legion's founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, for having sexually abused them while they were seminarians.

While details of the abuse were made public years ago, the new documents seem to solidify proof that the Vatican knew of the allegations long before taking action. Excerpts of the book were published by the Mexican magazine Proceso on Sunday.

"The importance of this book is that it documents the irrefutable evidence and proof that the Vatican has been lying about Maciel," said Bernardo Barranco, an expert from the Religious Studies Center of Mexico and author of the prologue of the new text.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict, headed the office that received their complaint in 1998, but it took the Vatican eight years to sanction Maciel for the crimes, while the accusers were branded as liars and discredited by the Legion.

Maciel, meanwhile, continued to enjoy Pope John Paul II's highest regard as the founder of one of the world's fastest-growing religious orders, able to attract money and vocations to the church despite the mounting accusations against him. . . . . Benedict took over the Legion in 2010 after the order finally admitted Maciel had molested seminarians and fathered three children with two women. A Vatican investigation determined Maciel, who died in 2008, was a religious fraud who had built an order based on silence and obedience that allowed his double life to go unchecked.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barba said the book was based on information from some 212 documents in a Vatican archive that he said he had obtained from unnamed church officials.

The documentation, he said, demonstrates that the Vatican had information against Maciel as early as 1944 and particularly in the mid-1950s, when the Holy See launched its first investigation into the Mexican-born Maciel. The so-called apostolic visitation lasted from 1956 to 1958, during which time Maciel was suspended as the Legion's superior, though he was subsequently reinstalled.

The documents "show with complete clarity that the Vatican knew the true nature of this man, the accusations, the opinion of experts, the revision of other experts on top of previous experts, and the opinions that the apostolic visitors gave," Barba said.

"The revelation of these documents, previously unknown to the great majority of Legionaries who acted in good faith, shows that there were solid grounds for the removal of Fr. Maciel more than 50 years ago," Gill said in an email, calling anew for the Vatican to further investigate how Maciel could have hidden his behavior from public view for so long.

The Catholic blogger Cassandra Jones, for example, has cited letters sent in 1956 from the bishops of Cuernavaca, Mexico, and Mexico City to the Vatican's office for religious orders recommending Maciel's removal and a Vatican investigation into what Cuernavaca's then-bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo termed "devious and lying behavior, use of narcotic drugs, acts of sodomy with boys of the congregation."

But "La Voluntad de no saber," which comes out on Benedict's first full day in Mexico, promises more complete documentation from the Vatican's own archives. While the book is only being published in Spanish in Mexico with an initial run of 6,000 copies, the documentation will be available on a website, , organizers said. http://www.lavoluntaddenosaber.com

Benedict himself has acknowledged Maciel was a "false prophet" but has insisted that he only learned the true nature of the allegations against Maciel in 2000. His office received Barba's complaint in 1998 and the Vatican's office for religious orders received the Mexican bishops' charges in 1956.

Barba and other victims have said they would never agree to a meeting with Benedict since it was his old office – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – that sat on the case for eight years while they suffered the Legion's defamation campaign to discredit them.

"For nothing in the world would I ever meet with someone who protected Maciel when he should have been punished," said Jose Antonio Perez Olvera, a former Legionary who was sexually abused by Maciel. "We don't make deals with criminals, nor with those who were their protectors and accomplices."

Sadly, too many Catholics refuse to admit that the Vatican is a foul criminal enterprise that has protected child rapists on literally a global basis. And if the sex abuse wasn't enough in and of itself to expose the criminality of the Vatican, now it appears that the Vatican Bank may have been laundering money - something that has caused JP Morgan Chase to close accounts with the Vatican Bank. The Daily Beast has coverage on this new banking scandal. Here are some excerpts:

The Vatican is in public-relations panic-mode ... again. But it’s not the pedophile priest scandal or Vatileaks that has the pope’s image-makers hopping. This time the Holy See faces serious allegations that its curious accounting practices are really a cover for a money-laundering scheme.

On March 30, the Milan branch of the global investment bank JPMorgan Chase will officially close the Vatican bank’s account No. 1365—held by the Institute for Works of Religion, or the IOR—on speculation that the account is being used for less-than-immaculate financial deeds. JPMorgan Chase sent a letter to the Vatican on Feb. 15 to notify them of the closure after the Vatican bankers were “unable to respond” to a series of requests about questionable money transfers from the account. The JPMorgan Chase account was a “sweeping facility” that was zeroed out at the end of each business day. The account, which was opened in 2009, had processed some $1.5 billion in funds to other Vatican accounts—mostly in Germany—during the short time it was open, . . . . the fact that Vatican bankers couldn’t quite explain the reason they moved so much money in such a short period of time led the bank to close the account.

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department named the Holy See on a list of its own, as a “jurisdiction of concern” for money-laundering practices in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, alongside countries like Honduras and Syria.

“The best way for the Vatican to come clean would of course be to close the bank: it’s hard to see why it’s needed other than to shroud the Church’s financial dealings in a veil of obsessive secrecy,” he [Reuters financial columnist Pierre Briançon] wrote in a recent blog post. “Barring such a radical exorcism, a clean sweep is in order.”

Sexual abuse of children, protecting and covering up for sexual predators and money laundering - what does it take to make rank and file Catholics to open their eyes to the truth about the putrid Church leadership in Rome? If one has a shred of moral decency, I honestly do not understand how they can continue to hand money over the the Catholic Church.

Misplaced Priorities

No commentary is required.

Sex Abuse Scandal Casualty: Cardinal Rigali Out As Head of Philadelphia Archdiocese

It's hard to feel much compassion for a man who apparently cared nothing about the sexual abuse of children and allowed predatory priests to remain in ministry. Hence, on hearing the news that Cardinal Justin Rigali pictured at left) is resigning as archbishop of the Philadelphia archdiocese, my first thought can basically summed up as "good riddance." The irony, of course is that Rigali is being removed from office by the ring master of sexual abuse cover ups - Pope Benedict XVI. Indeed, the bigger question ought to be that of when will Benedict XVI abdicate as a result of his own filthy hands that have aided and abetted predators for decades? Yes, I realize that some apologists will argue that under the less than saintly Pope John Paul II Ratzinger was merely following orders. However, Ratzinger could have resigned rather than be an accomplice to all the evil. Indeed, if he had any honor and decency he would have resigned. That he chose to "follow orders" like a good Hitler Youth speaks volumes as to why he's unfit for the papacy and ought to instead be behind bars himself. The Philadelphia Inquirer has details on Rigali's resignation.
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FIVE MONTHS AFTER a grand-jury report blasted the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for failing to investigate claims of sexual abuse by priests against children, Pope Benedict XVI will accept Cardinal Justin Rigali's resignation this week, the Daily News has learned.
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The Archdiocese did not return calls yesterday seeking comment on Rigali's expected resignation. But sources close to the Archdiocese confirmed a report Thursday on the National Catholic Reporter's website that Rigali would resign.
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Rigali, 76, took over for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua in 2003. He has been under fire following a grand-jury report, released in February, accusing the Archdiocese of a widespread cover-up of predatory priests over decades, and alleging that as many as 37 priests remained active in the ministry despite credible accusations against them. The report recommended that the Archdiocese revamp procedures for assisting victims and for removing priests accused of molesting children.
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A high-ranking Archdiocesan official was charged with child-endangerment for allegedly transferring "predator priests" to other positions. Two priests, a former priest and a former Catholic schoolteacher were charged with sexually assaulting minors.
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With public pressure mounting, Catholic commentators say that a spotlight is shining on Philadelphia. "This is the most high-stakes personnel move Pope Benedict is making as pope," said Rocco Palmo, of Philadelphia, author of the Catholic-oriented blog Whispers in the Loggia. "Every bishop in the country is watching. They know it will reflect on them and their archdiocese. The eyes of the Catholic world are on Philly right now."
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Rigali turned in his letter of resignation when he turned 75 in April 2010. The pope can accept the resignation at any time, but Winters said Rigali hadn't planned to leave so soon. "I don't think he was planning on leaving this year," Winters said. "He understood after the grand-jury report he could not dig them out of this mess."
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The Rev. Charles Engelhardt, former priest Edward Avery and former teacher Bernard Shero were charged with sodomizing the 10-year-old, and the Rev. James Brennan was accused of raping the 14-year-old in his apartment. Monsignor William Lynn was charged with child endangerment for allegedly shielding and transferring known predatory priests.
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Remind me again - why does anyone, be they a lay Catholic or a political office holder listen to anything the Catholic Church leadership has to say on anything? These men make the Mafia look virtuous.