Pope Forces Out Closeted Anti-Gay Cardinal Keith O'Brien

Over the weekend this blog noted the exploding gay sex scandal surrounding UK Cardinal Keith O'Brien who has been an outspoken opponent to LGBT rights in general and gay marriage in particular.  While O'Brien had said he would contest the allegations made by four different priests - most of the claimed sexual advances occurred when the priest were seminarians or newly ordained - there must have been fire and not just smoke in the allegations because reportedly in a final act Pope Benedict XVI forced O'Brien's resignation.  As one might expect, perennial Catholic Church apologist William Donohue is apoplectic that the "Lavender Mafia" successfully took down a cardinal.   Despite Donohue's protestations that O'Brien should be deemed innocent until proven guilty, Benedict XVI in a rare display of decisive punishment for sexual impropriety felt forced to act.  Apparently, covering up countless crimes against children and youths is fine with Benedict XVI, but accusations of actually participating in gay sexual activities is too much for the the bitter old queen.  First these highlights from The Guardian:

The pope has forced the abrupt resignation of Britain's most senior Roman Catholic as the church made a frantic attempt to minimise the impact of allegations of "inappropriate acts" committed by Cardinal Keith O'Brien against fellow priests.

O'Brien stood down as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh the day after the Observer published accusations by three serving priests and a former priest about his conduct towards them during the 1980s.

He issued a statement in which he ambiguously apologised for "any failures" and to those he had "offended", and announced that he would no longer travel to the Vatican to help select a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who retires at 8pm on Thursday. O'Brien had been due to be the only British cardinal with a vote.

The cardinal revealed in his statement that he had been asked by the outgoing pope to stand down immediately. Already due to retire next month, the cardinal stated: "The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today."

Senior Catholics said his resignation was intended to stop the allegations turning into a crisis. The church is already under pressure over unrelated abuse and corruption scandals in other dioceses.

Professor John Haldane, one of Scotland's senior Catholic theologians and an adviser to the Vatican, said O'Brien's decision was "shocking and sad" but, given the timing of the allegations and the "inevitable" media interest, it was not a surprise.

[T]the move led critics to demand that other cardinals at the centre of scandals over failures to report sex abuse by priests – including Roger Mahony, emeritus archbishop of Los Angeles, and Seán Brady, the primate of all Ireland – "recuse" themselves from the papal conclave, citing O'Brien's decision as a precedent.

In his statement on Monday, O'Brien implied he had been told to resign immediately, stating: "The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today, 25 February 2013, and that he will appoint an apostolic administrator to govern the archdiocese in my place until my successor as archbishop is appointed."

Insiders said O'Brien's abrupt departure had left the Scottish Catholic church, which he had led for 10 years, disoriented and shocked. One source said it meant that only three out of eight Scottish dioceses now have full-time, permanent bishops in charge.

I suspect that many others within the ranks of the Church's cardinals and bishops have behaved no differently than O'Brien.  Meanwhile, here's what the always incensed  Donohue is spouting:

We don’t know the names of the four men making the accusations because the British newspaper behind this story, The Observer, won’t release them; the details of what allegedly happened have not been disclosed (all we know are vague statements about “inappropriate” and “unwanted” contact); the four accusers waited over 30 years to come forward before coordinating their joint charges.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien must be considered innocent until proven guilty. But we don’t need to wait any longer to conclude that the British media have discredited themselves again (they do so regularly with all matters Catholic). To withhold the names of the accusers, and the details of what allegedly happened (dating back to 1980), without ever allowing the accused to rebut the charges, is despicable. Am I alone in picking up the scent of lavender in the air?

Catholic Hierarchy Disingenuousness

Sometimes I honestly cannot help but wonder whether or not the members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy think everyone other than themselves are utter morons or have all recently suffered lobotomies. Do they truly believe that thinking people with IQ's over say even 85 are too dim witted to figure out that the authors of so-called pastoral letters don't mean a damn word they write? Or do they just think we all have the gullibility of a three year old child? A case in point is Cardinal Roger "Lets Protect the Child Molesters" Mahoney of Los Angeles who has floated a "pastoral letter" to gay Catholics in his archdiocese. Mahoney apparently believes that notwithstanding all of the efforts of the Catholic bishops and the Knights of Columbus to secure passage of Proposition 8 that gays are so incredibly stupid that we will believe his false claims that the Roman Catholic Church doesn't really wish us ill. Tell lies about us, malign us, imply we are all child molesters, call us "inherently disordered" or perhaps even call us evil, but deep down we are supposed to believe that the Catholic hierarchy actually care about us. Sorry Cardinal, but we are not as dumb as you think. Here are some highlights of the bullshit shoveled out by Mahomey:

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As Bishops of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, we are addressing this message first of all to the homosexual members of our Church. Given the controversy generated by the passage of Proposition 8, we want to reassure each of you that you are cherished members of the Catholic Church, and that we value you as equal and active members of the Body of Christ.

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The passage of Proposition 8 in the State of California does not diminish in any way the importance of you, our homosexual brothers and sisters in the Church. Nor does it lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the Body of Christ.

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Proposition 8 was never intended, directly or indirectly, to lessen the value and importance of gay and lesbian persons. Your intrinsic value as human beings and as brothers and sisters continues without change.

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We welcome thoughtful and civil dialogue with you so that we can deepen our realization that all of us cherish God's creative life which we equally share. We are committed to find ways to eliminate discrimination against homosexual persons, and to help guarantee the basic rights which belong to each of us.

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As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words and the Roman Catholic Church's actions make it most clear that LGBT individuals are regarded as little better than human garbage by the Church leadership. Talk is cheap and disingenuous lip service doesn't change the true reality of the situation. Why any LGBT individual would remain a Catholic defies (in my view at least) comprehension.

Cardinal Mahony: Church Can't Approve Redefining Marriage

Not surprisingly, among those condemning the gay weddings now occuring in California are Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony and six of his minions, Auxiliary Bishops Thomas J. Curry, Gabino Zavala, Gerald Wilkerson, Edward Wm. Clark, Alexander Salazar and Oscar A. Solis. Mahony, who acts all sanctimonious and pios is in my opinion anything but. Here is what the Dallas Morning News in its special report on cover ups of sexual abuse of minors by bishops and cardinals (roughly 2/3's were found to be involved in cover ups) had this to say about Mahony and his archdiocese:

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More than 30 current and former archdiocesan priests are under criminal investigation, and the district attorney has said he would call Cardinal Mahony before a grand jury unless he divulges his files on them; he has vowed to cooperate. One of the cases involves the Rev. Michael Stephen Baker, who admitted to the cardinal in 1986 that he had molested boys but was kept on the job, in several parishes, until 2000. The cardinal later approved a confidential $1.3 million settlement with two of Father Baker's victims who say they were abused as recently as 1999. "I offer my sincere, personal apologies for my failure to take firm and decisive action much earlier," Cardinal Mahony recently wrote to the priests he supervises. Father Baker is accused of molesting boys, some as young as 5, from 1976 to 1999.

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In another case, the archdiocese let the Rev. G. Neville Rucker remain in the ministry until this year despite abuse allegations that first surfaced 35 years ago and led to an out-of-court settlement of a 1993 lawsuit. Father Rucker's alleged victims included 9-year-old girls; he has denied wrongdoing.

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In the early 1980s, when he was bishop of Stockton, Calif., Cardinal Mahony moved the Rev. Oliver O'Grady to various parishes. During a civil trial, the cardinal said he didn't know about Father O'Grady's abuse, but his testimony was contradicted by a psychiatrist he had hired to evaluate the priest. Father O'Grady was later sent to prison, and Cardinal Mahony's dealings with him have become the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit.

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Between this information and the fact that Mahoney's archdiocese went on to enter into a $660 Million settlement with the victims of sexual abuse after vicious rounds of litigation where one prosecutor described Mahony as worse than dealing with an organized crime figure (see MSNBC's coverage), one has to truly wonder why anyone with intelligence and/or shread of integrity would listen to anything Mahony might bleet given his disingenuous track record. It is unfortunate that Channel 9 failed to remind viewers of these facts about Mahoney. Here are some highlights of Mahony's latest pontifications from the KCAL-9 TV:

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LOS ANGELES As same-sex couples throughout California prepare on Monday for the era of gay marriage, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and six auxiliary bishops spoke out against the unions, saying the Catholic Church cannot approve of the redefinition of marriage.

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the church cannot approve of redefining marriage, which has a unique place in God's creation, joining a man and a woman in a committed relationship in order to nurture and support the new life for which marriage is intended," the statement says."The meaning of marriage is deeply rooted in history and culture, and has been shaped considerably by Christian tradition. Its meaning is given, not constructed. When marriage is redefined so as to make other relationships equivalent to it, the institution of marriage is devalued and further weakened."