Catholic Cardinal Preyed on Men Seeking Priesthood

McCarrick with George W. Bush and John Roberts.

While most of the media's focus is on Trump's open acts of treason in Helsinki, another story revealing the depths of the depravity of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is laid out in detail in a piece in the New York Times.  The piece looks at how the behavior of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, DC, was ignored by Church officials who received numerous warnings that the cardinal was sexually abusing seminarians.  The Church condemns normal, loving same sex relations, yet covers up the misdeeds of psycho-sexually deformed clerics, damaged by the Church's bizarre dogma on sexuality. Anything rather than discard the warped 12th century beliefs so loved at the Vatican.  Here are article highlights (read the full article and note how the less than saintly John Paul II ignored warnings about McCarrick):  

As a young man studying to be a priest in the 1980s, Robert Ciolek was flattered when his brilliant, charismatic bishop in Metuchen, N.J., Theodore E. McCarrick, told him he was a shining star, cut out to study in Rome and rise high in the church.

Bishop McCarrick began inviting him on overnight trips, sometimes alone and sometimes with other young men training to be priests. There, the bishop would often assign Mr. Ciolek to share his room, which had only one bed. The two men would sometimes say night prayers together, before Bishop McCarrick would make a request — “come over here and rub my shoulders a little”— that extended into unwanted touching in bed.

Mr. Ciolek, who was in his early 20s at the time, said he felt unable to say no, in part because he had been sexually abused by a teacher in his Catholic high school, a trauma he had shared with the bishop.

“I trusted him, I confided in him, I admired him,” Mr. Ciolek said in an interview this month, the first time he has spoken publicly about the abuse, which lasted for several years while Mr. Ciolek was a seminarian and later a priest. “I couldn’t imagine that he would have anything other than my best interests in mind.”

Bishop McCarrick went on to climb the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy — from head of the small Diocese of Metuchen to archbishop of Newark and then archbishop of Washington, where he was made a cardinal. He remained into his 80s one of the most recognized American cardinals on the global stage, a Washington power broker who participated in funeral masses for political luminaries like Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts senator, and Beau Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Suddenly, last month, Cardinal McCarrick was removed from ministry, after the Archdiocese of New York deemed credible an accusation that he had molested a 16-year-old altar boy nearly 50 years ago.

He is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be removed for sexual abuse of a minor.

But while the church responded quickly to the allegation that Cardinal McCarrick had abused a child, some church officials knew for decades that the cardinal had been accused of sexually harassing and inappropriately touching adults, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Between 1994 and 2008, multiple reports about the cardinal’s transgressions with adult seminary students were made to American bishops, the pope’s representative in Washington and, finally, Pope Benedict XVI. Two New Jersey dioceses secretly paid settlements, in 2005 and 2007, to two men, one of whom was Mr. Ciolek,

[W]hile the church has made strides in dealing with sexual abuse of children, it has largely avoided a reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse suffered by adult seminarians and young priests at the hands of their superiors, including bishops.

Because bishops have control over priests’ assignments and complete loyalty is expected by the church’s clerical culture, seminarians and priests can be especially vulnerable to sexual harassment by their superiors.

Now, after the fall of Cardinal McCarrick, some Catholics are saying that the church is on the verge of confronting its own #MeToo moment, akin to the wave of painful truth-telling that has swept through other workplaces, schools and Hollywood. In 2000, Pope John Paul II promoted Archbishop McCarrick to lead the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., one of the most prestigious posts in the Catholic Church in America. He was elevated to cardinal three months later.

At least one priest warned the Vatican against the appointment. The Rev. Boniface Ramsey said that when he was on the faculty at the Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in New Jersey from 1986 to 1996, he was told by seminarians about Archbishop McCarrick’s sexual abuse at the beach house. When Archbishop McCarrick was appointed to Washington, Father Ramsey spoke by phone with the pope’s representative in the nation’s capital, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the papal nuncio, and at his encouragement sent a letter to the Vatican about Archbishop McCarrick’s history.

Do not hold your breath waiting for the Vatican to clean house of individuals like McCarrick as it needs to do so badly. 

Two Anti-Gay Bishops Resign in Minnesota Over Sexual Abuse Coverups

I would have posted on this story (which I revel in personally) sooner, but the last few days for work have been insane with evening meetings and today an early business breakfast the result of which has been no time to write blog posts.  As many will recall, now former Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis has been among the most virulently anti-gay prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in America.  His lap dog, auxiliary bishop, Lee A. Piché, has all too willingly gone along for the homophobic ride.  Meanwhile, of course, Nienstedt has been up to his ears in cover ups for sexual predator priests and even had an abuse complaint filed against him personally.  Now, both Nienstedt and Piché have tendered their resignations.  One can only hope that they will be named personally for criminal prosecutions.  One can likewise hope that the many other bishops and cardinals who aided and abetted predatory priest will also soon be driven or removed from their positions.  The New York Times looks at this much needed development.   Here are excerpts:

Two bishops in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis resigned their posts Monday, the second time this spring that American church leaders have stepped aside after complaints over their handling of sexual abuse claims involving priests.

In Minnesota, Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and an auxiliary bishop, Lee A. Piché, announced their departures less than two weeks after prosecutors in St. Paul accused the archdiocese of willfully ignoring warning signs of a pedophile priest. Their resignations followed the April exit of Bishop Robert W. Finn from the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, who had been convicted of a misdemeanor for failing to report a priest who took pornographic pictures of girls.

Though sexual misconduct by individual priests has long drawn headlines in Minnesota and around the world, the latest resignations come amid a push to punish the church leaders who did not intervene.

Under Pope Francis, the Vatican has stepped up efforts to hold bishops accountable for covering up or failing to take action in sexual abuse cases, including the announcement last week of a tribunal to weigh such cases.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, did not say Monday whether the two Minnesota bishops had been or would be judged by the tribunal. “It is a valid question,” Father Lombardi said. “I have no information for now.”

John J. Choi, the prosecutor in Ramsey County, Minn., said the resignations would not affect his office’s criminal and civil cases against the archdiocese, which accused church leaders of failing to intervene against a priest despite repeated complaints of misconduct. That priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, has since been defrocked and imprisoned on sexual abuse charges involving boys in his parish.

“While today’s resignation will be viewed as a positive development by many in our community, the pending criminal action and civil petition and the ongoing investigation will continue,” Mr. Choi said in a statement. “As we have said, the goals of our actions are to hold the Archdiocese accountable, seek justice for the victims and our community, and to take appropriate steps to ensure that what we have alleged and intend to prove about the past conduct of church officials will never be repeated.”

In accepting the resignations, the pope appointed the Rev. Bernard A. Hebda, a coadjutor archbishop of Newark, as apostolic administrator to oversee the Minnesota archdiocese. The Vatican also announced on Monday that it would open a trial in July of its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Jozef Wesolowski, on charges of sexually abusing boys while he served in the Caribbean and of possessing child pornography.

Jeff Anderson, a lawyer in Minnesota who has represented victims of sexual abuse by clergy, said more top officials needed to be held accountable for their actions, and that criminal charges would be appropriate for some of them.

Mr. Anderson attributed Monday’s developments to the criminal charges against the archdiocese and unflattering disclosures made in recent civil cases. Many of those lawsuits were made possible by legislation that allowed victims to sue the church over abuse that happened years ago, and for which the statute of limitations had expired.

“This is about a culture and system that has been intractable,” Mr. Anderson said. “It needs to continue on a headlong course toward full accountability and full disclosure.”

Pope Creates Tribunal To Judge Bishops Who Protected Predators

With continuing stories of bishops covering up child molestation by priests in Australia and Ireland and elsewhere and now a criminal indictment against the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, Pope Francis has belatedly realized that the Church's failure to act against bishops who aided and abetted sexual predatory priests is only worsening the loss of membership the Church is experiencing.  Hence the creation of a tribunal to judge such bishops.  Whether or not any real discipline will take place is, of course another story.  Only time will tell if this is merely a PR stunt.  Talking Points Memo looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

Pope Francis has created a new Vatican tribunal section to hear cases of bishops accused of failing to protect children from sexually abusive priests, the biggest step the Holy See has taken yet to hold bishops accountable.

For years, the Vatican has been criticized by victims, advocacy groups and others for having failed to ever punish or forcibly remove a bishop who covered up for clergy who raped or molested children. In April, Francis accepted the resignation of a U.S. bishop who had been convicted of failing to report a suspected child abuser, but that wasn't a forced removal.

The Vatican said Wednesday that Francis had approved proposals made by his sexual abuse advisory board. They create a mechanism by which the Vatican can receive and examine complaints of abuse of office by bishops and adjudicate them.

A special new judicial section will be created inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "to judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors," a Vatican statement said.  The Congregation currently reviews all cases of priests who abuse 

minors.

Canon law already does provide sanctions for bishops who are negligent in their duties, but the Vatican was never known to have meted out punishment for a bishop who covered up for an abuser.

Catholic Diocese Legal Defense: A priest Is Not a priest When He's Molesting Children

As more and more victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy are increasing demanding that Pope Francis take action against high clerics who covered up abuse and/or protected predator priests, the Diocese of Trenton has put forth an utterly absurd defense in a lawsuit which claims that the diocese has no liability for abuse because when a priest is molesting children, he is not "on duty."  This outrage gives even more merit to demands that Francis cease the mealy mouthed apologies and fire some individuals, and by fire, I mean defrock them and kick them to the curb pension less.  Nj.com looks at the batshitery coming out of the diocese of Trenton.  Here are highlights:

Chris Naples says something snapped inside him that January day.

The Burlington County man sat in the gallery of the Delaware Supreme Court, watching as a lawyer for the Diocese of Trenton told the justices that the Rev. Terence McAlinden was not "on duty" — or serving in his capacity as a priest — when he allegedly molested Naples on trips to Delaware in the 1980s.

McAlinden, who once headed the diocese’s youth group, had introduced himself to Naples at a church-sponsored leadership retreat in Keyport. He’d heard his confession, included him in private Masses and discussed matters of spirituality with him.

Yet McAlinden wasn’t officially a priest when he took a teenage Naples to Delaware, the lawyer argued.

[R]eplied the diocese lawyer, “you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example. ... A priest abusing a child is absolutely contrary to the pursuit of his master’s business, to the work of a diocese.”

"Any hope I had that the church was concerned about me as a victim or about the conduct of its priests was totally gone," Naples, now 42, said in a recent interview. "They were washing their hands of it. I was shattered. I just couldn’t believe that was one of their arguments."

He [McAlinden]  also admitted sleeping nude with "a number of" teen boys who were active in the diocese’s youth group. The overnights took place at Jeremiah House, the youth group’s headquarters in Keyport, and at the rectory of St. Theresa’s, he said. Other times, McAlinden said, teen boys bathed nude with him in a hot tub at his parents’ home in Toms River.

Meanwhile, a piece in The Independent looks at the growing demands that Pope Francis do more than give lip service to supposed remorse over the rape of children and youths by Catholic clergy.  Here are highlights:

As Pope Francis prepares to meet victims of sexual abuse by clergy, will he concede that the notion of abstinence has failed, and even more importantly, demand that priests facing accusations of sexual abuse be handed over to the law? 

During a flight from Jerusalem last week, Francis announced he would be meeting with sexual abuse victims at the Vatican and declared the act of priests’ molestation of children equivalent to “a satanic mass”.

Enough already! 

By now victims and whistle-blowers of the Roman Catholic’s sexual scandals – details of which have exploded in the last 15 years or so – could do with more action and less of the emotive descriptions of what are plain unlawful acts which ought to be handed to law enforcement for prosecution. 

Benedict and Francis conveniently forget that the church holds itself to a higher standard than that found in the broader society. 

It is the church which ordains its priests to act in the person of Christ the Head. But that aside, what has transpired in this regard since the declarations “to deal appropriately and transparently” with these sordid deeds? 

The Ryan Commission set up by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children in Irish institutions operated by Catholic Church orders found wide-ranging abuse including physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect. 

The Belfast Telegraph described the details of the commission’s report as “Ireland’s nightmare from hell” and “Ireland’s shameful holocaust”. 

The paper said the findings were “our Nuremberg trial, Irish style, with no names, prosecution and no court appearances”.

And what of the many bishops and leaders of the Roman Catholic Church who have stymied investigations into the accusations, and where priests who have been identified as wrong-doers have been shifted from parish to parish to obstruct and deny victims justice? 

Where are the offending priests? 

What of the men and women who have come forth on the side of the victims and spoken up but have now been chastised as a result of their actions?

 Will he [Pope Francis] now step up to the plate and decisively deal with the issue of the clergy’s sexual abuse and, while at it, put up for review the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests?

Catholic Theologian Preaches Revolution and Overthrow of Pope

I have addressed the many problems relating to and the evil, if you will, that the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy works across the globe be it in the form enabling of cover ups for predatory priest or the denigration of women's and LGBT rights.  Having been raised as a Catholic, I know full well just how soul killing and psychologically harmful the Vatican's version of Catholicism can be for so many.  Being raised to loath one's self and be racked with fear and guilt are not healthy attributes.  Yet that is the stock in trade of the Church hierarchy.  Now, a leading catholic theologian - who not surprisingly the Vatican has sought to silence - is speaking out and urging the Catholic laity to revolt and take the Church back from the foul and morally bankrupt hierarchy which cares only about its power, its ability to control others, and to demonize anyone who fails to heel to the Vatican's dictates.  It is note worthy that the oath Benedict XVI demands from bishops and cardinals bears a frightening similarity to the oath Hitler demanded of his generals.  The Guardian has coverage on this call to revolution by theologian Hans Küng.  Here are excerpts:

 

One of the world's most prominent Catholic theologians has called for a revolution from below to unseat the pope and force radical reform at the Vatican.

Hans Küng is appealing to priests and churchgoers to confront the Catholic hierarchy, which he says is corrupt, lacking credibility and apathetic to the real concerns of the church's members.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Küng, who had close contact with the pope when the two worked together as young theologians, described the church as an "authoritarian system" with parallels to Germany's Nazi dictatorship.

"The unconditional obedience demanded of bishops who swear their allegiance to the pope when they make their holy oath is almost as extreme as that of the German generals who were forced to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler," he said.

The Vatican made a point of crushing any form of clerical dissent, he added. "The rules for choosing bishops are so rigid that as soon as candidates emerge who, say, stand up for the pill, or for the ordination of women, they are struck off the list." The result was a church of "yes men", almost all of whom unquestioningly toed the line.

"The only way for reform is from the bottom up," said Küng, 84, who is a priest. "The priests and others in positions of responsibility need to stop being so subservient, to organize themselves and say that there are certain things that they simply will not put up with anymore."

Küng, the author of around 30 books on Catholic theology, Christianity and ethics, which have sold millions worldwide, said that inspiration for global change was to be found in his native Switzerland and in Austria, where hundreds of Catholic priests have formed movements advocating policies that openly defy current Vatican practices. The revolts have been described as unprecedented by Vatican observers, who say they are likely to cause deep schisms in the church.

"I've always said that if one priest in a diocese is roused, that counts for nothing. Five will create a stir. Fifty are pretty much invincible. In Austria the figure is well over 300, possibly up to 400 priests; in Switzerland it's about 150 who have stood up and it will increase."

He said recent attempts by the archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, to try to stamp out the uprising by threatening to punish those involved in the Austrian "priests' initiative" had backfired owing to the strength of feeling. "He soon stopped when he realised that so many ordinary people are supportive of them and he was in danger of turning them all against him," Küng said.

"He [Benedict XVI]has developed a peculiar pomposity that doesn't fit the man I and others knew, who once walked around in a Basque-style cap and was relatively modest. Now he's frequently to be seen wrapped in golden splendour and swank. By his own volition he wears the crown of a 19th-century pope, and has even had the garments of the Medici pope Leo X remade for him."

That "pomposity", he said, manifested itself most fully in the regular audiences who gather on St Peter's Square in Rome. "What happens has Potemkin village dimensions," he said. "Fanatical people go there to celebrate the pope, and tell him how wonderful he is, while meanwhile at home their own parishes are in a lamentable state, with a lack of priests, a far higher number than ever before of people who are leaving than are being baptised and now Vatileaks, which indicates just what a poor state the Vatican administration is in

Calling Pope Benedict XVI's reign a "pontificate of missed opportunities", in which he had forgone chances to reconcile with the Protestant, Jewish, orthodox and Muslim faiths, as well as failing to help the African fight against Aids by not allowing the use of birth control, Küng said his "gravest scandal" was the way he had "covered up" worldwide cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics during his time as the head of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Ratzinger.

"The Vatican is no different from the Kremlin," Küng said. "Just as Putin as a secret service agent became the head of Russia, so Ratzinger, as head of the Catholic church's secret services, became head of the Vatican. 

Will American Catholics wake up to what they are financially supporting at the Vatican?  A portion of every single dollar contributed at the parish level goes to support the Vatican, not to mention the typically morally challenged bishops who act as Benedick XVI  thugs to keep the laity in line while the Church hierarchy lives in luxury and continues to protect sexual predator priests.

The Blindness of "Liberal" Catholics

I often comment on the many huge failings of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and urge Catholics disgusted with the moral cesspool in the leadership to vote with their feet.  Throughout history the ONLY way the Church has experienced major lasting change is when membership plummets and the flow of money to the Vatican is diminished.  Catholics who refuse to accept this harsh reality and who continue to support their local parishes are in fact enablers of the hierarchy.  Yes, it's hard for many to see this reality, but a portion of every single dollar received at the parish level goes to support the local diocese and still another portion goes to Rome.  E.J. Dionne who writes for the Washington Post is one such Catholic who refuses to see his own culpability.  In a column where he tries to justify his continued membership in the Church he cites the Church's social ministry and he cites Pope John XXIII.  My response is that (i) if the Church cleaned house within the hierarchy and cleaned up the sex abuse disaster, there's be more funds for social ministry.  As for Pope John XXIII, yes in ways he was a breath of fresh air.  But Dionne misses one huge blight on his papacy:  John XXIII authorized a 1962 Vatican directive that validated the Church's covering up for and enabling predator priests.  Here's a sampling of Dionne's effort to deny his own culpability:

Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.”

The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph: “If you think you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a ‘good Catholic,’ you are doing ‘bad’ to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

Catholic liberals get used to these kinds of things. Secularists, who never liked Catholicism in the first place, want us to leave the church, but so do Catholic conservatives who want the church all to themselves.
I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. It may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and lay people who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

I’d like the FFRF to learn more about the good Pope John, but I wish our current bishops would think more about him, too. I wonder if the bishops realize how some in their ranks have strengthened the hands of the church’s adversaries (and disheartened many of the faithful) with public statements — including that odious comparison of President Obama to Hitler by a Peoria prelate last month — that threaten to shrink the church into a narrow, conservative sect.

Do the bishops notice how often those of us who regularly defend the church turn to the work of nuns on behalf of charity and justice to prove Catholicism’s detractors wrong? Why in the world would the Vatican, apparently pushed by right-wing American bishops, think it was a good idea to condemn the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main organization of nuns in the United States?

Too many bishops seem in the grip of dark suspicions that our culture is moving at breakneck speed toward a demonic end. Pope John XXIII, by contrast, was more optimistic about the signs of the times.  .   .   .   .   The church best answers its critics when it remembers that its mission is to preach hope, not fear.

Dionne misses the point that the bishops and Vatican will not change voluntarily.  And as long as "liberal" Catholics like Dionne keep putting their checks in the collection plate and donating to Catholic institutions, there's no reason to change.  They money flow is continuing proving that the bishops and Nazi Pope can continue doing whatever they want with impunity.  Dionne needs to get his head out of the sand - or somewhere else.

More Catholic Church Lies and Malfeasance

It truly has become nearly impossible to address issues involving the Roman Catholic Church on a daily basis since each day there seem to be new lies floated by the Vatican or some horrible new details of sexual abuse - some of it very recent and not in the distant past as the Church would like to pretend. And then there is the disingenuous campaign of the Church in Connecticut where the state's bishops have sent a "pastoral letter" to all Catholics urging their assistance in defeating a proposed law that would eliminate the statute of limitations on sexual abuse claims. The full letter can be viewed here and it is literally sickening how the bishops pain a picture of the Church being unduly victimized as opposed to the truth that the Church and its morally bankrupt priest and hierarchy allowed the victimization of thousands. Here are a few passages that underscore the disingenuousness of Connecticut's bishops:
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This bill would put all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk. The nature of bankruptcy litigation puts all assets at risk, even if your parish has had no past incidents, reports or allegations of child abuse. That is why it is important for you to join other Catholics across Connecticut in opposing this legislation. And this is not simply about bankruptcy or the loss of property. Ultimately the legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, threatening our parishes, our schools, and our Catholic Charities.
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The bottom line is that this is terrible public policy, discriminatory by its nature, and a huge threat to us all. Most importantly, it does nothing to protect the state’s children because it delays reporting. We must stop this bill now.
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Please take action today! This is our Church, your Church, and we love and cherish it. Please contact your State Senator and State Representative now and express your strong opposition to House Bill 5473 as soon as possible.
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Shockingly, virtually nowhere in the letter do the bishops acknowledge the rampant sexual abuse by priests or the hierarchy's criminal role in covering up such abuse for decades. The Church is depicted as the wrongfully accused victim. It is in short, disgusting. It is yet another reason why I am no longer a Catholic. Bad things happen - or continue to happen - because good people look the other way or by their silence tacitly endorse it.
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As for the bishops false claims that alleged abuses would date back 50, 60 or 70 years, a case out of Texas shows that apparently little has changed in terms of the freedom of predatory priests to prey on victims. It is still happening. Here are highlights from the San Antonio Express News on incredible abuse - some at gun point - that occurred less than two years ago and occurred in the diocese headed by the newly named archbishop of Los Angeles:
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A Catholic priest from a rural parish west of San Antonio is accused in a lawsuit filed Thursday of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy at gunpoint and during private catechism sessions two years ago. The suit, which names outgoing Archbishop José Gomez as a defendant and claims he sought to conceal the matter, comes three days after the Vatican named Gomez as the next archbishop in Los Angeles. He is transferring to California next month. Gomez said recently through a spokesman that his five-year tenure involved no new sex-abuse allegations.
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The suit claims that Father John M. Fiala repeatedly assaulted the youth from January to August 2008 while Fiala was working as administrator at Sacred Heart of Mary in Rocksprings. That’s the county seat of Edwards County, which is about 110 miles west of San Antonio and is part of the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
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The archdiocese said Thursday it has cooperated in the investigation, but it did not say whether it had reported any complaints against Fiala to police. During a news conference Tuesday to announce Gomez’s new assignment, Father Martin Leopold, head administrator for the archdiocese, said only a couple allegations of sex abuse by priests had surfaced during Gomez’s tenure. He said they involved claims from 20 and 30 years ago and were made public at Gomez’s request and in keeping with the standards of transparency codified by bishops in the aftermath of an explosion of sex abuse allegations earlier this decade. “In the last five years, we’re blessed to not have had any allegations of new abuse,” Leopold said, reasserting programs and policies to protect from such abuse.
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The Fiala case follows the same pattern of cover-up of sex-abuse complaints in the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe, said David Clohessy, national president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “Bishops are so quick to say that they have made changes,” he said. “And the ones to pay the price are the young victims.”
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On other occasions, the priest manipulated the teen into performing oral sex, once by leveraging his gift of a car and another time pulling a revolver on him, according to the suit. The teen eventually ran away from home and attempted suicide, the suit says. A school counselor learned of the alleged abuse and contacted the Sheriff’s Office.
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“One of the issues in this case is he had numerous transfers and periods of no assignments at all,” said the teen’s attorney, Tom Rhodes. “That’s a pretty good red flag.”
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This case, if proven suggests that Los Angeles' new archbishop is little better than outgoing Cardinal Richard Mahoney who always put the interest of protecting predator priests ahead of the safety of children and youths. Indeed, NOTHING has really changed. Every Catholic who gives ANY money to the Church at the parish level is underwriting and enabling this obscene system. Money is assessed against parishes and passed to the diocese level from which some of it is passed on up to Rome. Why can't the Catholic laity see that it is being cynically used by the Church's morally bankrupt leadership?

Meanwhile More Priests Charged With Sexual Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church has expended a large quantity of Crocodile tears in its feigned remorse over the sexual abuse of minors by priests and claims that it has purged its ranks of pedophiles. Like so much disseminated by the Church, the claims that all abusers have been removed are not true. Two new cases illustrate the continuing phenomenon. First, a situation from Ohio where a priest previously cleared by the diocese has again been charged with abuse. Here are some highlights:

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A former Catholic priest who served at St. Jude Church and is accused of having sexual contact with a teenage boy 12 years ago pleaded not guilty Thursday to a single count of sexual battery. . . . O’Connor, 51, resigned in June 2008 after the latest allegation against him surfaced when the victim in the case, who wasn’t a parishioner, came forward to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. The victim, now in his late 20s, was a teenager during the summer of 1997 when the sexual contact allegedly took place, according to prosecutors.

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O’Connor previously had been suspended as a priest between 2003 and 2007 while the church was investigating another sexual abuse allegation from his time as a priest at St. Joseph Church in Cuyahoga Falls during the 1980s. A diocese review board cleared him of those allegations, which surfaced in 2003 and prompted him to leave his position with the Police Department. O’Connor was reinstated as a priest in 2007, but the diocese restricted his access to children. O’Connor, who is free on bond, could receive up to five years in prison if convicted.

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Then, in Illinois a priest has been arrested for his involvement with a 15 year old boy he met through an Internet chat room. As I have said before, only a thorough house cleaning from top to bottom of the Catholic clergy will end this seemingly never ending story of abuse and inappropriate contact with minors. Here are highlights on the Illinois case:

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Wayne E. Wigglesworth of Valparaiso was arrested Aug. 17 after police pulled his vehicle over near the intersection of 60th and Rockwell streets in Chicago when Wigglesworth's vehicle made an improper turn. They found the 15-year-old teen with him, but the teen didn't know Wigglesworth's name.

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When police further questioned him, the teen said he met Wigglesworth through an Internet chat room, TeenChat.com., and they talked for several days. Wigglesworth eventually asked to meet the teen so they could perform oral sex on each other and then "hold and hug each other," according to the criminal complaint.

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Wigglesworth is being held without bond although no indictment has been filed against him in federal court. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Trumbull-Harris said the case was still being investigated and that anyone with information about improper conduct regarding Wigglesworth should call Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America

The Christian Century has a review of a book written by William Lobdell, a religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the full title of which is "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace." I suspect that Lobdell's spiritual journey to unbelief resonates with many, particularly with the LGBT community which has been the target of some many lies and so much viciousness from allegedly "godly Christians." I also suspect that many in the younger generations who view Christianity negatively may identify as well. It seems that the behavior of Christians - and in Lobdell's case the Roman Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal - is one of the strongest arguments against Christianity. Indeed, it is proof, at least in the opinion of some, that institutional Christianity is an utter sham, peopled with hopelessly unloving practitioners such as the leaders of "professional Christian" organizations like The Family Foundation here in Virginia. Here are some review highlights:

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Former religion reporter William Lobdell's deconversion narrative, Losing My Religion, refrains from both bombast and suggestions of dopiness. By his very choice of genre—memoir rather than apologia—Lobdell enters a different territory of the new atheism, one already inhabited by several other counter conversion narrators, including John Loftus, who wrote Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Prometheus, 2008), and Dan Barker, author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (Ulysses, 2008).

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He calls himself a "reluctant atheist" and a "skeptical deist." "With all that has happened to me," Lobdell says, "I don't feel qualified to judge anyone else.""All that has happened" includes, most notably, Lobdell's eight-year tenure on the religion beat of the Los Angeles Times during the breaking of the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.

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Then a colleague of Lobdell's passed him some documents about a priest named Michael Harris who was named in a clergy sex abuse lawsuit. . . . It was the first of more than $1 billion worth of settlements with victims of clergy sex abuse across the nation. Lobdell became convinced that as chilling as the pedophile priests' actions were, the real story lay in the bishops' cover-ups of the felonies, their quiet transfers of accused clergy to new and unsuspecting parishes, and the Catholic Church's revictimization of the victims.

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The Harris case dealt Lobdell's personal faith what he calls a "spiritual body blow." . . . But the deeper he got into the story, the more difficult it became to square the sins of the church with his image of a loving and powerful God. "I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies—many of them written on their own stationery, undeniable and permanent—out of my head," he writes. "Like a homicide detective, I had seen too much."

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Lobdell depicts the ebbing of his faith as inevitable, something that he could not control or choose to fight. Many people assume that Christians-turned-agnostics make a conscious decision to leave the faith, but he insists that in his case that's simply not true. "As deeply as I missed my faith, as hard as I tried to keep it, my head could not command my gut.

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While the review goes on to critique Lobdell for not retaining his faith, personally, I he is very much on point. As a former Catholic I find it difficult to even walk into a Catholic Church given the hypocrisy and evilness of the Church hierarchy. While I still consider myself Christian, it is in spite of not because institutional Christianity.

A Kennedy Plumbs Life as a Catholic - and Revives My Childhood Memories

Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kerry Kennedy (pictured at left), has a new book out in which she strives to reconcile her Catholic faith with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Growing up, I strongly identified with the Kennedys both because of our shared Catholic faith and also because on my mother's side of the family there were some parallels of Irish Catholic immigrants who had done well, albeit on a much more down to earth financial level. My mother's father was a wealthy doctor and in the area where he lived after moving to New York after nearly two decades in Central America as a hospital administrator and surgeon, he was a big deal in terms of respect and influence. In the area where the family summer compound on Brantingham Lake was located - only 17 miles from Lowville where he was the head of the regional hospital and also county coroner - he was very prominent and his family name carried clout for long after he died when I was 11 in 1963. As teenagers, for my oldest sisters and me being his grandchildren opened doors and let us get away with all kinds of things.

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Like Kerry Kennedy, growing up being Catholic was for me a central part of my identity. Indeed, we were raissed to believe that we would die before we disavowed are Catholicsm. On Sundays during the summer we all - including aunts and cousins and assorted guests staying at the lake compound - attended mass in the small Catholic Church in the nearby town as a family enmass. Thus, between finally admitting to myself that I was gay and the sex abuse scandal which blew wide open in 2002, and disclosed the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy from the Pope on down, I was faced with a huge identity crisis. Unlike Kerry Kennedy, confronted with the Church's horrific attitude towards gay and clear proof that the hierarchy had knowingly closed it eyes and/or covered up vile cases of the sexual abuse of children, I chose to leave the Church. As a matter of conscience I simply could not remain a part of an institution with such a corrupt and - in my opinion - evil leadership. Fortunately, I have found a home in the ELCA, but I still think of what the Roman Catholic Church could be if the hierarchy could be purged of the sanctimonious hypocrites who now lead the Church. I know that I am one of many "recovering Catholics" who have been harmed not so much by Catholiscm per se, but rather by a group of self-centered, fallible men who are all consumed by power and wealth. Here are some highlights from the Boston Globe about Kerry Kennedy's book:

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HYANNIS PORT - Catholicism ran deep at the home of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. "It was central to my upbringing - But today, like many Catholics, Kennedy has a hard time reconciling her own views with some of the teachings and actions of her church; in fact, she often can't. So Kennedy decided to talk with well-known Americans about their often complicated relationships with the Catholic faith; the result is a revealing book being released tomorrow.

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The book, "Being Catholic Now," offers an unusually intimate view of how much being raised Catholic shapes the identity of many prominent Americans, but also how much tension many feel with the institutional church.

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"Don't even let me go into Cardinal [Bernard F.] Law and that he has been rewarded with a princely title in Rome," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Kennedy, referring to the former archbishop of Boston, who resigned over the sex abuse scandal and now oversees a prominent basilica in Rome. "It is just appalling. I cannot deal with that, so I don't."

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And Anne Burke, an Illinois Supreme Court justice who was appointed by the American bishops to a board overseeing the church's response to the clergy abuse scandal, was clearly infuriated by her up-close view of the church's upper management. "It's the culture of the administration of the Catholic Church in the United States that permitted a climate of cover-up to go on for the past 50 years; it's the same culture and it's still out there today," Burke said. "Things have hit rock bottom in the Catholic Church, and it's going to get worse."

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Kennedy said she is at odds with the church hierarchy over many issues - abortion rights and women's ordination among them. Her views do not make her extraordinary; polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of American Catholics support women's ordination and that American Catholics reflect the general public's split over abortion.

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But Kennedy also said that in her travels around the world as a human rights advocate, she concluded that in "virtually every country I've gone to, the Catholic church is on the cutting edge of social change."

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"I was witnessing the mighty spirit, and the tremendous capacity of this institution which was so much a part of my history, and my family, and my sense of spirituality, and my vision of social justice . . . and then coming back and hearing bishops who were protecting their turf instead of protecting children and playing Three-card Monte with the pedophile priests and blaming it on people who are gay," she said. "So it was important to me to resolve that."