Ex-Cardinal Allegedly Ran Sex Ring At Beach House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Leaving the Catholic Church the Moral Thing to Do

I left the Catholic Church in early 2002 in the wake of the sex abuse scandal explosion in the Archdiocese of Boston.  I had not been a casual Catholic.  I had been an altar boy for 10 years and was involved in the Knights of Columbus and achieved the 4th Degree.  But on finding that bishops, cardinals - and yes, popes - had known of the abuse of children and youths for decades (if not centuries) and viewed it as no big deal but for the bad PR for the Church.  With three children of my own, I cannot comprehend the callousness of the celibate, self-centered, power hungry clergy to whom the rape and molestation of children and youths was no big deal.   Yes, coming out as gay was an added reason to leave a gay-hating church, but ultimately I believed it was the only moral thing to do.  Over time, the balance of my family has followed suit. An opinion piece in The Week by a recent refugee from the Catholic Church lats out this moral argument.  Here are excerpts:

Three months ago, I announced I was leaving the Catholic Church. My reason was that the latest revelations in the church's interminable sex abuse scandal had revealed "a repulsive institution — or at least one permeated by repulsive human beings who reward one another for repulsive acts, all the while deigning to lecture the world about its sin." Let's just say subsequent events haven't led me to regret the decision.

That would include Wednesday's news that the offices of the cardinal-archbishop of Galveston-Houston, who also happens to serve as president of the United States Catholic bishops' conference, were raided by "dozens of local and federal law enforcement officers … looking for evidence in a clergy sexual abuse case." A couple of weeks ago, the story was the Vatican's decision to nix plans by the American bishops to devise some kind of response to the scandal — on the grounds that it's mostly just a conspiracy drummed up by troublemaking right-wing clerics and laypeople. A week or a month from now, the story is bound to be something arising from the dozen or so investigations underway by the Justice Department and attorneys general around the country.

It's hardly surprising that writers deeply devoted to the Catholic Church would reject the reasons for my decision to leave the church. . . . . As I say, the response was unsurprising, even perfectly understandable. Though I do wonder whether any of these apologists for the church quite grasps why I left the church — and why so many others are likely to make the same move over the coming months and years.

The Catholic Church does make extraordinarily high claims for itself — not that its priests and bishops and cardinals and popes are angels but that the church as an institution is, of all the churches that follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, the one most fully and rightly ordered through time.

If I may be permitted some speculation of my own — this time of a psychological variety — I'd like to suggest that those objecting to the departure of fellow Catholics from the church may be moved to express those objections because they recognize how weak and frankly unpersuasive such ecclesiological claims really are. They are really arguing with themselves, in other words, trying to muster reasons to continue affirming something that, at a certain level, they fully recognize to be just a few millimeters away from outright absurdity.

What's absurd? The claim that, of all the Christian churches, the Roman church is the very best, the truest of all, the one most fully and rightly ordered through time. That would be not only the church of the great diabolical popes of the past (like John XII and Alexander VI and Boniface VIII and Leo X), but also the church that in recent decades has seen literally thousands of priests in countries across the globe accused of sexually abusing children — 271 of them in the archdiocese of Boston alone — with untold numbers of bishops covering it up year after year after year. The number is untold, by the way, because we are still nowhere near knowing just how many members of the Catholic hierarchy around the world — all the way up to popes themselves — knew exactly what was happening and responded like self-protective bureaucrats and PR flacks out to protect a corporate brand from bad press.

It's become commonplace for Catholic laypeople to ask themselves why the clergy has responded in the way it has to the scandal — how Pope John Paul II (along with Neuhaus) could have turned a blind eye to the myriad abuses committed by Marcial Maciel Degollado; how Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Francis Law could have been rewarded with a cushy sinecure at the Vatican as his "punishment" for basically overseeing a decades-long child-rape gang in Boston; and how Theodore McCarrick could have been promoted to one of the most powerful and prestigious positions in the Catholic Church in the United States after decades of alleged sexual predation with the full knowledge of (once again) untold numbers of priests, bishops, and possibly popes.

The behavior is only mysterious if you assume that anyone in their place would respond the way you and I would: with revulsion. But it isn't mysterious at all if you assume what should be obvious by now to everyone: They just didn't think it was such a big deal. Judging by the current stance of the Vatican to the pope's pesky American critics, the character of that response hasn't changed one bit down through the years.

[T]o believe that this particular church, of all the Christian churches in the world, is the one most fully and rightly ordered through time, over and above all of the others? You can't possibly be serious.

To react with anger and incredulity to this suggestion isn't to display unrealistically high hopes or expectations about the church. It's to respond reasonably to a claim that the church makes about itself — a claim that is flatly implausible on its face.

And that, my former fellow Catholic communicants, is why I have left the church — and why I fully expect quite a lot of the rest of you to be joining me in my unregretted exodus very soon.

Decent and moral people should want nothing to do with this corrupt and disgusting institution.

The Much Need Message of "Recovering Catholics"

I make no secret that I am a former Catholic and believe that my Catholic upbringing inflicted much pain and self-hatred on me.  Indeed, it took several years of therapy to get over the damage done.  Thus, I found it of interest when on December 17, 2017, the Rev. Gregory Greiten, a Roman Catholic priest, shared a secret with parishioners at the St. Bernadette Catholic Parish: “I am gay.” Greiten was then greeted with a standing ovation, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  Greiten next wrote a column in the National Catholic Reporter that looked at both his own experiences but also on why the Church needs to change and reject its 12th century views on sexuality.  In the Root, another former Catholic reviewed Greitan's actions and made statements that ran all too true with me.  Here are excerpts:

As someone who now uses the descriptor “recovering Catholic” to answer questions about my religious identity, was once approached for the priesthood, struggled with reconciling my faith with my sexual orientation, and just finished writing about these experiences and more in a book called I Can’t Date Jesus, much of what Greiten wrote felt all too familiar.

Like Greiten, I was taught that homosexuality was something “disordered, unspeakable and something to be punished.” I thought I was going to go to hell for every thought I had, every touch I contemplated, each time I gave in to temptation. It’s a haunting, shameful feeling that eats you inside. You become so accustomed to guilt that even if you dare to be truthful about who you are in all settings, you may still find yourself having to learn to shake off old habits, like guilt. Religions in general tend to make their believers feel guilty about their misdeeds, but Catholics are particularly adept when it comes to guilt.

That’s why it matters so much that Greiten has stepped forward and gained national attention. There are many more like him. Just how many is unclear, but none of them should feel compelled to linger in the shadows. . . . The church continues to collectively hold archaic, bigoted views about transgender people. Moreover, the Vatican relentlessly clings to needless positions about women on issues like contraception that contribute to their subjugation around the world.

Everyone should be loved and embraced rather than merely tolerated.

As we launch into 2018, I hope that more Catholics - especially those who are LGBT - will reject the Church's toxic teachings and in the process find self-acceptance and the realization that there is nothing wrong with them.  Happy New Year! 

Nothing Has Really Changed for Gays in the Catholic Church

Pope Francis has made a few statements deemed by a gushing media to indicate a softening of the Roman Catholic Church's centuries old anti-gay jihad (even as the ranks of the clergy remain packed with self-loathing gays) and a majority of everyday Catholics in America are supportive of gay rights and even gay marriage, yet as far as official Church dogma and policy go, we remain more or less untouchables.  If we want any possibility of inclusion, we are demanded to live a lonely, loveless life - in short, to be a miserable as much of the clergy that cannot let go of childhood brainwashing and the Church's "natural law" which in essence is based on ignorance and at best 11th century knowledge.  One Jesuit has written a book to try to usher in much needed changes, but he has been met with a backlash from the bitter old men in dresses within the clergy and among the lunatic far right of Catholicism which much like white supremacists always need some one they can condemn and feel superior to. A piece in the New York Times looks at the situation which underscores to me that the best thing gay Catholics and their families can do is to leave Catholicism.  Here are highlights:

The Rev. James Martin knew his latest book – which urges a dialogue between the Catholic Church and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics who feel estranged from it – would be provocative. Even though the book was approved by his Jesuit superior as being in line with church teachings and was endorsed by several cardinals, he did not expect everyone to agree. That’s fine, he said. That’s why dialogue was needed.

His public position on this hot-button issue – most recently in the book, “Building a Bridge,” but also in speeches, articles and social media – has earned him the gratitude of parents of gay children or adults who feel unwelcome at church because of their sexual orientation. But his stance has also led to “joking” threats of violence and insults against him. Conservative Catholics have called him “effeminate,” a “homosexualist,” “pansified” and guilty of “leading young men to perdition.” In recent weeks, campaigns by people opposed to him have prompted three high-profile Catholic groups to disinvite him from events where he was to be the featured speaker.

On Friday, Theological College, the national seminary at the Catholic University of America in Washington, withdrew its invitation to Father Martin, who was scheduled to deliver a speech on Jesus in early October. The seminary said in a statement that the decision was made after “increasing negative attacks” on social media. And while seminary officials “in no way” agreed with the critics, the college wanted to avoid “distractions” during centennial events, the statement said. Of his critics, Father Martin said that even an invitation to listen to L.G.B.T. people has “unleashed this torrent of hatred.”  “It’s insane. This is about reaching out to people on the margins. But on that issue it tells us that we have a lot to learn. If we can’t even begin a dialogue without a charge of heresy, then we need to take a good look at how we understand the gospel.”. . . . . “It’s reaching people where they are. Jesus went to where the people were and spoke to them in their language. And he was always going to the margins.” He had long received desperate messages and impassioned emails seeking counsel or prayer through life’s difficulties, and the publication of “Building A Bridge” prompted even more. He gets about 50 messages daily, in which people talk about things like how a priest would not anoint a dying man in hospice care because he was gay; or how someone was fired from a job at a Catholic institution because of their sexual orientation.

But he has also been the victim of ad-hominem attacks, even from other Catholics who, he said, do not seem to remember Pope Francis’s remark that “who am I to judge” if a member of the clergy was gay.

Despite the name-calling, innuendo and canceled speeches, Father Martin said he will press on. He has received support from bishops – who request boxes of his book — and from his religious order. He will not step back from social media, saying it is part of his order’s tradition to “find God in all things.” “We are not afraid of going to the margins,” he said. “That is what Pope Benedict and Pope Francis asked us to do. As Francis said to us, go to the peripheries where the church has not been serving people or where people need it the most. There is no one more marginalized in the church than L.G.B.T. Catholics. So, I’m right where I should be.”

As I noted above, the best move for gay Catholics and their families is to walk away.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (I technically remain a member) offer wonderful alternatives.  Meanwhile, as history has shown us time and time again, if enough people walk away and cease their financial support to the Church, the fossilized and bitter hierarchy will suddenly have a revelation and adjust its dogma.  Money is and always has been the real god of the Vatican. 

The Catholic Church's New Assault on Gays

I have a Google search agent function that brings me stories from all around the world involving the sexual abuse of children and youths by Catholic clergy and, most typically, the Catholic hierarchy's efforts to protect predators and avoid paying compensation to victims.  While  the sex abuse scandal is no longer regular front page news in America, it continues to explode in many parts of the world ranging from Guam and Australia to parts of Africa and India.   The pattern is always the same: bishops and cardinals covering up sexual abuse and shuffling predators to new parishes where they could molest a new set of vulnerable victims.   And despite much hand wringing and lots of crocodile tears, the Church has not truly addressed the problem.  High clergy who enabled and covered up abuse continue to live in princely settings and have servile parishioners give them deference.  It is in this background that Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Illinois has launched an effort to deal with what he sees as the Church's biggest problem: married gays receiving communion and having church burials.  Child rape is fine, married gays threatens humanity in Paproki's twisted world. This would almost be humorous but for the fact that in reflects the continued moral bankruptcy of the Church leadership and a near psychosis when it comes to an obsession with gay sex.  Why any self-respecting LGBT person remains in the Catholic Church is mind numbing to me - I left Catholicism back in 2002 around the time the Boston Globe broke the story of the rampant abuse in Boston. A piece in NPR looks at Paprocki's new jihad against gays:

A Catholic bishop has instructed priests in his central Illinois diocese to deny communion, last rites and funeral rites to people in same-sex marriages – unless they repent.

In the decree he sent to priests, deacons, seminarians and staff in his Springfield diocese last week, Bishop Thomas Paprocki sets forth a set of norms on same-sex marriage and related pastoral issues that he says are the policy of the diocese.

Paprocki's decree bans priests and parish staff from performing same-sex marriages or allowing same-sex weddings or receptions at any Catholic facilities. People in same-sex marriages "should not present themselves for Holy Communion, nor should they be admitted to Holy Communion." A person in a same-sex marriage who is facing death may only receive communion after expressing "repentance for his or her sins."

Finally, Paprocki writes that "unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death," people in same-sex marriages may not receive a Catholic funeral.

The Springfield Diocese defends the decree as necessary "in light of changes in the law and in our culture regarding these issues."

A 2015 Supreme Court ruling made gay marriage legal across the United States, and Paprocki has made headlines with his opposition to gay marriage before. In 2013, he held an exorcism in response to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Illinois.

"[T]he Church has not only the authority, but the serious obligation, to affirm its authentic teaching on marriage and to preserve and foster the sacred value of the married state," it said in a statement to NPR. "Regarding the specific issue of funeral rites, people who had lived openly in same-sex marriage, like other manifest sinners that give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they have given some signs of repentance before their death."

The Archdiocese of Chicago told NPR that the policies decreed by Paprocki are not its own, but otherwise would not comment. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directed a request for comment back to the Springfield diocese. . . . . "it's considered brutta figora – an ugly figure – to speak ill of other bishops on the record."

"The notion that a murderer could receive a Catholic funeral and someone in a same-sex union could not is absurd. ... Every Catholic deserves a Catholic funeral." 

Don't hold your breath waiting for Pope Francis to censure Paprocki - it simply will not happen. Meanwhile, my children (and grand children when they are older) are even more motivated to never darken the door of a Catholic church other than perhaps for a friend's wedding, although fewer and fewer Millennials are having church weddings at all. 

A Christian's Confessed Change of Mind of Gay Rights and Marriage Quality

I have often said that the best justification for not wanting to call one's self a Christian is the behavior of those loudly embracing that title - especially those in "conservative" denominations.  Instead of love for others, kindness and good works, the hallmarks of such Christians is hate, bigotry, judgment of others, and hypocrisy that would the Pharisees of the New Testament.  I have in many ways ceased to think of myself as a Christian because the word carries nothing but negative connotations.  The exodus of the under 30 generations from organized religion demonstrates that I am not alone in this feeling.  I happened across a piece in DailyExtra by a former conservative - ultra-right wing might be a more apt description - Catholic that explains his conversion on gay rights and his need to leave the Roman Catholic Church, especially after the way his was treated by the "godly folk" when he began to question their hate and animus based beliefs. Here are excerpts:

Pigs flying overhead, hell freezing over and any other clichés you can come up with to describe shock, incredulity or even horror: Michael Coren, writing an article for Daily Xtra! If it’s any comfort, until around two years I also would have thought the idea preposterous. I say it with no pride, and more than a little shame, that for the longest time I was considered an opponent and even an enemy of the LGBT community. That changed, or I changed, after a set of events and experiences in early 2014, which I chronicle in my new book, Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart and Mind over Same-Sex Marriage.

The entire process is too long and multi-layered to explain in a column, but the origins were in then foreign minister John Baird’s entirely justified and vital criticism of Uganda’s proposed legislation to make homosexuality a capital crime.

I suppose the door had been opened. Shortly after this, World Vision, an international Christian charity group, announced that people in same-sex relationships were welcome to work for them. Within 24 hours, however, pressure from Christian groups and churches had forced them to backtrack. They had threatened to withdraw their funding. In other words, fire the gays or African children will die. Christ must have been weeping. 

I certainly did. This was not the faith I had embraced so many years earlier. I spoke out against Christian homophobia, called for a new conversation, pleaded that we listen rather than shout. Which led to a campaign of abuse, threats and insults that I have never encountered in a long journalistic career that includes time in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and war zones.

I was seeing a new, deeply disturbing face of Christianity . . . . In June 2014, I wrote my syndicated Sun column — in a dozen newspapers — apologizing for any pain I had caused gay people. I didn’t even mention marriage at this stage, but offered contrition for my actions and words. Believe me, it wasn’t easy.

What happened next changed my life. The waves of love and warmth that came to me from gay people all over North America and even Europe broke my heart. I was also fired from columns, lost numerous speeches and was labeled an adulterer, a thief and someone who was mentally ill. People wrote to my wife, claiming that I was having an affair with another man; my children’s Facebook pages were trolled and they were in turn accused of various crimes.

If the desired effect was to change my mind, it worked. It radicalized me, obliged me to read, think and pray harder and to soon realize that I had been wrong on marriage — to be candid, I think I knew this anyway but lacked the courage to say it. So I did indeed come out, as it were, and declared my support for equal marriage. I also knew I couldn’t remain in the Roman Catholic Church any longer and retain self-respect. I could not lie, could not pretend. I no longer believed in the Catholic Church’s moral teachings.

Yet all of this was product not of a weaker belief, but of a deeper Christian faith, and a belief in a Jesus who accepted everyone and who personified not judgment but love; a man who never even mentioned homosexuality but did scold those who condemned others, and who assumed that only they were pure and righteous.

I joined the Anglican church, where I have never been happier. That move was made public by some right-wing Catholic bloggers and the attacks were multiplied. I was dismissed from more columns and had more speeches cancelled — and while money and career aren’t the issue here, I probably lost half of my income — which is ironic, as one of the attacks on me was that my move was motivated by money!

Now comes a book and, I am sure, more darkness from those who dance in its shadows. But my only regret is that this didn’t happen earlier. Let me say again, even though I have said it countless times: I am sorry for any pain or harm caused. I can’t expunge that, but I can make sure that what years I have left are devoted to what is true, good, noble and liberating. Thank God for my epiphany.   

Few are more mean and vicious than the "godly" conservative Christians.  Like Islamic fundamentalists, hate and mistreatment of others are their main fruits of their religious belief.  The sooner society at large recognizes this reality and the sooner journalists and politicians cease giving deference to such foul people, the better off the world will be.  In my view, the death of Christianity - especially conservative strains - would be a net positive for the world. 

The Vatican Put a Convicted Rapist Back in a Parish

One has to wonder how much it takes before the Vatican and subordinate bishops and cardinals will permanently throw a priest out of the Church and away from children and youths.  Apparently, raping two young girls isn't enough based on the shocking story of Father Joseph Jeyapaul.  Given the Church's virulent homophobia, would it have made a difference if he had raped young boys instead of girls?  The mindset that views children and youth as just disposable refuse is truly shocking and underscores the disingenuousness of apologies for sexual abuse made by Pope Francis and many other high clerics.  Their actions speak volumes even as they engage in crocodile tears.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this shocking story - which I suspect is the norm rather than the exception.  Here are highlights:

Just what is it that the Vatican does not get about predator priests? Apparently a lot.

Father Joseph Jeyapaul is a priest from India who admitted to raping two adolescent girls in Minnesota when he served the Crookston diocese from 2004 to 2005. 

After being charged with the abuse, which included rape and forcing at least one of the girls to perform fellatio on him, he fled home to India, where he was eventually arrested on an Interpol warrant. He was then extradited back to Minnesota, where he admitted his heinous crimes and entered a plea bargain in which, in exchange for a lighter sentence, he copped to molestation of one of the girls. 

Jeyapaul was suspended from the priesthood and served a year and a day in prison in Minnesota, then was deported back to India after his release last July. The Minnesota diocese where he worked also settled a civil lawsuit with the victims in which one accused him of systematic abuse in the confessional of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he would then tell the girl it was her fault, that she had made him “impure.”

How much more proof would one need that the man cannot be trusted with minors? 

Apparently, Jeyapaul’s rap sheet is not enough to kick him out of the priesthood for good. In February, the Vatican approved lifting his suspension from the priesthood and agreed that he could be reassigned to a new parish in India. That parish even made him the diocesan head of its commission for education. 

“We are not only disgusted and alarmed, but we realize there is a serious danger,” Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson said during a press conference last week. “Pope Francis has broken a pledge. This priest is a predator who needs to be stopped, and they have chosen not to stop him.”

Anderson, who has been at the forefront of the legal battle for victims of clerical sex abuse in Minnesota, is involved because he represents one of the victims Jeyapaul went to prison for abusing. Megan Peterson, now 26, has stepped forward to tell her story to protect children. She asked Anderson to file a public danger (nuisance) federal lawsuit against the Ootacamund diocese in Tamil Nadu, India. 

"This pope has said that bishops who cover up [sexual abuse] and the offending clerics have no place in the church. I feel like this is a slap in the face."

Peterson is not the only one calling foul. The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says this is the last straw. “It may be the most irresponsible Vatican move we’ve ever seen: Catholic officials in Rome have lifted the suspension of a recently convicted predator priest,” SNAP’s outreach director Barbara Dorris said in a statement. “We are stunned and saddened by such blatant recklessness and callousness.”

[I]t gives one pause to think that the Vatican could turn such a blind eye to a case in which the priest admitted to abusing minors and was sentenced in a secular court. 

Interestingly, I recently learned that one of the few members of my family that had still been attending Catholic Church services has stopped going.  Meanwhile, another family member talked to me about perhaps trying out the Evangelical Lutheran Church.   Each remarked on having seen the movie "Spotlight" and its exposure of the criminality and callousness of the Church hierarchy.  I have long maintained that NOTHING will bring change to the Church until there is a massive exodus of  members and a drying up of the money spigot.  

Papal Document Again Kicks Divorced Catholics and Gays to the Curb

In the last post I stated that religion, particularly conservative Christianity (I would add Islam to that category) is the enemy of human progress and the embrace of knowledge.  In a new document ludicrously titled "Amoris Laetitia," or “the Joy of Love,” Pope Francis made it clear once more that there is little room for love for those who are divorced or LGBT in the Roman Catholic Church.  No changes in Church doctrine are made and at best, Francis tells Catholics to be less condemning in the treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics and LGBT Catholics.  Once again, I am left thinking that gays who remain Catholic suffer from a severe form of masochism.  Why remain in a Church that treats you as little better than garbage?  The only way the Catholic Church will ever change is for people to walk away in a mass exodus, taking their financial support with them.  The Washington Post looks at Francis' mealy mouthed  blathering that proves again that he is not the great hope that liberal Catholics and others desperately wanted him to be.   Here are excerpts:

He called for divorced and remarried Catholics to participate more fully in church life. But he closed the door on gay marriage. . . . But more than anything, Pope Francis’s long awaited document on family life, released Friday by the Vatican, amounts to an exultation of traditional marriage while recognizing that life, in his own words, isn’t always “perfect.” 

Some two years in the making, the 256-page document known as an apostolic exhortation and titled Amoris Laetitia, or “the Joy of Love,” amounted to his most sweeping pronouncement to date on the social issues that have deeply divided his senior clergy. . . . offered no changes in church laws – either to the status of gay people or those who divorce and remarry outside the church.

Nodding to the fact that many hoped for a blanket rule allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to take communion, [Cardinal] Schönborn said “many people expected such rules, but they will be disappointed, and persuaded that this is the necessary choice made by our pope.” But he suggested that the pope did offer “renewed encouragement” for a pastoral path in “particular cases.”

Austen Ivereigh, a prominent Francis biographer, wrote Friday that Francis basically punted in the document in terms of the very specifics of who gets Communion and when.

“In effect, Francis has cleared the ground for maximum pastoral flexibility, refusing to treat civilly remarried divorces as a category,” he wrote on the Catholic site Crux.

Ivereigh said this of the changes that might come as a result: “Yet while this is a significant development, it is unlikely to affect that many people.” 

“There is some disappointment in Pope Francis [among progressives] now because they want him to act quickly, they want him to change laws, they want him to be different,” said Christian Weisner, a founding member of the Munich-based Catholic reform group who advocates church-sanctioned same sex unions.

On the topic of gay equality, Francis repeated words he has written and said before: same-sex unions are no in way “similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” Yet for the pope who floored the planet when he said, of gay priests, “who am I to judge,” there may be others who still hold out hope, based on other comments Francis wrote in his document.

After praising Christian marriage as being “fully realized in the union between a man and a woman…” he write that “Some forms of union radically contra­dict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way. The Synod Fathers stated that the Church does not disregard the constructive elements in those situations which do not yet or no longer correspond to her teach­ing on marriage.”

There will undoubtedly be Catholics who see Francis as closing the door on gay equality forever while others will say he left it open a crack .

Pardon me as I go vomit.  The good news is that the under 30 generations are walking away from the Church in droves - many spurred to leave because of the Church's continued anti-gay jihad.  In my own family where we were all raised attending mass, almost no one now darkens the door of a Catholic Church other than perhaps to attend a wedding or a funeral.  Let's hope Francis is hastening the Church's own funeral and irrelevance.  

Poll: Americans Like Pope Francis Much More than His Church

As a former Catholic - 10 years an altar boy, daily mass attendee for nearly nine years while trying to "pray away the gay" and 4th Degree Knight of Columbus - I know  all too well about the Roman Catholic Church's obsession with imposing a 12th century under standing of "natural law" on all Catholics.  Never mind the fact that those who authored the concept of the Church's "natural law" were ignorant and wholly uneducated by today's modern knowledge of science, medicine and of course, sexual orientation.  I have also have closely followed the Church's worldwide sex abuse scandal that first erupted in Boston right as I was beginning to  "come out" - a scandal that involved cover ups orchestrated even by "good popes" such as John XXIII.  It is not without reason that one in eight Americans - i.e., 40,216,125 people based on September 2015 census estimates - consider themselves as "former Catholics."  True, there are still the sheeple who fill the pews and continue to believe whatever crap is dished out to them from pulpits, but the Church is facing real trouble, especially with the younger generations - including Hispanics - fleeing religion in the face of American bishops who preach hate and division and homophobia.   The Washington Post looks at the disparity between respect for Francis and low approval of his church.  Here are highlights:

Pope Francis is adored by American Catholics and non-Catholics, who have embraced his optimism, humility and more inclusive tone. But as the 78-year-old pontiff arrives in the United States for his first visit, the public’s view of the Catholic Church is not nearly as favorable, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

[I]n a country moving steadily away from organized religion and with the denomination still haunted by a clergy sexual-abuse scandal, there is no evidence that Francis’s likability has boosted Catholic identification, worship attendance or prayer.

The poll, along with interviews with religious scholars and Catholics around the country, suggests that the perception of Francis is different from the experience in the pews.

“The church is not grounded in the human experience,” said William D’Antonio, a Catholic University sociologist who researches U.S. Catholicism. “The pope is. This pope has an understanding I’ve not seen in any other popes. He talks like a person who actually knows something about human life.”

But the pope’s pop culture popularity helps obscure this fact: He has made no significant changes to Catholic teaching on issues that sometimes put the papacy at odds with the church’s American parishioners.

That’s why Mary Barry, 57, a small-business owner in Arlington, Tex., and her husband said they are taking “a wait-and-see approach” on whether to attend Mass regularly, three years after stopping. They decided that the church no longer spoke to them.

The Barrys are not unique. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans consider themselves former Catholics, and most who still identify with the faith do not attend weekly Mass, according to the 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey. While the Catholic Church’s retention rate is similar to that of other Christian denominations’, it has struggled to attract new members to offset steady losses. For each person who has converted to Catholicism, there are more than six who have left the church.

In the Post-ABC poll, 45 percent of self-identified Catholics reported attending Mass nearly once a week or more often, 19 percent attended monthly, and 35 percent said they attend less often or never.

While non-practicing Catholics said in follow-up interviews that they admire Francis, they do not like that the church is not softening its stance on same-sex marriage, the role of women in the church and abortion.

Nearly 3 in 4 Catholics hold a strongly favorable view of the pope, and 47 percent hold a strongly favorable view of the denomination. Even among Americans with strongly unfavorable views of the Catholic Church, Francis is seen positively by 50 percent of them.

Wishful thinking is probably playing some role in the gap.

Kathleen Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, says the gap in perceptions between Francis and the institutional church is tied to the pontiff’s “leading with the positive.” . . . . “Francis focuses on what the church says yes to before all the things it says no to,” Cummings said. “And in this country, for the last few decades, we heard a lot first about what the church says ‘no’ to.”

The pope’s activism on social, economic and environmental issues is supported by a wide swath of Catholics and non-Catholics, with just 14 percent of Americans wishing he would be less active on those issues.
[W]eekly attending Catholics are less supportive of many items on liberal Catholics’ wish list: allowing women to become priests, accepting homosexuality and ending opposition to all abortions.

A long-term challenge for the pope is whether he can bring together those who are devout and distrustful of departures from the canon, and those who are disaffected and hopeful that the church will acknowledge societal changes.

Cummings, the Notre Dame scholar, said the pope’s trip could shrink the gap between his popularity and the church’s if he can change the behavior of American bishops.

[D]uring a Christmas message last year at the Vatican. He told top church bureaucrats that they had “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and that sometimes they see themselves as “lords of the manor, superior to everyone and everything.”

What is clear is that there probably will not be a post-trip bounce for Francis to build on.
In the past, papal visits have done little to boost Catholic affiliation. . . . Surveys show that papal visits also have not even temporarily stemmed the long-term fall in worship attendance among Catholics.

Poll: Catholic Church View on Same-Sex Marriage Causing Parishoners to Flee

To listen to Catholic bishops and cardinals around America one would think that gay marriage will destroy civilization and lead to the collapse of heterosexual marriage.  None of which is true, of course, and the irony is that this propaganda comes from an institution which has been documented to have engaged in a world wide criminal conspiracy to cover up sex crimes against children and youths by Catholic clergy.  The hypocrisy is stunning.  Another irony is that a new poll has found that the Catholic Church hierarchy's anti-gay jihad is causing members of the Catholic laity to leave the Church.  One can only hope that the phenomenon accelerates and becomes more widespread.  Here are highlights from NBC 10 News on the poll findings:

Not surprisingly, a high percentage of area Catholics have left the church over the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the organization in the past decade. But that's not all.

A Catholic parish in Philadelphia surveyed lapsed Catholics to find out why they left. The results show a dissatisfaction at both the local level and with the Vatican.  .   .   .   . 17 percent — said they did so because of the priest abuse scandal. 

"People who are going to leave the church over the scandal and the church's handling of it have already left. So people leaving the church today are leaving for other reasons," said Zech. "A growing reason we found out was the church's attitude toward homosexuals and gay marriage. A lot of younger people object to the church's teaching on that."

According to a recent national study on religious life in America by the Pew Foundation, a third of baptized Catholics leave the faith, often due to policies originating in the Vatican.

Nevertheless, Zech's study shows that local churches have some power to keep disgruntled Catholics from leaving, such as improving the quality of liturgies.

"Liturgies are really important. I'm not sure that parish staff and clergy understand how important liturgies are to people, that they have good music and the liturgy be meaningful," said Zech.

"People who feel they are not being fed by a meaningful liturgy — they'll go where they are being fed."   Most of those former parishoners became Protestants.

In the short term, the influx of Hispanic immigrants has masked the decline of the Catholic Church in America.  Over time, that will change and the Church will follow the downward trajectory it has experienced in Europe and other modern nations.   The choice for the Vatican is to either accept modernity and modern knowledge or eventually become a third world religion based in the most ignorant and uneducated nations of the world. 

Quote of the Day: Dan Savage on Religion

Like gay activist Dan Savage, I was raised as a Roman Catholic and church and religion dominated a great deal of my years through high school and even after.   However, unlike Dan, it took me far longer to face my sexual orientation and to ultimately let go of much of the brainwashing I had under gone as a Catholic youth in the late 1950's and 1960's.  In a column in the New York Times, Dan Savage reviews a new book, "Does Jesus Really Love Me?," by Jeff Chu.    The book among other things profiles gays and lesbians who are struggling to reconcile their faiths with their sex orientation.  Some, like some of my personal friends remain tortured by the indoctrination they received as children and find themselves unable to move on and see their faith traditions for what they are: made made constructs with money, power and control as their ultimate motivating forces.  In this category I would definite include the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Russian Orthodox Church (while for centuries worked hand in glove witht he rulers of Imperial Russia), and many fundamentalist denominations. Yet others end up rejecting religion completely.  Sadly, Chu is less kind to these individuals that the tortured gays who do not walk away from toxic denominations.  In the Column, Savage also talks about his own evolution.  Here are highlights:

A great many of the stories Chu relates are grim — I eventually lost count of the number of suicide attempts — but there are moments of humor. Andrew Freeman decides to move to Sweden at 26 in a last-ditch effort to turn himself straight. “I thought if there’s ever a place to find a beautiful woman, it’s Sweden,” he tells Chu. “Then I got there and I thought . . . this isn’t helping anything. Sweden has beautiful men!” 

And there is hope in this book, too.  .   .  .  .  A few months later she reversed herself, asked for her son’s forgiveness and gave him her blessing to come out. “I love this denomination,” Eva Sullivan-Knoff tells Chu, “but I love my son more.” 

A million moments like this are playing out all over the country. Taken together, they’re building toward a cultural tipping point, and as a result, the marriage of Christianity and homophobia is increasingly harming the churches that espouse it. The damage done by religious bigots used to go one way: churches preached homophobia, gays and lesbians suffered. Increasingly, religious bigots are hurting themselves.

But while Chu is gentle with gay people who are working to reconcile their sexualities and their faiths — straining in some cases to do so — he is far less generous to those of us who are no longer believers. For gay people who’ve left organized religion, the condescension that creeps in around the edges of his narrative begins to feel like contempt.

Mr. Byers, as we learned on the previous page, gave up his parental rights after his wife divorced him; his wife’s second husband adopted his children, whom he hasn’t seen in more than a decade; his brother refuses to speak to him; and his parents think his lifestyle is despicable. Maybe such acts of emotional and spiritual violence, committed in the name of Christian beliefs, account for the sadness Chu detected. 

Chu worries that gay people like Mr. Byers have been “pushed out of the church.” That’s not true for all of us. My father was a Catholic deacon, my mother was a lay minister and I thought about becoming a priest. I was in church every Sunday for the first 15 years of my life. Now I spend my Sundays on my bike, on my snowboard or on my husband. I haven’t spent my post-Catholic decades in a sulk, wishing the church would come around on the issue of homosexuality so that I could start attending Mass again. I didn’t abandon my faith. I saw through it. The conflict between my faith and my sexuality set that process in motion, but the conclusions I reached at the end of that process — there are no gods, religion is man-made, faith can be a force for good or evil — improved my life. I’m grateful that my sexuality prompted me to think critically about faith. Pushed out? No. I walked out.

He captures the fractures and conflict at a moment when the issue of what to do with L.G.B.T. people is tearing Christian denominations apart. 

Like Savage, I wasn't thrown out of the Catholic Church.  I left and happily so - especially as the sex abuse coverage exploded in 2002.  By leaving Catholicism, I felt clean as opposed to those who remain and continue to bankroll the criminal conspiracy orchestrated from the Vatican.    If I do have any regrets, they focus on the lives of Catholic youths who continue to be warped and damaged by a church that is about everything but the true Gospel message of Christ.  It distresses me at times when I wonder how many of these young Catholics will see suicide as the only escape.  Unlike Dan Savage, I do not count myself an atheist.  I do believe that there is a high power or creator.  By I believe that this higher power bears little resemblance to the God fabricated by men seeking wealth, power and control of others.  Religion can be a force for good.  But if one tallies up the evil done over the centuries, I suspect the scales reveal that religion - especially fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam - are a net evil in the world.

Ireland - The Next Catholic Country to Approve Gay Marriage

This past week saw Uruguay enact full gay marriage and the French Senate approve both gay marriage and gay adoption, all but guaranteeing that gay marriage will be legal soon in France.  And these developments have taken place despite the strenuous - dare we say nearly hysterical - opposition of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and its front organizations.   Now, it appears that Ireland - once a bastion of Catholicism where the Church wielded immense power - may be moving towards full gay marriage as well.  All of which, in the view of this blog is a very positive thing.  The Church needs to be pushed out of politics completely despite the hierarchy's longing of the "good old days" of the Inquisition and a time when the Pope could make rulers bend to his whims.  As the Irish Examiner reports, the Irish Constitutional Convention has approved a referendum of gay marriage an, based on recent polls and the Irish public's contempt for the Church hierarchy, the referendum will likely pass.  First these excerpts from the Irish Examiner story:

The Constitutional Convention has passed a vote calling for a referendum on same-sex marriage.

The Convention decided to recommend that the Constitution be changed to allow for civil marriage for same-sex couples, with 79 of the 100 members in favour of the motion.  Nineteen delegates voted against, with one 'no opinion'.

A report will now be drafted and the recommendations of the Constitutional Convention will now go to Government.

After the report is officially sent to the Oireachtas, the Government are committed to responding within four months by way of a debate in the Oireachtas and if it agrees with the recommendation to amend the Constitution, to include a timeframe for a referendum.

The result was announced by Convention Chairman Tom Arnold, to applause from the floor. 

As for the polls on public support, a story in the Irish Times earlier this year looked at the 75% of the population that supported civil marriage for same sex couples.  Here are excerpts:

There has been a 12 percentage point increase in support of same-sex civil marriages since 2008, according to a new poll.

The poll, which was carried out in late 2012 by Millward Brown Lansdowne for Marriage Equality, shows 75 per cent of people would vote yes in a referendum to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples. In 2008, 63 per cent of respondents said they would vote yes.

The only age range where the majority of people said they would vote no is the over-65s, which went from 27 per cent in 2008 to 43 per cent.

A further two out of three people said they felt Ireland’s reputation as a modern society will be strengthened by allowing same-sex couples to have civil marriages, while three out of five people agree that allowing same-sex couples to have civil marriages will promote a more tolerant environment in Ireland.

When asked about adoption, 69 per cent of people agree that being raised in a loving home by parents is a more significant factor for a child’s wellbeing than being raised by a mother and a father. A total of 54 per cent agree that same-sex couples should be legally allowed to jointly adopt a child.

All very good news for equality and modernity and bad news for the geriatric child rapist protectors in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

A Former Insider's View of Vatican Machinations and the Papal Race

Tony Adams, a/k/a Father Tony, is a columnist, editor, playwright and ex-priest that I first met at the LGBT Blogger Summit in Washington, D.C., in December, 2008.  Among other things, he is Senior Features Correspondent with South Florida Gay News and a contributor at PRIDE magazine and The Mirror. And, while he was a Catholic priest, he was stationed at the Vatican where he had a fist hand view of many in the Church hierarchy - the good, the bad and the ugly.  In the wake of Nazi Pope Benedict XVI's announced abdication, Tony has an insightful and interesting piece in the South Florida Gay News.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Benedict XVI has announced that he will retire the papacy on February 28. In hindsight, there were recent signs hinting at this. He made his beloved secretary Georg Gänswein an archbishop, assuring the handsome fellow a post-papal future in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. He promoted the servile head of his household, American James Harvey, to cardinal. These are the kind of loose ends tied up by an aged pope who had years ago stated his willingness to voluntarily vacate the papacy should he no longer be able to fulfill the duties of that office. No one ever expected him to exercise that option, given the obvious delight he took in the ermine, velvet and watered silk that perpetually swathed him as he seemed to float through the serene routine of his seven-year papacy.
From the immaculate soles of his Pradas to the jeweled tip of his gold-threaded mitre, Pope Benedict XVI has been a paragon of gilded denial whose brow furrowed briefly when confronted with news of pedophile priests, church cover-ups, condom use in Africa, unruly nuns, plummeting Sunday church attendance and a general lack of new and renewed subscription to a church that has kept its flock in line with the threat that disobedience to the infallible moral teaching of its pope would lead to eternal fire in hell.

What can we expect of the 117 voting-age cardinals who will lock themselves into the Sistine Chapel next month and smoke the place up with the burned ballots that will elect Benedict’s successor? Will they choose a man who will stop the anti-gay crusades of recent years? Will they elect a man who will hold women in such high regard that he will relinquish obsessive control over their lady parts and grant them access to that exclusively male club of the Catholic priesthood? Will they elevate a man who will understand how wallowing in ostentatious wealth irritates not only the poor but workers struggling to provide for the basic survival of their families? Will they tap a man who loves children in an honorable way and will cherish their innocence by getting rid of abusive priests with speed and transparency?

[C]ardinals are creatures who care little for popularity until such time as unpopularity means loss of revenue, the closing down of churches and schools, and the payment of millions of dollars in settlements for the victims of priestly abuse.  As they enter the Sistine Chapel, those fiscal realities will be writ with red ink on the ballots they burn to produce white smoke.

Among the American cardinals who will take part in the conclave are men I knew in Rome in the ‘70s, including Tim Dolan, Don Wuerl, Ray Burke, Jim Harvey, Justin Rigali and Dan DiNardo.
Most of them are celibate gay men who will never admit to being gay because they have that uncanny ability to feel same-sex attraction while eschewing the gay nametag.  DiNardo and Harvey may have some skeletons in their closets. Burke is a good henchman but not a charismatic leader. Rigali is an elegant diplomat but is not considered an antidote to the priest abuse scandal.  Wuerl persecuted bad priests when other bishops were wringing their hands but he may be slightly too refined for his own good.  That leaves Dolan  .  .  .  . Cardinal Dolan has always been a rule-follower and one of his appetites is his desire to please his boss as perfectly as possible. If he finds himself answering to no higher earthly authority, we will finally see what is in his heart as he tries to discern what god really wants of him.

Although the LGBT community has decried his strenuous efforts to thwart marriage equality, I know him as someone who took the time to write me a “let’s do lunch” letter after I sent him an email welcoming him to New York. He did not have to do that. He knew my situation, and also, he counts many gay priests among his close friends. I do not know if Tim Dolan is gay or straight. He was never the kind of guy who talked sex. I do know that I would rather have a straight pope who was our ally than another closeted gay pope who is our foe.

[T]he sad fact is that most of the LGBT community has shed anti-gay Catholicism, and is critical of those of us who wish for its reform. “Why bother with it?” they ask me.  Maybe the five years I spent marrying people, baptizing their babies, holding their hands on their deathbeds and absolving their tearful guilt in the secrecy of the confessional made me a better person.  Maybe I just want to see those good Catholics get the good pope they deserve . . .

Yes, I shed Catholicism.  Remaining a Catholic would have been like staying in an abusive marriage where one was regularly beaten and subjected to psychological abuse.   That said, I would be over joyed to see Catholicism reformed and brought into the 21st century.  Will it happen?  I am not going to be holding my breath.

Catholic Revolt in Washington State and Germany

I noted yesterday how Catholic theologian Hans Küng has argued that the Catholic Church laity and priests need to rise in revolt and overthrow the Pope and reclaim the Church from the morally bankrupt and Pharisee like Church hierarchy.  Sooner than expected it seems that some former priests in Washington State and Catholics in Germany are taking Küng's calm to revolt to heart.  First, these highlights from the Seattle Post on developments in the gay marriage referendum battle in Washington State:

Sixty-three former Roman Catholic priests in Washington state will announce on Thursday that they support Referendum 74, which would make Washington the nation’s seventh state to legalize marriage between same-sex couples.

The stand comes as the state’s four Catholic bishops intensify a campaign of pastoral statements and videos urging parishoners to vote against marriage equality.

The 63 former priests, with collectively more than 800 years of service to the Church, beg to differ.

“We are uneasy with the aggressive efforts of Catholic bishops to oppose R-74 and want to support the 71 percent of Catholics (Public Religion Research Institute) who support civil marriage for gays as a valid Catholic position,” they said in a statement.

Former priest Pat Callahan, who organized the statement, added:  “This is the first public action we’ve taken.”  Callahan was in the Catholic priesthood for 15 years.

In Washington, ecclesiastical shepherds are finding a lot of trouble herding their flocks.  Same-sex marriage legislation passed last winter.  It was championed by Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Catholic:  Its chief legislative sponsor was State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, a practicing Catholic and long-partnered gay.

A group called Catholics for Marriage Equality-Washington was prominent in Seattle’s Pride Day march last June.    Several major Catholic parishes — including Seattle’s St. James Cathedral — refused Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s request to serve as collection center for petitions to force a vote on same-sex marriage.

Catholics for Marriage Equality, in a statement this weekend, said:  “We are shocked when we read the language and examples used by our bishops to incite fear in our Catholic brothers and sisters if Referendum 74 passes.  The message of Jesus is love and compassion, not fear.”

And then there's the growing problems in Germany where Catholics are leaving the Church in droves.  NPR looks at the growing conflict between the growing conflict between rank and file German Catholics who resist paying taxes to the Church and the pompous Church hierarchy.  Here are highlights: 

Germany's bishops have a clear message for the country's 25 million Catholics: The road to heaven requires more than faith and good intentions; it requires tax payments, too.

Last month, German bishops warned that if members of the Catholic Church don't pay the country's church tax, they'll be denied the sacraments — including baptisms, weddings and funerals.

Registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a surcharge of up to 9 percent on their income. The Catholic Church alone received some $6.5 billion in 2011.

In issuing the stringent new decree, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the president of the German bishops' conference, said that not paying taxes for the church is a grave offense, and that sacraments will be banned for those who distance themselves from the church.

As church historian Carsten Frerk points out, setting conditions on church membership is against the church's own legal code.

The bishops issued their decree as church defections are growing. In 2010, when the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in Germany, nearly 200,000 Catholics left the church. In a normal year, it's 100,000.  Church statistics show that only 13 percent of Germany's Catholics attend Mass weekly. And, Weisner says, the majority of those who are observant criticize the church leadership.

"We need and we ask for more transparency and more participation in the decision-making process," he says. "It can't be the case that only the bishop is deciding which parish will get money and which parish will get a new church."

One can only hope that the resistance to the hierarchy's dictates continues to grow and that increasingly members of the laity will withhold their money and hit the Vatican where it hurts most.  After all, the real God of Benedict and his fellow bitter old queens in dresses is money.