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Is an Overdue Reckoning Coming for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been allowed to be above the law, especially in nationals like Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Germany, but so too in America.  Politicians have deferred to Church prelates and law enforcement officials rarely dared take on the Catholic Church establishment.  This thankfully began to change in 2002 when the Boston Globe blew the lid off of the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston.  Similar stories have since swept the globe, with the Church going into a free-fall in Ireland and major government investigations like that done in Australia that lead to the first criminal convictions against members of the hierarchy for their role in the cover up of crimes against children and youths.  Now, the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia has announced it is launching an investigation of seven of the eight dioceses in Pennsylvania.  Meanwhile the Attorney General of the District of Columbia is launching an investigation of the Washington Archdiocese.  Since the Vatican and bishops and cardinals have failed to date to come clean and clean house, some are hoping that a long overdue reckoning is about to overtake the Church.   I was never abused by priests, but I know those who were.  The hypocrisy of the hierarchy has been stunning as has the indifference towards crimes against children and youth.  A piece in Rewire looks at what may be coming.  Here are excerpts:

I remember the moment when the gravity of the Catholic hierarchy’s long-term cover-up of rampant sexual abuse within the priestly ranks was driven home to me. It was in 2010, and I was conducting an interview for my book Good Catholics with the noted Catholic feminist theologian Mary Hunt. We were discussing her reflections regarding what had, at that point, been a decades-long adversarial relationship with the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church, dating from when Hunt was one of the leaders of an effort in the mid-1980s to assert the validity of a pro-choice position in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Vatican.

Hunt told me. “We thought we were dealing with people of good will.” But it’s what she said next that sent a chill down my spine. “What we didn’t know then was that we were up against criminal behavior—people participating in criminal behavior and ignoring criminal behavior.”

As last week’s move by the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the abuse of children and young adults by Catholic clergy (and the subsequent cover-up by bishops) makes clear, Hunt was prescient.

The news that former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been serially abusing young men and seminarians for decades was eclipsed by the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of abuse and cover-up in dioceses throughout the state. This in turn prompted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington—Wuerl helped formulate the Church’s rules for preventing sexual abuse by priests—for his role in shuffling predator priests around the state when he was the head of the Pittsburgh diocese.

But the recently announced U.S. attorney’s investigation marks a major turning point and a potential moment of reckoning in the long-running and sordid sex abuse scandal that first burst into public view with the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in early 2002. The Justice Department investigation promises to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the U.S. Catholic Church and civil law enforcement authorities.

To date, no matter how messy the scandal became, civil authorities largely left the Church alone to clean up its own mess. While individual priests have been charged with crimes as the result of abuse, and culpable prelates like Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law were shuffled into retirement, the larger question of criminality on the part of the Church’s leadership has been off the table. It was, admittedly, an odd arrangement, with the U.S. government in effect deferring to the government of the Catholic Church, an arrangement neither codified in the Constitution nor available to any other religion.

But if this federal investigation does go forward—and it should be noted that it’s coming from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, so it could be impeded by higher-ups in the Justice Department—it would be a landmark moment as the federal government usurps the authority that Vatican has long claimed to police its internal affairs.

And the nature of the investigation reported by the AP, which spans seven of the state’s eight dioceses, suggests just how deep such an inquiry could go. According to the Washington Post:

The subpoenas seek years of internal records, including any evidence of church personnel taking children across state lines for purposes of sexual abuse, any evidence of personnel sending sexual material about children electronically and any evidence that church officials reassigned suspected predators or used church resources to further or conceal such conduct.

[T]he prosecutors could be planning a racketeering case against Church leaders: “Human trafficking, child pornography, the Mann Act—any of these could be the underlying crimes for RICO.”

The leveling of criminal conspiracy charges against members of the Catholic hierarchy would be a stunning denouement for men who, until recently, regularly met with U.S. presidents and influenced public policy on everything from women’s access to contraception to the simmering argument about transgender identity. It would signal that after a century of acquiescence to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a separate political structure operating with impunity outside of the U.S. legal system, U.S. civil authorities no longer consider the Church above the law.

As Emma Green notes in The Atlantic, the scope of the investigation “will test the Catholic bishops’ stated resolve to give secular authorities full control and transparency in abuse investigations, as the moral and legal stakes of the crisis continue to grow.” This will be especially important if subpoenas seek the contents of so-called secret archives that may hold previously unreleased information about efforts to cover up the activities of abusive priests.

And despite pledges of transparency, there are indications that the Church will not surrender without a fight. Even as bishops in Pennsylvania promised to cooperate with civil authorities in the wake of the grand jury report, behind the scenes the church fought tooth-and-nail to derail a popular measure that would have created an exemption to the state’s statute of limitations for sexual abuse suits.

Now the question becomes: Will the public—both inside and outside of Pennsylvania—stand any longer for the extraordinary dispensation that has been granted for so long to an organization that has engaged in what may prove to be a decades-long criminal conspiracy?

I continue to urge Catholics sickened by the sex abuse cover ups to vote with their feet and walk away.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church offer good alternatives that are free from the thoroughly corrupt Catholic Church hierarchy. 

Trump Continues to Pander to White Nationalists

In the countdown to the 2018 midterm elections less than a week away, Donald Trump continues to pander to white nationalists.  He did it again Monday night at a rally to support the reelection effort of Ted Cruz, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest members of the U.S. Senate.  There, Trump - campaigning with a Hispanic political prostitute only too happy to throw other Hispanics into the gutter or, better yet, to have them deported, stated he is a "nationalist" and in the process tried to walk back the sinister historical meaning of the term which is something very different than patriotism.  Nationalism carries with a racists and xenophobic undercurrent that is part and parcel with the Trump?pence regime effort to define some as "other" or a "threat"which in turn justifies abuse and mistreatment or worse.  Here are highlights from Politico on Trump's declaration:

Donald Trump on Monday evening proudly asserted that he is a “nationalist” — a designation some of his fiercest critics have previously wielded against him as an attack on what they deem nativist policy pursuits by his administration.

“You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist,” Trump said at a campaign event in Houston, where he rallied voters to support Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in November’s midterm elections.

Earlier Monday, Trump took to Twitter to proclaim that a caravan of migrants en route to the southern U.S. border was a “National Emergency,” writing online that “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.” 

Trump's claims about "middle Easterners" had not data or intelligence to back up the disingenuous claim (lie is perhaps a more accurate description).   I would go further and argue that even pretending that Hispanics from Central America - Honduras in particular - with Maya ancestry look like Middle Easterners is ludicrous to anyone other than rabid Trump supporters who hate anyone who isn't white.  But that red herring missing the true historic meaning of "nationalism."  To see what the term actually means and to get an insight into the true agenda of "nationalists" one can look to a piece by George Orwell.  Here are highlights:

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist — that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating — but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade. . . . . Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.

[N]o nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some sharp retort. If the chosen unit is an actual country, such as Ireland or India, he will generally claim superiority for it not only in military power and political virtue, but in art, literature, sport, structure of the language, the physical beauty of the inhabitants, and perhaps even in climate, scenery and cooking.

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. 

It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell's soldiers slashing Irishwomen's faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.

Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should — in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918 — and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which it is felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied.

Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. . . . Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.

It is no coincidence that much of the foregoing seems all too familiar over the course of the last two years, not to mention during the Trump/Pence campaign.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

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The Far-Reaching Threats of a Conservative Court

Of all the things Donald Trump and Vichy Republicans have done to date to undermine democracy in America, perhaps the worse is the shifting of the U.S. Supreme Court to the far right.  With a majority of justices who seemingly would undo progressive legislation from the New Deal forward and happily see a return of the robber baron days of the Gilded age, the damage could be immense.  The circumstances also highlight the need to do something to change the make up of the U.S. Senate where the disproportionate representation of small states - Wyoming with two U.S. Senators has a smaller population than the cities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk when added together - wildly exceeds anything the Founding Fathers could have envisioned.  Indeed, the Senate now almost guarantees a tyranny of the minority of anti-modernity, racist red states which in general have smaller populations than blue states which for the most part fund the federal government hand outs to red states. A column in the New York Times looks at the coming threat from a right wing Supreme Court which will likely bring us more pollution, inaction on climate change and an erosion of individual rights and protections.  Here are column excerpts:

With the start of the Supreme Court’s new term, many people are wondering whether the conservative majority, which has taken a further step to the right with the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, will overturn Roe v. Wade.

But that’s not where the action is. As two cases argued before the court this month illustrate, the real question is whether it will undermine the system of government that has protected the public from abusive business practices since the New Deal.

The two cases might seem esoteric, and far removed from government protection of workers and consumers. Gundy v. United States involved a challenge to the attorney general’s extension of sex-crime-registration law to offenders convicted before the law was enacted. Nielsen v. Preap involved a government policy that deprived certain unauthorized immigrants of some procedural protections against deportation.

The conservative majority can, and most likely will, rule against the government using broad theories that would also eat away at the constitutional foundations of the New Deal system, which is essential for protecting health and safety, the environment and much else.

Since the New Deal, Congress has authorized regulatory agencies to make policy by issuing regulations. These agencies are now a familiar part of our government. They include the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is currently aiding hurricane victims in Florida. Agency regulation became necessary as the problems of a modern industrialized nation overwhelmed the regulatory capacities of states, local governments and Congress itself.

The New Deal agencies initially encountered resistance from the Supreme Court, which was then, like now, a reactionary institution that frowned on novelty. . . . Eventually, common sense prevailed over these legalistic objections. Congress itself lacked the capacity to engage in the detailed regulation that is necessary to keep a modern economy humming while protecting workers and consumers. Agencies were needed.

By the 1980s, half a century after the New Deal, a political and legal consensus in favor of the administrative state had solidified. Left and right argued about how much regulation was needed, of course, but no one doubted the constitutional foundations of the administrative state — not even Justice Antonin Scalia. . .

.But Brett Kavanaugh is a skeptic. And so are Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s first appointment to the Supreme Court, and Clarence Thomas, who was appointed back in 1991. The views of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are less clear, but their judicial opinions point in the same direction.

The conservative assault on the administrative state has four elements.

First, Justices Gorsuch and Thomas want to revive a discredited legal rule that was invoked by the Supreme Court in 1935 and then abandoned. The “nondelegation doctrine” says that Congress may not “delegate” its legislative power to administrative agencies . . . .

Second, Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas want to undermine a rule called the Chevron doctrine, after a 1984 Supreme Court case. That rule says that when an agency regulation is based on a reasonable interpretation of a statute, courts should “defer” to the agency. The Chevron rule codified existing judicial recognition of the core idea of the administrative state. Specialists — in environmental hazards, in credit markets, in workplace safety — should regulate.

Third, the conservative justices dislike the principle of agency autonomy and have looked askance at job protections for agency officials.

Fourth, the conservative justices have endorsed a novel interpretation of the First Amendment that protects businesses from regulation — from campaign finance regulation, labor regulation and even regulations that require them to disclose information to consumers.

Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas claim to be “originalists,” who believe that the court should strike down laws that violate the original understanding of the Constitution. But the founders did not bar Congress from creating administrative agencies or think that the First Amendment protected businesses from commercial regulation.

The new conservative jurisprudence may help some businesses in the short run but ultimately will undermine the legal structure in which they flourish.

The answer is both obvious and depressing. The modern conservative jurisprudence is an exercise in nostalgia, a yearning for pre-New Deal America when, supposedly, government was less oppressive and people were freer than they are today. You can see this nostalgia in the homilies to olden times in Justices Gorsuch’s and Kavanaugh’s lectures — and their insistence that answers to today’s challenges can be found in a theory of government invented in the 18th century by men wearing breeches and powdered wigs.

This jurisprudence appeals to many people in a populist era that distrusts experts, chafes at bureaucracy, fears change and longs for a simpler past. But like so much being peddled by ideologues and partisans these days, it’s a sham.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

The Conundrum of Gay Republicans - Delusional, Self Loathing or Racist?

The 2018 midterm elections are two (2) weeks away and once again one is confronted with so-called gay Republicans who whether due to delusions or internalized homophobia and self-loathing are poised to vote for candidates of a political party that have more or less declared war on LGBT citizens.  With the passage of the Trump/GOP tax cuts last year, the fig leaf of supporting "fiscal conservatism" was wiped away.  Then there's the myth that the GOP supports "smaller government" even as it pushes to control women's bodies and regulate people's bedrooms.  And, if one cares about the environment, Trump and the GOP are (i) denying climate change is real and (ii) slashing regulations that protect us from air and water pollution. Not exactly responsible "smaller government."  So what motivates these gay Republicans - many of whom are privileged white males - if the GOP smaller government and fiscal responsibility they claim to support doesn't exist?  I have my theories and, my gut reaction is that it comes down to racism.  How else to explain these individuals supporting a party headed by a regime that has taken the following actions against LGBT Americans:

1.The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to eradicate federal recognition and protection of transgender Americans by redefining gender to be based solely on a person’s genitalia at birth.

2. The Department of Labor is developing a rule to allow federal contractors to fire LGBTQ people even as Trump has sought to bar most transgender recruits from serving in the military

3. The State Department has began refusing visas for same-sex partners of U.N. diplomats and U.N. workers if they are not legally married in their home country (even those from countries where same-sex marriage is not legal).

4.The Department of Health and Human Services with the assistance of the Trump/Pence Department of Justice is allowing health care providers to discriminate against LGBTQ people on the basis of “moral objection.”

5.  Betsy DeVos, Trump's Secretary of Education, and the Department of Education  have refused to protect transgender students from bullying and harassment.

6.  The Bureau of Prisons eliminated Obama-era policy protecting transgender prisoners

7.The Department of Justice gutted policies that protect transgender people from employment discrimination and has filed legal briefs supporting the right of employers to fire LGBT employees based on anti-LGBT animus.

8.  The Department of Justice dropped a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s anti-transgender “bathroom bill.”

9.  The Department of Commerce removed sexual orientation and gender identity from the proposed 2020 Census survey.

10.  Trump announced the “Deploy or Get Out” rule, which could remove HIV+ military personnel from service.

11.  The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

12.  Trump/Pence has created inhospitable work environments for LGBTQ federal employees.

13.  The Trump White House has yet to appoint an LGBTQ liason.

14.  The Trump White House refused to acknowledge Pride Month for the second year in a row.

15.  Trump has appointed two (2) anti-gay justices - Gorsuch and Kavanaugh - to the U.S. Supreme Court who, with the other "conservatives" could roll back past court rulings affirming LGBT rights. 

 As I note above, there would appear to be no reason for any gay individual to vote Republican unless they are either (i) subsumed with greed and place tax cuts above their own civil rights and dignity, or (ii) subscribed to the white supremacy that now is a main plank in the GOP agenda.

More Monday Male Beauty

America's Toxic and Dangerous Alliance with Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has long used its oil wealth to buy American loyalty and to guaranty American politicians' indifference to the evils of the regime.  Indeed, after the 9-11 terror attacks which were committed mostly by Saudi extremists, George W. Bush allowed special flights for Saudis to flee America even as all other flights were grounded.  What was already a toxic and unprincipled alliance has turned truly grotesque under the Trump/Pence regime lead by a man who worships money as his only god notwithstanding the ridiculous lip service given to Christofascist leaders whose only real goal was stacking the U.S. Supreme with far right ideologues.  A column in the New York Times looks at this immoral alliance and the increasing shredding of principle required to  maintain relations with a truly murderous regime.  Here are column excerpts:

The Saudis are experts on emoluments. If you don’t take their favors one way, they find another way to try to co-opt you. 

Hollywood, Silicon Valley, presidential libraries and foundations, politically connected private equity groups, P.R. firms, think tanks, universities and Trump family enterprises are awash in Arab money. The Saudis satisfy American greed, deftly playing their role as dollar signs in robes.

Donald Trump, who may be the only person more fond of lavish displays of arriviste gilt than the Saudis, is bedazzled by a Saudi pledge to buy billions worth of American weapons, just as he was flattered by the Saudi sword dance and weird luminescent orb séance on his visit to the kingdom.

Even before the bloodcurdling execution of Jamal Khashoggi for his just criticism of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, it was clear that the chump Trump and jejune Jared had bet their entire Middle East strategy on a chillingly autocratic and reckless person.

The prince was easing up on the draconian restrictions on women to get a gloss as a liberal visionary. But he was simultaneously jailing women activists, imprisoning and torturing royals and top businessmen and making America an accomplice in a grotesque war in Yemen, dropping bombs supplied by the U.S. with little care about whether civilians died, including in an attack on a school bus, killing dozens of children. This, as the self-styled children’s advocate Ivanka was out on the town, talking about the fabulous “deliverables” she and Jared were bringing to their BFFs in Riyadh.

The Saudis blithely assume abhorrence at their inhumane behavior — from beheadings to forcing teenage girls without head scarves back into a burning school to die, as the religious police did in Mecca in 2002, to the brazen murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist — can be lubricated away with oil and money.

And why shouldn’t they? Our alliance with the Saudis has always been poisoned by cynical bargains.

After the oil boom of the late ’70s, Islamic clerics were enraged at the hedonistic behavior of the royals. In order to continue with their hypocritical lifestyle, the royals offered cultural freedom and women’s rights as a sop to the fundamentalists, allowing anti-Western clerics and madrasas to flourish and giving a free pass to those who bankrolled terrorism.

Even as we hailed the Saudis as our partners in fighting terrorism, they were nurturing the monsters who would come for us. Seventeen years before the psychotic Saudi hit squad traveled to Istanbul to dismember Khashoggi while he was still alive, another psychotic Saudi hit squad traveled to America to turn planes packed with passengers into bombs.

Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. The Saudi royals repeatedly stymied American efforts to crack down on Al Qaeda in the years before 9/11.
But they remained our dear friends. W.’s White House allowed Prince Bandar — the dean of the Washington diplomatic corps was so close to the Bush family that his nickname was “Bandar Bush” — to spirit Bin Laden’s family members and other wealthy Saudis out of America on jets after the twin towers fell.

Even Barack Obama, who had no love lost for the Saudis, refused for eight years to release a classified document from 2002 detailing contacts between Saudi officials and some of the 9/11 hijackers, including checks from Saudi royals to operatives in contact with the hijackers and a connection between a Bandar employee and a Qaeda militant. (Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa, wrote charitable checks that ended up in the hands of two hijackers.) Our Faustian deal was this: As long as the Saudis kept our oil prices low, bought our fighter jets, housed our fleets and drones and gave us cover in the region, they could keep their country proudly medieval. The Saudis need us more than we need them. We now produce more oil than they do. And yet we continue to coddle them and shield them from responsibility for their barbaric ways.

Because, after all, the press is the Enemy of the People, deserving a body slam. And the Saudis are our dear friends, deserving bows, hugs and kisses.