Showing posts with label sex offenders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex offenders. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Pope embraces the Holy DUH


Finally.

By the grace of God, the Catholic Church, led by the pope, eventually came around to embrace the obvious.

Slowly, yes. Painfully, yes. But around it does come, usually, to embrace the gospel truth.


TODAY, the news of this comes via The New York Times . . . which had its own role in forcing the issue:
In his most direct condemnation of the sexual abuse crisis that has swept the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday said that the “sins inside the church” posed the greatest threat to the church, adding that “forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

“Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church,” Benedict told reporters aboard his plane en route to Portugal, speaking about the abuse crisis.

“This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from the sin in the church,” he added. “The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

In placing the blame for sex abuse directly on the church, Benedict appeared to distance himself from other church officials who in recent weeks have criticized the news media for reporting on the sex abuse crisis, which they called attacks on the church.

In recent months, the sex abuse crisis has revealed an ancient institution wrestling with modernity and has brought to light an internal culture clash between traditionalists who have valued protecting priests and bishops above all else, and others who seek more transparency.

The crisis has also raised questions about how Benedict handled sex abuse as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as bishop in Munich in 1980 when a pedophile priest was moved to his diocese for treatment.

A traditionalist but also a strong voice within the church calling for purification, Benedict met privately with victims of sex abuse on a brief trip to Malta last month, his third such meeting. In March, he issued a strong letter to Irish Catholics reeling from reports of systemic sex abuse in Catholic institutions. And last week the Vatican took control of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful religious order whose founder was founded to have abused seminarians and fathered several children.

But the pope’s off-the-cuff remarks on Tuesday were his most direct since the crisis hit the church in Europe earlier this year.

On the plane, Benedict told reporters that the church had to relearn “conversion, prayer, penance.”

WELL, DUH. And amen.

Let the Vatican's deeds now match the Holy Father's words.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Be a Saint


Maybe the Vatican, in dealing with the sex-abuse scandal and its never-ending aftermath, just needs to follow the example of a Saint.

For one thing, unlike the pope, a Saint doesn't need a veteran Vatican watcher to explain to the rest of the press corps, in effect,
"Yes, Benedict XVI was addressing the Scandals in this homily. It appears he was being critical of the church and pointing to the need for repentance."

At the Vatican, Christ's injunction in the fifth chapter of Matthew about letting
"your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No'," has yet to gain complete traction among those who proclaim it.

IS IT POSSIBLE that, in his own way, a modern-day sinner turned Saint -- as in New Orleans Saints -- might have a better grasp on confession and repentance than many of the pointy hats who've been preaching confession and repentance to fallen humanity since 33 A.D.?

Present-day Saint and former Nebraska Cornhusker sinner Carl Nicks just might. Perhaps they ought to start subscribing to the Omaha World-Herald all across Vatican City:
Carl Nicks returned to Nebraska on Wednesday with a Super Bowl watch, a new tattoo and a humble act of contrition.

Nicks met briefly after practice with head coach Bo Pelini, who banned the offensive lineman from the Huskers’ pro day two years ago. It was an unceremonious parting with the program before New Orleans made Nicks a fifth-round draft pick.

Nicks called the NU football office Wednesday and asked if he could come by — and now plans to stay for the spring game Saturday.

“I figured it was about time to put some water on some of those bridges I burned,” Nicks said.

As soon as the 2007 season ended at Colorado — along with Bill Callahan’s reign as head coach — Nicks stopped going to class, which he counts among the “immature stuff I did.” About three months after Pelini replaced Callahan, he cited an arrest and Nicks being a bad example for returning players in barring him from pro day.

Nicks said it wasn’t until he got to New Orleans and talked with former Husker safety Josh Bullocks that he realized that he was in the wrong.

“For about a good three or four months I had blamed Bo for it and I was blaming other people, and at the end of the day, you’ve got to look in the mirror,” Nicks said. “Once I got a little older, played a little professional ball, I realized how good I had it and just how bad I treated everybody.”
AN ASSOCIATED PRESS story adds this from Nicks:
"I'm not who I was then," he said. "It just kind of hurts, to know I made a fool of myself."

Dressed in shorts and a Kobe Bryant Lakers' jersey, Nicks approached Pelini after the coach's post-practice session with reporters. They talked for a few minutes and shook hands.

"I wouldn't be true to Nebraska if I didn't try to apologize to Bo, even though I didn't play for him," Nicks said. "He's the face of Nebraska. I have to make it right with him, Mr. Osborne and everyone I did wrong when I was here."

Osborne surprised Nicks by greeting him as Carl -- "I didn't think he knew my name" - and then told him to learn from his mistakes and finish his college degree as soon as possible.

"I basically apologized to them for being an irresponsible athlete," Nicks said. "I didn't really have to do it, but I felt I needed to do it."

THAT IS the grace through repentance the Pope was talking about in his homily today -- the one the press was divining for applicability to the Catholic Church's present sins.

It would be nice if Benedict could just come out and say what he has to say . . . plainly. Specifically. Explicitly. It would be nice if he could do that in personal terms, not hiding behind addressing the "church."

It would be nice if the pope's subordinates -- who have been so quick to unleash public-relations Armageddon on the "evil press" for delving into the sins of the fathers -- could follow the Founder's command (again, from Matthew 5) instead:
40
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.
41
Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.
42
Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
IT WOULD be nice if everybody involved -- the leadership of an institutional church just as in need of confession and repentance as any of us (and maybe more) -- tried to emulate the saints in all this. And failing that, maybe they just could follow the example of a Saint.

Monday, April 12, 2010

IT'S TRUE! Onion not making that s*** up!


Until now, I always thought The Onion was just making stuff up.

You know what I'm talking about -- for instance, the "fake" advice columns like "Ask a Bee" and "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child."

You'll note that I put "fake" in quotation marks. That's because I don't think The Onion is making that stuff up -- at least not all of it. The was brought home by an Italian Catholic website,
Pontifex, which apparently has run a real-life version of "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child Bishop."

AND THE retired bishop then went on at length about how the recent media scrutiny of the Vatican is all a big conspiracy put together by the Christ-killers. From London, The Times reports :
A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

Bishop Babini denied he had made any anti-Semitic remarks. He was backed by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), which issued a declaration by Bishop Babini in which he said: “Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me.”

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof.

Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

He was quoted as saying that Hitler was “not just mad” but had exploited German anger over the excesses of German Jews who in the 1930s had throttled the German economy.

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said Monsignor Babini was using “slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to World War Two”.
YOU KNOW, by the time the Vatican gets through asking Catholics -- at least on this issue -- to believe several unbelievable things before breakfast, and by the time various Catholic clerics and laymen get through saying patently crazy things in defense of the church, you have to wonder how many people will be scandalized right out of believing in God.

And scandalized right into believing
The Onion.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Vatican today: Homina, homina, homina

What The New York Times started, The Associated Press just might have finished.

The signature above is that of "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger," who would become Pope Benedict XVI. That signature was on a 1985 document uncovered by the AP, a document in which the cardinal said, in effect, he didn't think it was such a great idea to laicize a pederast priest in California.

Presented with an incriminating document, Vatican officials insisted that the American press believe the unbelievable. Here is a bit of the AP report, but do go to MSNBC and read the whole thing:

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that it was Ratzinger's signature. "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

Another spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up. "The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn't cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

(snip)

Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.
LET US REVIEW. The Diocese of Oakland flat-out tells the Vatican one of its priests is a stone-cold child molester.

The Diocese of Oakland tells the Vatican it's really, really important that this clerical molester be drummed out of the priesthood.

The Vatican sits on the case for several years. And then when the diocese gets a response, in 1985, it's from Cardinal Ratzinger -- the future pope -- saying, basically, "Not so fast, boys. Is it really good for the universal church to be kicking kiddie rapers to the curb here?"

And now, when the wire service tells the Vatican what it has, officials there confirm it's Ratzinger's signature, but stress they don't "believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations."

Translation into American English: "Oh, s***!"

Out of context? What the hell context justifies -- after being told, as an established fact, that a priest is a pervert and, in fact, has acted on his perversion . . . with children -- placing appearances over justice, over protecting Catholic children?

How do you finesse that which cannot be finessed?


HERE'S WHAT
is becoming quite plain. The Catholic Church -- and I am sure it is not alone among earthly institutions in this -- developed a culture of juridical and moral deviance when it came to its perception of, and its dealing with, pederasty. That culture was every bit as perverted as the child-raping priests it coddled and shielded from justice.

And Pope Benedict XVI was part of that culture. He bought into that culture. To the extent that he no longer buys into that culture, it is a relatively recent development in his long priestly vocation.

That seems clear, and yet the Vatican -- and many Catholics around the world -- cannot deal with that, almost as if admitting that the pope is human, possessing human frailties and committing human sins, would cause the whole edifice of the Catholic Church to come tumbling down.

O ye of little faith.

Obviously, we're still not done with the excuses, and we're certainly not done with the wagon-circling or the media-bashing. That, however, doesn't alter the fact that there really is only one thing left for the church to do -- something it absolutely requires of us mere laymen.

Confession.

It is long past time for institutional Catholicism to confess its sins against God, against itself and especially against its children. It is long past time for the church to confess, to repent, to exhibit a "firm purpose of amendment" . . . and then to do penance.


Just do it. Otherwise, there will be hell to pay.

Literally.

Friday, April 09, 2010

Tlhagale, the self-hating archbishop

I regret to report that there's a South African cleric who is a fifth-columnist within Catholicism -- a linchpin of the anti-Catholic "hate" campaign hell-bent on tarring the whole church with the unfortunate actions of a few.

EWTN News, no doubt, reported this awful slander under extreme duress:
The “scourge” of sexual abuse by clergy is a problem in Africa, Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said recently at a Chrism Mass. Condemning priests for betraying the Gospel and Christ himself, he called on clergy to experience the redeeming power of Christ and to rebuild “the battered image of the Church.”

Archbishop Tlhagale’s comments came at the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King.

He said reports of the “painful” clergy scandals in Ireland and Germany kept him from a positive frame of mind “for I know that the Church in Africa is inflicted by the same scourge.”

“In our times we have betrayed the very Gospel we preach. The Good News we claim to announce sounds so hollow, so devoid of any meaning when matched with our much publicized negative moral behavior. Many who looked up to priests as their model feel betrayed, ashamed and disappointed.”


(snip)

He claimed that the image of the Catholic Church is “virtually in ruins” because of badly behaving priests, whom he compared to “wolves wearing sheep’s skin.”

“We are slowly but surely bent on destroying the Church of God by undermining and tearing apart the faith of lay believers. Ironically, priests have become a stumbling block to the promotion of vocations.

“Bad news spreads like wild fire. I wish I could say that there are only a few bad apples. But the outrage around us suggests that there are more than just a few bad apples.”
WILL SOMEBODY kindly supply this uninformed archbishop with the official talking points and get him on message?

Repeat after us Tlhagale:
"It's just a few bad apples; we've got it under control. The press hates Catholics and wants to destroy the pope. It's not our fault, we swear to God."

Good God, they'll make anybody an archbishop down there. Sheesh.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Martyrdom by paper cuts?


Jesus had problems with his bishops long before His bumbling bench of disciples got a promotion and a pointy hat.

One of the first things they didn't "get," back in the 18th chapter of Luke, was the Boss' memo about how "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Quickly after, still scratching their heads over that pronouncement,
no doubt, the clerics to be tried to shoo away children seeking the good rabbi.

Luke sets the scene in Judea on what had been a long, tiring day.

"People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them," the evangelist writes, "and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.

"Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, 'Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.'"


ALMOST 2,000 years later, the successors to the disciples still don't "get" it. In fact, too many of them absolutely have perverted Jesus' unambiguous admonition.

In America and, as we now learn, all across the world, far too many Catholic priests -- these men who act
"in persona Christi," in the person of Christ, at the altar -- let the children come to them all right . . . and then molested and raped them. Then, in the name of not giving "scandal," bishops protected not the children but, instead, their violators.

If what Jesus said is really so, and the "the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" -- the children -- and the bureaucracy of the church has spent decades acting contrarily, what then is the kingdom to which it lays claim?

If the guardians of the Catholic faith obscure the kingdom of God behind a phalanx of bureaucrats and canon lawyers -- with secrecy their cry and Vatican letters their shield -- does that mean they've decided to deny Jesus in order to save His church? Has the magisterium suspended "whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it," kind of like Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War?

Do they consider that it is better for us that a few kids be thrown to the wolves instead of the hierarchy, so that the whole church may not perish?
Is that it? Why does that sound familiar?

UNBELIEVABLY, the Vatican seeks to portray itself as the victim in all this -- hounded by the "pagan" media much as Caligula and Nero tormented the early church.

I am not making this up. Unfortunately, neither is
The Associated Press:
The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.


(snip)

"There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.

It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.

The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.
NO, the "persecution" of the church by the press comes not because the pope "defends life and the family," but -- ironically -- because some elements of the church have been acting like (or covering up for those who've been acting like) Caligula. Or, at a minimum, a guest at one of the mad emperor's Roman orgies.

The thing about the press is this: If you're in public life and generally keep your nose (and other appendages) clean, reporters generally don't go around creating slanders out of thin air with which to persecute you. If you're getting bashed, oftentimes it's because you handed someone a baseball bat and dared them to use it.

The Vatican's problem -- more
our problem, actually -- is that its clerics and functionaries forget whom they serve. Sometimes, they're just serving themselves . . . perpetuating the bureaucracy and the institution with no regard for the first principles that gave life to the institution.

Other times, they're serving the pope -- sheltering a pope from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, reality. It's as if they have no faith that a church built upon the "rock"--
Cephas . . . Petrus . . . Peter . . . the clueless bumbler formerly known as Simon -- who denied Christ three times could survive a present-day pope being exposed as a fairly ordinary specimen of fallen humanity.

It's as if these slobbering toadies think only an übermensch with no need of Christ's saving grace could lead the church toward that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

At no time in all of this has anyone at the Vatican given the impression of actually being, first and foremost, a servant of Jesus. Or of the billion Catholics today who, tragically, find themselves in the spiritual care of self-pitying political creatures such as these.

Miserere nobis.

Really, were the last words of our first pope -- the martyred Peter --
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"? Somehow, I think not.

IN MATTHEW 18, Jesus has a few things to say about children, the hierarchy of heaven and the fate of those who causes the "little ones" to fall:
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.
6
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
7
Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come!
8
If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire.
9
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.
10
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
IN THE CONTEXT of this particular Catholic moment -- one that has been decades in the making -- no fair reading of Jesus' words from Matthew would point toward divine condemnation of how the press has covered the scandals.

But if anyone in Rome -- or among various
mau-mauers taking up space on the world's hapless bench of bishops -- finds Christ's words here somehow discomfiting . . . well, I don't think that would be an unreasonable reaction.

We live in a world that is sick unto death. We are beset by death-lovers and death-dealers. We are slaves to materialism. We live amid a culture where vulgarity has beauty in full retreat.

We need Jesus. We need His saving grace -- all of us, Catholics, Protestants, pagans . . whatever.

We need to see Jesus. We need to see Him in all things -- and especially in His church.

Somehow, those who administer Christ's church on His behalf have come between the Son of Man and those of us who stand at a distance, crying "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"

We look for God, but do not see Him in Rome.

We look to the successors of the apostles but, at best, we catch only fleeting glimpses of pre-Pentecost imitators.

We listen for the Truth, but what we've been hearing of late -- from Rome -- sounds more like the Father of Lies to me.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Where there's smoke. . . .


Sometimes, Satan catches a break.

Sometimes, he doesn't.

Now, if you're ensconced somewhere deep in the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church, there are procedures for deciding when the devil gets his due process. The procedures, it would seem, go something like this:

If you're in the media, and Vatican functionaries determine that your "biased reporting" is the handiwork of the Evil One, the church can move amazingly swiftly for a 2,000-year-old bureaucracy.

First, the Vatican newspaper launches a propaganda campaign against the printer's devil.

Then bishops get into the act, calling for the faithful to "besiege"
The New York Times and cancel their subscriptions to The Oregonian in Portland. In the case of the Times, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said he would "suggest canceling our subscriptions . . . but we need to know what the enemy is saying."

And then, we have the Vatican's chief exorcist contending that the press isn't just "the enemy" but is taking its marching orders from The Enemy. Which, of course, has led to a persecution of the Catholic Church --
at least according to the papal preacher -- not unlike that of the Jews.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if you're a priest who's molested kids, and if a local Catholic Church canonical court has determined you possess "almost a satanic quality," it can take years . . . and years . . . and years for the Vatican to get alarmed enough to remove the "smoke of Satan" from the sanctuary.

One case in point comes from Tucson, and the findings of the Arizona Daily Star don't exactly heap discredit upon the much-disputed reporting of Laurie Goodstein at the Times:

The late Tucson Bishop Manuel D. Moreno, often characterized as a poor advocate for sexual abuse victims, struggled with both canon law and Vatican mandates in his efforts to defrock two local priests, documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show.

In one case, Moreno pleaded with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for help in removing the Rev. Michael Teta, who was convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional.

"I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case, because the accused was a priest in whom I had great confidence at one time, but who, unfortunately, worked among our former seminarians, and, terrible to say, evidently corrupted many of them," Moreno wrote in an April 1997 letter to Ratzinger.

Ratzinger's office oversaw Teta's case because the crimes allegedly occurred in the confessional. His office did not handle the case of the other priest, Monsignor Robert C. Trupia, until 2001, when jurisdiction over such cases changed.

Teta's case, Moreno wrote, had already gone on for seven years. Teta was first suspended in 1990.

Teta and Trupia were defrocked in 2004. The diocese suspended Trupia in 1992 after a Tucson mother told the diocese her young son had been sexually abused by Trupia.

The diocese did not notify police about allegations against Trupia until 2000, when mandatory- reporting policies were adopted here.


(snip)

Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas said delays in cases here were not due to any Vatican office, including Ratzinger's.

"The frustration that you can sense in (Moreno's) letter, when put in the context of the delays experienced in our diocese, clearly refers to the challenges of getting the case resolved locally and did not refer to a frustration with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Kicanas wrote in an e-mail response to Star questions.

The church's canonical court in 1997 found "there is almost a satanic quality in (Teta's) mode of acting toward young men and boys." The court found that Teta's "insidious 'rape' of so many young men in his capacity as a priest" warranted his immediate removal from the priesthood.

"What is wrong with this system in which it takes another seven years to defrock a priest that has been found guilty of 'satanic abuse?' " Tucson lawyer Lynne Cadigan said.

Kicanas said that from 1997 to 2003, a process of review and appeals by Teta's canonical lawyer took place. "Unavoidably, criminal cases in our civil system of justice and canonical trials in the church, because of the need to respect the right to due process, can take a long time," Kicanas wrote.
DESPITE THE OFFICIAL bleating of the Vatican, various bishops, "orthodox Catholic" church militants, exorcists, papal preachers and L'Osservatore Romano, where there's smoke, there just might be hellfire -- and it's not in the press room.

The "smoke of Satan" still hangs over the church after two-and-a-half decades of sordid revelation after sordid revelation and egregious cover-up after egregious cover-up.
The mystical Body of Christ has endured decade after decade of justice denied and responsibility evaded, and it's high time for the magisterium to account for its actions -- and its inaction.

Bishops the world over have some explaining to do. And that includes the Bishop of Rome.

They can do it now, or they can do it later . . . before a much higher court than that of public opinion.

Friday, April 02, 2010

We have met the Enemy. . . .


The church militants of Catholicism, marching to the orders of their indignant leaders, have been quick to consign "the enemies of the church" to the fiery depths.

In the face of a decades-long trail of pederast priests, enabling superiors and abused, broken children, we at long last give voice to our outrage . . . at the media. For "an attack on the papacy."

I don't think it's the media the church needs to be worrying about. Because, truly, we have met the Enemy . . . and he is in us.

A reading from the gospel of
Matthew, Chapter 25
:
31
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit
upon his glorious throne,
32
and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34
Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
35
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
36
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'
37
Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
39
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
40
And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41
Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43
a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'
44
Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'
45
He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'
46
And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
THIS IS, at its core, the grounds upon which the "satanic" press calls Catholic Church leadership to account.

And this, from the Daily Mail in London, is the reality these Catholics in high places (and low places, too) neglect as they hyperventilate over how terribly mean the press is being to the pope and the church:
An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.

The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with.

In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.

Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn't prepared for "that kind of an onslaught."

The hotline is the Church's attempt to win back trust in the face of an escalating abuse scandal that threatens the papacy of German-born Pontiff Benedict XVI in Rome.

Earlier this week it was alleged that an ally of the Pope, Bishop Mixa, beat children - a charge he has subsequently denied.

Former girls and boys testified that he beat them with fists and a carpet beater which screaming; 'The devil is in you and I will drive him out!'

Also, the bishopric of Trier reported that 20 priests are suspected of having sexually abused children between the 1950s and 1990s.
IT'S ALL ABOUT "the least ones." Not the pope. Not the bishops.

It is these "least ones" the church so grievously failed all around the world. It is these "least ones" priests preyed upon -- molested -- and it is these "least ones" the hierarchy shoved aside, all in the name of protecting "the church" from "scandal."

And if those self-pitying forces in the church think the New York Times is picking on them, they haven't seen anything yet. Because you can't mau-mau the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

The devil made him say it


The man who preaches to the pope today compared a few critical news stories about the Catholic Church's problems with perversion to the persecution of the Jews.

Above is what the persecution of the Jews looked like.

But the pope's own priest, in the Vatican, on Good Friday, as the pope listened, said that stories about priests raping little boys, bishops covering it up and enabling the priests to rape again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and whether the pope -- when he was an archbishop and a cardinal -- did enough to put a stop to it, that those articles are somehow so awful as to be compared to the Holocaust and other persecutions of the Hebrew race.

The mind struggles to comprehend such personal and institutional narcissism. The mouth fails to form the proper words to respond to such a notion -- a sick notion put forth on the most solemn day in Christendom.

In the Vatican.

As the pope listened --
and said nothing.

HERE IS A BIT of the story from The New York Times, which we all know has installed Satan in a corner office:
A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.

The remarks, on the day Christians mark the crucifixion, underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and criticism over how it has handled charges of child molestation against priests in the past, and sought to focus attention on the church as the central victim.

In recent weeks, Vatican officials and many bishops have angrily denounced news reports that Benedict failed to act strongly enough against pedophile priests, once as archbishop of Munich and Friesing in 1980 and once as a leader of a powerful Vatican congregation in the 1990s.

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
I PAUSE HERE to give you a chance to catch your breath and collect your thoughts. It is not a good thing to take in this story all at once -- I made that mistake, and you don't want to repeat it.

While we're all catching our breath, let me just say that if there's a Catholic left in Europe
-- or, hell . . . anywhere -- after all this, it won't be for the Catholic hierarchy's lack of trying. The devil is somewhere, but I doubt it's at the Times.

That said, we now return to our regularly scheduled outrage:
Father Cantalamessa’s comments about the Jews came toward the end of a long talk about scripture, the nature of violence and the sacrifice of Jesus. He also spoke about violence against women, but gave only a slight mention of the children and adolescents who have been molested by priests. “I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here,” he said.

Disclosures about hundreds of such cases have emerged in recent months in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and France, after a previous round of scandal in the United States earlier this decade.

A leading advocate for sex abuse victims in the United States, David Clohessy, called comparing criticism of the church to persecution of the Jews “breathtakingly callous and misguided.”

“Men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims,” he said. “And to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

The comments could cause a new twist in Vatican-Jewish relations, which have had ups and downs during Benedict’s papacy.

Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who hosted Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”
I WISH to associate myself with the remarks of the good rabbi.

Amen.

The devil made them do it? All of them?


"Look, Fadda! I seen Laurie Goodstein from da Noo Yawk Times, and her head was spinnin' 'round like a top!"

"Aye, my son. That's because the devil has a hold on her filthy soul, the ink-stained wench! Now, you remember that if you tell your mother about our 'meetings,' you'll go straight to hell, right?"

"Yes, Fadda."

That's a cheap shot, you say? Well . . . yes. I agree with you. It's a bigoted, stereotypical and nasty cheap shot.

On Good Friday, no less.


BUT WHEN IT COMES to cheap shots -- and playing fast and loose with the truth (not to mention wild speculation about the workings of angels and demons) -- is that really any worse than this, uncritically reported by the Catholic News Service?
Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”

Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

Father Amorth added that in instances of sexual abuse committed by some members of the clergy, the devil “uses” priests in order to cast blame upon the entire Church: “The devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints.”


I KNOW a little bit about this mindset; I've seen it close up, and I know how alluring it can be.

It's alluring because it allows you to evade responsibility for your own sins. You're good, and any bad thing that happens to you -- any bad thing you do to yourself or others -- well, it's just not your fault.
The devil made you do it.

It was a satanic attack. Yeah, that's the ticket. . . .

It's right out of an old Flip Wilson sketch featuring "Geraldine."

* I bought a hunk of junk car, then didn't have any maintenance done on it. And -- who'd a thunk it! -- it broke down when I was on my way to a job interview. I don't understand these constant attacks by Satan! He's trying to thwart me, and harm the Catholic Church!

* I love my wife, but these attacks by Satan are always forcing me to have sex with prostitutes! Now she's divorcing me, and my kids are going to grow up in a broken home!

Damn you, Satan!
Oh, wait. . . .

* I'm a Catholic priest, and Satan forced me to enter the priesthood even though I've always been attracted to boys much younger than myself. And now, the demons have made me volunteer to be the head of my parish's youth programs!

Satan is making me molest 12-year-olds against my will! The devil is trying to destroy the church! It's not my fault!

What will the prince of darkness do next? Make my bishop move me to another parish when I get caught?

Not only that . . . the devil is going to dictate a story about child molestation in the church to Laurie Goodstein!
The horror!

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, none of us have free will. And none of us are capable of summoning the will -- none of us are capable of accessing the divine grace -- to look Lucifer in the eye and say "no."

Catholics have been saying the Prayer to St. Michael, begging protection against "the wickedness and snares of the devil," since 1886 out of sheer boredom, of course, being that resistance is futile when it comes to the Evil One. It -- obviously -- has been predestined that priests must submit to the devil's entreaties to screw little kids, and that their superiors must cover up that priests have screwed little kids.

This has been preordained so the devil can make priests screw more little kids, all so his malevolent majesty will have something juicy to make Laurie Goodstein of the New York (Satanic) Times write about.


In order to destroy the Catholic Church.

And perhaps a few immortal souls along the way . . .
but that's not important now.

Because it's all about us.

And don't think the devil doesn't know it.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Lookin' for Lucifer in all the wrong places

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Satan is not employed by The New York Times.

And sorry, Catholic Paranoiacs in Denial, that meeting where all of mainstream media gathered to plot the latest attack on the church took place only in your overheated imaginations.

The original Times report about how the Vatican handled the case of a pervy Wisconisin priest -- one accused of abusing more than 200 deaf children -- may or may not have assumed too much and the reporting may or may not have been sloppy (and, yes, Maureen Dowd is still Maureen Dowd), but the original all-American, all-Catholic crime remains.

The cover-up for -- and the decades-long tolerance of -- a child molester remains as a millstone around the neck of the bishops who supervised him, if not the neck of the cardinal-now-pope who got the case dumped in his lap years too late.

It is disingenuous for the anti-media church militants to yell at the Times for excessive scrutiny of Pope Benedict XVI while tolerating insufficient scrutiny of Catholic leaders closer to home -- leaders who, in effect, enabled criminal acts that cry out to heaven for redress.

BUT THINGS are better now, says the church militant. We don't let such unfortunate things happen anymore.

Bull, say those who keep track of such things.

Today's story from
National Public Radio just might dwarf the impact of the original, disputed Times piece:
In the wake of its own scandal almost a decade ago, the U.S. church says it has reformed its policies for handling sexual abuse allegations and will remove from ministry every priest who is credibly accused of abuse.

But some of those priests are now being quietly reinstated.

Juan Rocha was 12 years old when he says he was molested by his parish priest, the Rev. Eric Swearingen. He eventually brought his complaints to the bishop of Fresno, Calif., John Steinbock. When Steinbock said he didn't find the allegations credible, Rocha sued the priest and the diocese in civil court.

In 2006, the jury found 9 to 3 that Swearingen had abused Rocha. But it could not decide whether the diocese knew about it. Rather than go through a new trial, the two sides settled.

At the time, Steinbock said he thought the jury got it wrong, and that while the Catholic Church should protect children, "doing this cannot be done in such a manner as to punish innocent priests."

"Bishop Steinbock continues Swearingen in ministry to this day, choosing to believe the priest is innocent, choosing to protect the priest, and choosing to disregard entirely the judicial finding by a jury that found he had committed the crime of sexual abuse against Juan," says Rocha's attorney, Jeffrey Anderson.

Today, Swearingen serves as priest at Holy Spirit parish in Fresno, where he also oversees the youth ministry. Swearingen did not return phone calls, and Steinbock declined requests for an interview.

Swearingen's case is not an isolated one, says Anne Barrett Doyle, who works with the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org. She says that recently, bishops have started quietly returning to ministry priests who previously have been accused of abuse.

"I think they feel that the crisis has died down in the public mind," she says. "Therefore, they have some confidence that if they go ahead and reinstate these priests, that they'll get very little backlash."
THERE'S MORE. Oh, is there more. Go to the NPR website and read on.

And while the Catholic attack dogs throw brickbats at the devil where he ain't, the original fallen angel will be erecting the gates of hell in the middle of all those circled wagons.