The Other Shoe Drops

Errant priests’ secret children to sue church

When Pat Bond told her lover Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, that she was pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion.

Bond, who was 28, had a miscarriage and then became pregnant again.
This time Willenborg’s superiors urged her to give up the child for adoption.
Bond, from Missouri, kept the child but agreed to a vow of silence.

In a signed contract with the Catholic Church, she undertook to keep the priest’s identity secret in exchange for financial support for her son, Nathan.

In America, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Austria,women made pregnant by priests have signed such pledges in exchange for hush money from the church.

Pope Benedict XVI refused to comment on the scandals on his flight to Malta for a weekend visit yesterday, saying only that the church had been “wounded by our sins”. But he faces a new battle over the children of priests. Many former lovers and their offspring are preparing to mount lawsuits.

Bond was 25 when she started a five-year relationship with Willenborg in 1983, after going to him for marriage counselling. He kissed her passionately as she left his parlour, then she left her husband.

After Bond became pregnant by him for the second time in 1986, Willenborg’s order, the Order of Friars Minor, offered her $50,000 and a confidentiality contract. “They said: ‘Here, take this money, sign this contract and you’ll have support for your child’. I was very naive and I signed,” said Bond.

She broke her promise of silence last year after the Franciscans refused to meet part of the cost of treatment for her son Nathan, then 22, who died in November from a brain tumour.

When Willenborg’s liaisons with Bond, now 53, and another woman became public, the priest was suspended from his parish in Ashland, Wisconsin. He was treated for sex addiction, then returned to his pastoral duties. Catherine Schroeder, a St Louis lawyer for the Order of Friars Minor, declined to comment. Willenborg and the order failed to return calls and emails.

Other cases are reaching the US courts. In Maryland, two children of the late Father Francis Ryan are suing their local archdiocese and a religious order for $10m after discovering through DNA tests that he was their father.

Carla Latty, 58, and Adrian Senna, 65, say Ryan never admitted he was their father or made any payments to their late mother. Senna was sent to an orphanage, while Latty was put up for adoption.

Cait Finnegan, of the Good Tidings association, an American charity for priests and their lovers, has been contacted by nearly 2,000 women who had relationships with priests. She said one pregnant friend had been told by a bishop to “get rid of the child” — a comment she took to mean she should have an abortion. The woman kept the baby.

Thousands of priests in German-speaking countries are believed to have fathered children. Paul Zuhlener, an Austrian theologian, has estimated that up to 22% of Austrian priests have sexual relationships.

Sabine Bauer of the Austrian branch of We Are Church, a reform group, predicted a spate of lawsuits. “The children of priests, and their mothers, are the next ones who will take legal action against the church. Their numbers are large and they have been denied basic rights,” she said.

In Britain, Adrianna Alsworth, who has two children by a priest and runs the Sonflowers helpline for those who have had relationships with priests, said she knew of several women who had been offered confidentiality contracts in return for child support.

“The children aren’t given an opportunity to have a normal family life, and they suffer,” she said.
In Ireland, bishop Pat Buckley, who runs Bethany, a support group for women in relationships with priests, said he had dealt with two whose abortions had been paid for by priest lovers. In one case, the priest had accompanied the woman to England for the abortion.

In central Italy, Luisa, a psychologist who has an 18-month-old son by a priest, was told by her bishop: “If you give up the baby for adoption, you can stay with the priest and I’ll pretend there’s nothing wrong.” She refused but the couple have since broken up and the priest refuses to recognise the child.

Lorenzo Maestri, a former priest and member of Vocatio, an association for married priests in Italy, accused the Pope of leading a cover-up. “Benedict is responsible for the secrecy, because in 2001, as head of the Vatican office which dealt with all sexual problems involving priests, he ordered the bishops to send these cases to him in Rome,” Maestri said.

Benedict, whose fifth anniversary of his election is tomorrow, may acknowledge the child-abuse cases by agreeing to meet seven victims on his Malta visit. There is no such prospect for the children of priests.

When asked what she would like the pontiff to do, Bond quoted her late son: “Nathan told me, ‘I want the Pope to tell me he’s sorry. The church abandons us, it calls us legal obligations. It doesn’t even call us by our names’.”

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I have maintained that the emphasis on gay ephebophilia in Europe and North America was a purposeful strategy to deflect attention away from the truth about heterosexual abuse. It is heterosexual abuse the results in abandoning children or abortion. Like in pedophilia these very real children become "legal obligations" or "evidence of the violation of celibacy". It does not surprise me in the least that abortion or abandonment would be a management strategy, and one suggested by bishops. Removing or hiding evidence is a very common strategy of the guilty. So is deflection, so is scapegoating, so are lies and denial.

How many children are we talking about? Probably millions. It is estimated that 50% or better of the African clergy are involved with women and have families. It is the same in Latin America, and in the US Richard Sipe has estimated at any given time 50% of American clergy are in an active sexual relationship. All of these priests are not gay men attracted to teen age boys as the apologists would have us believe. The vast majority are heterosexuals and way too many of them are abandoning their partners and their children when they are not advocating their abortion or adoption. I guess it's better to be a hypocritical priest for life, than a belatedly responsible adult male and stand by your children.

I wondered why Cardinal Bertone resurrected the gay/pedophile link while he was in Chile. I subsequently learned that the abuse case exploding in Chile at the time involved a priest in a long standing heterosexual relationship who is credibly accused of abusing his own daughter at five years of age, producing heterosexual pornography and using teen age prostitutes his 'partner' procurred for him. But clerical abuse is entirely a gay problem according to Bertone.

Of all the lies and exagerations which have come from the Vatican, the gay lie is the one that most closely approximates Goebell's strategy of fomenting moral panic. As Dr. Porch mentions in a comment for a previous article on this blog, this is classic institutional projection and it's effective with the true believers as can be seen from the most recent comments for John Allen's original article at the National Catholic Reporter.

Today marks Benedict's fifth anniversary in the papacy. If he thinks he's had problems defending his office and the Vatican Church previously, just wait. The march of women and their abandoned priestly offspring is just beginning. The depth of this filth could very well bury his fantastical notions of the all male celibate priesthood.

While the Pope did meet with victims of abuse in Malta, he also stayed on his favorite topic---the evils of the dictatorship of relativism. Is he willfully blind to the dictatorship of relativism practiced by the Vatican? In the meantime, Nicholas Kristoff writes an elegant piece on the 'other Catholicism'. The one I love. The one the actually lives the Gospel.

A Church Mary Can Love
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times - Published: April 17, 2010

I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?

Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems. It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”

That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old boys’ clubs.

It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies. Jesus himself focused on the needy rather than dogma, and went out of his way to engage women and treat them with respect.

The first-century church was inclusive and democratic, even including a proto-feminist wing and texts. The Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic text from the third century, declares of Mary Magdalene: “She is the one the Savior loved more than all the disciples.” Likewise, the Gospel of Mary (from the early second century) suggests that Jesus entrusted Mary Magdalene to instruct the disciples on his religious teachings. (I think it's more appropriate to use the term spiritual teachings.)

St. Paul refers in Romans 16 to a first-century woman named Junia as prominent among the early apostles, and to a woman named Phoebe who served as a deacon. The Apostle Junia became a Christian before St. Paul did (chauvinist translators have sometimes rendered her name masculine, with no scholarly basis).

Yet over the ensuing centuries, the church reverted to strong patriarchal attitudes, while also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with sexuality. The shift may have come with the move from house churches, where women were naturally accepted, to more public gatherings.

The upshot is that proto-feminist texts were not included when the Bible was compiled (and were mostly lost until modern times). Tertullian, an early Christian leader, denounced women as “the gateway to the devil,” while a contemporary account reports that the great Origen of Alexandria took his piety a step further and castrated himself.

The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut. The same faith that was so pioneering that it had Junia as a female apostle way back in the first century can’t even have a woman as the lowliest parish priest. Female deacons, permitted for centuries, are banned today.
That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.

But there’s more to the picture than that. In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches. One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church — obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.

So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.

It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile. (Unfortunately, the Vatican, Opus Dei, the Neo Cats, the Legionaires, and other conservative apostolates and their supporters will never let this happen.)

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Do I think that Pope Benedict cares about the victims? Yes, but not as much as he cares about defending and protecting his fantasy of the priesthood and hierarchical authority and his supposed direct pipe line to God. I keep hoping to read a quote of his that actually mentions his desire to clean out the filth in the Vatican, but I don't. I keep hoping to read that he met with victims as an equal and not surrounded by reminders of his authority. It never happens.

Here's John Allen's report on Benedict's meeting with Maltese victims:

Lombardi said the session took place in the chapel of the residence of the papal nuncio, or ambassador, in Malta. It began with a moment of silent prayer, and then Benedict moved near the altar to meet the victims one-by-one, allowing them to say "whatever they wished to say," Lombardi said. (yes, this is exactly the kind of setting which is going to foster one on one honest communication. Let's not forget boys, just who you are talking too.)

The pope also responded to the victims individually, in either English or Italian, Lombardi said, but did not offer any general remarks.

The meeting concluded with a common prayer in Maltese, and the pope gave each victim a rosary.

The victims were accompanied by two local Maltese bishops, while the pope was joined by a senior Vatican official, his private secretary, and his nuncio in Malta.

Everything about this meeting is contraindicated in doing real therapy for real healing. I suspect a number of these victims will experience some form of PTSD triggering and when the Vatican fails to deliver meaningful change they will join other survivors who have met the Pope and been sorely disappointed with the over all experience. A point John Allen makes:

On previous occassions when victims have met the pope, their first-blush reactions are generally positive, but over time some have argued that the promise of those meetings has not yet resulted in sufficient policy changes.

It is very very difficult for me to imagine Jesus standing at the Arc in the Temple and meeting with the sexual abuse victims of His anointed Apostles and handing them rosaries. "I'm on it, really." he says. "Go and sin no more." It's much easier to envision Mary coming unglued with Jesus for his lack of empathy, token concern, and obvious need to remind victims of his authority.

The Church of Mary would have dropped the pomp and met with victims in their reality, where victims actually have to live the consequences of priestly abuse. Like in prison.

Speaking of Mary, the Vatican has formed another visitation body to look into Medjugorge. Apparently in some messages Mary is not towing the company line. I will get into this visitation in more detail in another post, but there is zero question in my mind, that this visitation will not return a favorable report. At this particular time, when the entire authority structure is being put under a microscope, the Vatican can' afford to have Mary floating around and demanding they clean their act up. Especially when her seers are all married lay people. One last thought, it's really interesting that most of the fraud associated with Medjugorge has come from ordained clerics. Coincidence or part of the message?

Another Attempt To Explain Away The Evil Anti Catholic Media --- By Playing The Evil Nazi Card

Now the Italian Bishops are fielding the notion the abuse crisis is a rerun of the Joseph Goebbel's strategy to attack the moral credibility of the Church.

Sociologist compares today's crisis to Nazi smear campaign
by John L Allen Jr on Apr. 17, 2010 NCR Today

Perhaps the most remarkable defense of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis to appear in recent weeks ironically never mentions the current pope, and it comes not from a senior Vatican official but a lay Italian sociologist of religion. In a nutshell, the suggestion – never made explicit, but clear nonetheless – is that today’s drumbeat of criticism of the church over “pedophile priests” amounts to a replay of a Nazi smear campaign.

Massimo Introvigne, who directs the international Center for Studies on New Religions, published an essay in the April 16 edition of L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, about a Nazi campaign in 1937 led by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to discredit the Catholic Church following Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Introvigne argues that Goebbels created what sociologists would later call a “moral panic,” based on real facts, but facts which are distorted and amplified.

In the end, Introvigne says, the plan backfired – Goebbels’ attempt to smear the church generated more outrage than actual cases of sexual abuse in 1930s-era German Catholicism, which were reported in the German media and tried in German courts.

The entire article, including a translation of the Avenwire article can be read here.

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I thought John Allen was supposed to be covering the Pope's trip to Malta, not pushing a reverse propaganda piece for the Italian Bishop's conference.

What Goebel's did in Germany with ONE nation's completely state controlled media can under no circumstances be compared with countless independent media from dozens of countries reporting on the exact same phenomenon and exact same cover up. There is no comparison.

Except for one thing. Goebel's campaign was exagerrated from fact which shows that clerical pedophelia is not now, and never was, a novel product of Vatican II, secular relativism, gay agendas, the wild and crazy 60's, or a Jewish conspiracy. This is just another red herring and I'm surprised the NCR has undercut the brilliant reporting of Jason Berry by letting John Allen publish this piece.

Fraternities Don't Have A Coherent Media Strategy Either

Substitute vintage wine and princely clothing and one can conjur up notions of a 'clerical fraternity' which is also self serving, self regulating, and self forgiving of criminal kinds of behavior.

Why the Vatican media strategy is failing

BBC - 4/14/2010

The Vatican's handling of child abuse allegations has been called into question, following a senior cardinal's suggestion of a link between homosexuality and paedophilia.

Gerard O'Connell of the British Catholic newspaper The Universe says the Church's attempts to defend itself often just cause more damage.

Where is the Vatican's media strategy going wrong?

Pope Benedict XVI has been caught in the eye of the cyclone for several weeks, battered by accusations from lawyers and victims in Germany, the USA and elsewhere that he and senior Vatican officials have badly mismanaged or sought to cover up serious cases of abuse, and protected abuser priests.

These accusations - if not fully answered or firmly rebutted in timely fashion - are particularly damaging to the Catholic Church's credibility and image, as well as to the moral authority of the Pope and of the Holy See on the world stage.

But the Vatican has struggled to defend him from the daily drip-drip of damaging revelations, and many questioned its communications strategy.

'Shooting the messenger'

When I asked John L Allen, the American Catholic commentator on the Vatican, why its media strategy was failing, he responded:

"As soon as I see that they have a strategy, I will answer you! The fact is, they don't have one, and that is where they are going wrong."

Indeed, the absence of a coherent media strategy is evident, as a variety of Vatican personalities take it upon themselves to respond publicly to the accusations.

They often do it in a defensive or denial mode, shooting the messenger, or denouncing a conspiracy against the Pope and the Catholic Church because of its moral stances on life, the family and bioethics.

Over recent weeks, the Vatican has often resembled a fire brigade as it dashed to quench a fire in one place only to find another has broken out elsewhere, and never knowing where the next might blaze up.

It was caught completely off guard on several occasions, before and after Easter, when its own people started fires right inside the Vatican.

Jews and gays

On Good Friday, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, preaching in St Peter's Basilica, sparked tensions with Jews by quoting a letter from a Jewish friend that suggested a comparison between the attacks against Pope Benedict with anti-Semitic attacks on Jews.

On Easter Sunday in St Peter's Square, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, dismissed as "idle chatter" the accusations against the Pope, thereby offending victims' organisations.

On April 13, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State enraged the worldwide gay community by asserting that studies show a link between homosexuality and paedophilia.
The Vatican press office had to quench that fire too.

Commenting on these missteps that fanned rather than moderated the media frenzy, Andrea Tornielli, a leading Italian commentator on the Vatican, said "all this makes it difficult to understand what is the Vatican's strategy and line of response". (Maybe that's because when you know you are guilty as accused it's hard to fabricate a legitimate line of response.)

The Holy See's press office is headed by an Italian Jesuit, Fr Federico Lombardi, a journalist who is also in charge of the Vatican's radio and TV stations.

But whereas in any modern government's communication strategy the chief spokesman is in on all the major discussions about key issues as was, for example, Alistair Campbell during the Blair government, the same is not true of Fr Lombardi. (If Fr. Lombardi was Archbishop or Cardinal Lombardi he would be in the loop. His lack of access matches his ecclesiastical level. As a mere priest his job is to support, obey, and defend his superiors. Not be part of the decision making process.)

'Undermined'

He has not once spoken with Pope Benedict about the abuse crisis since it first blew up in Germany last February.

Fr Lombardi describes himself as "a spokesman who is dependent on the Vatican's Secretariat of State, from whom I get directions". (Getting direction from Cardinal Bertone truly is a serious handicap.)

"It is the Secretariat of State that decides the line, and I try to communicate that as best I can," he said. (This is a wonderful line. Lombardi points the finger exactly where it belongs. He was clever. He could have added, "and the best way to communicate that line is silence, but that would have been disrespectful!)

He does not consider himself as co-ordinator of the Vatican's media strategy. "No-one has ever given me that mandate," he told me. (No one will either. You are not ever going to be authorised to speak for anyone higher up the food chain.)

He realises the need to rebut accusations quickly when there is no solid basis to them, and to provide answers to questions.

Fr Lombardi's patent sincerity is an advantage and he is doing as well as he can under the circumstances. But he is being undermined when everyone in the Vatican feels they are in a position to comment too.

Missing strategy

Fr Lombardi has collaborated closely, during the crisis, with the heads of the other Vatican media operations: L'Osservatore Romano - the official Vatican daily paper, the Council for Social Communications, and the website.

This has led to the publication on the website of a layman's guide explaining how the Vatican deals with allegations of sex abuse of children and priest offenders. (This is how the Vatican theoretically deals with allegations now. It's not how they dealt with them six months ago.)

While all this is a welcome development, it is far from being the centrally co-ordinated media strategy the Vatican needs if it wishes to defend its moral credibility and authority in an increasingly sceptical world.

One senior Western diplomat told me he wished "the Vatican could get its act together" because "there is no justification for the accusation that Pope Benedict has taken a soft line on child abuse". (But there is also ample justification for taking the line that Benedict still put the good of the Church (Priesthood) above justice for the victims.)

"I do believe they have a good story to tell", he said, "but they are just not getting it through."

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The only reason anyone could find this state of affairs puzzling is because they don't understand bishops and cardinals function as if they were royalty and unaccountable to anyone. Why would anyone expect a mere priest to be able to corral a coherent response from guilty as hell senior clerics? As Fr. Lombardi states, mere priests take direction from superiors, they don't give direction to superiors. If they do they are more likely to hear 'off with their heads" than 'thank you for this good advice'.

This dynamic is played out all through the abuse crisis. Whistle blowers from the lower clerical ranks really did have their heads chopped off. (See Fr. Tom Doyle.) This aspect is to my way of thinking completely under reported. Good, honest, thoroughly disgusted priests were ignored or disciplined for 'breaking ranks' while the perpetrators who manipulated the sycophant game were coddled.

The constant attacks on the media from senior clergy amply demonstrate the point that priests who cared about the victims could not get anything done with in the system. They had to go outside the system to be heard.

Senior clergy have historically tried to shoot all the messengers. It was a strategy that worked with individual clerical crusaders and beaten down victims, but it didn't work with the Boston Globe. God did not strike down the Globe at Cardinal Law's petulant command. The reverse happened. Well, the reverse would have happened if the Vatican hadn't intervened and come to Law's rescue. God may not protect his clerical 'princes', but the Vatican factory does.

Thank God the western media is just too big to silence, that it is no longer particularly respectful of the self styled 'princes of the Church', and that it has stopped playing the game. Otherwise it would be royal infallible business as usual.

Bill Lyndsey has a very interesting article dealing with another aspect of Fr. Lombardi's problem. It is extremely difficult to put forth a coherent strategy when it involves a bunch of entitled men acting like a gang of entitled frat boys.

Bill's article brought back some very vivid memories for me personally. Back in the day when I was in grad school I was also the director of a sorority. I had more than my share of run ins with the entitled frat boys. I actually had three frat pledges tossed in jail for breaking and entering, amongst sending other signals that it would not be business as usual at the sorority I directed.

One of the presidents of one of the frats called me up to discuss my perceived hostility. I had him meet me at one of our Monday formal dinners where I told him he better show up in a suit and tie. I wanted him out of his comfort zone. He showed up and tried valiantly to get me to drop the charges against his pledges. His excuse more or less amounted to 'we've always done things this way. It's just harmless hazing." I threw an article about Ted Bundy's murders at a sorority in Florida on his plate and asked him very reasonably 'How do I know it's just harmless fun, and not Ted Bundy or some other sociopath taking advantage of your 'tradition'? He had no answer because frat boys never had to ask the question. It was never the frat houses being broken into. It wasn't frat boys being raped.

The Church is still refusing to deal with similar questions. It's not the priests being abused and like fraternities, the clerical system is self selecting, self perpetuating, and self governing. It's another tradition that gives cover to sociopaths, and it's another all male tradition that is asking us to tolerate it's immaturity and criminal activity for the sake of the tradition. It didn't fly for me back in my sorority days, and it doesn't fly now.

Do These Recent Vatican Overtures Really Signal A Change?

This actually has more relevance to some comments from a couple of days ago, but sometimes I wonder how many cookie crumbs have to be found before the Vatican and Pope Benedict will admit they have been eating the same cookies as Hoyos, Sodano, and other Vatican Cardinals.

Cardinal hailed bishop for hiding predator priest: report
Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor - Reuters - VATICAN CITY - Thu Apr 15, 2010

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A Vatican cardinal in charge of clergy around the world congratulated a French bishop in a 2001 letter for not denouncing a sexually abusive priest to the police, according to a French website on Thursday.

The letter posted by Golias, a critical lay Roman Catholic magazine based in Lyon, is the most explicit of a wave of recently published internal church documents in showing past Vatican encouragement to cover up sexual abuse by priests.

In the letter dated Sept 8, 2001, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos backed French Bishop Pierre Pican's decision not to denounce a priest who was later sentenced to 18 years in jail for repeated rape of a boy and sexual assaults on 10 others.

Under fire in recent weeks for its secretive handling of abuse cases, the Vatican has insisted the fact that other published documents did not explicitly instruct bishops to inform police of abuse did not prove it told them to hide it.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi did not dispute the letter's content but said it confirmed "how opportune it was to centralize treatment of cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics under the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." (Lombardi is getting better at offering alternative explanations.)

The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, instructed Catholic bishops around the world on May 18, 2001 to report all case of clerical sexual abuse of minors to the Congregation, the top Vatican doctrinal office that he headed.

Pican, who received a suspended three-month jail sentence for not denouncing sexual abuse of minors, admitted in court he had kept Rev. Rene Bissey in parish work despite the fact the priest had privately admitted committing pedophile acts.

The case shocked France and prompted its bishops to declare that all abuse cases must be reported to civil authorities. (Catholicism would still be shuffling it's predator priests around if it weren't for the evil press.)

"I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration," Castrillon Hoyos said. "You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest."

BISHOPS NOT REQUIRED TO INFORM POLICE

In it, the cardinal said relations between bishops and priests were not simply professional but had "very special links of spiritual paternity." Bishops therefore had no obligation to testify against "a direct relative," he stated. (Seems the Institution used whatever legal strategy it could, whether it was family law, corporate law, or constitutional law to avoid dealing with victims or predator priests.)

The letter cited Vatican documents and an epistle of Saint Paul to bolster its argument about special bishop-priest links.

"To encourage brothers in the episcopate in this delicate domain, this Congregation will send copies of this letter to all bishops' conferences," Castrillon Hoyos wrote. (I thought we were told the Vatican never sent any letter which specifically encouraged bishops not to report priests to civil authorities.)

A staunch conservative from Colombia, the cardinal headed the Vatican department for priests from 1996 to 2006. From 2000 to 2009, he also ran a commission dealing with traditionalist rebels who broke from Rome in 1988 and were excommunicated.

He conducted the talks that led to the January 2009 decision to readmit the four banned bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X to the Church, which caused an uproar when it emerged that one of them, Richard Williamson, had denied the Holocaust. (It is conceivable that Cardinal Hoyos never met an anti semite 'clerical brother' he didn't like.)

The controversy was highly embarrassing to Pope Benedict, who said he did not know about Williamson's views, even though they could easily be found on the internet.

Two months after the incident, Benedict folded Castrillon Hoyos's commission into the Congregation and the cardinal retired.

On Thursday the pope said the church had to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference to the pedophilia scandal.

Yes, the Pope did address the abuse scandal yesterday:

Abuse scandal painful, pope says
By Cindy Woodenn - Catholic News Service - 4/15/2010

VATICAN CITY -- Recognizing the sins of priests who have sexually abused children, performing penance and asking for forgiveness, the Catholic Church trusts that God will purify and transform the church, Pope Benedict XVI said. (But again, there is no mention of the bishops who protected and transferred these priests.)

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace," the pope said April 15 in a homily during a Mass with members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. ('we Christians' had very little to do with your cover ups.)

"We see how it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is mistaken in our life," he said during the morning Mass in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace.

Audio clips and a transcript of part the pope's homily, delivered without a prepared text, were posted on the Vatican Radio Web site.

The pope said Christians know that "to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare oneself for forgiveness, to allow oneself to be transformed, the pain of penance -- that is to say of purification and of transformation -- this pain is grace, because it is renewal, and it is the work of divine mercy." (Interesting that this is being translated as Benedict using the term 'Christians' and not Catholics. Is this purposeful generalization or just a purposeful mistranslation.)

In his homily, the pope also spoke about the liberating effect of obeying God, even in a world that likes to pretend that freedom means doing whatever the individual wants to do, but still insists on everyone conforming to what the majority believes and does. (Or the institution in some cases.)

Without a reference to God and to God's will for his creation, the final arbiter of right and wrong becomes majority rule or the dictates of the most powerful, he said. (When 'we' all know it is supposed to be the Vatican which is the final arbiter of God's will.)

"The Nazi dictatorship, the Marxist dictatorship" in the 1900s were examples of regimes that could not stand the idea of God's primacy, he said. (You might want to add the Vatican dictatorship to this list. Oh, I forgot, it isn't a dictatorship it's God's will.)

Fortunately, he said, such dictatorships do not exist today, but there are subtle forms of pressure on people to conform to a worldly opinion and not to God's will.

"A conformism under which it becomes obligatory to think as everyone thinks, to act as everyone acts, and the subtle or not so subtle aggression against the church demonstrate that this conformism really can become a real dictatorship," he said.

The reason Christians are called to obey God is because they want to enjoy eternal life, the pope said. Unfortunately today, Christians seem embarrassed to talk about the final judgment and eternal life, so instead they focus on the good works and solidarity faith inspires, he said. (This is the statement that negates this entire spin. Ultimately this talk is not about penance for sins, it is an excuse to yank the hell chain and remind everyone what the Church is really selling. Not good works and solidarity, but get out of hell cards.

The promise of eternal life is also the reason why it is a grace to be able to recognize one's sins, perform penance, ask pardon and know that God will bring forgiveness and healing, Pope Benedict said. (Only through the office of the priesthood.)

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It does appear to me that the strategy being used by the Vatican is to flip bad news into an opportunity to recast Pope Benedict as the hero and at the same time underscore the specialness of the priesthood for our salvation from hell. We will undoubtedly continue to hear a lot more about hell and how the Church can keep us out of it. We will hear very little about the hell that the Church has created for the victims of abuse on Earth--or women or gays.

I am not impressed that the Vatican has cast Cardinal Hoyos adrift. The facts once again show this act was prompted not from newly found transparency but from newly found letters exposed by the press. Hoyos is retired. Nothing was done about Hoyos or his views until he publicly embarrassed Pope Benedict with the SSPX fiasco. So what's the lesson here: Pay backs are a bitch?

The Holy Spirit seems to have the bit in her teeth. On Monday the Vatican published it's sexual abuse policy on it's brand new blog site. Prominently given it's own paragraph is the sentence which mandates reporting to civil authorities. We are told it's really always been that way. Thursday the Holy Spirit counters by producing a letter from a relevant dicastery which completely contradicts that assertion. Apparently meaningful penance can not be accomplished through lies and disingenuous statements.

The exposing of the abuse crisis and the corruption and self service of the Vatican 'reform of the reformers' will continue until Benedict is left defending a circle of one. Himself. And don't kid yourself, it won't be about defending the Papacy or the Church, it will be about defending himself, his theology, and his exalted vision of his own priesthood. That has been his historic pattern and that will not change without a massive personal conversion.

For another example of defending the exalted role of the priest the new Vatican blog has an article about Benedict's ad limina meeting with Brazilian Archbishops whose dioceses include the Amazon. The bishops concern is the social and ecological disaster the Amazon is facing and it's global consequences. Benedict spoke to them about his central vision of the priest led Eucharistic celebration and the need to focus on it's sacrificial nature and not it's communal aspects. Not one word about the Amazon or the social upheaval it's economic exploitation is causing to the bishops' indigenous people. Maybe because a large part of that exploitation is in human sexual trafficking.

Two Catholic Speakers Demonstrate Catholic Cognitive Dissonance

Archbishop Migliore's recent UN speech is indicative of why many NGO's think the Vatican needs to have it's mike turned off--permanently.

Catholic pro-life leader demands protection for abused, pregnant girls

CNA STAFF, Apr 14, 2010 / 10:09 pm (CNA).-

The chairwoman of Alliance for the Family, Christine de Marcellus de Vollmer, denounced the media push to decriminalize abortion in Latin America by using the tragic cases of young, pregnant sexual abuse victims. She then called on politicians to adequately protect and show solidarity with such girls and their unborn children.

Speaking with CNA, de Vollmer referred to two specific cases: one of a 10-year-old girl who was raped in Recife, Brazil, and a similar case in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, one of the 18 Mexican states that has enshrined protection of the unborn into law.

Christine de Vollmer began by explaining the need to "powerfully raise our voices so that people do not fall prey to this malicious information. We are obviously in the midst of a campaign to legalize ‘therapeutic abortion’ in cases where the life of the mother is ‘at risk.’ We know that this step always leads to the legalization of all abortions."

She explained that the “girls are not the primary concern of promoters” of therapeutic abortion. “It is obvious that their priority is the legalization of abortion.” For evidence to back her claims, de Vollmer said, “a clear sign of this pro-abortion priority” can be found in Recife and Quintana Roo, two places that have been “recent battlegrounds in the fight to legalize abortion, and its promoters want to clear the path by using these extreme cases.”

De Vollmer said it is necessary to provide adequate explanations in order to confront the fallacies of the abortion lobbyists and feminists that are being promoted by the media (even by some Catholic media). (Parentheses are CNA's little editorial addition--Media bashing being the in thing at the moment. I'm not bitching, just observing because I do it all the time. But then I don't claim to be media outlet. Now I' bitching.)

She noted that the first explanation has to do with the term “rape.” “We here in Latin America know well that we are not dealing with rape (in these cases), but rather with something worse and more common—and which perhaps we don’t want to face—which is this tragic promiscuity.”

(No, what you don't want to face is the culture of 'machismo' so you call this promiscuity, essentially blaming the girls' mother and leaving the male out of it.)

De Vollmer said that in these situations, “everybody lives in the same little house and sleeps in the same bed. And of course all kinds of things happen there, unfortunately including to children. As the bodies of these little girls are stimulated, they begin to ovulate and become pregnant at some point. It is not 'rape.' In fact, it's something much worse and more endemic."

The second fallacy of the feminists is the use of the word, “stepfathers.”

“They aren’t stepfathers. They are simply men who live in the home with the mother and her daughters, oftentimes for just circumstantial reasons, without any serious commitment,” she underscored.

De Vollmer also told CNA, “We need to look at the entire social reality of the abuse of so many little girls. We must not fall into the ‘false compassion’ and reductive reasoning of the promoters of abortion. They want us to pay attention to the little girl only when she is already pregnant in order to give her what they are selling: abortion.” (No they want her mother to have the right to control her own reproductive choices so sex isn't forced on her daughters.)

“It would be more objective, engaging, and caring to prevent or correct the very common situations of promiscuity and danger of so many young girls before its too late,” she added.

This problem “exists not only in Quintana Roo and Recife. This abuse will not be stopped by legalizing abortion. On the contrary, it will increase because among other things, the visible consequences (of abuse) will be taken away,” De Vollmer said.

“The suffering of these girls and their unborn babies is a call to solidarity,” she continued. “They need special psychological and medical care and perhaps the option to give these children up in adoption.”

“We must expose this and clarify that these conditions must be addressed by politicians and the Church, rather than only paying attention when the girl gets pregnant,” she underscored.

“Politicians must not rend their garments over these pregnancies when they turn a blind eye to the abuse that goes on daily. If they do nothing to stop this abuse, it can only end in pregnancy,” she said.

“This is not ‘a medical opinion’ or a ‘medical case’,” de Vollmer stressed. “It is an eminently social and humanitarian issue, and humanity cannot save itself by killing its weakest members.”

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This is a pretty interesting argument Mrs. Vollmer has going here. First and foremost it seems to me she is doing a great deal of verbal semantics to avoid using the words, 'rape', 'incest' and 'protect the girl's life'. It is not step fathers, it is opportunistic men. It's not rape, it's promiscuity due to close quarters. Combating these pregnancies is not about the very real danger to the lives of ten year old children, it's about giving mothers special care and more options for adoption.

Therapeutic abortions then are just a 'commodity' abortion interests are selling. It has nothing to do with a real medical diagnosis. Kind of like tacos.

And of course, there is no mention of the very real poverty and over population this is all a product of, and certainly no mention of sex education, female empowerment or God forbid, birth control.

I will say this much though, it is refreshing to hear at least one Catholic pro life voice that understands we need to address some real life issues besides the legal prohibition of abortion. Not surprisingly this voice is female. Because our male leadership was in front of the UN saying this:

Vatican diplomat: Plunging birthrates are part of economic crisis
April 15, 2010 - Catholic World News.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, apostolic nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, told a UN commission on April 12 that the world’s nations need to confront the problem of plunging birthrates in order to help solve the international financial crisis.

“As this Commission on Population and Development convenes in the midst of an ongoing economic and financial crisis, we would do well to listen to a growing opinion among economists that demographic trends are part of the problem and cannot be overlooked as an important part of the solution,” he said. (Like with Cardinal Bertone, we are not told who these experts are. For all I know they could be white eugenics proponents.)

“The demographic crisis that in a few decades has brought down annual population growth rates from 7% to below 1% in many parts of the world, in tandem with the aging of the population, has resulted in devastating effects for the economy and governance.” (Maybe using Pope Benedict's gay logic, we should get rid of the idea of marriage with all it's benefits for non procreative old people. Apparently they are a threat to world peace.)

“The correction of the population deficit with constant immigration does not seem to resolve the problems even in the short term,” he continued. “The same demographic policies that caused population growth rates to plunge to unsustainable levels need to be reviewed and redesigned along with appropriate social policies to encourage births. (What areas of the world is he referencing?)

Noting that two million women suffer from obstetric fistulae and that 800,000 people die annually from malaria, Archbishop Migliore also called for a greater attention to prenatal and childhood health care. (Hooray, another call for health care for women and children. Of course, it only comes after a call for women to get with it and get pregnant.)

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I have spent a great deal of time lately on the clerical abuse crisis and our gutless or corrupt male leadership, but the real truth is, Catholicism as we currently experience it does the bulk of it's human damage to women and children.

It is this constantly repeated drum beat of pro creation and pregnancy at all costs that harms the most people. It's the root cause for the situations described by Christine Vollmer. It's the prevalence of the cheap labor markets excessive population promotes that keeps the wheels of western economic interests running. It's the lack of education in these populations that keeps guys like Migliore in their finery and it's their wealthy supporters whose pockets are lined by this poverty. We know that about Latin America too.

We also know, when the other side of the Church talks about these issues and their root causes, they are hung out to dry by the Migliore's of the Church and sometimes assassinated by the supporters of the Migliore's.

And it's the male Migliore's of the Catholic world who keep the female Vollmer's of the Catholic world from uttering the birth control words.

More Craziness From A Vatican Spokesman. This Time It's The LCWR Up Against The Whipping Post

Archbishop Burke feels uppity nuns of the LCWR are not sufficiently obedient and respectful when it comes to the fallible political opinions of bishops and some of those nuns should cease to call themselves Catholic.

Vatican Official Slams 'Obstinate Betrayal' of Nuns, Cath. Health Assoc.

By Kathleen Gilbert MUNDELEIN, Illinois, April 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -

Catholic consecrated religious who openly dissent from the authority of Rome and the church's teaching on life are "an absurdity of the most tragic kind" and should cease identifying themselves as Catholic, said Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of Rome's Apostolic Signatura.

Burke gave the remarks in his keynote address Friday at the Institute for Religious Life’s national meeting at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois. The Institute also honored Burke with their Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award at a celebration of the legacy of Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, SJ.

In excerpts of the address published by Thomas Peters of the American Papist blog, Burke took a moment to express his exasperation with the defiance of Catholic religious sisters in the U.S. who supported the federal health care bill - a measure dubbed the most pro-abortion piece of legislation since Roe v. Wade, thanks to its vast expansion of government abortion funding.

"Who could imagine that consecrated religious would openly, and in defiance of the bishops as successors of the apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violated the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenets – the safeguarding and promoting of innocence and defenseless life, and fail to safeguard the demands of the free exercise of conscience for health care workers?" Burke questioned. (Whoa, is he using the words 'failed to promote and safeguard'? As in children from abusive priests?)

The Vatican official also severely criticized "public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious" towards Rome's ongoing apostolic visitation into U.S. religious orders.

After the visitation began last spring, Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary said in remarks published on the National Catholic Reporter that nuns should receive representatives of Rome "politely and kindly, for what they are, uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house."

"Who ever could have imagined that religious congregations of pontifical right, would openly organize to resist and attempt to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience?" he asked. (Oh, the Legionaires probably could imagine quite a bit more and did. Are you looking looking for an envelope? Sorry, not until you have a red hat.)

Abp. Burke indicated that the attitude of sisters towards the visitation represents "a growing tendency among certain consecrated religious to view themselves outside and above the body of Christ as a parallel institution looking in upon the Church with an autonomy which contradicts their very nature." (Hmmmm, most interesting choice of phrase. Didn't a certain bishop or two think the same thing about the Legion and Opus Dei?)

"Religious life lived in the heart of the Church, and for that reason religious congregations are, by their very nature, bound in strictest loyalty to the Roman Pontiff," he said. "It is of course an absurdity of the most tragic kind to have consecrated religious knowingly and obstinately acting against the moral law. (The Pope never issued a teaching on the senate health bill or are you expecting consecrated religious to conflate bishops with the Pope?)

"The spiritual harm done to the individual religious who are disobedient and also the grave scandal caused to the faithful and people in general are of incalculable dimensions."

Burke also directly challenged Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, as well as Network, a pro-abortion lobby group of U.S. nuns, whose support for the bill the Obama administration openly acknowledged as critical to its success.

"Was not the Speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi] glowing to report that so many religious sisters were in support of her proposed health care plan?" he asked. "Was not a religious sister [Sr. Carol Keehan, President of CHA] one of the recipients of a pen used by the President of the United States to sign the health care plan into law? (Did not Bart Stupak sell you down the river? Give Nancy Pelosi the needed votes? What congregation of nuns does he belong to?)

"Now is the time for us all, and in particular for consecrated persons to stand up for the truth and to call upon our fellow Catholics in leadership to do the same, or to cease identifying themselves as Catholics." (Hear, hear. Let's start with Cardinal Bertone. He's not telling the truth and he's in leadership, and he calls himself Catholic. And then there's Rode and Sodano and.........Burke?)

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If this isn't enough to make you shake your head and weep, try this one. I don't even know what to write. I am like so not believing any of this. I've had seriously psychotic clients that have had a better over all grasp on reality.

Political Agendas, Decisions, And A Short Memo To The Pope

Pope Benedict needs to weed some of these 'old boys' out of the ranks of Cardinals before he adds anymore because if he doesn't, he is not addressing the 'filth' in the Church.

I find the thinking of traditionalist apologists very fascinating. While generously accusing liberals of using the sexual abuse crisis to further their theological agendas, they in fact engage in the same. The following is from Damian Thompson who is a traditionalist columnist for the London based Telegraph. The article is referencing the second installment of Jason Berry's expose of the Legion.

Interesting fallout from the Legionaries scandal
By Damian Thompson Religion - Telegraph.com.UK - April 14th, 2010

My traditionalist priest friends are, thank God, not susceptible to the sin of Schadenfreude. But, if they were, they might note that several Vatican officials dragged into the financial side of the Legionaries of Christ scandal were stubbornly opposed to Pope Benedict XVI’s attempts to improve the worship of the Catholic Church by liberating the pre-Vatican II form of the Roman Rite. (It's only the liturgical progressives who take bribes from con artist pedophiles?)

As I said yesterday, I can’t see how Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, can cling on in the light of accusations of his links to the fabulously wealthy Legionaries made by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. And Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, formerly John Paul II’s private secretary, must also be a nervous man. (I agree. One would think both are nervous men and one can hope, both are remorseful men. But if they are anything like their patron, they are not.)

Dziwisz is accused by Berry of accepting charitable donations that smoothed the way, shall we say, for Legionary supporters to attend the “private” Masses of John Paul. Cardinal Ratzinger abandoned those semi-public occasions when he became Pope, perhaps because he suspected something was not quite right. Also, Berry reports that Ratzinger pushed away one of the Legion’s “charitable” bungs when it was offered to him in an envelope. His puritanical attitude towards money was one of several things that distinguished him from the curial backslappers, who were sometimes surprisingly effective at limiting his access to John Paul II. Another was his wish to act more firmly against senior clergy accused of sex offences. (Wishes do not change reality and Ratzinger made no dent in this reality, and after five years he has made no dent in this reality. Is he still just 'wishing' as Pope.)

Something I’d like to know: in their obsession with getting as close as possible to papal Masses, did the Legionaries exert any pressure on Archbishop Piero Marini, John Paul’s MC (and the designer of liturgies whose rubrics owed more to the Metropolitan Community Church than to Catholic tradition)? Archbishop Marini, you may recall, was given a slap-up party by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor in Westminster to celebrate the publication of a book subtly dissing (as we say these days) Pope Benedict’s reforms. (Please Damian, Archbishop Marini is not implicated in any wrong doing, and just in case you failed to notice, Cardinal Pio Laghi also turned the Legion and Sodano down cold after their bribery attempt to have their pet seminary raised to Pontifical status.)

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One of the complaints traditionalists had with the Legion before it's stunning fall from Grace, was that the Legion did not push too strongly for 'the reform of the reform' when it came to the liturgy. For a bastion of Catholic orthodoxy and piety, the Legion didn't seem to have it's act together when it came to reforming the Mass in the direction of a more vertical expression.

It could be that the Legion wasn't very on board with this reform because it suited their mentality to face their congregation to keep 'an eye' on them. Can't do that very well when your back is turned and you are supposedly focused on Jesus. Besides actors like to interact with their audience--kind of like JPII.

I keep wondering why Damian is so quick to blame Archbishop Marini for his distaste of JPII's Masses. Marini wasn't the actor, he was just the stage director. JPII was the director/actor. Anyone who doubts that doesn't get the type of papacy JPII ran. Even the 'courageous filth reformer' Cardinal Ratzinger, couldn't find the courage to buck JPII. Why would a reasonable person assume JPII was somehow subservient to the liturgical wishes of Marini?

It is nice to see that both liberals and traditionalists can see the need for Benedict to finally do something about the corruption in the College of Cardinals. Pope Benedict might strongly consider removing a bunch of Cardinals before he calls another consistory where he appoints even more of the same. That's just a thought. A sort of hopeless wish.

Msgr Georg Ganswein--Benedict's right hand man and all around papal assistant--was quoted yesterday in the German newspaper Bild that it was not Pope Benedict's job to comment on individual abuse cases. That was the job of respective bishops and dioceses:

"It does not make sense, nor is it helpful, for the Holy Father to comment personally on each case," the he told the German newspaper Bild.
"It is overlooked too fast that various bishops and bishops conferences carry responsibility," he said.
"Criticism that helps the cause is always legitimate," he was quoted as saying. "But I doubt that in this case the criticism really follows this purpose."

Ganswein has something of a legitimate gripe, but it is Benedict's responsibility to discipline and remove offending bishops and cardinals and so far his record is squat with this responsibility. He has removed none. Five years as Pope and the same corrupt Cardinals still have their positions or have actually been promoted. And if he finally acts in the case of Cardinal Sodano, once again it will be because he has been forced to act by the 'anti Catholic agenda driven media'. Just where is the courage in that?

Rumor has it that a papal commissioner will be put in charge of the Legion. That it will not be suspended or disbanded or at the opposite end given a 'certificate of good conduct' as was the hope of Cardinal Rode. Not terribly shocking that Rode would want to give the Legion, not just a get out jail free card, but a pat on the back.

Memo to Benedict, you must remove this guy because he no longer has any credibility. Any decision which comes from his dicastery about the Legion or the LCWR will be vilified. They will not be evaluated on their merits, but on his documented corruption. See, that's the whole issue with the Legion. It can not stand outside the personal corruption of Maciel and neither can any decision that comes from Rode's dicastery as long as that man is it's head.

There is a lesson in this for you as well Holy Father, because you are the head of the entirety of the Church and the less transparent, the less courageous and upstanding you seem, the more you cast the entire church in disrepute. It's all of a piece because that's the way it works in autocratic hierarchy. You are no better than the corruption you leave in place or try to hide.

Sanity Is In Short Supply In The Upper Echelons Of Catholicism, But There Are Other Voices Lower Down, Closer To Reality

The Vatican Secretary of State had better wake up to some hard facts because as it sits right now he is becoming Benedict's biggest PR nightmare. Right behind Cardinal Sodano.

On a day when Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone has this to say:

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia," he told a news conference in Santiago.
"This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms," he said. "The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous."

And retired Italian Bishop Giacomo Babini is quoted as saying a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism of Pope Benedict, because it was "powerful and refined" in nature;

And on a day when Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano, maintains the whole crisis is perpetuated by the media because:

"The media, not only in Italy, are in decline; their sales are less and less. This kind of news helps them sell." Journalists always have known that stories about animals and stories about sex sell newspapers, he said.

The sex story becomes even easier to sell when it involves the Vatican, he said.

(This link is to John Allen's take on the same press conference.)

And then he added:

"The need to sell is the first key to understanding this campaign. Then there is the hostility" against the Catholic Church, he said. "Anti-Catholic hostility certainly exists. This has been documented," Vian said."The preaching of the Catholic Church bothers many people in many ways," particularly when it comes to moral issues, he said. (Oh, it's not Jews, it's gays and feminists.)

And on a day when Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nicholls is denying he knew anything about predator priest David Pearce until he became Archbishop of Westminster- in spite of the fact he had previously served as Chairman of England's Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults while Pearce was doing his preying and Cardinal Murphy-O'Conner was ware of it:

And on a day when Vatican and Church sources are blaming everyone and everything for their own despicable actions, there was another voice. A voice calling for accountability, transparency, and actually doing something about all the verbiage the Church has said about putting the victims first. And it was a call that came from the altar.

In sermon, E. Longmeadow priest calls on Pope Benedict to step down
By Emma Stickgold - Boston Globe Correspondent / April 12, 2010

An East Longmeadow priest called yesterday from his pulpit for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, demanding greater protection of children and greater accountability from the Catholic Church hierarchy.

The church’s top leader has not been truthful, said the Rev. James Scahill of St. Michael’s Parish, violating an important tenet of the faith. His strongly worded sermon echoed sentiments he shared with parishioners several weeks ago, but this time, he spent more time and spoke with greater conviction on the controversial subject.

“Any who deny the truth deny Christ, and we, as people, must reclaim our church,’’ Scahill said in a phone interview last night. “Those in authority must be willing to admit to the truth, admit their horrific crime of coverup, and beg for forgiveness, and until that happens, there will be no healing.’’

Benedict has been heavily criticized recently for the way he has dealt with some abuse cases, and Scahill said that because of all the information that has been brought to light, the pope should resign.

Scahill, who became pastor of the church in 2002, has long been outspoken on the need for accountability among church leaders.

Parishioners generally were supportive of Scahill’s sermon, said Parish Council president Thomas LaMondia.

“I thought he did a great job of conveying how he feels and how the church feels about the whole issue,’’ he said yesterday. “I thought he did a really nice job of explaining that it’s really about the protection of children. . . . The church really needs to look at what they need to do to hold people accountable.’’

Controversy within the church over priests’ and bishops’ roles in the abuse scandal has been going on for more than eight years since the scandal broke in Boston but recently it has escalated, with new allegations about the actions of the current pope when he was an archbishop.

“If we cannot get a pope that’s going to give us the truth, then our church is dead,’’ Scahill said.

Mark Dupont, a spokesman for the Diocese of Springfield, was quick to distance the diocesan leadership from the comments made by Scahill.

“It in no way represents the position of the bishop,’’ Dupont said. “We find his statements to be unfortunate.’’

Scahill, he said, has not properly recognized measures to ensure safety undertaken by the American Catholic leadership, which has “led the world in their efforts,’’ as well as steps the Diocese of Springfield took over the years to deal with the issue of sexual abuse.

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The Diocese of Springfield was once led by Bishop Thomas L. Dupre. Fr. Scahill's long advocacy on behalf of victims started when he and Bishop Dupre got into it over comments Scahill alleges Dupre made in which Dupre states the Diocese was lucky that it's former bishop destroyed records of priests accused of sexual activity with minors. This was in 2002 at the height of the Boston scandal. By 2004 Bishop Dupre had himself been accused of sexual abuse and resigned, but not until he had done his best to demonstrate why we can not trust Catholic bishops to implement any non binding policies. And of course Canon Law more or less precludes placing Bishops under binding policies because it conflicts with their autonomy as bishops. That's why the Vatican only issues guidelines and that's why some guidelines which, serve to protect their position and resources and wealth, are universally followed, and some will be disregarded for the same reasons.

Fr. Scahill's long battle against his own diocese for transparency and accountability is worthy of acclaim. Say what you want about him, he has never lost site of who this abuse crisis is really about and that of course is not the greater glory of Mother Church, but the victims Mother Church has kicked to the curb and continues to kick to the curb.

Pope Benedict's upcoming trip to Malta should prove very interesting. Maltese victims, as elsewhere in Europe, are surfacing in droves and demanding Pope Benedict deal with reality and not the Vatican fantasy. Speaking of fantasies, someone should tell Cardinal Bertone to actually investigate what reality based mental health professionals know about pedophilia.

In the meantime, yesterday also produced Jason Berry's second installment on Maciel and his money machine--eergh the Legionaires of Christ--and Cardinal Sodano does not fare well. One wonders to just what 'family' does Cardinal Sodano owe his allegiance.

An Attack On The NCR From First Things For Being Right, But In A Wrong Way

This has got to be one of the funniest things I have read in a very long time. It proves what low levels paid Catholic apologists will resort to when they have been thoroughly scooped by another publication which wasn't as thoroughly duped.

First Things bent over backwards to castigate the professional qualifications of Jason Berry and Gerald Renney when they first reported on Maciel. These two reporters were called anti Catholic propagandists amongst other lovely things and the National Catholic Reporter and Hartford Courant were villified for attacking a holy 'conservative' icon.

The same kind of attacks are going on in the following article, but in the end First Things can't deny that Maciel really wasn't the man the founder of First Things Fr. Richard Neuhas, thought:

"I am not neutral about the Legionaries. I have spent time with Fr. Maciel, and he impresses me as a man who combines uncomplicated faith, gentle kindness, military self-discipline, and a relentless determination to do what he believes God has called him to do. They are the qualities one would expect of someone who at age twenty-one in Mexico vowed to do something great for Christ and his Church, and has been allowed to do it. In the language of the tradition, they are qualities associated with holiness; in his case a virile holiness of tenacious resolve that has been refined in the fires of frequent opposition and misunderstanding."

But apparently the editorial staff of First Things still retains their opinion of Jason Berry and the NCR.

Maciel & Money
Apr 7, 2010 - Joseph Bottum - First Things

One of the keys to Fr. Maciel’s influence was money, and after the revelations of his sexual misbehavior, those who’ve been less than trusting of the Legion have long been waiting for the other shoe—the news of dubious financial dealings—to drop.

Here at First Things, we’ve been pursuing for several months now an essay on the finances of the Legion in Mexico, but it has proved nearly impossible to find the real figures and the documented level of reporting necessary. (I'm sure it has been to meet your standards which must platinum and Vatican approved.)

And, as it turns out, we may have been looking at the wrong end of the conduit. The National Catholic Reporter finally drops the long-awaited shoe with reporting from Rome.

The piece is very thinly sourced. Here, for example, is the leading indictment in the piece: “One of the ex-Legionaries in Rome told NCR that a Mexican family in 1997 gave Dziwisz $50,000 upon attending Mass.” (Actually I thought the documentation about Cardinals Rode, Sodano and Somalo were the heart of the piece. Buying access to JPII is one thing, but buying stonewalling from relevant dicasteries is a different ballgame.)

That ain’t exactly what any real journalist would call a smoking gun, and the National Catholic Reporter has clearly rushed the story in a patent effort to link up with the media attention focused on the priest scandals in Europe. (And in a effort to tar with the Maciel scandal the conservatives the paper dislikes.) Not a stunning moment in professional Catholic journalism. (Does being a professional Catholic journalist mean one takes money to write the Catholic apologetic line? Just how much Legion and Opus Dei money have you taken to write your 'professional' apologetics?)

But even though the National Catholic Reporter is fumbling here, I’m convinced they are fumbling toward the truth. The secrecy of the finances of the Legion that Fr. Maciel built was an open invitation to corruption—and we already know that he was not a man to resist such invitations. (Only because Jason Berry and the NCR forced you to admit it.)

Joseph Bottum is editor of First Things.

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Although I found the above the most humorous of the slew of Catholic apologetic writings surfacing in the last week, others have been just as vociferous about bashing the media and defending Benedict. All of them are using the same excuses that surfaced from the Bishops in 2002 in the US. We are being asked to believe that poor Benedict was just a victim of his times and bad advice. We are essentially being asked to ignore all the facts that say poor Benedict never concerned himself with the victims, that his primary concerns were the reputation of the Church, hiding the fact of the perpetrators, and keeping everything under silence and in house. Well, c'mon, that's the way things were done back then, the system is what it is. He did the best he could.

If that's the best Benedict could do, then what kind of sick system are you guys defending? The same cast of characters which made Benedict's life miserable are still in charge. It's now five years that Benedict has had all the power any man could want to make real change in this sick system. Where are the changes from the man bound and determined to clean up the filth? Are you asking us to believe that Benedict is still a captive prisoner of the sick system since nothing has appreciably changed and not one bishop, not one Cardinal has been held accountable for the cover up? That all Benedict can do is accept resignations when the anti Catholic media forces one to resign?

The fact is that nothing was done by Ratzinger about Maciel until the scandal of the man became public. Courtesy of the Hartford Courant. Nothing was done about Cardinal Groer until the scandal became public. Nothing was done in the US, Ireland, Germany and on and on and on, until the scandal Benedict tried to cover up became public. The real agent of change in cleaning up the filth has not been Ratzinger, it's been the anti Catholic agenda driven media. Certainly not publications like First Things.

Attacking the NCR for being right, essentially because it's left of center, is unbelievable arrogance. Oh well, I'm sure you got paid well to do it. Here's a look at the NCR from a media source that is not a paid Catholic apologist.