Clerical abuse and clericalism

Read James Preece's brilliant analysis of the clerical abuse scandals and Catholic culture. Here's the money quote:

As far as I can see, the position of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales including our own Bishop Terrence Drainey is currently "let us have a culture that tolerates and even encourages clerical abuse, in which priests and bishops are free to abuse their power and authority and laypeople are expected to be co-conspirators or else face accusations of disrespect and disloyalty but let us make an exception for the sort of abuse that the civil authorities take seriously, that is, the sort of abuse that costs money and looks bad in the papers".

This is like saying "stealing is okay, as long as you don't steal anything somebody will notice" or "lying is okay, as long as nobody finds out". Essentially, the Bishops are saying "it's okay with us if priests abuse their power, as long as they don't do anything illegal".

What concerns me most of all is this: As long as the culture remains in place, the potential for harm continues. As long as the culture remains in place, the potential for "[hiding] behind a clericalism which is prepared to protect vicious behaviour at the expense of defenceless innocents" remains in place.

This is simply unacceptable.

This is partly why this blog has never been shy about reporting clerical abuse stories - something which the aggressive liberals in the comments boxes have never been able to understand, and which has got us in trouble with conservative Catholics as well.

Clericalism and ultramontanism is not the answer to the problems of today. Yes, we have problems of disobedience of legitimate authority justly exercised, and in those cases the authority should be supported. But this is not the opposite problem as the sex abuse being covered up by bishops: it is another example of the same problem.

How so? The sex abusers were disobedient. Their bishops didn't approve of the abuse; they asked them to stop. The abusers were breaking canon law as well as the natural law. The abuse persisted because of a failure of legitimate authority. But it also persisted because of the false deference towards that failing authority.

Because no-one wanted to confront and denounce the bishops and religious superiors who were failing to exercise their authority, out of deference to that authority, they were enabled to go on not exercising their authority.

The clerical club which protected the abusers, without necessarily approving of them, is also tolerating priests who commit liturgical abuses, refuse to give the faithful communion kneeling, refuse to teach the whole gospel, and turn their parishes into centres for left-wing activism.

Read More...

Summary only...

New abuse claim against the Jesuits

Briefing.

From The Tablet, in part: THE JESUITS could face a multi-millionpound damages bill after the High Court in London accepted claims of sexual abuse made by a former City lawyer.

Patrick Raggett, who is seeking up to £5 million, the biggest individual claim against the Church in Britain to date, said that the abuse by Fr Michael Spencer at the Jesuit-run Preston Catholic College in the 1970s had ruined his life.

Mrs Justice Swift ruled that even though the abuse took place more than 30 years ago, which the Jesuits argued made it “statute barred”, it was not too late for Mr Raggett to seek damages.

...

Meanwhile, a case involving three men who claim they were abused in homes in the 1970s

run by Nugent Care Society, a Catholic organisation, was heard in the High Court this

week. The men, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are spearheading a claim for damages

involving dozens of residents of institutions for troubled children, St Aidan’s and St Vincent’s, in the Liverpool area.

Read More...

Summary only...

Archbishop of Baltimore on the Legionaries

Comment: Archbishop O'Brien gives authoritative voice to many long-standing concerns about the Legionaries of Christ and its lay affiliate Regnum Christi, which have come to a head following the scandalous revelations about its founder, Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado. Here are some selected comments, which he made to his diocesan newspaper after meeting the order's superior in Rome.

"It seems to me and many others that this was a man with an entrepreneurial genius who, by systematic deception and duplicity, used our faith to manipulate others for his own selfish ends,"

"While it's difficult to get ahold of official documents," Archbishop O'Brien said, "it's clear that from the first moment a person joins the Legion, efforts seem to be made to program each one and to gain full control of his behavior, of all information he receives, of his thinking and emotions."

The archbishop said many members who leave the order suffer "deep psychological distress for dependency and need prolonged counseling akin to deprogramming."

"It's been said that the founder is alone called 'nuestro padre' ('our father') and that no one else can have that title," Archbishop O'Brien said. "All are bound to identify with him in his spirit, his mind, his mission and in his life. This would suggest that the very basis of the Legion movement should be reviewed from start to finish."

See the article in the National Catholic Reporter. H-T to Damian Thompson.

The Archbishop is quite right: the problem here is not one abberrant individual, but an institutional culture which is completely rotten and completely un-Catholic. Catholic spirituality and obedience is not about losing one's individuality. Maciel's exploitation of this culture for the grossest abuses is the icing on the top.

We agree with Damian Thompson: the Legionaires and Regnum Christi have to be dissolved. It will be painful, but they have to be helped to form themselves according to the charism of one of the Church's many great founders of orders - St Benedict, St Ignatius, St Francis, St Dominic - and leave behind the hideous pattern of Marcial Maciel.

Read More...

Summary only...

Sex Abuse pay-out in Leeds Diocese

Briefing.

Frpm CFNews: Seven victims of a paedophile priest have won a fight for compensation from the Catholic Church in Leeds.

The men took legal action against Leeds diocese over abuse at the hands of Father Neil Gallanagh at St John's School for the Deaf near Wetherby in the 1970s. Now the diocese has agreed out-of-court settlements with the men, now in their 40s. No details are being made public on the sum they have received - though the Yorkshire Evening Post understands it is 'significant'.

Previous reports said the claimants each stood to get as much as £50,000 if they succeeded in proving wilful neglect by the diocese. The case of an eighth man is still ongoing.

The action has been led by David Greenwood, a solicitor with Dewsbury-based law firm Jordans. He said: 'No amount of money will ever make up for what happened to these men. That does not mean, however, that they should not be compensated for their ordeals.'

Mr Greenwood believes the diocese's decision to settle was prompted by a recent Law Lords ruling in favour of a Leeds woman attacked in 1988 by Lotto rapist Iorworth Hoare. The woman has been fighting, with the support of the YEP, for a six-year time limit on compensation claims from victims to be lifted.

Gallanagh was given a six-month suspended prison sentence in 2005 after he admitted indecently assaulting two teenage boarders at St John's between 1975 and 1980. Charges involving five other boys under 16 were left on file at the conclusion of the 75-year-old's trial.

It later emerged that Gallanagh already had a conviction for child abuse when he was given his job at St John's. He admitted attacking a nine-year-old boy during a day trip to the Isle of Man in 1960, when he was a priest in Northern Ireland.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Leeds said today it would be 'inappropriate' to comment until the group action was fully concluded.

In an earlier statement, when the compensation bid was first announced, the diocese said written records from the time were 'scant' and two bishops of the era had died. Since that time, the diocese had developed 'good policies and practice in regard to all aspects of the protection of children and vulnerable adults', the spokesman said, and it had 'co-operated fully when approached by statutory authorities in regard to historical cases'. [Yorkshire Evening Post]

Read More...

Summary only...

The Pope on clerical abuse

Briefing: the strength of the Pope's recent condemnation of clerical sex abuse at Sydney is worth noting. The UK is fare from free of these problems.

From Damian Thompson, in part (see his full post): It's true that the heyday of sexual assault by Catholic clergy was a long time ago, during the 1970s. But the heyday of the cover-ups was much more recent. Many bishops alive today were up to their necks in it; interestingly, liberal and conservative prelates were equally guilty.

Pope John Paul II did not respond adequately to the revelations that surfaced during his pontificate: in his confused old age, he even publicly honoured the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Marcial Maciel, long after it was clear that the guy was a sexual predator. It was Benedict who finally took action against the disgusting old hypocrite.

The Pope's strongly worded apology in Australia is part and parcel of his reforms of the whole Church: it cannot be divorced from his determination to breathe new life into moribund structures. The Catholic Church is emphatically not a nest of paedophiles, as its enemies claim; but for years it has been saddled with lazy and smug prelates - not just liberals, I hasten to add - whose sense of their own moral superiority helped protect sexual predators.

Do the bishops of the world and the administrators of the Vatican really share the Pope's deep sense of shame at what happened? I'm still not convinced.

Read More...

Summary only...

Another clerical abuse conviction

Prayers, please, for the victim and the convict. Catholics must acknowledge and make reparation for these terrible crimes.

Hat-tip to Fr Finnigan, who has a thoughtful post on a case which is a local issue for him.

Read More...

Summary only...

Scottish priests involved in abortion and homosexual activism

Briefing. This shocking story is in the public domain, but the priests involved, Fr Monaghan and Fr Breslin, are still free to carry on giving talks in Catholic churches (in the first case) and working as a supply priest (in the second). Will the scandal of inaction by the bishops involved never end? The only way to end it is by exposing the matter once again.

From Catholic Truth Scotland, March 2008 Newsletter p4:Scotland’s Shame - a synopsis of the part played by the Church in the normalising of homosexuality in Scotland

It is often said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are fated to make the same mistakes. Because priests are getting involved in homosexual groups it may be timely to record what happened once before when Scottish priests assisted a 'gay rights group'.

The early ‘gay rights group’ was called 'Scottish Minorities Group' (SMG) and was set up in 1969 by a Glasgow student called Ian Dunn who continued to lead it until his death in 1996. This whole enterprise needed the backing of SMG as a 'lobby group' and that in turn depended on the fact that SMG had been given instrumental assistance to organise at its inception. That help was provided by two priests.

Firstly, in 1980 Fr Anthony Ross O.P. stated at a conference on 'Pastoral Approaches to Homosexuality': 'I have advised people sometimes to get a flat and move in together because they were in an intermittent relationship that was proving frustrating' adding that he was 'not concerned' whether it was heterosexual or homosexual 'involvement' (The Pitlochry Papers 1981 published by Scottish Homosexual Rights Group - SHRG).

As Catholic Chaplain at Edinburgh University, Fr Anthony Ross allowed SMG to hold meetings in his Chaplaincy1 including Scotland’s first ever commercial ‘gay dances’2 which raised the money that purchased premises in Broughton St.3 SMG was also provided with a base in Glasgow at the Iona Community Centre, 214 Clyde St which also provided its 'mail-box'. It was from here that the Secretary of SMG, Fr John Breslin of Motherwell, operated.4

From 1971 to 75 he also edited the group’s newsletter SMG News.5 It was in the October 1974 edition that adverts appeared for a group for paedophiles, which was set up by Ian Dunn and two SMG members, and called 'Paedophile Information Exchange’ (P.I.E.) 6 The aim was to effect a change in society to enable paedophilia to become legal. The advert urged members to apply ‘c/o SMG News, 216 Clyde St, Glasgow’7 which was Fr Breslin’s mail-box.

The next issue (Nov 74) announced that ‘P.I.E. is well under way’. It is significant that up till now (March 08) Fr Breslin has never been challenged about his role in setting up P.I.E. (Ed: consider it done)

In 1975 P.I.E. moved base to London, where the leaders were eventually prosecuted under the Obscene Publications law and for publishing a list of paedophile ‘contacts’8. The resultant press outcry put intense pressure on the new leaders, forcing them to 'reach out for support' from the 'fringe revolutionary left' by publishing a new magazine in which children were presented as the 'victims of capitalist society'.

To run the magazine the new leaders obtained Dunn’s consent to use his Edinburgh flat as the publication’s mailing-address.9

In 1980 Dunn persuaded a local MP Robin Cook to spearhead 'gay law reform' in Scotland - see www.scotsgay.co.uk/dunn/index.html In 1984 Dunn then set up a ‘Lesbian and Gay Socialist Conference’ with a ‘workshop’ on paedophilia.10 At this conference, Dunn admitted having had sex with a boy of 14.11

He also set up a ‘contact-circle’ for men turned on by a particular depravity 12 - a depravity which carries an intrinsic risk of contracting AIDS.13 In 1978 SMG changed its name to Scottish Homosexual Rights Group (SHRG). Fr Andrew Monaghan - the Edinburgh priest who, to this day, hosts Radio Forth’s Open Line phone-in - recommended SHRG to homosexual callers.14

The above evidence was accepted by the police, who promptly closed down Dunn's 'contact-circle', by the Labour Party, who de-selected Dunn as a candidate in Regional elections and by national newspapers which exposed Dunn's links with P.I.E. The only person it failed to impress was Fr Monaghan's superior, Archbishop O'Brien, who defied a Vatican order to remove him from broadcasting and he has since continued to recommend callers to ‘gay’ switchboards/groups. (Ed: incredibly, Fr Monaghan has been invited to deliver the Gonzaga Lecture at St Aloysius Jesuit Church, Glasgow on 4/3/08 with Bishop Devine of Motherwell taking the same platform one week later)

Fr Breslin, who helped launch P.I.E., has continued to be associated with groups like the 'Gay Christian Movement' and 'Quest' and, claiming that one in seven priests are homosexual, he set up a 'gay clergy help group' called 'The Scottish Clergy Consultation Group' (Catholic Times 23.2.03) He even spoke at an event to 'celebrate homosexuality' at Southwark's Anglican Cathedral. Retired now, Fr Breslin continues to work in parishes in the Motherwell Diocese as a supply priest. So both Cardinal O'Brien and Bishop Devine support priests who have given considerable support to the 'homosexual movement'. It is shocking to think that Catholic priests, with the continuing support of their bishops, actively supported a movement with links to paedophilia. “Sectarianism” has sometimes been described as “Scotland’s shame”. I believe that it is the complicity of these priests and their bishops in the rise of homosexuality within the Church that is truly “Scotland’s shame”.

Iain Colquhoun is a retired nurse who worked undercover with the awareness of Edinburgh police to monitor the Homosexual rights movement from July to December 1984 and the evidence he gathered on Dunn's involvement in P.I.E. was published in both the Scottish Sunday Mail and the Daily Star. This publicity coincided with the demise of the organisation.

References (1) SHRG archive GD1467/1/3/9 at the National Archives of Scotland. (2) SHRG archive cited above. (3) SHRG publicity material. (4) SMG News December 1971 (5) ibid (6)‘The Sexual Dead-End’ by Dr Stephen Green, (hereafter SDE) ISBN 0 9519934 0 2, Broadview Books, 1992. (7) 'Information about P.I.E.’ 1974. (8) SDE p. 212. (9) Letter from Dunn in ‘Gay Scotland’ May/June 1987. (10) SHRG publicity material (11) SDE p 213 (12) SDE p 86 (13) ibid (14) Letter from Fr Monaghan of June 1985 in response to complaints about his recommendations. Further details on the above are contained on Iain Colquhoun's website: see the pdf here from p5-15 on.

Read More...

Summary only...

Sex abuse: another conviction

Prayers, please, for the victims and the priest: a priest from the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for abuse between 1975 and 1982, of two boys aged between 11 and 15.

Hat-tip to a Catholic blogger who would prefer to remain anonymous; here is the BBC.

Read More...

Summary only...

US Bishops urged to sue their 'sex' advisers

Briefing: there must be parallels in the UK.

From CFNews: California-based lecturer and author Dr. Judith Reisman, who has served as an expert witness in lawsuits involving sexual abuse, urges bishops to take action against sex therapy 'experts' who have advised the Church. Her research paper, 'Reliance of the Catholic Church on Sexuality Advisors Whose Moral Foundation Differs Markedly from that of the Church,' was submitted to a select group of bishops in 2002, so far without official response. California Catholic Daily interviewed Reisman on Aug. 12.

A number of Catholic priests later convicted for sex abuse were ex-patients of sexual therapy centers. What's the problem here?

Reisman: 'Human sexuality education' has always been based on the Kinsey model. The 'Harvard' of the Kinseyan field was the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco . The IASHS 'education' canon reflected the frauds created by Kinsey, a pedophile advocate.

Kinsey's research was ultimately used to eliminate laws banning pornography and sexual deviancy in all fifty states. Didn't anybody realize he was a fraud?

Several highly respected academicians, including Abraham Maslow, charged that Kinsey's work was shoddy and un-scientific. Even Warren Weaver, a lead scientist with Kinsey's funder, the Rockefeller Foundation, knew and warned that Kinsey's statistics were worthless; but Weaver was ignored.

Is there evidence of fraud perpetrated against the Catholic Church?

Susan Brinkman gives the details in her book, The Kinsey Corruption (Ascension Press). Certain Catholic Church administrators hired sexuality educators who taught Kinseyan values. This employment pattern held as well for some selected psychologists who screened aspiring seminarians, many of whom were rejected because they were said to be too sexually 'orthodox,' not 'tolerant' of homosexuality. Bishops sent pedophile priests for treatment to therapists who accepted pedophilia as an 'orientation.'

Which experts and treatment centers?

The Johns Hopkins clinic and St. Luke Institute [in Maryland] are two Kinseyan therapeutic venues. Fr. Rossetti took over St. Luke Institute after its founder, Michael Peterson, a priest and practicing homosexual, died of AIDS. Some of their infamous pederast patients included Fr. Rudy Kos of Dallas and Fr. John Geoghan of Boston .

The key experts were Dr. Fred Berlin and his mentor, the late Dr. John Money of the Johns Hopkins clinic. Yet, Money claimed his failed sex change operations were complete successes. He originated the notion that there is no genetic woman or man. Culture only determines one's sex, he said.

Money also told The Journal of Paedophilia that sex between men and young boys was healthy. He advocated an end to age of consent. His protégé and successor Fred Berlin refused to report his patients who were actively offending pedophiles and pederasts during his 'treatment.'

You want the Church to sue the clinics where the priests and psychologists had been trained. Are there legal precedents ?

Yes, medical malpractice is one approach that immediately comes to mind. These 'sexperts' held themselves out as authorities; bishops and vocations directors listened and commonly followed their directives. Yet, almost all of these 'sexperts' built their therapies on the fraudulent research of Kinsey and his disciples.

Could the ordinary Catholic laity seek damages, for instance through a class-action suit?

I did speak with several attorneys who confirmed that the Catholic laity was empowered to seek such damages. As 'the Church' the laity would have legal standing for redress of grievances, loss of religious trust and amity, and other claims due to the fraud and harms perpetrated by bogus sex experts [California Catholic Daily]

Read More...

Summary only...

Clerical paedophilia

Briefing: two sobering stories, from the US and Ireland, from Damian Thompson's blog. The situation in the UK seems not to have been as bad as this.

An American journalist, William Lobdell, who decided to reverse his decision to become a Catholic, writes:

I discovered that the term ‘sexual abuse’ is a euphemism. Most of these children were raped and sodomised by someone they and their family believed was Christ’s representative on Earth. That’s not something an eight-year-old’s mind can process; it forever warps a person's sexuality and spirituality.

Many of these victims were molested by priests with a history of abusing children. But the bishops routinely sent these clerics to another parish, and bullied or conned the victims and their families into silence. The police were almost never called. In at least a few instances, bishops encouraged molesting priests to flee the country to escape prosecution.

I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies — many of them right there on their own stationery — out of my head. … the children were so innocent, their parents so faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.

An Irish journalist, ex-priest Peter de Rosa, writes:

Between 1985 and 2006 when I was living in Ireland I wrote numerous press articles on child sex abuse by Catholic priests. I prophesied that it would lead to a crisis of faith worse than at the Reformation and the final payouts to victims would lead to an economic meltdown.

If anything should prevent the beatification of John Paul II it is his Great Silence on this issue. His condemnations of so-called lay sins like contraception came out fast as salt from a salt shaker. But he never could bring himself to put together the two words “priest” and “paedophile”.

The cost to the Irish Church alone is unfathomable. Try to imagine the unimaginable. Suppose a paedophile-ring in Belfast, all Protestants, had targeted Catholic children.

Pretending to be devout converts, they insinuated themselves for years into Catholic life as sacristans, teachers and youth workers. When senior Protestant clerics learned about this, instead of going to the police, they covered it up to save face.

When the media highlighted this vile scheme, the Pope immediately expressed his utter disgust. Irish Bishops went ballistic. They demanded of the British PM a public enquiry into this obscene violation of Catholic children.

The true story is far more sinister. For decades, Catholic children were sexually tortured not by outsiders but by pervert priests who sometimes broke the seal of confession to do it. Some abused altar boys just before or after mass.

The Vatican knew and was silent. Many bishops knew but seemed to say, they're only children; they have no rights. The “Church” was more important than children.

They weren’t really bothered with investigating these appalling allegations. They didn't - as honest citizens should - report the rapists to the police. On the contrary, they secretly moved them from the parish where they’d committed rape to another where they raped children again.

Christ's so-called shepherds reversed his teaching. They tossed the lambs to the wolves.

Why not clear the whole mess up once and for all? Every priest known to have sexually abused a child should be dismissed and forbidden to say mass ever again.

I'd go further. Any priest who is sexually involved with a woman should be laicised, too. Because what is really at the basis of this terrible calamity for the Catholic Church is that Rome demands celibacy of its priests but not chastity.

Until Pope Benedict faces up to this, we shall merely substitute one priestly problem for another and the agony will go on and on.

Read More...

Summary only...

BBC's child abuse

Current status: complaints, please. The BBC is screening a 'reality TV' series, the 'Baby Borrowers', in which 16-19 yr-old 'couples' are given sole charge of infants and then older children, to see how they will cope. All the people in the programme are being exploited, but by what reasoning the infants could deliberately be left open to abuse and neglect?

Hat-tip to Against the Heresies and Hermeneutic of Continuity.

See here for the BBC blurb on the series; and here for complaints.

Read More...

Summary only...

UN Gives Accreditation to Pro-Paedophilia NGO

Update: it has been confirmed that the UK was among the countries voting in favour of these accreditations. (Hat-tip to C-Fam).

Background briefing. The normalisation of paedophilia is is the next item on the agenda for radical homosexual groups: be warned.

From the 'Friday Fax' (C-Fam):Radical Homosexual Groups Approved by UN with Bush Support, by Bradford Short

The U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) recently granted official status to three gay-rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians, the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) and the International Lesbian and Gay Federation (ILGA). ECOSOC granted the consultative status to the gay-rights NGOs despite the fact that the UNCommittee on Non-Governmental Organizations recommended against it, and the fact that one of the groups had clear links to pro-pedophilia organizations in the past.

ILGA is probably the most infamous of the groups granted ECOSOC consultative status last week. A “global federation of organizations and individuals seeking to” advance gay rights, ILGA, was repeatedly rejected forofficial UN status many times in the past several years for its connection to a child-sex group called the the North American Man/Boy Love Association
(NAMBLA). NAMBLA is probably the leading pro-pedophilia group in the United States. ILGA is said to have expelled NAMBLA but, according to UN delegations, refused to condemn adult-child sex. ILGA said “these groups had joined ILGA at an earlier stage of ILGA’s development, at a time when ILGA did not have in place administrative procedures to scrutinize the constitutions and policies of groups seeking membership.” This claim, at least until last week, gave UN delegations pause since the name "North American Man Boy Love Association makes it fairly clear the group promotes homosexual sex between men and children.

Another approved group, the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians considers itself to be an organization that takes a “conservative” approach to gay-rights advocacy in Denmark. That is, its support for gay “marriage,” for gay adoption, and for laws that would force churches to bless gay unions, all are “conservative” endeavors because in doing these things Danish homosexuals do not “want to change the world,” they “just want to be in
it on equal terms.” The Association does understand, however, the concerns of “subversive” Danish homosexuals, who want to prevent the “extensive heterofication of [Danish] society” that they say is happening because gays are pursuing “conservative” ends, such as marriage. In this way does the Association understand itself as a moderate gay-rights group.

LSVD includes member divisions such as “LSVD fresh,” which is supposed to be a support group “for youngsters” who are gay.

Twenty-three nations on the Council voted for the groups’ accreditation, while sixteen voted against it, and ten abstained. Among those voting in favor of the gay-rights groups was the United States, which has recently been voting in favor of groups that advance the homosexual agenda at the UN. One UN permanent representative told the Friday Fax that, “while the Bush
Administration has been solid on life issues, it seems irrational to me that they insist on favoring gay groups that clearly seek to undermine marriage and the family.”

See UN report here.

Read More...

Summary only...