Catholic Church spent $10M on lobbying to delay statute of limitations reforms: report

The U.S. Catholic Church spent more than $10 million on lobbyists over seven years to delay statute of limitations reforms from going into effect in eight states, according to a new report.

The church paid for lobbying efforts in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island between 2011 and 2018, the report, which was reportedly commissioned by law firms representing survivors of church sexual abuse, found. Each state’s legislature was either considering or passed legislation that broadened statute of limitations laws, the time period in which victims of crimes can come forward with legal action.

“This report lays out what we have known all along — that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch,” attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms, told NBC News.

In Pennsylvania, the church reportedly spent $5,322,979 to keep existing statute of limitations laws in effect. Victims of child sexual abuse currently can bring criminal allegations until the age of 50 and file lawsuits until age 30.

“Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them,” attorney Gerald Williams told NBC News. “The church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors.”

The church spent nearly $3 million dollars in lobbying efforts to prevent the Child Victims Act from going into effect in New York, according to the report. The measure, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed into law on Feb. 14, allows child sexual abuse victims to sue institutions and specific perpetrators until age 55, up from the previous age of 23.

Eighty percent of the money spent in New York went to the Catholic Conference Policy Group Inc., which the report states was asked to lobby on “statute of limitations, legislative issues and liability issues.”

“I think it’s incredibly troubling that parishioners who on Sundays contributed to the church collections may have been inadvertently funding lobbying efforts against victims of sex abuse seeking legal redress,” New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D) said, according to NBC News. “Three million dollars that went for lobbying could have done a lot of good elsewhere, including soup kitchens, after-school programs for children, support for seniors. In my district, a Catholic school that is closing might perhaps have stayed open if that money had been used for better causes.”

The church reportedly spent $875,261 in Connecticut, $633,458 in New Jersey, $537,551 in Massachusetts, $124,260 in Maine and $61,961 in Rhode Island.

In New Hampshire, where legislation to amend the statute of limitations laws has not yet been introduced, the church spent $134,345, according to the researchers.

The Hill has reached out to church officials in each state and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for comment.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference said in an email to The Hill that officials had not reviewed the report.

“For more than a half century, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference has lobbied on a myriad of issues that are important to people of the Catholic faith,” the spokesman added.

Complete Article HERE!

Woman Accuses Cardinal Daniel DiNardo Of Dismissing Sex Abuse Case

Laura Pontikes, a Texas-based construction executive, has accused Monsignor Frank Rossi of drawing her into a physical relationship.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

By

When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things.

He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. Emails and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the relationship had gone on for years — even as the priest heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and pressed the couple for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

She says she was assured that the priest, Monsignor Frank Rossi, would never be a pastor or counsel women again.

Months after that meeting, though, she found out DiNardo had allowed Rossi to take a new job as pastor of a parish two hours away in east Texas. When her husband confronted DiNardo, he said, the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.

On Tuesday, three years after the meeting with DiNardo and after written inquiries by the AP last week, the church temporarily removed Rossi, announcing in a statement from his new bishop that he was being placed on administrative leave.

Laura Pontikes, a 55-year-old construction executive in Texas, had been at a low point in her life when she sought spiritual counseling from Rossi, the longtime No. 2 official in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese DiNardo heads. Instead, she said, Rossi preyed on her emotional vulnerability to draw her into a physical relationship that he called blessed by God.

“He took a woman that went into a church truly looking for God, and he took me for himself,” she told the AP.

Rossi’s sexual relationship with Pontikes is now the subject of a previously undisclosed criminal investigation in Houston. Yet it is DiNardo’s handling of the case that poses far-reaching questions for the church in the #MeToo era, when powerful men and institutions are being called to account over sex abuse.

As the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, DiNardo will lead a meeting next week in Baltimore to address the church’s credibility crisis over its failure to fully reckon with sexual abuse, 17 years after it committed to cleaning house. DiNardo is expected to present his brother bishops with new proposals to hold one another accountable for sexual misconduct or negligence in handling abuse cases.

But Pontikes’ case lays bare that even leaders in the Catholic hierarchy who have vowed to do right by victims continue to fail them. Pontikes said DiNardo has been negligent by keeping in ministry a priest who “seduced, betrayed and ultimately sexually victimized” her, Pontikes’ therapist told Texas prosecutors.

The June 11-14 meeting in Baltimore is part of the church’s effort to confront sexual abuse worldwide. In a little more than a year, Pope Francis admitted he made “grave errors” in Chile’s worst case of cover-up, an Australian cardinal was convicted of abuse and a French cardinal was convicted of failing to report a pedophile.

In the U.S., a Pennsylvania grand jury blasted church leaders for following “a playbook for concealing the truth,” and attorneys general in at least 15 states are investigating sex abuse by Catholic clergy and its cover-up.

The Galveston-Houston archdiocese acknowledged an inappropriate physical relationship between Rossi and Pontikes, but asserted that it was consensual and didn’t include sexual intercourse. In a written statement to The Associated Press, it defended its handling of the case, saying Rossi was immediately placed on leave and went for counseling after Pontikes reported him.

Rossi returned to active ministry, without restrictions, based on recommendations from an out-of-state “renewal” program for clergy he completed, the statement said.

Pontikes filed a police report in August. Under Texas criminal law, a member of the clergy can be charged with sexual assault of an adult if the priest exploited an emotional dependency in a spiritual relationship.

Rossi’s attorney, Dan Cogdell, said Rossi is cooperating with the investigation and has met with police. He declined further comment.

Pontikes’ allegations against DiNardo add to questions about how he has dealt with abuse in the past. SNAP, a national group of survivors of clergy abuse, has called for him to resign as head of the bishops conference because he allowed predator priests to remain in ministry in Houston, as well as in his previous diocese in Sioux City, Iowa.

And when law enforcement raided DiNardo’s offices in November as part of an investigation into an alleged abuser, they found files locked away in a bank vault that the archdiocese had failed to turn over, according to police documents released last month.

Rossi previously helped handle Galveston-Houston’s abuse cases for more than two decades. But in a church bulletin in February, he minimized the number of abusers nationwide, accused the media of hyping the scandal and insisted that while even one case of abuse was too many, the vast majority of accused were “good men” who simply made a “terrible single decision.”

Pontikes provided the AP with seven years of her email correspondence with Rossi, therapists, priests and friends, along with financial data and communications with the archdiocese. She told the Vatican in April that Rossi heard her confessions after their relationship became physical — a potentially serious crime under church law that DiNardo never asked her about. The Vatican said her complaint was under review.

The church, which has been grappling for decades with the sexual abuse of children, is now being forced to reckon with the idea that adults too can be sexually exploited by clergy. Last summer, amid revelations that ex-

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had preyed on adult seminarians, DiNardo used his pulpit to apologize for the leadership’s failures. “This is especially true for adults being sexually harassed by those in positions of power,” DiNardo said Aug. 27. “We will do better.”

That statement gave Pontikes hope, but nothing changed, she said. She said she came forward to protect other women and expose DiNardo’s handling of her case, which has left her so distraught that she can barely sleep or work.

“They’re not going to play with my life like this,” said Pontikes. “They just can’t get away with it…Somebody had better stand up and tell the damned truth.”

Pontikes first met Rossi in the confessional at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in December 2007. At the time, Pontikes sought to fill the void of an emotionally distant husband and mounting pressures at the family business by throwing herself into her faith, giving sizeable weekly donations at Mass.

Rossi’s easy manner and laughter broke the ice.

Soon the coiffed and charismatic preacher was calling her “Laura dear” and attending family dinners. In 2008, while she showed him a religious painting in their downstairs wine cellar, Rossi slipped his hand under her jacket and rested it on her bare waist, she said.

She froze, embarrassed, but didn’t know what to do, she said. So she did nothing.

During a 2009 dinner, Rossi asked the couple to give to an ambitious capital campaign that included rebuilding the St. Michael rectory where the parish priests lived. Their firm built the new rectory for $900,000, more than half of which the couple donated themselves. In addition, Laura Pontikes donated nearly $250,000 in religious art and furnishings, including $20,000 for an 18th-century scroll depicting the Virgin Mary as the Good Shepherdess, according to a list of vendors provided to AP.

In all, the Pontikeses said they gave the church about $2 million over nine years, and Rossi asked for more, including $750,000 for a new school chapel they couldn’t afford. The archdiocese countered that their construction firm benefited from contracts worth $24 million over that time.

Pontikes began seeing Rossi for regular spiritual direction in 2010, at the same time her husband was trying to get an annulment for his first marriage. The couple wanted their civil marriage of two decades to be recognized by the church.

Rossi married the Pontikeses in a religious ceremony at St. Michael’s in August 2012. Less than four months later, during a session of spiritual counseling in his office, Pontikes said, Rossi started their physical relationship with an intimate, sexual embrace. The next day, Rossi wrote her an email with the subject line “blessings.”

“It was wonderful to visit with you yesterday and continue to unfold the love of God in your life,” he wrote.

She felt blessed and special to him, but also conflicted, knowing a boundary had been crossed. That same confusion tormented her during the many times he induced her to perform sexual acts in his office during spiritual direction, she said.

Pontikes phoned and emailed Rossi several times a day with spiritual musings and work and family problems, and he responded with the attention she sought. In time, she was increasingly questioning her feelings for him.

“I have blocked my faith mightily over my fear of my love for you,” she wrote him Jan. 5, 2013.

Rossi assured her that such feelings are common in spiritual direction and that “holy touches” were not only sanctioned but encouraged by St. Paul the Apostle.

Houston architect Ken Newberry was dismayed at seeing his longtime friend and client fall under Rossi’s spell. “She was like someone that was hypnotized or mesmerized,” Newberry said.

Newberry recognized a process of grooming that he went through when he was abused by a Catholic priest at the age of 15. He eventually told Pontikes he couldn’t bear to hear any more, because it was triggering his own trauma.

“Someone is talking to you about God,” he says, “and they’re pulling you in and telling you that this is right…It is very, very confusing and overwhelming.”

Throughout the relationship, Pontikes said, Rossi was her confessor. On Dec. 20, 2012, about two weeks after their first sexual embrace in Rossi’s office, he agreed to hear her confession: “I would be most happy to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation with you if you would like.”

A few months later, Pontikes was rushing to catch a flight to visit a friend whose husband had died. Guilt-ridden about her growing intimacy with Rossi, she wanted to ease her conscience with confession before leaving town.

He was not happy with her request and said he didn’t have time. But she chased him down, followed him out the side chapel and made him hear her, according to Pontikes. She confessed that she had been inappropriate with her priest. He absolved her of their sin, she said, and told her, “Go forth and sin no more.”

The so-called “absolution of an accomplice” crime, one of the most serious in canon law, must be reported to the Vatican and can carry the penalty of excommunication. It occurs when a priest absolves someone with whom he has engaged in a sexual sin, including merely a lustful touch.

The archdiocese claims Rossi never heard Pontikes’ confession during or after their physical relationship, but the emails Pontikes turned over to church officials include several references to confession.

Edward Peters, a leading U.S. canon lawyer and consultant at the Vatican high court, says that “as a matter of good governance” the bishop in question — DiNardo — should have asked Pontikes about possible confession-related crimes. Pontikes said neither DiNardo nor his subordinates ever did.

The sexual relationship grew during a March 2013 trip to Taormina, Sicily, one of several family vacations Rossi joined at the Pontikeses’ invitation and expense. The family also had begun building a guest cottage for him at their weekend retreat on Trinity Bay.

George Pontikes, who knew nothing of the sexual encounters with his wife, reached out to Rossi for advice after the trip. She was growing more distant, irritable and distracted, he said, and the couple was on the verge of separation.

“I don’t know whether I’m asking for help or sympathy,” he wrote on April 3, 2013. “I know Laura listens to you.”

Rossi responded that she was going through strong mood swings. “My gut feeling is that she is on the verge of a breakdown due to the stress,” he wrote.

George Pontikes reached out again two weeks later.

“Frank: Laura is close to losing it,” he wrote Rossi. “I want to help. She does not want it. I think you should give it a try. She trusts you.”

Four days later, on a Friday night after George had gone to bed, the priest and parishioner consummated the relationship in the pool house bathroom of her Houston home, Laura Pontikes said. It was the first of up to half a dozen such sexual encounters over more than a year, according to Pontikes.

“I wish I could have walked away from it, but I just didn’t and I just couldn’t,” she said.

The archdiocese denied key portions of Pontikes’ claim, saying the relationship included encounters of a sexual nature but not intercourse. It also said Rossi ended the physical relationship, but Pontikes continued sending him “hundreds of unsolicited messages primarily by email and phone.”

Although Pontikes acknowledged the continued correspondence, she said she was desperate to hold onto the spiritual relationship because she believed it an essential part of her faith. Rossi assured her that their relationship was “a blessing from God.”

“I am praying fervently and digging deeper and deeper into my own soul,” he wrote her in 2015, after the physical relationship had ended. “I ache at my very core.”

The turmoil tore Pontikes up so much that she sought therapy. Gradually, painfully, she came to believe that Rossi had preyed upon her. Her suspicions were confirmed when she watched him interact with other women, and she remembered seeing him touch one on the bare shoulder at her wedding.

Then two friends told her about his inappropriate attentiveness to yet another woman on a Holy Land pilgrimage. It was the tipping point. She confided in her friends, and they urged her to turn him in.

Pontikes reported Rossi to the archdiocese April 7, 2016. She met with Auxiliary Bishop George Sheltz and Sister Gina Iadanza. They didn’t ask questions, Pontikes recalled, but Iadanza wrote down everything she said, and she left them with a stack of email correspondence.

That night, as she sat in the prayer chair in her living room, she finally told her husband. “What have you done?” George Pontikes asked his wife in shock.

Over the next few days, Laura checked herself into a residential clinic to cope with the trauma. George spoke with her therapists, read the emails between Rossi and his wife and began to realize that the priest had manipulated and betrayed them both. He was livid.

Less than a month after reporting Rossi, Laura Pontikes said, she got a phone call from Iadanza. She and her husband listened together.

“She said they had completed their investigation and that a committee had determined that he must be turned over to the authorities,” Pontikes said. “I panicked. I did not want to ruin anyone’s life, even as mine appeared to be in shambles.”

The archdiocese maintained that it was not legally obliged to report Rossi to police at the time, and that Pontikes “vehemently resisted” their suggestion that she do so. However, Joe Bailey, a onetime assistant district attorney in Harris County who is now advising the Pontikeses, said Rossi’s wrongdoing is clear and should have been reported immediately. The archdiocese did report the case last year, and said it is cooperating with the investigation.

For Pontikes, this case is as much about DiNardo as it is about Rossi.

DiNardo’s archdiocese is known for its secrecy among victim advocates. In the November raid on the diocese, prosecutors backed by 60 members of the Texas Rangers and federal agents seized records related to the Rev.

Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who has been charged with sexually abusing minors. Two of LaRosa-Lopez’s alleged victims have accused DiNardo of downplaying their claims and keeping him in ministry, around children, until his arrest in September.

DiNardo also allowed the Rev. John Keller to celebrate Mass on the same day his name appeared on the archdiocese’s list of accused priests, even though allegations that he fondled a 16-year-old boy had been public since 2003.

In 2002, during his tenure as bishop of Sioux City, Iowa, DiNardo apologized for allowing the Rev. George McFadden to continue working as a priest after he molested at least 25 children.

Rossi, for his part, helped handle Galveston-Houston’s abuse cases as vice-chancellor, chancellor and vicar general of the archdiocese. Pontikes recalls he boasted that his bosses couldn’t take action against him since “I know where all the bones are buried.”

In 1998, Rossi signed a form letter stating that the Rev. Jesse Linam was a validly ordained priest who had been granted “complete retirement for medical reasons,” according to documents obtained by AP. The letter didn’t mention that Linam had been removed from ministry five years before after admitting to sex abuse. In a 2003 letter with a $2,000 loan to Linam for legal fees, Rossi wrote, “Jesse, I realize that this has been a very difficult time for you. It has been for Bishop (Joseph) Fiorenza and myself as well.”

In his new posting in east Texas, Rossi continues to express sympathy for accused priests.

“These men need our prayers, as they too are suffering due to the harm they know they have caused,” he wrote in the Feb. 2-3 parish bulletin.

A month after Pontikes reported him, Rossi sent an email to the staff of St. Michael’s with a letter to parishioners announcing his resignation as pastor, effective May 7, 2016.

“I am being faced with some very difficult personal issues affecting my priesthood which require my full and single focused attention;” Rossi wrote. He vowed to return after “a period of renewal.”

Pontikes said Iadanza later told her that Rossi would never be a pastor again, and that the archdiocese was looking for a position for him as a port chaplain or in prison ministry — where he wouldn’t have access to women. The archdiocese said Pontikes’ account of Iadanza’s comments is “not accurate,” but did not elaborate.

The Pontikeses found out about Rossi’s return to Houston when they learned a parishioner had invited them all to the same Christmas party. George Pontikes pressed DiNardo in a subsequent meeting to hold Rossi accountable, but said he came away feeling threatened.

“He told me that this could be headed for some type of civil or criminal matter and that we should resolve this problem because ‘Laura can’t handle it, you can’t handle it and your business can’t handle it,’” George Pontikes recalled DiNardo warning him.

“I told him, ‘Neither can you.’ He said, ‘You’re right. I’ll put money, art and everything on the table. Let’s have a mediation.’ “

Scott Allen, an attorney representing Pontikes, also thought the church was bullying the couple. After a May 31, 2017 meeting, he wrote that archdiocesan lawyer Robert Schick had tried to warn them off litigation by mentioning the “public domain exposure to Laura, George their business” as well as the potential for “St. Michael’s community fallout.”

“Despite attempt at ‘cordiality,’ I found the tone and content purposefully vaguely & opaquely threatening and somewhat insulting,” Allen wrote.

The archdiocese didn’t respond to questions about the exchanges.

Rossi’s “retirement” from the archdiocese was announced that spring, along with his new appointment as pastor of Our Lady of the Pines in Woodville, Texas, a humble parish that seats about 100 people. Laura Pontikes said Iadanza assured her Rossi would be under a strict monitoring protocol. In the meantime, DiNardo defended his actions to George.

“They started telling me things like, ‘His life is ruined, George. We’ve already punished him,’” George Pontikes said. “‘We’ve sent him out to east Texas… He will never ever be looking at an upward mobility anymore.’”
By October 2017, Dr. Ken Buckle, Laura Pontikes’ Catholic therapist, had outlined mediation proposals. They included a formal apology for actions by Rossi and by the archdiocese; ongoing monitoring of Rossi along with five years of therapy, with annual reports to the couple; and “more compassionate” policies in cases of inappropriate conduct.

But Pontikes said that during two years of mediation, the church focused exclusively on a financial settlement.

What happened between Pontikes and Rossi is under investigation by the Houston police department, and Harris County prosecutors have subpoenaed her therapists in the name of a grand jury.

In an affidavit seen by the AP, Buckle wrote that Pontikes was in crisis as a result of “sexual and religious abuse” and that the decision to relocate Rossi to another parish was “highly distressing” to her. Texas law states that sex is without consent if a clergyman exploits a person’s emotional dependency on him.

“It’s recognized that the person really can’t give consent,” said Tahira Khan Merritt, a Dallas lawyer who represents abuse victims. “And the church knows that.”

The archdiocese said it informed Rossi’s new bishop of his violation of his vow of chastity and time in a renewal program.

Beaumont Bishop Curtis Guillory didn’t respond to questions about what other information or monitoring recommendations DiNardo had provided. He told AP that he accepted Rossi into his diocese as a retired Houston priest “in good standing,” and that he has received no allegations of misconduct in his parish. In a press release Tuesday put on the Beaumont website, he announced Rossi had been placed on temporary administrative leave pending the investigation.

Until the suspension, neither the criminal investigation nor the years-long mediation with the archdiocese appeared to have crimped Rossi’s ministry. As usual, he led a 13-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Jordan in early November. The pews at his new parish were full on Palm Sunday, when Rossi celebrated Mass and then greeted visitors in near-perfect Spanish.

“At times, we betray the Lord, through our evil acts of sin,” Rossi said in his homily. “And then we regret our sins.”
Rossi’s parish bulletins included posts on spousal love and sexuality, including how husbands and wives should communicate. Laura Pontikes read them in disgust, seeing them as an attempt by Rossi to find women in troubled marriages who might seek counseling.

She enclosed the bulletins in her April letter to the Vatican, including one from November that read: “Holding hands, kissing, embracing and sexual intimacy are all ways of communicating marital love… For a person whose primary love language is touch, physical contact with their spouse is essential.”

Complete Article HERE!

‘A more open way of being’: Catholics in Kenya rebel against celibacy vow for priests

The Rev. Peter Njogu, bishop of Nyeri diocese, speaks to churchgoers in Gachatha, Kenya. Njogu is part of a breakaway faction of Catholic priests who started their own church in which they do not have to remain celibate.

By Max Bearak

He was a priest just out of seminary. She was a nurse. They were both from the slopes of Mount Kenya, but their paths improbably crossed in Rome

He became unshakable in his desire to marry her, even though he had taken the Catholic Church’s mandatory vow of celibacy for priests

When he returned to preach in Kenya, Peter Njogu was shocked when fellow priests told him that many of them had broken that vow, marrying and having children. In hushed tones, they spoke of their “secret families,” kept hidden in distant homes. The thought of doing so pained him

As the Catholic Church goes through a global crisis brought on in part by the revelation of widespread sexual misconduct by its clergy, self-proclaimed Bishop Njogu believes he has figured out how to save Christianity’s largest church from its own sins: Let priests marry and raise families.

Njogu’s breakaway faction, the Renewed Universal Catholic Church, is Catholic in every way except in having optional celibacy for its priests. Its growth in Kenya is rooted in opposition to the practice of keeping secret families but reflects a growing worry among some Catholics that the celibacy requirement — to many an nonnegotiable tenet of the priesthood — creates a harmful culture of sexual secrecy.

Bishop Njogu greets churchgoers after Mass.

The Vatican has shown no interest in reexamining the issue for all priests, and Pope Francis has called celibacy a “gift to the church.” But the pontiff has also signaled that he is open to ordaining married men in remote parts of the world with a severe shortage of priests. More radical voices in the church have called for the church to rescind the requirement altogether.

“Most of our members are ex-Catholics,” said Njogu. “They are tired of the hypocrisy. Some of our people call us the ‘Church of the Future.’ ”

Nearly 20 priests and more than 2,000 parishioners have joined Njogu since 2011, he claims, mostly in the towns and villages that dot the fertile slopes of Mount Kenya, the 17,000-foot-high extinct volcano right in the center of this country.

“Now that I’ve come out, these other priests tell me, ‘The problem with you is you went public,’ ” he said on a recent Sunday after celebrating Mass. “And I say, ‘I am not the problem; I am the solution. Join me.’ ”

To his flock, he said: “This is where you find your freedom from all that hypocrisy.”

The church in the hilltop village of Gachatha where Njogu preaches his reformation is a far cry from a cathedral. The pews, pulpit and church itself are all made of wooden planks nailed together. The floor is sawdust atop dirt. On a clear day, the ice-capped peak of Mount Kenya glimmers through a glassless window.

While Catholicism has declined in numbers in some former bastions in the West, such as Ireland, it is growing more rapidly in Africa than anywhere else. Africans make up nearly a fifth of the world’s Catholics. Njogu’s sermons hark back to Catholicism’s pre-celibacy era while appealing to the faith’s future in Africa, where he believes it will have to reconcile with local customs as it grows.

“No one in the Vatican understands the African soul. They do not understand that for the African man, priest or not, the worst sin is to leave this world without siring a child,” said Njogu. “Mandatory celibacy is thus the root of priestly sin, but they pretend all is well while their house is burning to the ground.”

Njogu, center, celebrates Mass. Some of his followers call the Renewed Universal church the “Church of the Future,” he said.

The Catholic Church excommunicated Njogu after he defected for alleged “unbecoming behavior,” including purchasing land and speaking openly about his intention to marry Berith Kariri, who remains his wife.

“These priests are not sincere, they are pursuing personal interests,” said Father Daniel Kimutai Rono, general secretary for the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops. “There is nothing about ‘African-ness’ or ‘European-ness.’” The vow of celibacy, he said, “is about the vocation, about the call to serve God and the sacrifice which entails in serving God.”

Dozens of Njogu’s followers said in interviews that they left the mainstream church because they doubted their former priests’ devotion to the vocation.

“As a parent, I had to fear that a priest would impregnate my daughter if I took them to my old churches,” said Margaret Kimondo, who was one of Njogu’s first converts. “In front of the altar they may look one way, but at night, you don’t even want to hear those stories.”

Philip Muiga, 78, had been a Catholic priest for decades before joining the Renewed Universal church last year.

“One day I met a priest in the street who I have known for a long time, and he was drunk,” he said. “When I went home and looked at myself in the mirror, I just saw darkness. I could not justify continuing to call these men my colleagues.”

Rono, who represents the Kenyan Catholic Church, denied any sort of systemic abuse or existence of “secret families” but acknowledged a global churchwide “trend of infidelity to the priestly vocation” and said priests should avoid any kind of “coverup.” The Vatican deferred to its Kenyan representatives for comment.

Men pray during mass at the Renewed Universal church.

Celibacy has been expected of Catholic priests since its origins in the first century after Jesus Christ’s death, but the 12th-century imposition of a celibacy vow was necessitated primarily by a priesthood that had begun using the church as a family business, said Chris Bellitto, a professor and church historian at Kean University in New Jersey.

“Priests were handing their parishes along to their illegitimate sons as if they were training them as cobblers, who inherited your shop and tools when you died. This complicated the integrity of the sacraments — what if the son didn’t have a vocation or disposition as a spiritual leader? — and the independence of the church, since the bishop was supposed to be naming parish priests,” said Bellitto.

But the vow always seemed at odds with certain parts of the Bible’s teachings, leading many within the church to question its purpose. Njogu’s faction is certainly not the first to try charting a new course without the celibacy vow, said Kim Haines-Eitzen, a historian of early Christianity at Cornell University.

“In Catholicism, there’s always been a pronounced preference for asceticism to prove devotion. But how do you square that with, say, ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ from Genesis? Are priests expected to be separate from all other humans?” she said.

That enforced detachment from the lives of their flock is what drives priests in Kenya to adopt “secret families,” said Father Matthew Theuri, 73, who was a catechist for nearly four decades before joining Njogu’s church as a priest. But it also presents a quandary in being a good priest, he said.

“Our churchgoers come to us with questions about wayward children, trouble paying school fees, marital issues — how can we help them if we know nothing of that life?” he said, while sitting at home with his wife, Jane, and two of his grandchildren.

After Njogu’s Mass on a recent Sunday in Gachatha, Joseph Macharia, a coffee farmer, said he thanked God every day for the new church.

“This is a more open way of being,” he said. “The others, the ones who keep secret families, they come to the pulpit to lie. Maybe they think we are stupid.”

Father Matthew Theuri, 73, his wife, Jane, and two of their grandchildren sit at their home in Ithe Kahuno. Theuri joined Njogu’s church after four decades as a catechist.

Complete Article HERE!

Priests’ fury with Pope over his stance on female deacons

THE Association of Catholic priests (ACP) was very disappointed at Pope Francis’ response to the demand for the ordination of female deacons. The Pope said that a commission he appointed three years ago failed to reach a consensus on whether female deacons in the early Church (1st century AD) were ordained in the same way as male deacons.

Consequently, for now the jury was out (in the 21st century). Nothing would be done to change the situation (for another 21 centuries?). And that was that!

The ACP responded with a sharp criticism, asserting that the Pope was ‘kicking the can down a timeless road.’  They said that the equality of women was critical for the credibility and the future of the Church, and that introducing ordained women deacons was a minimalist step.  If the Pope couldn’t take such a step, there was little or no prospect of any movement towards equality.

A knotty topic, indeed, but we must confess that we rather liked the quirky reference to kicking tin cans. It suggested the activities of idle urban young fellas with nothing better to do than playing footie with the Supreme Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ and Holy Father who every now and then directed an aimless lash at a metal container (beans, perhaps?) with a finely polished Italian boot.

And although ‘gurriers’ are linked with the kicking of tin cans, we are sure that the Association of Catholic Priests in no way wanted to give the impression that the Pope’s street activities were in any way similar to those sections of modern youth who engage in loutish behaviour.

Has ‘no authority’

Yet, as matters stand, the can-kicking squad (in Vatican colours) consists of God, the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops and priests and, on the sideline, the humble deacons.

The latter are ordained men who are not priests although they wear vestments at mass and some even sport Roman collars. Single or married, their job is to serve and assist priests and bishops. They’re entitled to baptise, preach, ‘do’ weddings and run a parish, but they cannot consecrate the Eucharist or hear confessions.

But, and here’s the contentious bit, the Church says the Pope, has ‘no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.’  It ordains only men.

The ACP says that’s  a form of discrimination (for that matter, neither does Canon Law allow transgender people to be ordained. In the eyes of the Church, ‘trans-men are considered to be women and trans-women to be men of unsuitable character’).

Deacon Phoebe

As Pope Francis bluntly put it, ‘the door is closed’ regarding women’s ordination. In fact, the only female deacon mentioned in Scripture is a lady named Phoebe! And no, we’re not referring to Monty Python or the ‘Life of Brian!’ (See Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, verses 16: 1-2).

In recent years, historical-theologians have had a field day arguing for and against the fact that as far back as the First Council of Nicaea in 325 women could receive sacramental ordination in certain times and places, and that it was not until the 13th century that women were utterly prohibited from becoming priests.

For men only

Fast forward to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and, once again, the pros and cons of women being ordained deacons and having the same functions as male deacons were hotly debated. Since then, the argument in favour of ordaining permanent female deacons has gathered pace, despite entrenched opposition from Vatican greybeards.

Sadly, all the signs are that the ‘Men Only’ regulation is set to continue secula seculorum even though prominent ecclesiastics, such as the Archbishop of Quebec, opposed the anti-woman bias. It’s significant too that an International Theological Commission (1992-97) produced a report that was positive, although the hardline Cardinal Ratzinger delightfully refused to circulate the contents.

Eventually, in May 2016, Pope Francis gave way and said he would create a commission to study the role of women deacons in the early Church.  The purpose was to find an answer to the question as to whether women could serve as deacons today.

Last January the Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women unofficially gave its answer to Pope Francis:  no!

Lost in translation?

But, although the conclusions have not been released, judging from Pope’s response, he agrees with the thumbs down, interim decision.  However, in a recent press conference that he gave on a plane journey from Bulgaria, he admitted that some members of the commission had opinions that seriously differed from Rome’s.

The Pope was asked what he learned from the report.  His response was linguistically weird (perhaps something was lost in translation?).  He said: ‘On the question of the female diaconate, there is a way of conceiving it that is not with the same vision as that of the male diaconate.

‘For example, the formulae of diaconate ordination (of women) found up to now are not the same as for the ordination of the male diaconate.  Rather, they are more like what today would be the blessing of an abbess.

‘There were deaconesses at the beginning of the Church, but the question is was theirs a sacramental ordination or not?  They helped, for example, in the liturgy of baptism, which was by immersion, and so when a woman was baptised the deaconesses assisted.

‘Some say there is a doubt.  Let us go forward to study the women’s diaconate. I am not afraid of the study.  But up to this moment it has not happened. Moreover it is curious that where there were women deacons, it was always in a geographical zone, above all in Syria.’

Bad vibes

Hence, the criticism from the Association of Catholic Priests who had expected a different reaction. His comments, they said, sent ‘all the wrong messages about women to women and men.’

It confirmed that women were not good enough in the eyes of the official Church, the result of which would be the waste of women’s gifts, and that the official institutional Church would continue to be perceived as a men’s Church. The Church, they said, was a clerical hierarchical patriarchy and that injustice was built into its heart.

The Irish priests described the Pope’s comments as an enormous blow to those who believe in equality.  As a result, it was incumbent on bishops, priests and people in the pews to make their voices heard. ‘Now was not the time for looking over shoulders, thinking of promotions or offending those in authority,’ they said.

Stirring stuff indeed, but (thankfully) not yet in the mould of the 16th century Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, who also had problems with a pope who didn’t want to listen; and we all know what that particular shouting match led to!

Complete Article HERE!

Victims of clergy abuse to sue Vatican, seek abusers’ names

They seek files of clergy who’ve abused children.

By

Five clergy-abuse survivors, including three brothers abused by former St. Paul parish priest Curtis Wehmeyer, plan to sue the Vatican to release the names and files of all clergy who have sexually abused children.

The charges against Wehmeyer, who sexually abused the boys in his trailer parked at Church of the Blessed Sacrament, led to unprecedented criminal charges filed against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for failure to protect children.

It also led to the resignation of former archbishop John Nienstedt, who was sharply criticized for failing to take disciplinary action against a priest with a history of sexual misconduct.

The brothers will speak publicly for the first time at a news conference Tuesday in the office of St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, who has several lawsuits pending against the Vatican. The brothers are expected to demand greater sanctions against Nienstedt, who resigned in good standing.

This undated photo shows Curtis Wehmeyer, who pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct and child pornography. Some of his victims are among several people who are planning to sue the Vatican

Anderson announced plans to file the lawsuit and the Tuesday news conference in a news release Monday.

The lawsuit, to be filed Tuesday, asks that the Vatican release the names of more than 3,000 priests who have sexually abused children, as well as evidence and documentation. It is one of several lawsuits that abuse survivors represented by Anderson have filed against the Vatican.

At the news conference, Anderson said he will provide details of the lawsuit and introduce the plaintiffs. They include the brothers, who have not yet been named, as well as Twin Cities abuse survivor Jim Keenan and survivor Manuel Vega of California.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of an announcement by Pope Francis that the Roman Catholic Church now would require that clergy report any sexual abuse to their superiors. The new rules have been criticized by victims of child sexual abuse, who say that any incidents need to be reported to law enforcement, not to church officials.

Wehmeyer plead guilty to criminal sexual misconduct in connection with the abuse of two of the boys, and is serving five years in prison.

Complete Article HERE!