The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement urging Catholics to attend NOM’s anti-LGBT hate march this weekend. They write:
March for Marriage 2016
On June 25, 2016, the day before the one year anniversary of the erroneous and unjust Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, a rally and March for Marriage will be held in Washington, D.C. The event is meant to highlight the importance of the unique meaning of marriage to society and the importance of mothers and fathers for children.Participants will be gathering at the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol building around 11:30 a.m. for the program, and the march to the Supreme Court will begin at 1:00 p.m.Please consider joining the March for Marriage 2016 to witness to the continued importance of authentic marriage!
Donald Trump wasted no time. “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”
This was early on Sunday, as the country was waking up to learn about the massacre in Orlando. Fifty people dancing at “Latin night” at a gay nightclub, The Pulse, had been killed by shooter who, at that hour, had not yet been identified.
The facts weren’t all in then, and are even now still being revealed. But it wasn’t too early for Donald Trump to decide on the source for this tragedy. “I called it,” he tweeted, referring to his pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.
There are a lot of threads in this story: gun rights, terrorism, ISIS, Latino and Latina identity, immigration, and the endless and execrable campaign of 2016. It is hard to understand this catastrophe without taking the time to understand how all these forces intersect. The weeks ahead will give us the chance to learn more.
But one thing seems clear already. Omar Mateen didn’t learn his hatred of LGBT people from a distant cell of terrorists in Syria. He learned it on American soil.
This was no foreign born terrorist who furtively snuck over the border, like those Mexican “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists” Trump has mentioned. This was a man born in New York, raised in this country. Whatever he is, he is the product of our own culture.
We know that Mateen had been married, for a year, and that the marriage was marked by violence and abuse. But we also know that he had used an app called Jack’d, a dating site for men. He’d once proposed meeting a gay man for a drink at Pulse, the very club where he would later commit his atrocity.
One possible narrative of this tragedy is that it was committed by a man who was attracted to other men, and who found it impossible to accept the truth of what was in his heart. So instead he decided to destroy what was in himself, by lashing out at his brothers and sisters, to destroy the lives of people living with an absence of shame that he could not imagine for himself.
This was a man who had learned that it is better to commit mass murder — and suicide — than to accept oneself. This was a man who had learned that the lives of gay and lesbian and bi and trans people are expendable, that his own life, if he was one of us, was not worth living.
From whom did he learn this lesson? Did terrorists in Syria send him telegrams? Did the Taliban reach him by phone?
Of course not. He learned hatred of LGBT people, and of himself, right here at home.
He learned it from a county in which 200 anti LGBT bills have been introduced in the last six months.
He learned it in a country in which legislators have approved bills making it legal for any business not to approve services for marriages on the basis of religious objection.
He learned it from a country in which in one state, people with female anatomy and appearance are legally required to use the men’s room, because of what might appear on their birth certificates.
He learned it from a country in which, in another state, mental health professionals are permitted, if they so choose, to refuse services to gay people.
He learned it from a country in which people like me, and families like mine, are blithely referred to as “abominations.”
He learned it from a country in which the Lieutenant Governor of Texas — the second highest elected official in our second largest state — responded to the tragedy in Orlando by posting the message on Twitter: “God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
He learned it from a country in which more than a third of transgender people have attempted to take their own lives. One such victim, seventeen year old Leelah Alcorn, threw herself in front of a truck last year rather than live in this culture. “Fix society,” she wrote in her suicide note.
The society Alcorn wanted fixed is not the society of the Taliban in the mountains of Pakistan. The society Alcorn wanted fixed is not the society of the Islamic State. It was the society of her home town of Kings Mills, Ohio, a state that has no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity outside of state employment.
It was the society of Orlando, Florida, where a person who survived the massacre at the Pulse on Saturday night can be legally fired on Monday morning for being gay.
On Sunday, just hours after the Orlando shooting, a twenty year old Indiana Man, James Wesley Howell, was arrested in California with an arsenal of weapons he apparently intended to use on an attack on the Los Angeles Pride celebration. His car contained three assault rifles, high capacity magazines, ammunition, and a five gallon bucket containing chemicals.
From whom did Howell learn his hatred? Hint: It wasn’t Osama bin Laden.
We cannot create a more loving and compassionate country by sealing our borders. Hatred of people like me, and of my family, does not come from overseas.
The fault is not in our stars. It is in ourselves.
The U.S. Catholic bishops met in Huntington Beach, California this week, just days after the Orlando massacre. And despite the fact that the church’s most powerful prelates were all gathered together at a time when the nation is desperate for pastoral leadership to counter the vitriol spewing from Donald Trump and his ilk, this was the official, and only, USCCB statement on the massacre released by conference president Archbishop Joseph Kurtz:
Waking up to the unspeakable violence in Orlando reminds us of how precious human life is. Our prayers are with the victims, their families and all those affected by this terrible act. The merciful love of Christ calls us to solidarity with the suffering and to ever greater resolve in protecting the life and dignity of every person.
It’s an amazingly tepid, generic statement in the face of such tragedy that touches on two areas of special concern to the bishops: guns and gays. While the bishops’ conference officially backs gun control proposals put forward by President Obama and the Democratic Party, it has put almost no energy into pushing for them. Imagine if Catholic bishops rallied from the pulpit against politicians who failed to vote for common sense gun control legislation with the same energy they put into opposing John Kerry and other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights? Or with the sustained effort they put into opposing the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, with their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom, their annual “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign and countless statements and interventions by leading bishops?
The bishops’ silence on animus toward the LGBT community is more understandable, although no more acceptable, given their own role in fostering it by suggesting that the legalization of same-sex marriage was some kind of cultural Armageddon and that refusing to accommodate gay people is a protected form of religious martyrdom. Only Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, had the guts to admit that the Catholic Church was complicit in fostering a culture of hostility toward the gay community:
…sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people. Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence. Those women and men who were mowed down early yesterday morning were all made in the image and likeness of God. We teach that. We should believe that. We must stand for that.
By comparison, in his statement on the massacre, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone revealed the dark heart of what so many in the church’s leadership believe to be the truth about LGTB individuals:
…we stand in solidarity with all those affected by this atrocity, regardless of race, religion, or personal lifestyle.
That’s right, it’s too bad your “personal lifestyle” got you killed. Just as the Catholic Church still insists on referring to LGBT individuals as “people who experience same-sex attraction,” the church offers its sympathy with a not-to-pointed reminder that ultimately it believes homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism are lifestyle choices that can be rejected, and indeed must be rejected, to be fully accepted by the church.
Similarly, Kurtz’s official statement, with it’s reminder of how “precious life is” and call for “protecting the life and dignity of every person,” is a not-so-subtle reference to abortion. Nothing like using a national tragedy that has absolutely nothing to do with abortion to push your anti-abortion agenda, boys.
But conservatives within the church will continue to push the line that it’s an “abortion mentality”—as well as a lack of respect for the special sacredness of heterosexual, procreative sex—that allows all forms of violence to flourish, ultimately making gay people, not guns, responsible for the violence visited upon them.
Matthew Barrett (right) says his job offer at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, was rescinded when he listed his husband as an emergency contact.
BOSTON — A Boston man who had a job offer from an all-girls Catholic high school rescinded after administrators learned that he was in a same-sex marriage has settled a lawsuit with the school.
The Boston Globe reports 45-year-old Matthew Barrett’s confidential settlement with Fontbonne Academy comes nearly five months after a Massachusetts judge found the Milton school had discriminated against Barrett.
Fontbonne Academy officials pulled their offer of a food service position to Barrett in 2013 after he listed his husband as an emergency contact.
Ben Klein, Barrett’s attorney, says the settlement means that the December Superior Court ruling against the school will stand, establishing a legal precedent that employers have no religious justification for discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.
In December 2015, a superior court judge rejected Fontbonne’s claim that hiring Barrett would infringe on its constitutional rights because it views his marriage to a man as incompatible with its religious mission.
The judge said Barrett’s duties as a food services director did not include presenting the teachings of the Catholic Church.
“As an educational institution, Fontbonne retains control over its mission and message. It is not forced to allow Barrett to dilute that message, where he will not be a teacher, minister or spokesman for Fontbonne and has not engaged in public advocacy of same-sex marriage,” Norfolk Superior Court Judge Douglas Wilkins wrote.
The judge also found that a religious exemption to the state anti-discrimination law applies only if a religious organization limits admission to people of a certain religion. Fontbonne is open to students and employees of all faiths, with the exception of its administration and theology faculty.
At the time, Barrett’s attorney, Ben Klein of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, said Fontbonne was liable to pay damages for lost wages and compensatory damages for discrimination.
“Marriage equality has been the law of Massachusetts for over a decade, and it is now the law of the land. But you can’t have equality if you can get married on Saturday and fired on Monday,” Klein said.
Fontbonne released a statement Wednesday saying it “expresses deep gratitude to Mr. Barrett for his willingness to come together with us in a spirit of conciliation.”
Sylvia MacEachern’s website go-to gathering place for church abuse victims
By Simon Gardner
Sylvia MacEachern has dedicated years of her life to tracking and cataloguing convicted child molesters and alleged abusers connected to the church.
Mike Fitzgerald is a 60-year-old truck driver who grew up on a farm near Bancroft, Ont.
Mike Fitzgerald, 60, was in his teens when he says he was sexually assaulted by a priest in Bancroft, Ont.
It’s with some trepidation that I ask him if we can meet at the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, a grand Catholic church located in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. He readily agrees, but when I meet him and his wife Marla on the steps of the cathedral he admits to feeling uncomfortable.
“The good father destroyed my faith in the Catholic Church forever,” he explains.
When I hear about what happened to Fitzgerald when he was a teenager in the early 1970s, his bitterness comes as no surprise.
Fitzgerald grew up in a devout Catholic family. There was even talk of him becoming a priest.
He was musical, and when he turned 17 he agreed to help the parish priest, Father Henry Maloney, form a choir.
Because his family’s farm was about 35 kilometres from Our Lady of Mercy Church in Bancroft, it was decided Fitzgerald would move into a room in the church rectory.
He says he and his family had no idea he was about to fall into the clutches of a child molester.
‘You are going to sleep with me now’
“I remember very clearly the day I came home to the rectory and Father had moved all my personal belongings into his bedroom and said, ‘You are going to sleep with me now,'” Fitzgerald recalls.
Father Henry Maloney was a member of the clergy until he died in 1986.
In his lawsuit against the Pembroke Diocese, he claimed Maloney repeatedly sexually assaulted him.
“It started out with groping, fondling and it eventually culminated in August of that year with anal rape. And there was some physical damage the next day. I had to go and see a doctor and [Maloney] told me I should not go to my own family doctor. I should go to his doctor, who turned out to be just the same.”
The lawsuit against the diocese was settled last year. The terms are confidential and Fitzgerald will only say it’s given him some degree of financial security.
In their original statement of defence, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Pembroke said it had no knowledge of any abuse by Maloney, denied anything occurred, and said that if there was abuse — the diocese was not to blame.
The archdiocese declined to comment for this story. (During negotiation between the diocese and Fitzgerald’s lawyer, it was revealed that another lawsuit claiming abuse by Maloney was filed. The allegations, which have not been proven in court, date back to the late 1940s.)
Fitzgerald’s focus is now on recovery. For years he was angry, bitter and racked with sexual insecurities.
Rogues’ gallery of abusers, suspects
Though unable to forgive, these days Fitzgerald seems more at peace.
He credits much of his recovery to an unlikely saviour: a grandmother of 11 who maintains a website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, a community on the outskirts of Ottawa.
People who meet Sylvia MacEachern are typically struck by her intensity, her deep outrage at the plight of abuse victims — and her unshakable devotion to the Catholic faith..
For years MacEachern has been a familiar face at trials and investigations into church abuse scandals. As a result, she’s amassed a huge collection of files, transcripts and other documents.
Sylvia’s Site, as she calls it, is a WordPress-based blog and database launched in 2010.
Sylvia MacEachern runs her website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, Ont.
Since then, the website has showcased an ever-expanding rogues’ gallery of Catholic Church abusers or suspects. As well, the site is increasingly becoming a conduit for victims to describe their painful memories, and often, to express their anger.
Father Maloney is one of about 350 people listed in the “accused” section of MacEachern’s website. The alphabetical catalogue includes clergy members who were charged and convicted for their crimes, but also those who have successfully appealed, who reached settlements with their alleged victims, or who have simply been named in investigations.
‘The Mother Theresa of Fitzroy Harbour’
MacEachern’s mission to document alleged crimes by Catholic clergy has made her a thorn in the side of the Church.
But her status as an outspoken critic predates her website. I recall speaking with a senior Church official about 25 years ago who was incensed over a publication called The Orator.
The magazine exposed divisions within the Church and criticized the more liberal practices that were taking hold. MacEachern was its editor.
“They don’t love me,” she says with a sly grin.
Hundreds of victims who have stumbled across Sylvia’s Site and made contact with her feel differently.
“I call Sylvia the Mother Theresa of Fitzroy Harbour, Ontario,” says Fitzgerald. “She has been the shoulder that hundreds of us have leaned on. I don’t know where she gets her patience from. She has been a godsend to us.”
MacEachern now describes herself as “Orthodox Catholic,” but she was born in Northern Ireland into a staunchly Protestant family. Much to the shock of her father, she married a Catholic man and converted to the faith.
Her doubts about the Church started in the early 90s when a popular and respected Ottawa priest was charged with molesting boys at a summer camp for underprivileged kids.
MacEachern says she was shocked by the “abysmal” way the archdiocese treated the victims, and disgusted by the level of denial among parishioners even after the priest pleaded guilty.
At first she didn’t realize how important the site would become to victims.
Website unites victim, alleged abuser’s relative
Father Henry Maloney died in 1986, but Sylvia’s Site has now drawn together Mike Fitzgerald and one of Maloney’s relatives.
“I got a telephone call from Sylvia. She said you are not going to believe this but an extended member of your abuser’s family has contacted me and would like me to release your telephone number to her,” says Fitzgerald.
He says he’s since formed a “warm relationship” with the priest’s relative. The messages between them, he says, are full of “love, compassion, kindness, everything I have been looking for for some time.”
There are now plans for the two to meet in person, possibly as soon as the mid-May. Fitzgerald predicts it will be an emotional moment.
MacEachern says she’s never seen a relative reach out to a victim like this, but she wishes it would happen more often.
Film Spotlight ‘stirring something in a lot of them’
MacEachern says the number of victims contacting her is growing. She credits the acclaimed film Spotlight.
Mike Fitzgerald grew up on his family’s farm near Bancroft, Ont.
The movie centres around a group of investigative journalists at The Boston Globe who expose how the Catholic Church covered up abuse perpetrated by a network of nearly 90 priests in the Boston area.
“It’s stirring something in a lot of victims. They are suddenly getting in touch,” MacEachern says.
MacEachern says Fitzgerald is one of hundreds of victims she’s communicated with since starting Sylvia’s Site.
“You will have a grown man or woman who one day decides to Google the name of their priest molester. Most of them can’t explain why. They hit the site and discover, ‘Gosh, he’s already been charged and convicted, gosh, he’s dead, but there has been several lawsuits.’ They suddenly realize, ‘I am not the only one.'”
She adds that many victims take their secrets to the grave, or only disclose their experiences near the end of their lives. It’s rare for her to hear from men in their 20s or 30s, she says.
Church ‘hijacked’
About a year ago, an 82-year-old man from Toronto contacted her and covertly described being abused in his youth by a priest.
“This man got in touch with me and had very specific instruction to call him at a certain time of day when his wife would be sleeping. He did not want her to know and he’s 82 years old. He had never told a soul. He didn’t want his wife to know because she is a practicing Catholic and he was afraid it would destroy her faith.”
Some question how she keeps her own faith, but she insists it’s not her devotion to Catholicism that’s been shaken, but her confidence in those in charge.
“I tell people our Church has been hijacked by these fellows.”
MacEachern firmly believes the only way forward is to clean house. She says clergy members who abuse children must be defrocked.
“Any priest who lays a wayward hand on any child, or on an adult for that matter, he doesn’t belong in the priesthood. Get him out.”
