Catholic Hierarchy – Page 225

June 26, 2015

Gay Catholics Will Be Silenced During Pope Francis’ Philadelphia Visit: Archbishop

By Philip Pullella

Homosexuals can attend a Catholic family congress in Philadelphia during Pope Francis’ U.S. visit this year but won’t be allowed to use it to attack Church teachings, the city’s archbishop said on Thursday.

“We don’t want to provide a platform at the meeting for people to lobby for positions contrary to the life of our Church,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput. The Catholic Church teaches homosexuality is not sinful but homosexual acts are.

“We are not providing that kind of lobbying opportunity,” he told a news conference presenting the September 22-27 congress known as the World Meeting of Families.

Gay Catholic groups and families headed by gay Catholics had asked for an official presence at the gathering to present their view that homosexuals should be fully welcomed in the Church.

The pope will attend the last two days of the Philadelphia meeting at the end of a trip that will take him to Cuba as well as New York and Washington.

About 15,000 people from around the world are expected to attend the family congress to hear lectures and take part in workshops on family issues before the pope arrives to close the gathering.

“We hope that everyone feels welcome and certainly people who have experienced same-sex attraction are welcome like everyone else,” Chaput said.

Bishop John McIntyre, also of Philadelphia, said the only event dedicated to gay issues at the congress will be one by Ron Belgau, a celibate gay Catholic and founder of the Spiritual Friendship Initiative.

Belgau blogs and lectures about how Catholic gays can live by the Church’s teaching.

McIntyre said Belgau “will talk about his own coming to terms with his sexual orientation and the manner in which he embraced the teachings of the Church” and his mother will also speak.

The program for an event Belgau addressed last year at the University of Notre Dame said he spoke of “a faithful and orthodox response to the challenge of homosexuality”.

Catholic gay couples have contested the Church’s ban on homosexual activity, saying it deprives them of the intimacy that is part of a loving relationship.

It will be the eighth World Meeting of Families since the event was started by the late Pope John Paul in 1994 to promote traditional family values. It is held every three years in a different city.

Organizers said they expect up to two million people to attend the final event, a Mass by the pope on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a boulevard that runs through they city.

June 20, 2015

Report: Former Twin Cities archbishop John Nienstedt tried to limit investigation

The former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, interfered with an investigation by an outside law firm into allegations of his misconduct, Minnesota Public Radio reported Friday.

While Nienstedt authorized the investigation in the hope of clearing his name, the results threatened to ruin it. Several of his top advisers gathered privately in April 2014, and read sworn statements gathered by the lawyers that accused Nienstedt of inappropriate behavior, including sexual advances toward priests. Each adviser agreed he should resign.

A few days later, Auxiliary Bishops Lee Piche and Andrew Cozzens traveled to Washington to tell the papal ambassador; MPR was unable to learn what transpired there. But soon after the bishops returned home, the investigation as originally conceived ended, with Piche limiting the probe to allegations of crimes and grave sins. A new law firm eventually took over.

The Vatican announced Nienstedt’s and Piche’s resignationsMonday. They stepped down amid an intensifying scandal over how the archdiocese handled cases of clerical sexual misconduct. The archdiocese sought bankruptcy protection in January as abuse claims rose, and prosecutors filed criminal child-endangerment charges against the archdiocese earlier this month for allegedly turning a blind eye to Curtis Wehmeyer, a now-imprisoned former priest convicted of molesting two boys.

MPR said its details of how Nienstedt tried to limit the investigation came from interviews with more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the inquiry, including four people who provided affidavits to investigators, current and former archdiocese officials, and others who spoke with the investigators.

MPR could not reach Nienstedt for comment on the new allegations. In a 2014 interview, Nienstedt said, “I’ve done nothing criminally wrong ever, and nothing immoral” and that he hadn’t interfered with the investigation.

But attorneys at the Greene Espel law firm — the initial firm on the Nienstedt investigation — disputed the archbishop’s claim of noninterference as well as a recent similar statement from Piche.

“We strongly disagree with those statements. Greene Espel’s investigation and work will not be mischaracterized without a response by us,” attorneys Matt Forsgren and David Wallace-Jackson told MPR.

The attorneys had wanted to know whether Nienstedt had a personal relationship with Wehmeyer, and whether that influenced his decision to keep Wehmeyer in ministry despite knowing about his past misconduct. Nienstedt told MPR in 2014 he did not have a sexually inappropriate relationship with Wehmeyer.

Wehmeyer told the investigators he couldn’t understand why Nienstedt wanted to spend time with him or why he kept him in ministry. He said Nienstedt made him uncomfortable and that he wasn’t interested in Nienstedt.

Ex-seminarian James Heathcott, who lives in Oregon, told MPR he enrolled at a Detroit seminary in 1987 when he was 18. Nienstedt became rector a year later, and the seminary’s tone immediately changed, he said.

According to the affidavit, Nienstedt asked Heathcott: “Have you explored your sexuality?” and “Do you think you have homosexual tendencies?”

Heathcott also said Nienstedt later invited him on a ski trip at a “private chalet.” Heathcott said he declined and told Nienstedt that the invitation appeared to contradict his own statements to seminarians about the importance of boundaries. He said Nienstedt told him a few days later to pack his belongings and leave.

“I consider Nienstedt’s interactions with me to be a kind of grooming … I believe he denied me the chance to continue exploring my calling to the priesthood to its fruition,” he said in the affidavit.

The archdiocese, which filed for bankruptcy in January, hasn’t said what it paid Greene Espel. MPR, citing people with direct knowledge, put the cost at several hundred thousand dollars. The firm wouldn’t comment either. The archdiocese paid the second firm, Wold Morrison, nearly $139,000 between October and January, but the filing didn’t say if it made any payments to either firm earlier.

Complete Article HERE!

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015

More smoke and mirrors from the Vatican on child sexual abuse

By Kieran Tapsell

Cardinal Desmond Connell, the former archbishop of Dublin, told the Murphy commission in Ireland that mental reservation was deceiving someone without telling a lie. He said it is permissible to use “an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be.”There is an exquisite piece of mental reservation in a recent announcement from the Vatican. According to Vatican Radio, “The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors presented a five point plan to the Pope and his closest advisors at this week’s meeting, including the establishment of a ‘new judicial section’ to examine all cases of bishops accused of abusing their office and failing to report crimes committed by priests in their care.”

The ambiguous expression in this case is “failing to report crimes” because it does not say to whom the bishops should have reported. Nearly everyone would understand the expression to mean reporting to the police. That is not what the Vatican means. It means reporting to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in every case and only sometimes to the police.

As the Holy See told the Irish foreign minister in 2011, bishops are the governors of their own diocese, and so far as the church is concerned, the only restraint on them is canon law. Bishops can only be put on trial before this new tribunal for breaching canon law. A bishop who fails to report credible allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is in breach of canon law because that obligation is set out in the decree Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.

Likewise, canon law in the United States since 2002, and for the rest of the world since 2010, requires bishops to comply with domestic civil reporting laws. A failure to do so constitutes a breach of canon law. The recently resigned bishops — Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché of St. Paul-Minneapolis and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., who was convicted by a Missouri court of failing to report a priest’s possession of child pornography — could be brought before the new tribunal for failing to comply with civil laws on reporting as required by the norms approved in December 2002 by the Holy See for the United States.

Very few jurisdictions in the world have comprehensive reporting laws. Most have reporting laws for children at risk, that is, where they are under the age of 18, but very few have reporting laws that apply to historical abuse, that is, where the abused person is now an adult. In the United States, half the states have such laws and half do not. The United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada do not have them. In 2014 and 2015, the Italian and Polish Catholic bishops’ conferences announced that they would not be reporting child sex abuse offenses by clergy to the police because their civil laws did not require it. Their stance is consistent with canon law.

In Australia, only two out of the eight states and territories require the reporting of historical abuse. Figures produced at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry in Australia suggest that historical abuse amounts to more than 99 percent of all complaints. The same inquiry found that of the 611 complaints of child sexual abuse in the four Victorian dioceses between 1996 and 2012, not one of them had been reported by the church to the civil authorities.

This was understandable because prior to 2014, there was no requirement under Victorian law to report any abuse, whether of children at risk or historical abuse. And the bishops on ordination had sworn an oath to obey all ecclesiastical laws, which in this case meant not reporting these crimes to the police in accordance with the pontifical secret imposed by Pope Paul VI’s Secreta Continere and Pope John Paul II’s Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.

In those jurisdictions without such reporting laws, unless a bishop walks into a priest’s bedroom and finds him in flagrante delicto with a minor, the pontifical secret prevents him from reporting any knowledge of or allegations about such crimes to the police. If he reports the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he has complied with canon law and cannot be charged with “abuse of office,” despite the fact that he has covered up these crimes by not reporting them to the police.

On two occasions now, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee against Torture demanded that the Holy See abolish the pontifical secret for child sexual abuse and order mandatory reporting under canon law, irrespective of whether there are civil reporting laws or not. On Sept. 26, 2014, the Holy See rejected the request.

Many media reports describe the setting up of this tribunal as a breakthrough. There is no breakthrough. The announcement does not do away with the pontifical secret and does not extend reporting requirements to the civil authorities. In many cases of cover-up by bishops, there will be no abuse of office because the cover-up has been required by canon law, as the announcements by the Italian and Polish bishops attest.

The pope has always had jurisdiction to dismiss or punish bishops like Nienstedt, Piché and Finn, who have breached canon law. He even has jurisdiction to dismiss them even where they have not breached canon law, as the case of the Australian Bishop William Morris shows.

This announcement is being dressed up as a measure to protect children when all it is doing is setting up a tribunal that would ensure that bishops accused of breaching canon law have the right to be heard. It is another example of clericalism creating smoke and mirrors to give the impression that better protections are being provided for children when the people being looked after are the bishops. The real breakthrough will happen when the Holy See complies with the demands of the United Nations.
Complete Article HERE!

June 15, 2015

Children of celibacy: What happens when priests’ vows are too hard to keep

Priests sometimes father children, but everyone involved can be trapped in a web of secrecy.

By Mark Woods

Roman Catholic priests take vows of lifelong celibacy. Probably the majority see it as a gift and a calling, and are content to sacrifice a sexual relationship and a family life for the sake of their ministry.

However, for some, a vow made with every good intention is not so easily kept – and sometimes children are the result. In historically Catholic countries like Ireland, this can result in terrible tensions, with the natural desire of parents to bring up a child together at war with shame, social disapproval and a desire for secrecy. Almost inevitably, it is the children – and often their mothers – who come off worst, with the children not told the identity of their fathers.

Six months ago, a new website aimed at helping support such children was set up in Ireland and has already received around 15,000 hits. COPING – Children of Priests International – was founded to help children come to terms with their experiences. It has had visitors from the United States, Italy, India and Australia as well as from Ireland.

COPING points to the particular pressures on priests’ children, including forced emigration, late night abusive phone calls and exclusion. Mothers have been forced to sign confidentiality agreements in order to get help with childcare expenses and have been encouraged to remain silent about the parentage of their children. COPING says that such agreements “actively silence an individual, encourage the notion of taboo and encourage shame”.

“It is the considered opinion of Coping that such agreements, whether past, present or future are unconscionable and are founded upon undue duress,” it says. The organisations stresses that lay people as well as clergy are responsible for such behaviour.

COPING is supported by Prof Patricia Casey, a senior psychiatrist and conservative Catholic commentator, who believes that children deserve to know their father’s identity. “The desire to know ones’ origins and all connected with this is very powerful and can only become more apparent and acceptable as the numbers conceived in non-traditional ways increase,” she argues.

The website includes testimonies from children of priests and their mothers, including women whose lovers had died and who felt unable to tell their stories to anyone, including their children.

It has won backing from the Catholic Church and cites the support of the Archbishop of Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, who said: “I pray that COPING will be able to find ways which will bring the children of priests and their natural parents together for the benefit of both.” Its website also quotes Pope Francis, who as Cardinal Bergoglio said: “If a priest comes to me and tells me that he has gotten a woman pregnant…I remind him that the natural law comes before his right as a priest…just as that child has a right to his mother, he has the right to the face of his father.”

The Irish Catholic Bishops Conference has said: “The Bishops are anxious to ensure that appropriate support is being offered to all children. In particular they appreciate the sensitivity required in any pastoral outreach to children of priests.”

Referring to the Church’s counselling programme, the statement says: “The Bishops are actively collaborating with Towards Healing so that Towards Healing will be in a position to provide appropriate counselling / support to children of Catholic Clergy.”
Complete Article HERE!

June 15, 2015

Vatican orders former archbishop Jozef Wesolowski to stand trial for sex abuse

A Vatican prosecutor on Monday ordered the trial of a former Roman Catholic archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic and of possessing child pornographic material.

Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who had been defrocked by a Vatican tribunal, last year became the first person to be arrested inside the Vatican on paedophilia charges.

A statement said the trial, the first on paedophilia charges to be held inside the Vatican City, would start on July 11.

It said allegations of crimes committed in the Dominican Republic were based on an investigation by police there.

The others were based on a Vatican investigation that found child pornography on his computer after he was arrested last September.

Wesolowski was recalled to Rome by the Vatican in 2013 when he was still a diplomat in Santo Domingo and he was relieved of his duties after Dominican media accused him of paying boys to perform sexual acts.

The former archbishop, who later lost his diplomatic immunity, could face up to 12 years in jail, the Vatican said at the time of his arrest.
Complete Article HERE!