Disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who resigned as head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland after admitting to sexual misconduct, will leave his country for months of “prayer and penance”, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
By Philip Pullella
A brief Vatican statement did not say where O’Brien, once Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, was going, or spell out why he was quitting Scotland.
But it will be hoping the announcement draws a line under an affair that has added to a sense of crisis in the Catholic Church as it continues to deal with separate scandals over sexual abuse of children by priests.
The cardinal resigned as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh on February 25 after three priests and one former priest in Scotland complained about incidents of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1980s.
The “full social and legal effects” of state lawmakers’ decision to legalize same-sex marriage “will begin to manifest themselves in the years ahead,” said the Minnesota Catholic Conference.
“Today the Minnesota Senate voted to redefine marriage in Minnesota. The outcome, though expected, is no less disappointing,” the conference said in a statement.
Say, I don’t look like i have a same-sex attraction, do I?
The state Senate in a 37-30 vote gave final approval Monday to a same-sex marriage bill. The state House passed the measure May 9. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed it Tuesday.
The law is to take effect Aug. 1, making Minnesota the 12th state to allow same-sex couples to marry. Earlier in May, Rhode Island and Delaware became the 10th and 11th states, respectively, to legalize same-sex marriage.
“The church, for its part, will continue to work to rebuild a healthy culture of marriage and family life, as well as defend the rights of Minnesotans to live out their faith in everyday life and speak the truth in love,” said the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops.
“Some wish to believe that sexual relationships outside of the marital context of husband and wife are innocuous, choosing to ignore the fact that they are actually harmful to individuals and to society as a whole,” said Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.
“There are many of us Americans, including many Minnesotans, who stand for the natural and true meaning of marriage,” he said in a statement released Tuesday. “They know that men and women are important; their complementary difference matters, their union matters, and it matters to kids. Mothers and fathers are simply irreplaceable.”
Cordileone called it “the height of irony” that the final vote on “the redefinition of marriage” and the governor’s signature on the bill occurred just a day “after we celebrated the unique gifts of mothers and women on Mother’s Day.”
In November, Minnesota voters rejected a ballot measure to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only a union between a man and woman, but polls show Minnesotans remained sharply divided over legalizing such unions. According to Minnesota Public Radio, a recent survey showed a majority are against same-sex marriage.
The measure changes the definition of marriage from “between a man and a woman” to “a civil contract between two persons.” A prohibition against marriage between relatives, such as first cousins, remained in place.
In a statement about the earlier House vote, the conference said lawmakers by approving same-sex marriage “set in motion a transformation of Minnesota law that will focus on accommodating the desires of adults instead of protecting the best interest of children.”
“This action is an injustice that tears at the fabric of society and will be remembered as such well into the future,” it said.
The Catholic conference said the bill posed “a serious threat to the religious liberty and conscience rights of Minnesotans.”
It includes legal protections for clergy and religious groups that don’t want to marry same-sex couples, but the conference said lawmakers failed “to protect the people in the pew — individuals, non-religious nonprofits, and small business owners who maintain the time-honored belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman.”
According to the conference, lawyers on both sides of the issue have stated that no accommodations for “the deeply held beliefs of a majority of Minnesotans will result in numerous conflicts that will have to be adjudicated by our courts.”
In a separate statement issued after the House vote, Duluth Bishop Paul Sirba said the church “will continue to uphold and propose to the world what we know, through sound reason and through divine revelation, to be the authentic nature of marriage: a permanent union between one man and one woman, uniting a mother and a father with any children produced by their union.”
No civil authority, he said, “has the authority or competence to redefine marriage. Civil authorities have the obligation to protect and defend true marriage for the sake of justice and the common good.”
Sirba acknowledged that many disagree with the church’s stand on the issue and expressed dismay over the negative tone the debate over same-sex marriage has taken toward the church.
“We are particularly mindful of our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attractions,” he said.
(Have you ever noticed how our fearless leaders can’t and won’t use the word gay? We use it to self-define, but they want to define us for us, using the euphemism — our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attractions. It’s like if our same sex attraction is an add-on, the likes of which they want us to pray away, if we don’t mind.)
“Our hearts break that this debate has often been used as an occasion to sow mistrust and doubt, as if followers of the God who is love, and whose love for all people we proclaim each day as the body of Christ, are acting instead out of some sort of ill will.”
“To all those with same-sex attraction, we continue to extend our unconditional love and respect. For those who have heard God’s call and respond in faith, hope and love, striving to walk in his ways, we also offer our pastoral support,” the bishop added.
In Rhode Island May 2, Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed into law a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in that state. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence expressed “profound disappointment” that the measure to “legitimize same-sex marriage” passed the Legislature.
In an open letter to the state’s Catholics, he said the Catholic church has fought very hard to “oppose this immoral and unnecessary proposition,” and that God would be the final arbiter of people’s actions.
Same-sex marriage became legal May 7 in Delaware; the law goes into effect July 1.
In an April 15 letter to Delaware legislators, Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington said marriage “is a unique relationship between a man and a woman” and it’s not the government’s place to “define or redefine” it.
In Munich, Germany, a once-aspiring priest is allegedly spreading his love around as a very popular sperm donor to lesbian couples as a way, he says, of getting “quiet revenge” on the church for denying him his vestments.
By Lester Brathwaite
Markus K. has never slept with a woman, but since fathering his first child nine years ago with a lesbian couple, he hasn’t been able to stop impregnating them. It all started in 1994. Friends had taken the U.S. by storm and Markus decided to do the same to some German ovaries. He had been in seminary in hopes of becoming a priest, but he was forced to leave because he was gay.
“Six years of theology, the Latinum Graecum, Hebraicum, all for naught,” Markus told the Munich Evening News. “My life was at a low point.”
You know what always cheers us up? Ejaculating into a paper cup. Markus felt the same way after seeing a note on the wall from a lesbian looking for a sperm donor. Big mistake. The woman was a bit of a whack — “she wore her first menstrual blood in an amulet around the neck, stuff like that” — but luckily his check bounced, as it were.
Then in 2003, a few years older and wiser and wealthier (he works in insurance) Markus answered an ad from a lesbian couple. Once he met them, he felt they would be good parents. Two attempts and nine months later he had a son. What’s more he didn’t charge the women so it was literally a gift of life.
Once word spread that Markus’ sperm took the HOV-lane to the uterus without paying a toll – well, let’s just say it’s a wonder he’s not incapacitated by severe carpal tunnel. Women just come to his apartment, he gives them the…stuff in a cup and then they go into a separate room to self-baste. See, nothing shady or strange about it. Sure, some of the ladies might “do a headstand after” but “others simply lie down and fall asleep.”
Now 45, Markus has 22 sons and daughters — 12 in Munich, one in Vienna, one in Tuscany, six scattered throughout the rest of Germany and two still on the way. With the birth of the two this summer, he’ll have 12 boys and 12 girls — then he might give it a rest.
The hectic seed-spreading schedule he’s been keeping over the last ten years has taken its toll on Markus’ love life. Turns out guys aren’t lining up to date a guy with more kids than pairs of shoes. His last boyfriend wasn’t too keen on having to deal with Markus’ 17 women and all of his fatherly commitments. Even with all those kids in different places, Markus is no deadbeat dad. He makes sure to see all of them for their birthdays and meets with five of the families every four weeks.
When one of his five-year-olds asked him how many other kids he’s been competing with, Markus began to wonder what other questions will be asked of him once his kids grow up — such as “why?”
“Probably a mix of help, reproductive instinct, loneliness and quiet revenge on the church. I can not be a priest as a gay man,” he said, “but I can reproduce myself as often as I want.”
An elderly Catholic nun and two peace activists have been convicted for damage they caused while breaking into a US nuclear defence site.
Sister Megan Rice, 83, Michael Walli, 64, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 56, admitted cutting fences and entering the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which processes and stores uranium.
The incident last July prompted security changes.
Sister Megan said she only regretted having waited 70 years to take action.
A jury deliberated for two and a half hours before reaching its verdict. The three face up to 20 years in prison after their conviction for sabotaging the plant, which was first constructed during the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb.
The three, who belong to the group Transform Now Plowshares, were also found guilty of causing more than $1,000 (£643) of damage to government property, for which they could face up to 10 years in prison.
Walli and Boertje-Obed, a house painter, testified in their own defence, telling jurors they had no remorse for their actions.
Sister Megan stood and smiled as the verdict was read out at a court in Knoxville, Tennessee. Supporters in the courtroom gasped and wept and sang a hymn as the judge left.
The break-in disrupted operations at Oak Ridge and reportedly caused more than $8,500 of damage.
“We are a nation of laws,” prosecutor Jeffrey Theodore said during closing arguments. “You can’t take the law into your own hands and force your views on other people.”
But defence lawyers said the break-in was symbolic and was not intended to hurt the facility, and officials have acknowledged the protesters never got near nuclear material.
“The shortcomings in security at one of the most dangerous places on the planet have embarrassed a lot of people,” said lawyer Francis Lloyd.
“You’re looking at three scapegoats behind me.”
‘Ineptitude’
Sister Megan said her only regret was waiting so long to stage her protest. “It is manufacturing that which can only cause death,” she said.
In a statement to the court, Boertje-Obed said: “Nuclear weapons do not provide security. Our actions were providing real security and exposing false security.”
The three activists admitted cutting the fence to get into the site, walking around, spray-painting words, stringing out crime scene tape and chipping a wall with hammers. They spent two hours inside.
They also sprayed the exterior of the complex with baby bottles containing human blood.
When a guard approached, they offered him food and started singing.
After the activists’ action, Congress and the energy department investigated the facility and found “troubling displays of ineptitude” there.
Top officials were reassigned, including at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
WSI, the company providing security at the site, was dismissed and other officers were sacked, demoted or suspended.
The Catholic Church suspends Anthony Musaala indefinitely for shining a light on what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse is a problem in Africa too.
By Robyn Dixon
He is a celebrity across eastern and central Africa, a gospel music star known to many as the “Dancing Priest.” But for years he also was a keeper of painful secrets — his own and many others’.
In going public, Anthony Musaala has forced the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda to confront a problem it had insisted didn’t exist. And he may stir a debate far beyond Africa’s most Catholic of countries.
The Ugandan priest has been suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for exposing what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse in the Catholic Church is a problem in Africa as well as in Western Europe and North America.
The African Catholic Church is fast-growing, pious and traditional. As the church elsewhere forks out billions of dollars to compensate the child sex abuse victims of priests, few African Catholics have questioned the assumption, voiced recently by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, that the African church is purer than its counterpart in the West, which is regarded as secular and permissive.
It’s not more pure, says Musaala. He says he has the evidence to prove it.
“The Vatican turns a blind eye because it doesn’t want to be embarrassed about this blooming church. But I think it’s time we had the truth,” Musaala says.
In March, he wrote to the archbishop of Kampala, Cyprian Lwanga, about priests who fathered children, kept secret wives or abused girls or boys, and called for a debate on marriage for priests.
One of the cases of abuse he cited involved himself. He was one of numerous boys sexually abused at 16, he says, by Catholic brothers at one of Uganda’s best boarding schools. He also alleged several other cases of child sex abuse in his letter.
“Wherever you go, people know about this. It’s like an open secret. People know. Nothing is ever done,” said Musaala in an interview.
The letter was leaked to the news media. And in response, Lwanga suspended Musaala, saying his statements stirred up contempt for the Catholic Church and damaged the morale of believers.
Later in the month, Lwanga acknowledged that abuses had taken place, apologized to victims and set up an internal inquiry. But he did not backtrack on Musaala’s unpaid suspension.
Lwanga’s limited concession came after South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban said in a BBC interview that he had dealt with cases of child sex abuse, which were handled by the church internally, and not referred to the police. He suggested that the perpetrators weren’t criminals and needed counseling.
“Some of the priests went, according to the wisdom of the time … for treatment, came back and have been under — what we call it — personal surveillance and have functioned quite normally ever since,” he said. Napier later apologized, but also accused the BBC of twisting his words in the radio interview.
For African Catholics, the revelations of child sex abuse in Western churches are shocking enough. But the idea that African priests might be sexually abusing boys had been unthinkable. Paradoxically, many believers in Africa are aware that some priests break their vows and father children, but talking about it is taboo.
Catholicism is the most popular religion in Uganda. In the center of the hilly capital, the faithful gather daily at Christ the King Church, and so many touch the foot of a large statue of Christ that its shiny toes gleam in the sunlight.
Parishioner Stephen Sanya, 68, a retired postal worker, said it was common knowledge that some Ugandan priests have sex, or, as he put it, “serve nature” instead of God.
“There are cases where [priests] indulge in these things. I have seen and heard of cases,” said Sanya, dawdling in the warm afternoon sun after dropping in to pray. “It’s scandalizing. I suggest that if a priest is not ready to be celibate, he can resign and get married. But I haven’t seen that happening in Uganda. Here, it’s secret.”
Anyone who calls for these embarrassing secrets to be brought to light, placing the church in an awkward position, doesn’t get much sympathy from Uganda’s conservative churchgoers, even if the allegations are true. To traditionalists, what Musaala is doing is un-African.
But then, Musaala is the kind of man who doesn’t exactly fit in, and perhaps it took an outsider like him to toss out the first allegations.
Educated in Britain for many years, he’s a creature of two worlds, not completely at home in either. His clipped British accent and his quaint turn of phrase mark him as an outsider in his home country. His attitudes, and his soaring sense of individual freedom also are imports.
A divided Delaware state Senate voted Tuesday to make their state the 11th in the nation to allow same-sex marriage, after hearing hours of passionate testimony from supporters and opponents.
The Senate’s 12-9 vote sends the bill to Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, who supports the measure and planned to sign it later in the day. It would go into effect July 1.
“I think this is the right thing for Delaware,” the governor said after the vote, while posing for pictures with supporters outside his legislative office. “It took an incredible team effort.”
Gay rights activists and their supporters in the chamber erupted in cheers and applause following the Senate vote.
Delaware’s same-sex marriage bill was introduced in the Democrat-controlled legislature last month, barely a year after the state began recognizing same-sex civil unions. The bill won passage two weeks ago in the state House on a 23-18 vote.
While it doesn’t give same-sex couples any more rights or benefits under Delaware law than those they have in civil unions, supporters argued same-sex couples deserve the dignity and respect of married couples. They also noted that if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars married gay couples from receiving federal benefits, civil unions would not provide protections or tax benefits under federal law to same-sex couples in Delaware.
Opponents, including scores of conservative religious leaders from across the state, argued same-sex marriage redefines and destroys a centuries-old institution that is a building block of society.
Under the bill, no new civil unions will be performed in Delaware after July 1, and existing civil unions will be converted to marriages over the next year. The legislation also states that same-sex unions established in other states will be treated the same as marriages under Delaware law.
The bill does not force clerics to perform same-sex marriages that conflict with their religious beliefs. But under an existing Delaware law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, business owners who refuse to provide marriage-related services to same-sex couples for reasons of conscience could be subject to discrimination claims.
Delaware joins neighboring Maryland and the nearby District of Columbia as jurisdictions that have approved gay marriage. Last week, Rhode Island became the 10th state to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed, with independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee signing the bill an hour after its final passage.
File under: Insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf church power structure
By Paulo Prada
The Catholic Church has excommunicated a Brazilian priest after he defended homosexuality, open marriage and other practices counter to Church teaching in online videos.
In a statement released late on Monday, the priest’s diocese said Father Roberto Francisco Daniel, known to local parishioners as Padre Beto, had “in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ betrayed the promise of fealty to the Church.”
The priest “injured the Church with grave statements counter to the dogma of Catholic faith and morality.” The actions amount to “heresy and schism,” the statement said, the penalty for which is excommunication, or expulsion from the Church.
The rare punishment follows what Daniel’s bishop and the priest himself said were repeated rebukes about the videos and other public activities, such as a radio broadcast and local newspaper column, in which he challenged Church doctrine.
The 47-year-old cleric, who studied theology in Germany, is popular in the southeastern city of Bauru, where he has been a priest since 2001. He is known for his rock T-shirts, a silver stud pierced through his right ear and his habit of posing, as on his official Facebook page, with a glass of beer.
On Facebook and Twitter, Daniel posted a brief statement about the excommunication: “I feel honored to belong to the long list of people who have been murdered and burned alive for thinking and searching for knowledge.”
SPREAD OF MODERATE VIEWS
Daniel’s excommunication, which prompted headlines across Brazil and protests in social media, illustrates the rising influence of more moderate social views in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country, and much of the rest of the region.
Progressive stances on sexuality, birth control, scientific research and other delicate topics for the Church are increasingly common in Latin America, home to 42 percent of the world’s Catholics, more than any other region worldwide.
The shifting views are among the many challenges faced by Pope Francis, an Argentine who ascended in March to become the first Latin American pope in history.
The excommunication comes just two months before Francis is scheduled to attend World Youth Day, expected to attract as many as 2 million young Catholics to Rio de Janeiro.
Though Francis is known to be a traditionalist on social issues and Church doctrine, his appointment raised hopes that the first non-European pope in 13 centuries would do more than his predecessors to modernize Catholicism.
But Daniel’s beliefs clearly went too far for church leaders.
In one of the recent videos he posted on YouTube.com and his own Website, the priest said a married person who chose to have an affair, heterosexual or otherwise, would not be unfaithful as long as that person’s spouse allowed it. “If someone is in an extramarital relationship and that relationship is accepted by the spouse, then faithfulness still exists there,” he said.
A “REBEL SON”
In a telephone interview, Daniel said his statements “are personal reflections that should be considered and discussed in the dialogue of the church.” The excommunication, he said, is “the sad act of a lukewarm and disengaged church that is out of touch with today’s society.”
The diocese retained a church expert in canonical law to oversee the excommunication process. The diocese also initiated a separate process at the Vatican through which Daniel will be stripped of clerical authority.
Last Tuesday, Bishop Caetano Ferrari gave Daniel a letter asking him to take the videos offline and publicly retract his statements. In an interview posted on the diocese Web site shortly afterward, Ferrari called Daniel “brilliant,” but characterized him as a “rebel son” who “crosses the line.”
On Monday, Daniel said he went to the diocese headquarters planning to renounce his clerical duties rather than retract any of his comments. But before he had a chance, the bishop and canonical expert made him face a committee of Church officials.
“It was a trial,” Daniel said. “I told them I was not there to be tried, that I had not been indicted.”
Shortly afterward, the Church issued the statement announcing his excommunication.
CARDINAL Keith O’Brien has been told by the Vatican to leave the UK amid concerns of wreaking further damage on the Catholic Church in Scotland.
By Gerry Braiden
Friends of the cleric have said he has been told by Rome to shelve his plans to retire to a church-owned cottage in East Lothian and instead leave the country.
The Herald understands Cardinal O’Brien was given the news yesterday afternoon, three days after being photographed moving his personal belongings from his official residence in Edinburgh to the residence in Dunbar where he had been spending regular weekends over the past few years.
The parish priest in Dunbar, Canon John Creanor, is understood to have voiced upset at the Vatican’s move against his “dear friend”.
It is the clearest indication yet of the Vatican’s unwillingness to let the matter drift and concern that the Cardinal’s admission of gay activity over decades and allegations of abuse towards trainee priests continues to damage the Church.
Investigations also continue into claims made by a serving priest in Lanarkshire of a “gay mafia” running seminaries in the 1980s and naming leading Catholic figures.
The Herald revealed on Thursday Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia was behind an appeal to the Vatican to intervene after Cardinal O’Brien’s re-emergence in Scotland this week.
Cardinal O’Brien remains the only cardinal in Britain and Scotland’s most senior Catholic churchman, leaving UK clergy powerless to act. However, he is not without support. One source last night said: “The cardinal has been advised not to relocate to the parish in Dunbar and has been told he should leave the country. That’s extremely disappointing and not a Christian way to treat someone. There’s clearly pressure from within and outwith the Church and no show of unity.
“People expect some sort of jail sentence for Keith O’Brien or at least a desire to see him retired to monastic life. It would certainly be convenient for them. Personally, I find it an atrocious way to treat someone who has been facing up to their responsibilities.”
A recent petition organised by the parishioners of Our Lady of The Waves in Dunbar saw more than 90% of those attending the Saturday vigil and Sunday mass signing a statement declaring “our support and affection for Cardinal Keith O’Brien”.
But, while leading historian Professor Tom Devine said the cardinal should be left alone, senior figures in the Church said he was “still causing immense damage”.
Yesterday, Cardinal O’Brien, 75, was reported to have admitted the scandal had been difficult and humbling. The former Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh was forced by Pope Benedict XVI to retire after admitting “inappropriate behaviour” with four priests and a seminarian.
He was quoted as saying: “I’m just trying to do my best to live a good Christian life myself now. Many people have been helping me to go back on the right path and that’s what I have to do. But I haven’t always managed to live that in my own life.
“I have been supported by many good Christian people and many people of no religion at all who realise I have said sorry for anyone I have offended. If Christianity is about anything at all, it’s about forgiveness. That’s what I have to do as a cardinal priest – just forgive the wrongdoer and help them go back on to the right path.
“It’s been quite a difficult, quite a humbling experience for me. It’s very difficult for them [the men whose complaints led to his retirement]. That is why I have apologised for being a teacher who has not been able to live up to the teaching of the Church.
“We know what’s against God’s law. Consequently, we should try to live by God’s law. I’ve apologised for my failures in that respect.”
Asked about any Vatican investigation, he said: “It’s up to those who are responsible in Rome for me to answer that sort of question.”
