Category: Abuse of Power

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Fr McVerry questions direction of church

By PATSY McGARRY

How can today’s young people be invited “to commit themselves to a male-dominated, authoritarian institution which suppresses dissent and attempts to control what its members may even discuss?” social justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has asked.

The founder of the Peter McVerry Trust for homeless people was speaking in Dublin last night at the first annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). The meeting continues today.

He said there were “many priests and religious . . . who experience only condemnation, exclusion and marginalisation by the very church which was mandated by its founder to reach out to all in compassion, love, and tolerance”.

The church established by Jesus “was to be a community of brothers and sisters, free of all domination”, he said. Jesus warned against “replicating the relationships of power that existed in the wider society”.

“Whatever little theology I have, I learnt from homeless people,” he said. Listening to them had “changed my understanding of who God is and what God wants”.

Fear

Fr McVerry said the wealth, power and status of the church, and its “fear of losing them”, may have filtered “understanding of the message of Jesus”. Such fear was seen recently in the church authorities’ response to child sexual abuse.

He recalled that “for the religious authorities at the time of Jesus, God was a God of the law” and that “the church, too, has often proclaimed a God of the law”. It meant “anyone, like Jesus, dissident priests, organisations like the ACP who challenge this understanding of God, is seen therefore as a threat . . . to be got rid of”.

“Jesus . . . was just ‘the carpenter’s son,’ one of the laity no less” who “was moved by the suffering of his people. And Jesus proclaimed a different God, a God of compassion”.

He wondered whether this was why today the message of the church was seen by so many as irrelevant to their lives.

Complete Article HERE!

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Six men suing the Catholic church for alleged sexual abuse

A group of men from a northwestern Ontario First Nations community are suing a Winnipeg-based Roman Catholic order and others to seek redress for alleged sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their community priest as young boys.

The six men from the Lac La Croix First Nation near Fort Francis seek unspecified financial damages from the federal government, a Catholic diocese in Thunder Bay and the order of Les Oblats de Marie Immaculee du Manitoba, along with a priest who lived and worked on the reserve in the 1960s.

The men range in age from 55 to 61.

In separate statements of claim, each alleges his life has been deeply and negatively affected by the aftershocks of sexual assaults he was subjected to — abuse the men say they felt powerless to speak out about given the priest’s position of power in their small community.

One man states that when he was 10 or 11 years old, the priest took him to his on-reserve home several times during the summer months and anally raped him. The behaviour continued until he was 13 or 14, the now-56-year-old says.

The other men make similar claims, one alleging he was abused more than two dozen times at the priest’s home and in a schoolhouse room. Another claims he was assaulted by the priest in a hotel room during a trip to Minnesota.

The priest died in May 1986.

The allegations have not been proven, and no statement of defence has been filed. No court date has been set to test the men’s claims.

The men state the Order and the Thunder Bay diocese should be held indirectly responsible for the actions of the now-late priest, who was a member of the order and an employee of the diocese, their lawsuits say.

“The Order and the Diocese held out (the priest) as an individual that embodied the values of the Roman Catholic faith such that it was implied that he could be trusted and that he would do no harm,” one lawsuit states.

The two organizations should have known there would be a “power imbalance” given the emphasis the faith places on obeying the wishes of its clergy, and the power the priest had over the “immortal souls” of the faithful in the community.

Complete Article HERE!

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Watchdog group asks IRS to probe Catholic bishops

By David Gibson

A public watchdog group is charging the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with openly politicking on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and it wants the Internal Revenue Service to explore revoking the hierarchy’s tax-exempt status.

“In completely unqualified terms, the IRS should immediately tell the Conference of Catholic Bishops that the conduct of its members is beyond the pale,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

“If the Catholic bishops would like to continue receiving the tremendous tax benefits on which they rely, they should follow U.S. law and stay out of American politics,” Sloan added in a statement last Friday (Nov. 2) announcing the complaint.

Sloan argued that last-minute appeals by numerous bishops had crossed the line into electioneering. She named several prelates, including Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., a fierce critic of President Barack Obama, who ordered his priests to read a letter at all Masses on Sunday that sharply criticized Democratic policies and warned that Catholics who voted for those policies would endanger their eternal salvation.

Though the complaint targets the bishops’ conference, the conference itself has no control over what individual bishops do or do not say. While the USCCB has been waging a fierce political battle with the Obama White House over a contraception mandate, it has been careful not to endorse either candidate.

The bishops under scrutiny deny they are being partisan, and say they are only stating Catholic teaching and pointing out that Democratic policies violate those teachings.

Complaints to the IRS about the Catholic Church are relatively infrequent; church-state watchdogs have generally targeted evangelical churches and other groups associated with the Christian right for violating laws on politicking from the pulpit.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a secularist group based in Madison, Wis., on Monday announced that it had filed a report with the IRS charging evangelist Billy Graham’s ministry with campaigning on behalf of Romney.

The aging Graham, who turns 94 the day after the election, surprised many observers last month by pledging to “do all I can to help” Romney. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association subsequently took out full-page newspaper ads in which Graham strongly urges believers “to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

“The context of the ads and publications by BGEA evidence its intent to endorse candidate Mitt Romney,” FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in an Oct. 31 letter to the IRS.

The complaints may be moot, however. The Associated Press reported last week that a senior IRS official said the agency has not investigated any houses of worship over political complaints in three years, an assertion supported by many experts in the field.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Bishops Get Their Ass Kicked By Their Own Flock

Election results all across the country couldn’t have been worse for our boys in the fuschia beanies. All their bigotry, all their hate, all their efforts to manipulate the election in favor of the Republicans have come to nought. All their money was wasted on an indefensible campaign. And I think it is safe to say that the election results shows, that once again, they are on the wrong side of history.

These insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf and power-hungry crusty old men have been given the drubbing they so richly deserve. Now we must take the lead. Let’s redouble our effort to take back the church! Hurray for all the courageous Catholics who voted for justice, goodness and Gospel values.

A word to my brother clergy of whatever rank in the Church — you have an important teaching role in our faith community. We’re fine with that. We look to you for guidance. We hope you will continue to share your faith with us in as passionate a way as you see fit. However, your position in the Church does not give you license to shame, humiliate. denigrate or in any other way bully anyone else of conscience for their faith commitment. Let your teaching and leadership be by example, not by harassment.

You must know that you are dangerously close to being completely irrelevant for the vast majority of the people you have been ordained to serve. Let this election be a wake up call to you. Show us some humility and a modicum of humanness and we may once again embrace you as our leaders. But remember, you will have to earn our trust. Because as it stands now, you are morally bankrupt.

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MEA MAXIMA CULPA SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

Alex Gibney, an award-winning documentary maker whose work has focussed on Lance Armstrong, Julian Assange, and Enron, has found his most contentious topic yet.

His Oscar-touted exposé, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, traces a sex-abuse scandal from a Milwaukee Catholic church to the Vatican.

Gibney also shot parts of the film in Ireland and Italy and received €50,000 from the Irish Film Board. The movie was banned by the Venice and Rome film festivals this year.

According to the New York Post, Gibney said of its rejection: “I was disappointed. The Vatican exerts a very strong influence in Italy. There is a palpable sense of fear there. This film takes on the Vatican’s complicity [in covering it up].”

The film won the best documentary prize at the London Film Festival last week.

It was co-produced by Belfast’s Below the Radar production company, and is in cinemas in the US from Nov 16.

It follows the story of Fr Lawrence Murphy at the St John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin, who molested 200 pupils for 24 years. He was never disciplined, even after his actions were brought to the attention of the Vatican. Instead, he was moved to other schools.

“The direct connection of the Vatican to this sheds light on the way they’ve shoved this stuff under the carpet,” said Gibney, who discovered a similar scandal involving deaf students in Verona in Italy while making the film.

Five students are interviewed in the film, and, as they use sign language, their words are voiced by actors.

Gibney said: “We play with the idea of silence in this film. How could this predatory behaviour exist with people so helpless?

“With the priests in Italy… there is very little sympathy for victims.

“Instead, there’s this resentment that people would attack the Church. What else is in this huge cache of documents in the secret Vatican archives that has been compiled for centuries?”

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Maryland Catholic Priest Breaks With Church To Urge Marriage Equality

At Baltimore’s St. Vincent de Paul Church, Rev. Richard T. Lawrence read the archbishop’s statement urging a vote against the marriage bill referendum. He then told his parishioners why the archbishop was wrong.

A Maryland priest bucked the Vatican — and his own archbishop — Sunday by telling his parishioners that he sees a future in which the Roman Catholic Church could recognize “the total, exclusive and permanent union of gay and lesbian couples as part of the sacrament of matrimony.”

The Rev. Richard T. Lawrence drew a quick response from the local Catholic hierarchy. Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori asked that a copy of Rev. Richard T. Lawrence’s homily that had been posted online at the church’s website be removed because it ran counter to Catholic Church teaching on the subject. Lawrence complied, Lawrence’s pastoral associate, Chris McCullough, told BuzzFeed on Thursday.

Lawrence acknowledged in his sermon that the sea change he predicted won’t happen in the near future, but in the meantime he told parishoners at Baltimore’s St. Vincent de Paul Church on Sunday that “even if we do not believe that gay marriage ever could or should be allowed in the church, we could live with a provision that allows civil marriage of gay and lesbian couples.”

Lawrence’s striking opposition to the Catholic Church’s strong teaching against the recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages, reported first in the National Catholic Reporter, was, in and of itself, unexpected in light of the dogmatic path set by Pope Benedict XVI.

What made Lawrence’s presentation of his view more remarkable was that it was preceded by his reading the letter written by Lori, who as archbishop oversees Lawrence, urging the congregation of the importance of opposing the referendum in Maryland on Nov. 6 over the marriage equality bill passed and signed into law earlier this year. Lori told all parishioners in the letter, read by Lawrence, that they faced “the momentous choice of whether to maintain marriage as the union of one man and one woman in Maryland, or to irrevocably dismantle our state’s legal recognition of the most basic unit of our society — the family unit of mother, father and child.”

Lawrence, after finishing the archbishop’s letter, then told the congregation of his views and asked them, “[C]ould not civil law be allowed to progress where church law cannot go, at least not yet? Personally, I believe that it can and that it should.”

He concluded: “So there you have it: the official teaching of the church and my personal reflections.”
According to the Catholic Reporter’s Arthur Jones, the parishioners gave Lawrence a standing ovation.

Lawrence’s move fits with his biography on the church’s website, which notes that he has been “active in social justice ministries all his life, starting with the Civil Rights movement in the [1960s] and the Peace movement in the [1970s], and is today one of the leaders in the Inclusive Housing movement.”

Moreover, on Thursday, Chris McCullough, the pastoral associate at St. Vincent de Paul Church told BuzzFeed that, although the homily had been taken down from the church’s website, the Catholic Reporter article provided “a very solid, essential synopsis of the homily.”

Of the archbishop’s response, McCullough said, “We knew there would be repercussions.” He added, “I think it’s gracious that there wasn’t further punitive action taken.”

McCullough said, despite the pushback from the archbishop, Lawrence gave the homily because he wanted parishioners to know “there are other opinions” and “to keep [those opinions] in dialogue.”

Complete Article HERE!

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MEA MAXIMA CULPA SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

Alex Gibney, an award-winning documentary maker whose work has focussed on Lance Armstrong, Julian Assange, and Enron, has found his most contentious topic yet.

His Oscar-touted exposé, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, traces a sex-abuse scandal from a Milwaukee Catholic church to the Vatican.

Gibney also shot parts of the film in Ireland and Italy and received €50,000 from the Irish Film Board. The movie was banned by the Venice and Rome film festivals this year.

According to the New York Post, Gibney said of its rejection: “I was disappointed. The Vatican exerts a very strong influence in Italy. There is a palpable sense of fear there. This film takes on the Vatican’s complicity [in covering it up].”

The film won the best documentary prize at the London Film Festival last week.

It was co-produced by Belfast’s Below the Radar production company, and is in cinemas in the US from Nov 16.

It follows the story of Fr Lawrence Murphy at the St John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin, who molested 200 pupils for 24 years. He was never disciplined, even after his actions were brought to the attention of the Vatican. Instead, he was moved to other schools.

“The direct connection of the Vatican to this sheds light on the way they’ve shoved this stuff under the carpet,” said Gibney, who discovered a similar scandal involving deaf students in Verona in Italy while making the film.

Five students are interviewed in the film, and, as they use sign language, their words are voiced by actors.

Gibney said: “We play with the idea of silence in this film. How could this predatory behaviour exist with people so helpless?

“With the priests in Italy… there is very little sympathy for victims.

“Instead, there’s this resentment that people would attack the Church. What else is in this huge cache of documents in the secret Vatican archives that has been compiled for centuries?”

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Minnesota nonprofit for farmers loses grant for ties to groups opposing marriage bill

By Zoe Ryan

A Minnesota nonprofit that assists beginner and rural farmers lost its grant funding from the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference when the conference learned it was a member of two Minnesota groups that oppose Minnesota’s marriage amendment, an amendment the church supports.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program, did not cut funding because of something the Land Stewardship Project did, but “because they don’t like whom we associate with,” said Mark Schultz, the project’s associate director/policy and organizing director.

The organization, which helps sustain rural farms and has an office within the Winona, Minn., diocese, is an organizational member of two large nonprofits: Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and TakeAction Minnesota. Those two organizations, while their missions do not involve same-sex marriage, have taken stances against the marriage amendment.

On Nov. 6, Minnesotans will vote on a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman.

“We have no position on that,” Schultz said. “We don’t do any work on that.”

Although Land Stewardship Project does not have a position on the marriage amendment and belongs to the two organizations for other reasons, it is because of these relationships CCHD revoked the project’s $48,000 grant this summer.

But Schultz, who is Catholic, thinks CCHD is wrong.

“We’re not in violation of the contract because it’s not the purpose or agenda of these groups to do something about marriage,” he said.

The Land Stewardship Project and CCHD have a long history together, Schultz said. He estimated the bishops’ agency has given them 15 or so grants in the past, and he appreciates the work the bishops’ agency does.

“This is really difficult for us,” he said.

Under CCHD grant guidelines, a group is ineligible if it “promotes or participates in activities that support principles contrary to Catholic Teaching or work against the USCCB’s priorities to defend the life and dignity of all human persons, to strengthen family life and the institution of marriage, and to nurture diversity.”

The Land Stewardship Project, which has offices in southern Minnesota, was founded in 1982 “to foster an ethic of stewardship for farmland, to promote sustainable agriculture and to develop sustainable communities.”

Schultz said the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, which has 2,000 members, helps organizations be better nonprofits, and TakeAction Minnesota — which has 14,000 individual and 29 organizational dues-paying members — works on health care reform, which relates to the farm organization’s work because many of its members are “underinsured, uninsured, and paying huge amounts of money to insurance corporations.”

The Land Stewardship Project, when listing its affiliations on the application, evaluated if its memberships would be a violation of the CCHD contract, Schulz said, but decided they would not because none of the Land Stewardship Project’s work with the two organizations involved the marriage amendment and because the separation was so distant it would not be a problem. However, CCHD disagreed.

CCHD director Ralph McCloud told NCR the agency has given grants to the Land Stewardship Project multiple times since about 1989, and he noted the project’s “tremendous work over the years.” However, its affiliation with the two organizations made it ineligible for a grant this year, he said.

When the Winona diocese contacted the bishops’ conference this summer, CCHD looked into what constitutes a membership in the two organizations: “Is it dues paying, do you support the activities of the group, what activities do you work together on, do you enhance the group by your presence there — those kinds of things,” McCloud said.

McCloud said that as CCHD understood it, the Land Stewardship Project was a dues-paying member. The group gave the Land Stewardship Project time to cut ties with the two groups in order to keep the grant. The Land Stewardship Project deliberated but decided to keep its memberships.

Joel Hennessy, director of mission advancement for the Winona diocese, said the Land Stewardship Project does “wonderful work,” and the diocese “is sad that people have to suffer.” He said he is hopeful the relationship can one day continue.

Since at least 2007, the Land Stewardship Project has received $30,000 or more in grant money from CCHD, according to the group’s grant reports.

In recent years, CCHD has come under attack from groups that say the bishops’ agency funds programs that are inconsistent with Catholic teaching. A coalition group called Reform CCHD Now compiled information on possible violations with the Land Stewardship Project using CCHD’s guidelines and sent the findings to the Winona diocese, said Michael Hichborn of the American Life League, one of the organizations in the coalition.

Founded in 2009, Reform CCHD Now works “to shine the light on the problem of Catholic funds going to organizations that promote abortion, birth control, homosexuality and even Marxism,” according to its latest report on its website.

After renewing its grant guidelines in 2010, CCHD has been more vigilant, resulting in cut grants for some groups.

For the 2012-2013 funding year, 214 organizations received more than $9.1 million from grants, according to Catholic News Service. The CCHD church collection is typically the weekend before Thanksgiving, Nov. 17-18 this year.

McCloud said there have been discussions on whether CCHD needs stricter guidelines to eliminate confusion on eligibility. Part of the problem, he said, is the sudden appearance of marriage amendments on organizations’ agendas.

CCHD encourages collaboration to end poverty, McCloud said.

“That’s a virtue when you’re able to work across different types of lines and come together to work on an agenda that deals with persons who are in poverty. That’s important to us. But to work with organizations who are working against some of the things that we’re teaching, the tradition that we have — we just have no tolerance for that.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Roman Catholic Church Finances in the United States

The finances of the Roman Catholic Church tend to be well concealed. But a spate of bankruptcy cases in the US (8 out of 196 dioceses, with Honolulu teetering on the brink) has enabled The Economist to examine the situation in that country in more detail than is usually possible.

There are 74 million people in the US who describe themselves as Roman Catholic, and the expenditure of the Church is estimated as $170 billion in 2010. Of this, 57% was spent on health-care networks, 28% on colleges and universities, 6% on dioceses, parishes and schools, and 2.7% on charitable activities. Over 1 million people were employed (by comparison, the Walmart supermarket chain employed 2 million people). Less than a tenth of the income comes from church offerings; much of the rest comes from investments, property, wealthy businessmen, and local and federal government support for the hospitals, universities and schools. The Church in the US probably has about 60% of the total wealth of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide.

The Church has paid out $3.3 billion in settlements for child abuse over the last 15 years and this figure is expected to rise considerably. The dioceses are financially independent and the settlements are made by individual dioceses, which is why a number of them have gone bankrupt as a consequence of these settlements. Ten states are considering relaxing the time limitation on investigating child abuse, which could lead to the bankruptcy of several more dioceses. It is estimated that the Church is spending somewhere between $100 000 and $1 million a year in opposing the relaxation of this time limit. The child abuse scandal has led to a considerable reduction in donations to the Church and, at the same time, the shortage of priests and nuns has reduced the amount of the cheap labour available to the Church and has increased the running costs.

The rest of the report is somewhat technical but the following points emerge. Several dioceses have responded to their financial difficulties by raiding the priests’ pension funds. Between 1986 and 2002 the Diocese of Boston collected about $70-90 million in Easter and Christmas offerings, none of which was paid into the clergy retirement fund, although many parishioners thought that this was where the money was going.

Some dioceses have presented their funds as consisting of numerous different accounts for parishes, schools, hospitals, etc, when in fact there is just a single account. The parishes, schools and hospitals have then lost all their investments when the diocese has gone bankrupt.

Other dioceses, threatened with bankruptcy, have tried to shield their money by moving it out of diocesan accounts. In the ongoing Milwaukee bankruptcy case, the Archbishop of Milwaukee authorized a transfer of $55.6 million from the diocesan account into a cemetery fund. One Californian lawyer who has been involved in several of the bankruptcy cases says, ‘We have seen a consistent tactic of Catholic bishops to shrink the size of their assets, which is not only wrong morally but in violation of state and federal laws’. A whole city block in downtown San Diego was valued in the diocesan accounts at $40 000, the price that had been paid for it in the 1940s. The judge in the case was so irritated by the various ‘shenanigans’ that she ordered a special investigation into the diocesan finances.

The Economist report exposes considerable financial corruption in Roman Catholic dioceses in America but, as so often when dealing with the Church of Rome, there is a reluctance to draw conclusions. Somehow the idea is preserved that the Church of Rome is doing a lot of good in America. One would hope that, from her financial corruption, people would readily deduce her spiritual corruption, but they are remarkably slow to do so.

Complete Article HERE!

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Jerome Christenson: The church has sided with the bigots

By Jerome Christenson

Jesus didn’t come to found a Super PAC. So how do I explain the role of the Roman Catholic Church in this election?

How is it that we find an organization that styles itself “the Bride of Christ” whoring after votes like Tammany Hall with pews?

For months, Minnesota Catholic bishops have been behaving more like old-time, big-city political bosses than pastors of a troubled flock. As a Catholic, I am angered and embarrassed that the leaders of my church have chosen to devote more than half a million dollars to writing language into the Minnesota Constitution that would deny legal rights, protections and privileges to women and to men based solely upon their gender.

Of all the rituals of the church, there is none I find so challenging as the annual re-enactment of Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles, with the concluding admonition of “I have given you an example.”

And what is the example Jesus gives? To go beyond what is comfortable, what is easy, what has been done before. To reach out to the poor, the weak, the put down and oppressed. To those without power, to those who have been denied.

“Come unto me,” he said, with a door open in welcome.

But rather than stand with Jesus in welcome, the prelates are calling upon us to stand with those who would slam the door.

They would have us deny our brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, friends and relations recognition of the most intimate and profound human relationships — and they are so very wrong to do so.

To those who tell me this vote isn’t for or against discrimination, I just repeat what my dad told me: “You’re known by the company you keep.” On this ballot question, on which side do we find the bigots, the homophobes, the haters? And on which side do we find the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church?

The wrong side.

Clearly, the wrong side.

And I am embarrassed and ashamed.

I know, there are plenty of folks who will say, “If you don’t like it, leave.”

No.

This is my church as much as it is the church of the hierarchy — ultimately all are equal before God. I go to Mass for prayer, not for a political rally, and prayer will continue long after the electioneering is over.

And if I claim it as my church, I also share responsibility for what the church does and what it stands for. And in this matter I take my example from the unlettered son of a Nazarene carpenter who dared say to the scribes, elders and pharisees, You are wrong.

And on this matter our bishops are wrong. How do we claim to live according to the great command, Love one another as I have loved you, and say with our words, our money, our votes that some of us are not worthy of — or capable of — what may be the most profound, selfless love humans may experience.

This is something I do know a bit about.

Had she lived, Gayle and I would have been married 35 years this July. If my mom were still living, she and Dad would be celebrating 62. Having lived better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, lived it until parted by death, I know the love that sustained us in joy, anger and sorrow was rooted in our souls, not in our genitals.

To stand between any two people and deny them the expression of such a love is no less a sin than to stand between them and the very love of God.

Complete Article HERE!