Category: Abuse of Power

Posted on

Cardinal Dolan and America’s troubled Catholic Church

By Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo

Cardinal Dolan, president of the USCCB, says he needs an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” woman as his personal spokesperson, claiming that “the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over.” He has chosen Kim Daniels, a long-time effective advocate of conservative causes, and ex-personal domestic policy czar to Sarah Palin. Might one say that Daniels has gone “from Sarah Palin’s brain to Cardinal Dolan’s voice?” But her promotion also signals that the cardinal as head of the USCCB has had more failures than successes.

dolanThis is not to deny Dolan’s talents. Seldom has Catholic America had a prelate so effective with media. He uses lunch-pail comparisons to explain even the most complex of church teachings. He stood up to inquisitorial Catholic right-wingers and invited President Obama to the annual Al Smith Dinner. But I believe an honest appraisal would show that influence and respect for the USCCB is lower now than when Dolan assumed the office. These are moments when I think his leadership struck out.

Strike one was in allowing division between Catholic America’s religious sisters and the bishops. Perhaps he could not have controlled a Vatican investigation into the LCWR, but surely he could have influenced Rome’s maladroit handling. Moreover, the Nuns-On-the-Bus tour turned into a symbolic civil war with the sisters on one side and the bishops on the other. Dolan should have known his side would lose because the nuns have always held the warmest spot in Catholic hearts.

Strike two was in silence after the over-the-top comparisons by clerics like the Bishop of Peoria. who compared President Obama to Hitler and by laypersons like the Knights of Columbus’ Supreme Knight Carl Anderson who promoted Catholic resistance to Obama in the spirit of the Mexican Cristeros. The latter group of Catholics, it will be remembered gathered armed militias against the Mexican government and eventually assassinated a president. The legal principle here is “Qui tacuit, consentire,” and it means that silence is the same as acquiesce. This criticism extends to Bishop Finn of Kansas City who was found guilty of violating civil law and his own policy against pedophile clerics. By going easier on Catholic males than on the religious women battling for social justice on economic matters, Dolan widened the deepening rifts in Catholic America.

Strike three was allowing the Fortnight to Freedom to become identified with politicking for Mitt Romney. This effort had been spawned in the murky dark places of the Manhattan Declaration with obvious partisan intent. Tacking on the current immigration law as another instance of “religious persecution” was not enough to dislodge the public perception that the Fortnight was intended to instruct Catholics to vote for Republicans. This alliance with evangelicals was unfruitful. The original evangelical partners were a questionable crew embracing entrepreneurial pastors who raise fabulous amounts of money for partisan causes. Our Catholic tradition, however, obliges bishops to pastoral roles. When the bishops jumped into the same barrel with the right-wing pastors they diminished Catholic tradition. Dolan should have seen this coming. (Let me classify this as a “foul ball” so that the cardinal gets another swing.)

The last strike was in undercutting the policy of a full committee of the USCCB with contradictory statements by individual bishops. After the Social Justice Committee of the USCCB had condemned the Paul Ryan budget, Cardinal Dolan and Madison Bishop Robert Morlino rejected the conclusion that Ryan’s plan was outside Catholic teaching. Given new life, Ryan quickly dismissed his episcopal critics as “not all the bishops” happily trivializing the USCCB committee structure with his quip.

Once you break the code yourself, you give others license to do the same. Thus, while Dolan stated the need to consider more carefully the Obama remedy to the HHS mandate on February 2, 2013, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Chaput issued a statement on February 4, 2013 that jumped the gun, claiming total rejection came from “courage that gives prudence spine and results in right action, whatever the cost.” Two days later, Dolan said “me too.”

I consider it appalling that the president of the USCCB needs a personal spokesperson in addition to the USCCB’s resident Sister Mary Ann Walsh. Ensuring division among bishops to promote the influence of an individual cleric is never good.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Legion priest leaves priesthood to care for son

A prominent American priest of the Legion of Christ religious order has decided to leave the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child years ago.

The Legion said Saturday the Rev. Thomas Williams, a moral theologian, author, lecturer and television personality, had asked Pope Francis to be relieved of his celibacy and other priestly obligations. A friend, the Rev. John Connor, wrote in a Legion blog that Williams wanted to care for his son and the mother.

After Williams’ admission, the Legion’s then-superior acknowledged he had known for years about the child, yet allowed Williams to continue teaching and preaching morality. It was another blow to a congregation discredited by revelations that its founder was a pedophile who built a cult-like order which the Vatican is trying to reform.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Church lecture on morality? What a joke (Opinion)

Veiled threats by the Catholic hierarchy to excommunicate politicians who support the proposed abortion legislation are clerical comedy at its blackest.

As administrators of a private club, governed by self-generated rules, bishops and cardinals are perfectly entitled to formulate their own membership policies (within the law, of course).

But the excommunication tactic involves a darkly hilarious proposition – that good standing with the Vatican is synonymous with morality.

Anyone convinced by this quaint notion should break the habit of a lifetime and open their eyes.

On any given Sunday, many of the country’s most twisted crooks can be found in churches of various kinds.

Sometimes, the worst offender is the degenerate priest on the altar; sometimes, it’s the corrupt TD in the front pew.

In the more salubrious parishes, it’s the gangster banker who likes to showcase his spiritual side by leading the prayers of the faithful.

This is not to say that believers are more prone to greed or deceit than anybody else but rather that the greedy and deceitful frequently disguise themselves by infiltrating the company of believers.

Hiding in plain sight is a well established law-evasion technique; in holy Catholic Ireland, the strategy has been refined to involve hiding within the sight of God.

Excommunication would be an excellent idea if church authorities started with the real reprobates and worked downwards – just like Jesus did when He decided to cleanse the temple.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Uganda priest ostracized for publicizing sexual abuse

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.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Catholic church excommunicates Brazil priest for liberal views

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.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Cardinal ordered into exile by Vatican

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.”

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Catholic bishop warns against attending same-sex weddings

File under: Sour Grapes.  Really, Bishop?  It’s God who looks unfavorably upon marriage equality?  Really?  Remember when pious Catholics were warned not to attend marriages between a man and a woman but were held in non-Catholic settings?  Was God pissed off at that too back then?  I guess he got over it, huh?  You shameless fraud!

By Eric W. Dolan

Bishop of Providence Thomas Tobin, the Roman Catholic leader of Rhode Island, on Thursday warned Catholics that God looked unfavorably upon those who attended same-sex weddings.

In a letter published as Rhode Island was poised to become the tenth state to embrace marriage equality, Tobin wrote that Catholics should have “respect, love and pastoral concern” for LGBT individuals.

But that didn’t mean Catholics should accept their relationships or attend their wedding ceremonies.

“At this moment of cultural change, it is important to affirm the teaching of the Church, based on God’s word, that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2357) and always sinful,” Tobin explained.

“And because ‘same-sex marriages’ are clearly contrary to God’s plan for the human family, and therefore objectively sinful, Catholics should examine their consciences very carefully before deciding whether or not to endorse same-sex relationships or attend same-sex ceremonies, realizing that to do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others.”

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

Newark Archbishop John Myers must go: Editorial

For background story see HERE!

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

After all the Catholic Church has been through, it is beyond infuriating that Newark Archbishop John J. Myers can be so neglectful of his duty to protect children from sexual predators.

He should resign immediately and apologize to the families whose children he left exposed, barring some stunning new disclosure that could exonerate him in the face of the damning facts presented by The Star-Ledger’s Mark Mueller in today’s edition.

john_myers_newark

The case concerns Michael Fugee, a priest who was convicted in a sexual abuse case in 2003 after he confessed to fondling a 14-year-old boy, and being a compulsive masturbator obsessed with penis size.

The conviction was overturned when a higher court found the judge had given improper instructions to jurors. Instead of trying Fugee again, as they should have, prosecutors allowed him to avoid jail by joining a program for first-offenders.

Part of the deal was an agreement that Fugee signed, along with the archdiocese, committing all parties to keeping Fugee away from minors.

Fugee was not to work in any position involving children, or have any affiliation with youth groups. He could not attend youth retreats, or even hear the confessions of children.

With the full knowledge and approval of Myers, Fugee did all of those things. Look at the picture of him clowning around with children in today’s paper, and it makes you want to scream a warning. The agreement was designed to prevent exactly that.

This is not the first time Myers has shown contempt for the safety of children in his flock. While many bishops are making a sincere efforts to rehabilitate the church, Myers has shown a pattern of leniency toward pedophiles, indifference to potential victims, and a haughty disdain for those who dare to question his judgment.

Before this latest flare-up with Fugee, Myers had promoted him to an influential position in the church as co-director of the office that helps guide young priests, sending precisely the wrong message. Earlier this year, Fugee was found to be saying Mass and living at the rectory of a church in Rochelle Park. Parishioners had not been told of his criminal past, so again, children were exposed. In 2009, Myers appointed Fugee chaplain of St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, again without telling the hospital about Fugee’s restrictions.Michael Fugee

Unlike some other bishops, Myers will not release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of abuse.

In 2004, he wrote a letter of recommendation to six dioceses in Florida for one priest, a week after learning the priest had been accused of assaulting a woman after breaking into her house. The same year, he banned one priest from public ministry after investigating an allegation that he had abused a boy, but did not notify laypeople or other priests. In 2007, he did not tell laypeople about a credible finding of molestation against a priest working in Elizabeth and Jersey City, information that was finally turned up by a victims’ group.

Fugee is, or at least was, the real danger. He seems to think he can break the rules. It is Myers’ job to stop him, and he is instead enabling him.

He is refusing to discuss any of this. Our hope is the prosecutors press him to do so. He is a part to the agreement on Fugee, which was signed by the archdiocese’s vicar general on behalf of Myers, and which has clearly been broken.

In the meantime, for the sake of the children, Myers should step down.

Complete Article HERE!

Posted on

O’Brien scandal: Vatican calls halt to new bishops

The Vatican has called a halt to the appointment of any more Scottish bishops until a full investigation into the Cardinal Keith O’Brien scandal is completed by Rome.

By Gerry Braiden

In the first known move in relation to the crisis since the election of Pope Francis, Scotland’s leading Catholic cleric Philip Tartaglia was given the news at a meeting in the Vatican this week.

o'brianCardinal O’Brien resigned from his position as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh two months ago amid confessions of gay sexual activity spanning decades.

The move by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, one of the front-runners in the recent conclave to elect a new pope, means three dioceses – Paisley, Dunkeld and Edinburgh – will not have their vacancies for a bishop filled.

Another two with ageing bishops, Motherwell and Galloway, will not have their churchmen replaced.

Canadian Cardinal Ouellet is the current prefect of the Congregation for the Bishops, which oversees the selection of new bishops.

Serving and former trainee priests have claimed to have been abused by Cardinal O’Brien, who remains a cardinal.

In another move, it is understood the Congregation for the Bishops has instructed the Pope’s ambassador in the UK to keep the book open on Cardinal O’Brien and continue to gather evidence. The demand is another indication Pope Francis is turning his attention to the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church in Scotland.

It also wants evidence on the allegations of a “gay mafia”, sexual bullying and open sexual relationships in seminaries made in a recent book by a serving priest in Lanarkshire, Father Matthew Despard.

Meanwhile, it is understood Cardinal O’Brien has been seeking clarification from the Papal Nuncio in London as to the status of the investigation into the claims.

He has been given assurances no decision has as yet been taken to remove him from the clergy or demote him.

There have also been discussions in Church circles that the Catholic hierarchy was of the view the storm around Cardinal O’Brien had passed and that it wanted to brush the matter under the carpet.

There have been claims that, having removed himself from public life, the only punishment he would face was not having a burial at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh.

However, the moves in recent days gave a clear indication the Vatican has not closed the book on the Cardinal O’Brien fallout and has extended its interest into Father Despard’s claims.

One source said: “Philip Tartaglia was meeting with Ouellet over the situation Scotland has faced for several years. It needs new bishops.

“But Ouellet’s made it clear: no new broom until Rome gets to the bottom of all that’s happened here. Scotland’s not the Holy Father’s priority, but this book and the Cardinal have brought disgrace to the Church. Utterly discredited it in the eyes of the world and Francis wants cleansing.”

Another said: “Were the Congregation for the Bishops simply to give the nod for new blood now, the Church would face ever more accusing of trying to sweep things under the carpet. It doesn’t want that here.”

The Vatican did not respond to a request for an update on the investigation into Cardinal O’Br ien. No-one was available at the Papal Nuncio’s office.

Cardinal O’Brien was also contacted but he was unavailable.

A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Media Office said: “Since the complaints against the Cardinal went directly to the Vatican it will be for them to deal with and decide what action to take.”

Three priests and a former priest made allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour against Cardinal O’Brien. He apologised and asked forgiveness from those he had offended as he stepped down.

Complete Article HERE!