Category: Living A Lie

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South Boston priest held on child porn charges

A South Boston priest who police said had images of girls who appeared to be as young as 8 on a computer at the parish rectory is being held on bail after he pleaded not guilty today to child pornography charges.

The Rev. Andrew J. Urbaniak, 39, pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa, a Roman Catholic church on Dorchester Avenue, was arrested yesterday afternoon on charges of possession and dissemination of child pornography following a two-month investigation by Boston and state police.

Urbaniak was held on $10,000 cash bail following his arraignment in South Boston District Court. If he makes bail, Judge Michael Bolden ordered Urbaniak to wear a GPS bracelet, have no contact with children under age 16, surrender his passport and remain in the state. He was also banned from using the Internet and will be subject to random unannounced checks of his computer.

Urbaniak, who was wearing a polo shirt at the arraignment, kept his eyes downcast while prosecutor Kate Clayman detailed the charges against him.

Urbaniak had been downloading child pornography and child sexual abuse images on a computer at the church, said Clayman, and when police arrived at the church yesterday to execute a search warrant the “computer was actively downloading files.”

Among the images police found on the computer at the parish rectory were a “prepubescent female child displaying graphic sexual activity” and “a 10-year-old girl lying on a bed fully exposed,” Clayman said.

Urbaniak’s attorney, Jeffrey Denner, told the judge, “He is a very decent man charged with very indecent activities. He doesn’t pose any danger, nor does he pose any risk of flight. He has devoted his life to good.”

Urbaniak, a Polish national, has been a priest at Our Lady of Czestochowa for four years. He has been an ordained priest for 14 years and has been in the United States since 2000.

The Archdiocese of Boston said today that Urbaniak has been placed on administrative leave.

“The Provincial Superior of his religious order in Poland has been informed of the matter,” the Archdiocese added. “The Church prays for all those impacted by these events and is committed to providing for the pastoral care of the parish during this difficult time.”

Urbaniak is due back in court Aug. 31 for a probable cause hearing.

Complete Article HERE!

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Psychologist: Bishops’ lashing out at sisters is a distraction

COMMENTARY — Kathy Galleher

Since the Vatican’s public release April 18 of the results of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, many American Catholics have been confused and angry. These women, who work tirelessly with the poor and marginalized, whom many of us see as embodying Christ’s love, are being accused of doing grave harm to the church. In conversation after conversation, I have heard, “Why so much anger directed at women religious?”, “What is this about?” and “It just seems … abusive.” As I pondered this last observation, I recognized a familiar dynamic.

For nearly eight years I worked as a psychologist at a treatment center for priests and religious. During that time I worked with a number of men who had committed sexual abuse. An essential part of the therapeutic work was for these men to understand the deep pain they had caused, to accept responsibility for it, and to move forward with a commitment not to let it happen again, which included accepting restrictions and consequences. Often the largest obstacle to healing was the first task: accepting and understanding the amount of pain they had caused.

When we harm someone, healing requires that we recognize the extent of the injury we caused. Only when we are able to see this clearly and take responsibility for it can we respond with appropriate guilt. Appropriate guilt focuses us on how to repair the injury (if that is possible) and what actions we must take to prevent it from occurring again. If we cannot recognize the pain and take responsibility for it, we get stuck and assume an aggressively defensive stance, lashing out and blaming others as a way to deflect attention from our actions, actions we find too painful to look at honestly.

In treatment, when a client was stuck in this way, we would see this blaming/lashing-out dynamic, and he would start a fight. The greater the unacknowledged pain, the more furious the fight. Often the fury was directed toward a bishop or superior who was removing him from ministry. “You’re ruining my life,” he would say. “I feel betrayed. You have no idea how much pain you are causing me and you don’t even care.” Although he was the abuser, in his mind in that moment, he was the victim of the bishop or superior. The real victim had vanished from his awareness.

Fights like these were so provocative that the instinctive reaction of those on the receiving end was to respond with their own aggression. So the fight would escalate, take on more heat, and distract from the work at hand. As therapists, we tried to contain these fights and give them as little energy as possible (like depriving a fire of oxygen). Our job was to say, “This is a distraction. Let’s get back to work.” Then we would support the client in leaving the fight behind and returning to his unfinished work: looking deeply at his own pain, taking responsibility for the pain he had caused, and taking action to prevent it from occurring again.

I see strong parallels between this and the church’s dealings with LCWR. The level of anger and blame in the doctrinal assessment document feels like someone is picking a fight, and the intensity of it hints at the enormous amount of still unworked pain at the heart of the church’s sexual abuse crisis. To me, this fight looks like a distraction.

In the past 10 years, the church has taken steps toward responding to the tragedy of sexual abuse in the church at the individual level, including responding to allegations more quickly, involving law enforcement, and developing child protection policies. However, the church has not yet been willing or able to examine its own role as an institution in concealing and enabling decades of abuse. The bishops have not taken collective responsibility for their actions (and inactions) and for the enormous pain they have caused. As much as the abuse itself, it is this failure by the hierarchy to acknowledge and accept their responsibility that has angered and disillusioned so many current and now-former Catholics. Too much pain is still unacknowledged and unworked.

The church hierarchy seems to be stuck and they are blaming and lashing out. They have started a fight with LCWR and the women religious. In the doctrinal assessment, they have accused the women of the church of betraying the core values of the church, of causing scandal and leading the faithful astray, and of not being sufficiently trustworthy to reform themselves. They have ordered the women to be closely supervised. These accusations seem more rightly to belong to the sexual abuse scandal rather than to the actions of LCWR. It was the bishops who, by protecting sexual abusers, betrayed core values of the church and caused scandal to the faithful. It is the institutional church that appears not to be able to reform itself and to be in need of outside supervision.

This fight with LCWR is a distraction from the work the bishops still need to do in order to bring about genuine healing in the church.

In response to the misdirected accusations and the severe punishment directed at LCWR, many Catholics feel outraged and want to fight back. But as we saw above, to do so stokes the fire and continues the distraction. We can all be grateful to the women of LCWR for their powerful model of non-reactivity and reflection in their response to this situation. They have spoken their truth, but have not thrown wood on the fire. Similarly, public statements of support from men religious — notably the Franciscans — are courageous and direct but nonviolent. I hope that all of us will follow their lead — speaking our truth with courage and nonviolence, and, like the sisters, keeping our eyes on the real work we are called to do as a church.

It seems the moment to say clearly to the Vatican and to the bishops, “This fight with LCWR is a distraction. The women are not to blame. The church is not the victim. There is still a great deal of pain to address. Let’s get back to work.” Let us hope that with our prayers and support they will be able to look more deeply. Let us hope they can return to and complete the work that is still theirs to do, and in that way bring about healing and transformation for themselves and for our entire church.

Complete Article HERE!

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Flaccid ‘Fortnight for Freedom’ fizzles for fathers

COMMENTARY – Fred Clark

The “Fortnight for Freedom” was a flop.

This was supposed to be a game-changer — the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ big display of political might. But instead it exposed the bishops as inept campaigners and as generals without an army.

I thought they’d be better at this sort of thing. They had some formidable assets to work with. For weeks ahead of time, Fortnight events were publicized and promoted in every diocese and every parish across the country. And they had some serious money to work with thanks to deep-pocketed (anonymous) donors. They even got a big boost of support from their allies in the evangelical religious right.

But still, it flopped. Big time.

This two-week extravaganza was supposed to redefine the political conversation, but instead it went mostly unnoticed and unattended. It was supposed to show massive grassroots support for the bishops’ contention that allowing women to purchase comprehensive health insurance constitutes an intolerable threat to the religious liberty of employers who wish to prohibit that. But instead it showed, definitively, that there is no grassroots support for that strange argument.

The bishops declared themselves the grand marshals of what was to be a glorious parade, but no one showed up to march behind them and only a meager handful turned out to line the route as spectators.

It was pathetic, really. A bunch of nuns on a shoestring-budget bus tour drew more enthusiasm and more support for their polar-opposite message. For all the millions spent and all the weeks of elaborate, top-down fanfare, the Fortnight for Freedom came and went almost without notice.

“Oh, right, the bishops’ big rally, when is that again? Oh, it happened already? Oh.”

Yawn.

All that time and money invested and almost nothing to show for it.

Part of what we learned here, I think, is that if you’ve got a top-down, hierarchical mentality that regards listening to anyone else as beneath you, as an affront to your righteous authority, then you’re probably not well-suited to rallying grassroots support. When that arrogant mentality shapes your outlook, it seems, you’re probably not even capable of recognizing that you’ve utterly lost all grassroots support.

The bishops did their best to put a happy face on their embarrassing fortnight of failure. “Thousands rally in Washington,” one press release said. And that was true — “thousands” plural because two is a plural number. The largest Fortnight event drew about 4,000 — or, in other words, it was a bit smaller than the crowd at a Bowling Green Hot Rods game on Fireworks Night. (Yes, the Rays’ single-A farm team may outdraw the bishops despite a much-smaller PR budget, yet as far as I know the Hot Rods are not making any claims that this gives them the right to dictate national policy to the president.)

By the end of the fortnight, the affiliated Republican effort “Conscience Clause” had also collected 6,000 signatures for a petition in support of the bishops — or nearly half the number of signatures collected so far in the “Save Pan Am” campaign to get ABC to revive that failed show.

The Fortnight for Freedom was a failure. I suppose, though, that it did succeed in at least one way: providing a handle for plenty of insightful commentary on the bishops’ demands for religious privilege and their increasingly partisan political activism. A sampling of some of that commentary below the jump.

Jessica Coblentz: “Fortnight for Freedom: Whose Religious Liberty?”

In the reaction against Fortnight for Freedom, some are responding to the bishops on their own terms. If the campaign is about religious liberty, they ask, then whose liberty is at stake? The bishops present the Catholic exercise of religious liberty as the ability to reject the use of contraception, or at least the financing of insurance plans that cover contraceptive services. The irony, to those on the other side, is that a campaign meant to promote religious liberty actually denies the religious freedom of many Catholic women, who rely on their personal religious convictions to determine their stance on contraception and the mandate. Studies show that as many as 98 percent of sexually experienced American Catholic women over the age of 18 have used contraception. A recent PRRI/RNS poll reports that a majority of American Catholics do not see the contraception mandate as a threat to religious freedom, indicating that many hold a broader understanding of religious liberty than the bishops maintain. The debate surrounding the mandate, then, is not only about contraception and religious liberty. It is also about who gets to define religious liberty’s very meaning.

… Critics of the bishops’ current battle can call on this Catholic history of religious liberty and individual freedom. In their view, women’s choices are an issue of religious liberty — not merely a threat to it. Still, who defines religious liberty remains a matter of authority — and a highly gendered one at that. When the USCCB conveys that the rejection of contraception is the only religiously-motivated choice that warrants the protection of religious liberty among Catholics, they assert the message that only church leaders have the authority to determine what counts as religious behavior. This strips other Catholics of the legitimate authority to negotiate their tradition when determining their own religiously-motivated actions. What is more, so long as the all-male Catholic clergy solely possess the authority to identify what does and does not constitute a free, religiously-motivated choice worthy of legal protection, women have no official authority in Catholic religious liberty conversations whatsoever. As it stands, the religious decisions and actions of all Catholics other than clergy — be they for or against contraception and contraceptive coverage — are seemingly insignificant in “Catholic” concerns about religious liberty.

… The bishops, or anyone for that matter, need not theologically condone the contraceptive decisions of Catholic women in order to recognize them as exercises of free, religious choice. Yet the current rhetoric of the USCCB’s “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign does not. … If the bishops continue to exclude so many American Catholics from their representation of religious liberty — notably, the majority of Catholic women — the USCCB fails in its own stated aim to protect the religious liberty of all.

Katherine Stewart: “How Corrupt Catholics and Evangelicals Abuse Religious Freedom”

In the writings and speeches of Catholic bishops and evangelical leaders in recent months, “religious freedom” has come to mean something close to its opposite. It now stands for “religious privilege.” It is a coded way for them to state their demand that religious institutions should be allowed special powers that exempt them from the laws of the land.

… This is a war of conquest, designed to expand the power of religious institutions at the expense of the rest of society and the state. It is about carving out an even larger share of the special privileges and exemptions that are already made available only to organized religious institutions.
Such privileges are already substantial. Religions already receive hefty subsidies – by some estimates, as much as $71bn a year – through broad tax exemptions, deductions, and faith-based government programs. A “ministerial exemption” allows them to hire and fire people directly involved in religious activity without regard to anti-discrimination laws.
But they want more. And they are willing to turn the meaning of the word “persecution” on its head to get it.

Sally Rasmussen: “The Bishops on Religious Freedom: ‘We Get More Than You’”

The Catholic bishops have been talking a lot recently about the First Amendment. They’ve made the remarkable claim that their tradition is a source of First Amendment freedoms, but their interpretation of such freedom is that it should shield them from prosecution for collaborating in the sexual abuse of children, at the same time that they are doing their best to deny freedom of religion, speech, and assembly to American nuns. Nor do they believe in freedom of conscience for the Catholic Church which is the people of God – a Church that has thoughtfully concluded that contraception is morally acceptable.

Mark Silk: “Religious Freedom, Becket Style”

I can’t help suspecting that the bishops’ rage against the contraception mandate is actually displaced anger at losing their de facto power to decide the fate of sexually abusive priests.

The real lesson of the conviction of Msgr. William Lynn in Philadelphia last month and the impending trial of Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City is that if church authorities don’t behave like secular executives when confronted with a subordinate suspected of abuse, then they too will be criminally prosecuted. Archbishop Becket would have considered that an assault on his religious freedom. No one in America can do so anymore, Fortnight or no Fortnight.

Complete Article HERE!

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Man who attacked priest in revenge is not guilty of felonies

William Lynch, who beat the Catholic priest he said molested him as a child, is acquitted on elder abuse and felony assault charges. He may be retried on a misdemeanor assault charge.

SAN JOSE — A jury has found a San Francisco man not guilty of felony assault and felony elder abuse, despite his admission that he attacked the priest accused of molesting him nearly four decades ago.

Father Jerold Lindner. Lindner now lives in Los Gatos, California at Sacred Heart a retreat for Catholic clergy. San Francisco resident William Lynch said he has suffered nearly three decades of irreparable emotional and psychological harm, and attempted suicide two times, because of what happened to him at the hands of Jesuit priest Jerold Lindner during a church-led, family camping trip in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1975. Lindner was removed from active ministry in Los Angeles in 1997 in response to a civil suit filed by Lynch that year. In September of this year, the priest was returned to Sacred Heart. A retirement and medical center for about 65 Jesuit Roman Catholic priests and brothers, it has become a place where priests suspected of abusing children can be safely housed. Photo Received December 13, 2002.

The 10-man, two-woman panel also said Thursday that William Lynch was not guilty of misdemeanor elder abuse in the 2010 attack on Father Jerold Lindner. The 67-year-old Catholic priest has been linked to more than a dozen alleged victims — including his own nieces, nephew and sister — but never has been brought to trial because the statute of limitations in every case had run out.

The jury was split on a final charge against Lynch: misdemeanor assault. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge David Cena declared a mistrial on that count. Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Rosen said his office would decide in the coming days whether to retry Lynch.

After the verdict was read, Lynch said he had felt certain that he would be going to jail — and was pleasantly surprised that he would not. But he also spoke haltingly, and with deep emotion, about justice and responsibility.

“I was wrong for what I did,” said Lynch, 45. “If I’m going to be taking responsibility, I have to take it fully. And in [beating Lindner] … I was perpetuating the cycle of violence.”

Surrounded by family, supporters and his attorneys in front of the courthouse, Lynch said: “I wanted to … be accountable, unlike the church and Father Jerry up to this point.”

Rosen said that his office too had had a responsibility: to charge Lynch for lying his way into the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, where the retired Lindner lived, and attacking him.

Using “a fake name, gloves. Beating and bloodying someone. That’s not justice under the law,” Rosen said after the verdict, giving a shorthand account of Lynch’s actions. “That’s revenge.”

Rosen said that although his office understood what motivated Lynch’s behavior, “we do not condone it.… A just punishment is delivered through our justice system, not through the acts of one traumatized and troubled man.”

The two-week-long trial was filled with dramatic turns and punctuated with tearful, graphic testimony — not about the attack in question, but about what happened in 1974. That is when Lindner allegedly lured Lynch and his younger brother, then 7 and 4, into his tent during a Catholic family camping trip. The boys said that the priest raped them and forced them to perform oral copulation on each other while he watched.

As the trial opened, Deputy Dist. Atty. Vicki Gemetti told the jury that Lindner, who was a spiritual advisor for the outing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, had indeed molested the Lynch brothers.

She played a gut-wrenching video of a San Jose Mercury News interview in which Lynch recently talked in graphic detail about that camping trip years ago. Gemetti told the jury that Lindner would “probably lie” when he took the stand.

When Gemetti asked whether he had molested Lynch and his brother, Lindner said: “No.”

Defense attorneys called for a mistrial, insisting Gemetti had committed prosecutorial misconduct by inducing perjury. Cena disagreed, and the trial continued.

But when Lindner returned to the stand, he refused to testify further on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. The judge then struck Lindner’s testimony entirely and told the jury to ignore the priest’s description of Lynch’s “vicious” attack.

And that, Juror No. 12 said, was key for him in deciding the case.

“The victim in this case disappeared,” said the retired accountant, who declined to give his name. “His testimony disappeared. To me, if you have no victim, do you have a crime?”

The juror, who walked with a cane and sported a silver brush cut, described the nine hours of jury deliberations over three days as cordial and professional.

“There were 12 people who simply agreed to disagree,” the juror said. “There was some disagreement with the law. There was disagreement with some of the testimony. There was disagreement with each other.”

The juror said that everyone on the panel believed that Lindner had committed “absolutely heinous” crimes against Lynch and his brother. But, he said, he was one of the eight who voted “guilty” on the lesser charge of simple misdemeanor assault because Lynch “got up and said he did it.”

To defense attorneys Pat Harris and Paul Mones, Lynch’s testimony was an act of courage fueled by his desire to protect other children from Lindner — and to fight the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions that cover up child sexual abuse and protect perpetrators.

“Will had the strength to speak for many people who can’t speak,” said Mones, who called the jury’s verdict “an example of what’s been happening around the country today.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Argentine Bishop Bargallo quits over ‘amorous ties’ row

The Pope has accepted the resignation of an Argentine bishop after the publication of pictures showing him embracing a woman on a Mexican beach.

Bishop Fernando Bargallo, 57, was photographed in the sea, hugging a woman in a bikini.

He initially said she was a childhood friend, but later admitted to having had “amorous ties” with her.

Bishop Bargallo was in charge of the diocese of Merlo-Moreno, in the province of Buenos Aires.

The scandal broke last week, when an Argentine television station broadcast pictures of Monsignor Bargallo on holiday at a beach resort in Mexico in the company of a woman.

‘Childhood friend’

In one of the pictures, he is seen half-submerged in the water, embracing a woman in a bikini.

Shortly after the pictures were published, Monsignor Bargallo gave a public statement saying that the woman was a childhood friend, whom he had known all of his life.

He said the situation in which he had been photographed was “imprudent, as it could lead people to jump to the wrong conclusion”.

He asked his flock to forgive him for “the ambiguity of the pictures” and urged them to view the photos “in the context of a long friendship”.

But later that same week, Monsignor Bargallo convened the priests of his diocese and told them he had had “amorous ties” with the woman and would resign.

The Vatican said he would be replaced by Monsignor Alcides Jorge Pedro Casaretto.

Complete Article HERE!

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Woman Says ‘Exorcist’ Priest Abused Her

A Roman Catholic priest “kissed (a woman) on all parts of her body” during a so-called “exorcism” session, and “frequently explained full, passionate kisses as ‘blowing the Holy Spirit into’ her,” the woman claims in court.

Jane Doe sued the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, its Bishop Paul Loverde – who is not the priest accused of the abuse – and Human Life International and the HLI Endowment Inc., of Charlottesville, in Arlington County Court.

Doe claims she was sexually abused repeatedly by her “exorcist,” Thomas J. Euteneur, who was president of Human Life International and the HLI Endowment; Euteneur, however, is not named as an individual defendant.

Doe claims that Euteneur, a Roman Catholic priest, offers “‘spiritual deliverance’ and the performance of the rite of exorcism,” and did it “with the knowledge and consent of the Diocese and the Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde. … On at least one previous occasion, the Diocese and Bishop Loverde gave permission to Euteneur to conduct an exorcism within the Diocese.”

Doe claims that the defendants know that exorcism could be “potentially dangerous to the participants.” She says: “The defendants knew that a basic principle in the administration of an exorcism is that the priest should never act alone, and that he should always be accompanied by a support team who have been duly prepared to assist him.”

Doe says that her relationship with Euteneur began on Feb. 28, 2008, when she signed “a document entitled ‘Agreement for spiritual help.’ Among many other things, the document defines ‘deliverance’ as ‘the application of the spiritual resources of the Church to persons with demonic infestation in order to liberate them from the influence of unclean spirits.’”

Euteneur became her “deliverance minister,” and “The aforementioned documents included a requirement of ‘complete cooperation’ and travel to Euteneur’s offices at HLI,” according to the complaint.

Doe says that Euteneur told her “that her case was ‘severe.’”

For two months he touched her “in appropriate ways” in his offices, then in April 2008 told her “that he had received permission from the Diocese to perform the rite of exorcism,” Doe says.

On April 11, 2008, she says, “Euteneur began to hug the plaintiff while saying, ‘I wish I could go a lot further.’ He carried the plaintiff into a guest residence bedroom at HLI and HLIE, laid her on the bed, embraced her, touched her under her bra, and attempted to touch her under her underclothes, which the plaintiff stopped. Euteneur spent the entire night in bed with the plaintiff.

“During the following weeks, during every meeting, Euteneur became progressively persistent in touching the plaintiff inappropriately. He kissed the corners of her moth; stroked her legs, breasts and thighs; caressed her face; laid his body on top of hers; and frequently explained full, passionate kisses as ‘blowing the Holy Spirit into’ her.”

From April to June that year, on six occasions, Doe says, Euteneur “directed the plaintiff to undress; touched and kissed the plaintiff on all parts of her body; and digitally penetrated the plaintiff’s vagina. In addition, Euteneur directed the plaintiff to touch his penis.”

Doe claims that Euteneur “knew that his sexual violations on the plaintiff were not committed with her consent” and “would cause severe emotional distress to the plaintiff.”

Doe claims that HLI hired her as an independent contractor in September 2008, hired her as full-time employee in March 2010, and that during all this time, until June 2010, Euteneur “sexually abused her during working hours and in various rooms at HLI and HLIE headquarters.”

Doe claims that when she told Euteneur she had kept a journal “that she had kept a private journal which covered her time spent with Euteneur,” he persuaded her to “entrust the journal to him for safekeeping” while she took a vacation in Hawaii with her family.

She claims Euteneur “flew to Hawaii and secretly met with the plaintiff every morning while she was there.”

She claims that before she returned, Euteneur went to her home in Virginia “for the purpose of finding and collecting any and all other journals that the plaintiff might have kept. His attempt was unsuccessful.”

And, she claims, when she returned and asked for her journal back, “Euteneur reported that he had burned the journal ‘because it would scandalize the public and harm HLI.’”

After a final, abusive “deliverance,” Doe says, she concluded that her treatment was “illegal, inappropriate, outrageous, harmful, and completely contrary to the dictates of her understanding of Roman Catholic beliefs and practices.”

She claims she gave another priest in the Diocese a “detailed description of her relationship with Euteneur,” but Euteneur remained at HLI and HLIE for 2 more months, during which he sexually violated her two more times.

Finally, in August 2010, Euteneur resigned as president of HIL and HLIE and “was recalled to the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida,” according to the complaint.

It continues: “On January 31, 2011, Euteneur published a statement in which he wrote: ‘I must acknowledge, however, that one particularly complex situation clouded my judgment and led me to imprudent decisions with harmful consequences, the worst of which was violating the boundaries of chastity with an adult female who was under my spiritual care.’”

She seeks punitive damages for assault, battery, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent entrustment, medical bills, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic bishop faces Vatican’s wrath after he’s busted cavorting with a scantily-clad beauty on the beach

Argentine Bishop Fernando María Bargallo red-faced after footage emerges

Initially denied he was in video, but later admitted he played starring role
Now under investigation by the Vatican and could be de-frocked

A Catholic bishop busted cavorting on a beach with a scantily-clad beauty has claimed she is just ‘an old friend’ and insisted he is still ‘devoted to God’.
Argentine Fernando María Bargallo, 59, was left red-faced after footage emerged of him swimming and cuddling with the blonde at a secluded luxury Mexican hideaway.
He initially denied it was him in the video, but later admitted he does play a starring role, and is now under investigation by the Vatican.

He could now face being sacked from his post as Bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Merlo-Moreno, a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires.
Bargallo said he recognised the ‘recklessness’ of his behaviour and the ‘ambiguity’ of the film, which he claimed was taken in 2011.

But he has insisted that the woman was a ‘very old friend’ who he has known ‘since I could reason’.
He said: ‘The photographs are, in effect, from an encounter in Mexico where I coincided for various reasons, two years ago, with a friend from my childhood.’

He said there were other people there, who did not appear in the images, and he had a strong relationship with the woman’s family, La Nacion reported.
But he has not responded to questions as to who funded the lavish trip to the Puerto Vallarta resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Bargallo is also head of the Cáritas Latinoamérica organisation which helps the development of impoverished people across the continent.

Complete Article HERE!

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Perhaps we need some help with PR, say Catholic bishops in U.S.

File Under: Ya don’t say!

There’s no doubt that America’s Roman Catholic bishops have had their share of what might quaintly be called bad press. The priest sex-abuse scandal, a Vatican crackdown on nuns, a head-knocking fight with the president of the United States over contraceptive coverage — none of these would qualify as good news.

On Thursday, the bishops said they’ve had enough. It is time, they said, to beef up their public relations arsenal.

“We need more help and sophistication in our messaging,” said Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who decried the “latest debacle” of bad PR over the treatment of American nuns (which involves an investigation by the Vatican, not the American bishops).

O’Malley observed ruefully that when John Jay College released a landmark study last year of the causes and handling of the church’s sex-abuse crisis, it “should have been a good moment for the church, and yet it was another black eye.”

His comments followed a report to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, who heads the bishops’ communications committee. The bishops are holding their annual spring meeting in Atlanta this week.

Wester said it was time for the bishops to fully embrace the 21st century array of communications tools, and “take a good, hard look” at how well they communicate their message.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., suggested the not-quite-revolutionary idea of hiring a spokesperson, someone who “can speak for all of us.” Several other bishops hailed the idea, although Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the president of the conference, noted that there was an “ecclesial” problem with the idea, since all bishops have authority to speak for the church and therefore, theoretically, other bishops can’t speak for them.

Be that as it may, the bishops at least have a new way to talk to each other: Wester announced the creation of an exclusive, closed social network open only to American bishops.

He didn’t say what the new network would be called, which seemed to present a ripe opportunity for late-night comedians. Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette, Ind., was the first to attempt to drive through the opening.

“I assume people in the room have already trademarked the phrases i-bishop and e-bishop,” he quipped (perhaps proving why he is a bishop and not a late-night comedian).

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican’s assessment of LCWR about fear, not doctrine

COMMENTARY

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s April 18 doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is not about doctrine. It is not primarily about protecting the faith or ensuring an ecclesiology of communion, no matter how many times these terms are woven through the report. It is fundamentally about fear — fear of the loss of power — and the willful use of dominative control to defend that power.

The abundance of religious themes and language do not mask this punitive effort to shore up the crumbling authority of hierarchical leaders. Nor does the document hide the anger that roils beneath the protestations of gratitude and concern. The final report of the LCWR assessment reveals a desperate attempt on the part of some fearful and angry church leaders to protect their turf — to maintain an all-male church leadership, to keep women and laypeople under their authority, and to shield the homophobic-homosexual subculture in the leadership of the Catholic church.

When fear rules

The pattern of using coercive intimidation to control others in one’s household is called domestic abuse. Domestic abuse does not need to involve physical violence — in fact, many abusers never beat their partners. Instead, the threatened person strikes out psychologically to evoke compliance. Public humiliations, corrections, threats, accusations of disloyalty and demands for absolute obedience make up the typical arsenal of the abusive person. In extreme cases, the abuser monitors the actions of the other, keeps a record of his or her transgressions, restricts his or her activities, discredits his or her reputation, takes charge of his or her decisions, and threatens to withdraw support if unquestioned compliance to demands is not maintained.

These abusive acts will sound curiously familiar to anyone who has read the proposed implementations of the Vatican doctrinal assessment.

While females can and do commit domestic abuse, statistically, they do so at much reduced rates, inflict less physical harm and commonly have different motivations than male perpetrators, making domestic abuse primarily a crime against women. Yes, a crime — like child sexual abuse — something many bishops, archbishops and cardinals in the Catholic church failed to take seriously until they were forced to do so by lawsuits and public outcry.

But has transfer of learning taken place? Do they get it? Do they get that they cannot treat women and children as stepping stones to power, privilege and pleasure?

Whether through hits or humiliations, broken bones or broken spirits, threats of bodily harm or warnings of impending excommunication, the goal of abusers is the same: Assert absolute control. Wear the person down until he or she gives in or gives up. Use punishment if he or she dares to claim his or her own authority.

The most dangerous time in a household where domestic abuse is present is right after the person being abused has stood up to the abuser. Have too many members of LCWR claimed their own authority? The classic domestic abuser seeks one thing above all else: obedience to dictates. It is not surprising that obedience is alluded to on every page of the final doctrinal assessment document.

In fact, the mandate for implementation of the results of the doctrinal assessment reads like a how-to manual for the most common form of domestic abuse — no physical violence, just a resolute campaign to rein in those who have dared disobey the master, or, in the case of LCWR, the pope and bishops: “to implement a process of review and conformity to the teachings and discipline of the church, the Holy See” (page 7). Pretty clear.

Diagnosing the abuser

Mental illness, including personality disorders, compound domestic abuse but are not its primary cause. Domestic abuse is power abuse. In its most prevalent form, it is conscious, coercive conduct by men those believe they have the unconditional right to use forceful tactics to enforce their rules and maintain absolute control over those they deem subject to them.

What kinds of people abuse others? While there is no single profile of the domestic abuser, research has identified characteristics frequently seen among perpetrators of all types. Ironically, there is not much difference between those who use their fists and those who use words alone to demand obedience.

* Abusers believe they are entitled to maintain power and control over those in their households (institutions).
* They may believe they have an obligation to compel obedience for the benefit of the victim and the good of the household (church).
* They do not identify their controlling and hurtful tactics as abusive and are insulted when others perceive them that way.
* Perpetrators tend to perceive all interactions within relationships through a prism of compliance or disobedience.
* Abusers tend to be insecure men who need to establish dominance to feel confident.

The single most conclusive thing we know about domestic abuse is that it is learned behavior. Abusers have gained knowledge of abusive behaviors by seeing them in action, either in their families or in the various cultures to which they belong. This applies to religious cultures where the seminarian is taught early to bow to the wishes of his rector, to obey his bishop and to submit to the cardinal — all of whom kiss the ring of the pope.

All of this bowing, obeying and willful submission programs the brain to normalize hierarchical authority, and in some less secure individuals, to deeply internalize this way of relating and to replicate it.

As in sexual abuse, church leaders who have witnessed domestic abuse in their families or who have experienced such abuse as children may be particularly susceptible to behave abusively themselves. When a fragile ego combines with learned patterns of abuse, the stage is set for domestic abuse.

While abusers do not fit neatly into any particular diagnostic category, their behavior is not considered “normal.”

Psychologically healthy adults do not mandate obedience, forbid dialogue about subjects they do not wish discussed, or use oppressive tactics to gain control over others. Personally secure leaders don’t issue orders to other functioning adults, threatening punitive measures if they are not obeyed.

Often described as having a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality, most abusers can be quite civilized and even charming when they need to be. Their ability to function as CEOs of companies and preside over large corporations does not eliminate them from the pool of the insecure who strike out against those who threaten them. Some male abusers have been found to harbor a secret loathing of females, considering them inferior. Since such attitudes are certainly present in the history of the church (read St. Jerome), it is possible that its influence still inhabits, consciously or the unconsciously, the collective mind of church leaders.

The persistent desire of hierarchical leaders to keep women under their control and out of their sphere of leadership, especially women theologians, suggests that the “Jerome Syndrome” might still be operative.

[Fran Ferder is a Franciscan sister, clinical psychologist, author and professor at Seattle University.]

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican report attempts mere excuse not explanation

COMMENTARY

RITE & REASON: THE REPORT on the apostolic visitation reflects an exercise in irrelevancy. The visitors listened but did they hear? The report includes the standard apologies, blame for the bishops and religious superiors, and praise for all the church has done in digging into the clerical culture to determine why the horrendous epidemic occurred.

But in reality, they looked for excuses rather than explanations. This “crisis” is not primarily about sexual molestation. It’s about the obsession with power and the corruption and stagnation of the clerical culture.

The visitors were not about to pierce the protective veil that covers the institutional church, a veil that hides the reason the clericalised church is unravelling and the communion between bishops and people is ruptured. The total lack of accountability by the authoritarian model of the church is the root of the crisis.

The Irish people didn’t deserve the insulting claim that the “shortcomings of the past” caused an inadequate understanding of the “terrible phenomenon of the abuse of minors”. The people named the causes head on: the secretive clerical culture, the lopsided theology of sexuality, seminary training disconnected from reality and the “church’s” obsession with control.

These are not the shortcomings of the past. They are the deadly symptoms of the present. A typical Vatican response to a complex problem it can’t understand is imposing structures that change the surface appearance while the core continues to deteriorate. It’s like trying to solve a hardware problem with a software solution.

The outrageous assertion that the bishops and religious superiors gave “much” spiritual and psychological help to victims is followed by a recommendation that they meet with and listen to victims. That this has to be recommended is a pathetic indictment of their lack of pastoral care. If the leadership’s first concern had been the victims and not the church’s image and power, the course of recent Catholic history in Ireland would have been dramatically different.

The visitation of the seminaries avoided the real issue: can priests be prepared to serve in the real world after years of formation in an unreal world? The superficial recommendations try to recapture a seminary culture that inculcated the toxic belief that priests are apart from others because of their exalted “calling”. Survivors know too well this attitude is a major part of the problem.

The second half of the report tells the real story. The agenda is not that of the victims. The true goal is rescuing the Irish clerical institution from its descent into irrelevance by imposing a return to the model of church as monarchy. The “renewed call to communion” is a thinly covered call to docile, unthinking submission.

Catholics in Ireland are walking away not because they need a “deeper formation in the content of the faith” but because they no longer equate faith in God with childish obedience to a clerical establishment that feeds on control.

The younger generation needs the new ecclesial movements as much as a duck hunter needs an accordion. These are nothing more than agents for the return to a model of church dominated by clerical control where intellectual creativity and theological self-determination are anathema.

The abominable legacy of abuse in the Irish church has nothing to do with orthodoxy and fidelity to the pope. It has everything to do with a destructive clerical culture that sacrificed the innocence of children for the distorted image and power of the hierarchy.

The visitors could not delve into the core issue because to do so would have meant recognition of the dark side of the institutional church. The solutions offered – obedience to the hierarchy and lock-step assent to doctrine – are irrelevant and an insult to the victims whose lives were shattered because of this very model of church.

The words and actions of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – and Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s laser-sharp assessment of the Vatican culture in his speech to the Dáil last July – are proof the real church in Ireland has accurately assessed the situation. The Vatican could have made unprecedented progress in restoring the church’s image by listening and learning.

Complete Article HERE!