Tag: Avoiding Corporate Responsibility

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Kansas City priest sentenced to 50 years in prison for child porn

By Carey Gillam

A Kansas City Catholic priest was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Thursday on federal child pornography charges for taking sexually explicit photos of several young girls, including a 2-year-old.

Shawn Ratigan, 47, is seen in two undated booking handout photos in MissouriShawn Ratigan, 47, pleaded guilty in August 2012 to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempting to produce child pornography.

“Society needs to be protected from you,” U.S. District Judge Gary Fenner told Ratigan before he pronounced the sentence. “You did this to yourself.”

Prosecutors had sought the 50-year sentence, which they had said would amount to a life term, after it was discovered that he had taken hundreds of lewd photographs of young girls.

Ratigan, who was shackled and wore an orange jail jumpsuit, had pleaded with the judge to sentence him to 15 years in prison, the shortest term possible.

“There are no words that I can express to tell you my sorrow, but it’s there,” Ratigan told the judge. “I just couldn’t help it.”

“I know that God has forgiven me, my soul is in good shape,” Ratigan said.

Prosecutors said Ratigan focused on girls from 2 to 12 years old and had committed multiple crimes over six years. Several counts were dropped as part of the plea agreement.

The mother of a 2-year-old girl who Ratigan was convicted of abusing, told the judge the priest should be put away for the full term because his actions had taken a lasting toll on the girl, her family and rocked their faith in the church.

“Our baby, our little girl, has suffered,” said the woman, who was not identified in court. “There are monsters everywhere.”

Ratigan had been known by members of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph as a fun-loving priest who had a special fondness for recording children’s parties and events with his camera. His arrest in May 2011 rocked the community.

Outrage grew when evidence uncovered in the case revealed that Bishop Robert Finn and other diocese officials became aware of Ratigan’s actions in December 2010 after photos were found on his laptop computer while it was being repaired, but did not notify authorities until May 2011.

Church officials ordered Ratigan to undergo psychological counseling and stay away from children instead of turning him in immediately. During that period, Ratigan continued to engage in activities with children and take more pornographic pictures.

Finn was charged with failing to report Ratigan to authorities, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official to face criminal charges in connection with a sexual abuse case involving a priest.

Finn was found guilty in September 2012 of one misdemeanor count and sentenced to two years probation.

More than two dozen civil lawsuits have been filed by victims of Ratigan naming the priest, the Kansas City diocese and/or Finn as defendants.

“The victims are going to find closure in this sentence,” said Rebecca Randles, an attorney who represents most of the plaintiffs in the cases.

Evidence showed Ratigan’s photos included close-up pictures of the children’s genitals. One child was photographed without pants next to a stained glass window in the choir loft of a church where Ratigan served as pastor, according to court documents.

Some photos were taken “in trusted environments under the noses of the victims’ parents,” prosecutors said in a report justifying their request for a 50-year sentence.

Complete Article HERE!

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Priest recounts in essay released in church files of fleeing from LA after he abuse confession

The orders the Rev. Carlos Rodriguez got from his religious superiors after he confessed to molesting a 16-year-old boy just hours before were swift and decisive: Leave immediately. Check into a motel. Don’t tell anyone where you are going. Wait for further instructions.

Rodriguez, then 31, picked up cash at a Catholic retreat center and waited by the phone. The next day, the regional leader of his religious order called and told him to book a plane ticket out of state. By the time the victim’s family went to police, he had checked in at a residential treatment center for troubled priests in Maryland.The Vincentians Charism

“I felt like a fugitive. But what else could I do under the circumstances. I had no other choice but to follow orders,” he wrote years later in an essay that was included in his Vatican petition to be defrocked.

The essay was part of a 330-page confidential personnel file on the priest that was released Monday along with files for five other priests who were also accused of molesting children while working for their Roman Catholic religious orders — the Vincentians, the Norbertines and the Augustinians — while assigned to parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Rodriguez’s file stands out among the dozens of priest files that have become public in recent months because it includes a candid and detailed autobiographical account of his actions and the steps his religious superiors took to shield him from the family and civil authorities.

The file also makes clear that officials with Rodriguez’s religious order, the Vincentians, and the LA archdiocese worked together to intercede. Both the order and the archdiocese knew of Rodriguez’s confession, but no one spoke with police until the boy’s family filed a police report a month later, according to the file.
“The thing that Carlos Rodriguez does is, he lays out the truth, the underbelly, and exposes that for all that it is,” said Ray Boucher, a lead plaintiff attorney in the clergy litigation who secured the release of the files.

The religious order files are the second set to be released this summer and at least a half-dozen more releases are expected in the coming weeks as religious orders comply with the final terms of a 2007 settlement with hundreds of clergy abuse victims in Los Angeles.

The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year for its own priests who were accused of sexual abuse, but the full picture of the problem has remained elusive without records from the religious orders, which routinely assigned priests to work in Los Angeles parishes and schools.

Without access to Rodriguez, the police case dried up and the priest was back at work within seven months, where he molested two brothers beginning that same year. Rodriguez, who was defrocked in 1998, was convicted of that abuse 17 years later, in 2004, and sentenced to prison. He was released in 2008.

Now 57, he lives as a mostly unemployed registered sex offender in Huntington Park, a gritty, industrial city southeast of Los Angeles. He has been accused of abuse in at least five civil lawsuits.

“It still weighs heavy on me,” Rodriguez, who wore a cross around his neck, said on Monday when reached at his apartment. “It’s nothing proud to talk about. I still feel remorse and it still hurts.”

The Rev. Jerome Herff, the Vincentian regional provincial who told Rodriguez to flee after his 1987 confession and placed him back in ministry the following year, said he urged him to leave because the boy’s family was irate and he feared for the priest’s safety. The treatment center, he said, was recommended by a law enforcement authority, although he declined to say who.

“I did what I thought was best and had to be done and what happened, happened,” Herff said in a brief phone interview. “I’ve lived with this for years and I just don’t want to go back there anymore.”

Rodriguez’s troubles began in the summer of 1987, when he took two teenage boys on a trip to the Grand Canyon roughly a year after he was ordained. The three checked into a Holiday Inn in Flagstaff, Ariz., and in his essay, Rodriguez wrote he began molesting one teen after he fell asleep on the floor.

The boy awoke and the novice priest, terrified at being discovered, drove nearly 500 miles through the night to deliver both teens to their families and immediately went back to his parish, where he took a shower and confessed.

The Vincentians sent him to the residential treatment center, where he stayed for seven months. While there, Rodriguez fretted in letters home about the “seriousness of the law in Arizona” that could get him up to 15 years in prison and asked the Vincentians for help gathering character references that could help convince the Arizona prosecutor not to press charges.

When the family finally contacted the Los Angeles police a month later, Rodriguez’s superior told the investigating detective that the “church was aware of the situation and the defendant was currently hospitalized,” according to court papers from a criminal case filed years later.

The victim’s former attorney, Drew Antablin, said his client, who could not be reached for comment, received a settlement in 2007 as part of an agreement with hundreds of plaintiffs in Southern California.

After his release from the treatment center, Rodriguez was assigned to work for the archdiocese’s office of family life in Santa Barbara in 1988 and then to St. Mary’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, a retreat center run by the Vincentians where he served as head of maintenance and grounds.

There were no children there, but with Herff’s permission he began saying Mass at a nearby parish and immediately attracted notice for the attention he paid to altar boys, according to letters and memos in Rodriguez’s file.

He took a leave of absence from the order in 1993 after complaints of abuse surfaced again and the archdiocese revoked his faculties, meaning he could no longer minister — but his superiors soon discovered he was saying Mass at a parish in neighboring Riverside County in violation of his status. In 1996, Rodriguez asked the Vatican to be defrocked and was exiled from the priesthood two years later.

In 2004, he pleaded guilty to molesting two brothers whom he met in 1988 on his first assignment after being released from the Maryland treatment center. The abuse came to light only in 2001, when one of the brothers wrote a letter about it to his parents.

“He used his position in the church and used the victims’ faith as a weapon against them,” said Deputy District Attorney Anthony Wold, who handled the case in 2004. “It was outrageous and unforgiveable.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Book Review by John Minck

Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex in the Catholic Church — Book Report
Rev. Richard Wagner, PhD, ACS

This is a tough book to read. It covers a complex and detailed, 13-year-long administrative action to dismiss a Catholic priest from his Oblate Community. That’s the hard reading part, because the investigation and the proceedings were so convoluted, and there were hidden agenda on the part of his superiors. The priest is Father Richard Wagner, PhD, ACS, ordained in Oakland in 1975, and a self identified gay priest. The interesting part is the second half which is a verbatim printing of his PhD dissertation of 1981, Gay Catholic Priests, A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance.

Richard Wagner is a psychotherapist, a clinical sexologist in private practice for over 30 years and the only Catholic priest in the world with a doctorate in Human Sexuality. His practice includes a special outreach to survivors of clergy sex abuse as well as clergy offenders. Wagner technically remains a Catholic priest, his “priestly faculties” have been removed and he is expelled from his religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

It could be assumed that this kind of research work by a practicing priest would not endear himself to the Catholic Hierarchy or to the Vatican, who never cease to proclaim that ANY homosexual activity is sinful. They have a BRAND to protect. They try to contend that the Church loves the homosexual as a person, but condemns any active sexual behavior. And yet, Wagner proposed his thesis project to his Oblate Provincial Superior and it was approved, probably even to the next higher level of General Superior located in Rome.small_front

The dissertation was undertaken during his study at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, where he was getting his PhD. It was a 3-year project, ending in 1981, when the dissertation was accepted. Just before that in 1980, he published an article in the liberal National Catholic Reporter (NCR) newspaper, Being Gay and Celibate–Another View. At that time, with the Church defending its strict views on sexuality across the board, the subject of the priesthood containing gay priests was not a subject that was encouraged. The early 1980s were also the time that the Bishop’s Club, USCCB, was becoming keenly aware that a serious child sexual abuse scandal was brewing, but so far they had been able to keep a lid on it. The stressful lives that homosexual priests led in the Catholic Church was an important subject to examine, not in the least, because there were a lot of them. And there were indications that many of them were ignoring the celibacy oath and engaging in forbidden sexual behavior.

Remember that the key Catholic ritual is the Mass and the Eucharist. The Eucharist requires regular Confession, and in the priesthood, one priest hears another’s confession. As a homosexual priest confesses his sins against his celibacy oath, other priests would be aware of what is going on. This is not to say that ANY priest confessor EVER revealed the secrets inside the confessional. Yet, the broad awareness of an active sexual culture was pretty commonplace.

As the 1962 Vatican II Council teachings swept over the global Church, they taught that the Church was more than the “Monarchial” Rome and the Hierarchical “Nobility.” In fact the term “People of God” was promulgated to mean that a big component of THE CHURCH was all of the people members. One outcome was that 125,000 priests globally left to get married or to lead civilian lives. To find enough recruits to re-fill the ranks, restrictions were relaxed to accept homosexual young men, who were already “out” and those who were still in the closet emotionally. These gay men were reaching their times of ordination in the late 1970s and early 80s. So the issue of gay priests in Wagner’s mind was of primary importance, as they struggled with a Church that was schizophrenic about this large cohort of new priests.

The panic among Church leaders of that time to Wagner’s research, stands in stark contrast to their apathetic response to the endemic child sexual abuse that has engulfed them, now for over thirty years. The tragic reason for their panic? The Church always uses the specter of gay priests as a scapegoat for ecclesiastical malfeasance to manipulate the faithful by bogus scandals involving homosexuality. The hierarchy just can’t seem to understand that gay people, both priests and society at large can experience a happy, healthy, life with integrated same-sex relationships. For the hierarchy, it’s all mixed in with pedophilia, making an outrageous and immensely destructive lie, to be fed to their doctrinaire disciples for the masses.

But living the life of a gay priest within the Catholic teachings in those years was lonely and scary and fraught with continuous misgivings. The Church had defined homosexuality as “Intrinsically Disordered,” while still proclaiming that gays were human beings and welcome into the community. And yet that welcome did NOT include homosexual behavior, meaning that there was to be NO genital sex. That would be the definition of celibacy, which ALL priests swear an oath to. BTW, I’m using the term HE and male throughout, but of course there are Lesbian nuns too, maybe a lot of them. Technically, celibacy applies to both heterosexuals and homosexuals, so it should not be any more repressive to one than the other. But in those years, being identified as homosexual was bad in both civilian life as in the life of the priesthood.

Wagner’s 1981 article in NCR was essentially his decision to reveal his homosexuality. Interestingly, he had previously revealed it during his acceptance interviews when he was applying for the seminary more than a decade before. His NCR declaration hit Rome and immediately there was kickback from the top command of the Oblates. In spite of the fact that he had already been “out” to his immediate superiors the wider publicity triggered a top down order to start proceedings for his dismissal from his priesthood. A part of the problem was that in editing his article some crucial content was deleted, somewhat changing his recommendations of how the Church should manage their considerable ranks of gay priests.

Worse was to come, because he had also agreed to an interview with a San Francisco Bay Scene 7 TV news program, done in a 2-hour session. While Wagner was very careful to ask the interviewer to restrict certain questions, he was also serious about not letting the content to be sensational. Unfortunately he was completely naive on protocol, and even with assurances with a member of the TV production team, the final cut trimmed the whole interview to a mere 15 minutes, and the questions preserved did in fact sensationalize the program. Instead of allowing any modifications, the producer brought in Fr. Gerald Coleman, an instructor in moral theology at the Catholic Major Seminary in Menlo Park, to add on a 5-minute rebuttal. So the combination was a disaster.

I remember Coleman, because our monthly diocesan newspaper, Valley Catholic, has a regular column by Coleman. His subject matter usually dealt with current media events, which had theological elements involved. I have always dismissed his writings because virtually every subject that he undertook got the most RIGID formulation of Church authority. So I can just imagine what the Coleman rebuttal did to Wagner’s position, which was already tenuous.

Dissertation. For the survey research, Wagner recruited 50 self-professed gay priests. It is not surprising that getting the right demographic sample was not just important, but quite difficult to achieve. He worked for a national distribution as even as he could, and winnowed an early 73 candidates down to 50. Candidate’s ages ranged from 27 to 58, with a median of 35. Among the potential candidates, there was a natural fear of reprisals and feelings of guilt. His search for candidates was aided by an existing informal network of gay priests, who supported each other in their lonely lives in a cold Church. Obviously, many of them in their vocations had to overcome what Wagner termed cognitive and affective dissonance. Recall also, that a very important part of Catholic life is the ritual Sacrament of Confession. Priests go to confession to other priests, so a gay priest, if he was sexually tempted or actually active, would be confessing those sins to another priest regularly.

The survey construction was modeled to a good extent by the well-known Kinsey sex behavior study of the early 1950s. The 34 survey questions were remarkably detailed to gain an understanding on the sexual awakening of the interviewee, and then on the practices of his present sexual behavior, along with considerable attitude discovery.

Dissertation Summary. The following is the verbatim summary section of the thesis, which is about 1/2 of the book :

1. The composite picture of the sexual behaviors of this sample of fifty gay priests reveals them to be sexually active. Forty-nine respondents are masturbating at a mean frequency nearly three times that reported by Kinsey in Sexual Behavior in The Human Male.

2. Fourteen respondents report a history of heterosexual coitus. Eight respondents report that this contact occurred after ordination; no one reports an occurrence within the past year.

3. Forty-eight respondents report a twice-a-week mean frequency of same-sex contact. The remaining two respondents are currently abstaining from same-sex contact. Interestingly enough, this sample has nearly five times the number of respondents reporting 500 or more total partners than Kinsey’s sample.

4. Overall, the respondents report enjoying their sexual activity while experiencing a minimum of sex-related guilt.

5. It was learned that 50% of the respondents had their first post-pubertal same-sex contact before entering the seminary; another 26% had their first experience during their seminary years.

6. The majority of the respondents, 62%, self-identified as gay before they were ordained, but only 46% had shared that identity with another person by that same time.

7. The respondents were almost unanimous in their rejection of official church positions regarding homosexuality and mandatory celibacy for priests. At the same time, nearly half of the respondents still experience some guilt because their lives do not reflect ecclesiastical expectations.

8. All but six report being unfulfilled in terms of intimacy needs by their priestly or religious lifestyle. Coupled with this is the recurring theme, appearing throughout the responses, of a desire for a lover by the majority of those who are currently without one. Only thirteen respondents report having a lover at this time.

9. The questions dealing with aspects of the priests’ dual identity were particularly revealing of the dissonance in their lives. The amount of discrimination experienced by the respondents for being gay in the church or for being a priest in the gay community is in direct proportion to the degree the priests are “out” to either group. Thus, when the majority of respondents report that they have not experienced hostility or oppression from either the gay community or the church, it is usually because they are still “closeted.” The path most frequently taken by the respondents in this regard is not to identify as gay in the church or as a priest in the gay community. This conflict is the source of much personal anguish and disappointment for the respondents.

This study reveals a group of highly motivated men, both professionally and sexually. The respondents seek integration and fulfillment in their personal lives as well as in their work, but they are often frustrated by what they report to be stifling role expectations put upon them by both the church and the gay community. While they are quick to criticize the shortcomings of both the church and the gay community, they report a sense of loyalty to and affection for both. It is as if both communities demand an exclusive commitment, one that would have them disown an integral part of their identity. This dissonance is reinforced by the respondents’ refusal to abdicate to either demand.

They are engaged in a process of questioning moral theology as well as reinterpreting traditional expectations of the celibate lifestyle in an effort to minimize the dissonance. Unfortunately, this process has been going on in secret. The fear of disclosure and possible reprisals has made this struggle a lonely one.

Impressions. For me there are two main impressions of this book:

1. Remembering that Wagner’s inquisition started in 1981, with the acceptance of his PhD dissertation, and the television interview, and ended in May, 1994, with the document that expelled him, his recall of the details of those 13 years is exception. He describes conversations with a presence that puts you right there, and augments those details with many letters and documents. I have to infer that he must have kept a diary of that difficult period.

Wagner uses abundant source material to detail how he, as a young Catholic priest, weathered a blistering 13-year battle with his religious community; only to be destroyed by the very Church he so loyally served. He is almost overly kind and tolerant, and forgiving of the mean-spirited bureaucrats of his own order as well as with the Church Hierarchy. His experience is remarkably similar to the treatment endured by lay Catholics going through the struggle of their lives, in the decades of child sexual abuse.

During those 13 years, there were many silent delays of years, then new alternatives would be proposed, including being subject to a process called an “obedience,” whereby Wagner would be ordered into a monastery for “prayer” and contemplation, and isolation. Wagner had to constantly weigh his options, whether he was going to do the right thing or do the thing that would protect his interests. And yet, at every step of the way, knowing his faith in the Church was implacable, he choose to do the right thing and paid the highest price of all for it.

The letters he includes present his side of the case of Inquisition, and they reveal the depth of the stone-cold prosecutions by the Church, which include some sideline proposals from Rome too. His immediate superior was his friend for years, they shared much comradeship, including the fact that his superior KNEW of his homosexuality for years. As the inquiry started, that superior was his enemy, no longer even open to reason. He includes a ‘swan song” letter he wrote to all of his comrades in the entire Oblate community.

2. The dissertation itself shocked me with its raw approach to the survey questions. There are sections on attitudinal and personal historical data, when the subject discerned he was gay, parent’s attitudes and behavior, and events that led to a call to the priesthood. The extent of the probing into sexual behavior is QUITE detailed, how often he masturbated, elements causing sexual arousal, first Fex contacts, intimate details on sex techniques (and I mean intimate), first times, and later frequencies. He makes tabular comparisons to the earlier Kinsey sex research for civilians.

Then he asked questions to develop the candidates’ present sexual activities, lovers? monogamy? how long relationships? what kinds of gay social procedures did he use, gay bars, out of town? anxiety of being found out? One survey answer mentioned that the gay priest was in an adjacent town at a gay bar, and ran into a Monsignor from his own diocese staff.

Considerable space was spent on compiling the interviewee’s attitudes on their life satisfaction, how they rationalized the Church’s strict rules with their lives. There were all manner of thought processes. for example, the Church Canon is absolute celibacy, yet some gay priests noted that that means “do not marry.” So, since they interpreted that it didn’t say, “no sex,” that they would just have sex.

I can just picture the bureaucrat in the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, in around 1982, actually READING Wagner’s dissertation, and the survey results. Once he realized that this document was being reviewed by public media in the United States, he would be running down the hallway to the new Prefect of the Congregation, just installed in 1981. This was Eminence Ratzinger, the reactionary leader of the efforts of the Vatican Curia to reverse some of the liberating visions of the 1962 Vatican II Council. That vision certainly could NOT be allowed to include gay priests who were active socially. Father Wagner would ultimately pay the price of his revelation of reality.

–John Minck
Palo Alto, CA
June, 2013

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Cardinal George hopes gay marriage is blocked, says pope’s remarks were misinterpreted

File under: The pope was misunderstood only when I don’t agree with what everyone else heard.

By Mark Brown

Cardinal Francis George told me in an interview this week that he remains hopeful of blocking the legalization of same-sex marriage in Illinois and that we in the media misinterpreted Pope Francis’ recent remarks that were seen as more accepting of gays.

“If they had the votes, they would have passed it already,” the cardinal said of gay-marriage supporters in response to my assertion that it’s only a matter of time at this point before a law is passed.

“There’s nothing inevitable about social trends,” he said. “They do change. They reverse themselves.”

cardinalgeorgeAs to the pope’s widely publicized “Who am I to judge?” comment when asked about gay priests in the Vatican, George said reporters misunderstood the context and therefore the import of the pope’s words.

“He wasn’t saying we can’t judge that homosexual relations are sinful or not. Objectively, they are,” George said.

The cardinal also remains “very angry” with a group of Catholic elected officials who published a letter asking him to reconsider stripping church funding from immigrant-support groups over their membership in a coalition that endorsed gay-marriage legislation.

And I’d say he’s none too pleased with me for a couple of columns I have written on this subject, although he treated me very cordially during a one-hour interview Monday at his residence on State Parkway.

That interview came after the cardinal sent a letter accusing me of being “both misleading and judgmental” in a column critical of his handling of the funding cutoff and his summation of the pope’s gentle remarks as primarily an affirmation that “homosexual genital relations are morally wrong.”

I’m not looking to get in a back-and-forth with the cardinal. We fundamentally disagree. But I thought you’d be interested in hearing more on what he has to say on these subjects.

Cardinal George defended his admittedly “caustic” earlier response to the public officials in which he reminded those who signed the letter that they will soon have to account for their actions in the hereafter.

“They claim to be Catholics, so I’m their bishop. It’s my job to remind them of certain eternal verities. One of them is judgment at death,” he said.

In that letter, the cardinal said: “Jesus is merciful, but he is not stupid; he knows the difference between right and wrong. Manipulating both immigrants and the church for political advantage is wrong.”

“That’s a somewhat angry response, because I’m very angry about this,” George told me when I mentioned that some of the public officials thought he was threatening them with eternal damnation, which he denied.

But he said he “felt betrayed” by the officials and found it “offensive” that they “thought they could make some points at the expense of the church.”

“When people vaunt their Catholicism and say ‘as Catholics,’ then all right, let me tell you what it is to be a Catholic,” he said.

He said he hasn’t gone so far as to seek to deny communion to those involved.

George expressed his opinion that the funding cutoff “wouldn’t have been an issue if we weren’t in a campaign for governor.”

That confused me a little, because I certainly would have raised the issue whether there was an election next year or not. The cardinal reiterated that his understanding is that some people want to use gay marriage as an issue in the governor’s race.

I suggested it was his decision to halt funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to the immigrant groups that made this an issue. He rejected that assertion, arguing that the leaders of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights in effect cut off funding to their own member groups with the decision in May to endorse gay marriage.

“That made it impossible for the CCHD to continue to fund groups that are associated with ICIRR. It was a principled issue which is before us — without a choice in a sense. If we betray the donors or if we betrayed our own anthropology, our own way of looking at the human being, then we should not continue to have a public voice at all.”

The cardinal noted that groups that receive funding from CCHD sign a contract promising not to promote activities that contradict the moral and social teachings of the Catholic Church, including “capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, racism, war, discrimination or same-sex marriage.”

“What follows is an inevitable result of their decision,” he said.

“If they had endorsed a racist viewpoint, would we be here talking about this at all?” the cardinal asked.

I asked if he thought advocating same-sex marriage is equivalent to advocating racism.

“In the sense that both are inconsistent with Catholic social teaching,” he confirmed. “It’s not to say there is a moral equivalency.”

George also observed that “it’s interesting that they don’t attack the black Protestant churches” who have been his key allies in the fight against legalizing gay marriage in Illinois. He said the black churches are more influential on the gay-marriage issue than even he because their ministers have closer relationships with their legislators. I promised him I would write about it if black churches cut off financial support to any social-service agencies over gay marriage.

The cardinal acknowledged his own characterization of the pope’s comments on gays may have been “jarring,” as I put it, but he said he was frustrated by journalists missing the pope’s point.

“In our culture, ‘Who am I to judge’ means nobody has the right to distinguish right from wrong,” which wasn’t what the pope meant, the cardinal said.

“He was saying that a person who has given up their sinful ways, you don’t judge them. You accept them,” George said. “. . .He started out saying: gay sex is wrong.”

I told the cardinal I never believed for a moment that the pope was changing church policy toward gays, only setting a different tone that was missing from his own approach.

The cardinal expressed frustration that, in the current political climate, Catholics can’t express their opposition to same-sex marriage without being regarded as bigots.

“”When that becomes the criterion for accepting gay and lesbian people, then we’re in the bind we’re in now, which is a real bind,” he said.

Nobody really expects the Catholic Church to change, only to adapt.

Complete Article HERE!

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“God Told Me To” -Ex Pope Benedict Says Mystical Experience Caused Resignation

File under — Who says there ain’t a God?

by Rebecca Savastio

Ex Pope Benedict says God told him to resign his position as Pope during a months-long “mystical experience” he had. When asked why he gave up his position, he said “God told me to.” While denying he had heard voices or saw an apparition of any kind, he explained that God gave him an “absolute desire” to give up being pope and spend the rest of his life praying in completely secluded private Vatican apartments. He claims the “will of God” was correct after seeing what an excellent job Pope Francis has been doing.pope-benedict-resigns

A Vatican spokesman told The Guardian UK that the original report by Zenit, a Catholic news organization, is correct. “The report seems credible,” the spokesman said. “It accurately explains the spiritual process that brought Benedict to resign.”

However, at the time of his resignation, Pope Benedict claimed that he was abandoning the position because of his rapidly declining health. At a meeting of Cardinals, he said “My strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

Some are skeptical of Benedict’s “mystical experience” claim and point to the fact that there have been extensive reports of a secret Vatican “gay lobby” whose influence was getting totally out of control. Current Pope Francis admitted to this powerful lobby just a few months ago and said he was planning on addressing it. He later came out and said he “would not judge” gay priests, leaving some to wonder if any action would be taken against the alleged lobby.

However, others feel that it was Benedict’s health alone which prompted his resignation, and one journalist who had met with him just prior to his leaving the papacy said Benedict looked “exhausted.” Benedict is 86 years old and has had numerous health problems in recent years, including a heart condition that required the installment of a pacemaker.

Other theories about his resignation include the scandal that broke recently about a top secret “rent boy” ring that was run by numerous priests inside Vatican City, in which they would hire underage male prostitutes to satisfy the sexual needs of their fellow Cardinals.

Perhaps the most controversial theory of all is that Benedict may be gay himself. That allegation comes, in part, from prominent Catholic blogger Andrew Sullivan. In a post entitled “Two Popes, One Secretary,” Sullivan implies that Benedict’s current arrangement with his male secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, is very strange, saying “So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement?”

Sullivan quotes another writer, Angelo Quattrochi, who discusses whether Gänswein’s relationship with Benedict could be more than professional:

When asked if he felt nervous in the presence of the Holy Father, Gänswein replied that he sometimes did and added: ‘But it is also true that the fact of meeting each other and being together on a daily basis creates a sense of “familiarity”, which makes you feel less nervous. But obviously I know who the Holy Father is and so I know how to behave appropriately. There are always some situations, however, when the heart beats a little stronger than usual.’… This man – clearly in some kind of love with Ratzinger (and vice-versa) will now be working for the new Pope as secretary in the day and spending the nights with the Pope Emeritus. This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

So which is the real reason for Benedict’s resignation? A secret “Gay Lobby?” A “Mystical experience?” Health problems? A ring of “rent boys” in the Vatican? The only person who knows the true answer is Benedict himself, and his current claim is “God told me to.”

Complete Article HERE!