Tag: Catholic Church

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St. Scholastica Catholic Church pastor Gerald Riva resigns

The Rev. Gerald Riva has resigned as pastor of St. Scholastica Catholic Church in Woodridge, days after his nearly 20-year-old sex crime conviction came to light.

Riva resigned from the parish this weekend, and did not perform Sunday Mass at the church, said Doug Delaney, a spokesman for the Diocese of Joliet, which administers the church.

Riva, 70, who has been a priest for almost 45 years, resigned on his own accord, and was not forced to do so, according to the diocese.

“He did not even say Mass on Sunday, as he was to ashamed to do so,” Delaney said.

In 1992, Riva pleaded guilty to the charge of public indecency. According to police records, Riva masturbated in front of a DuPage County Forest Preserve officer in a forest preserve in Winfield Township, and then grabbed the officer’s male genitals.

On Monday, Delaney blamed Suburban Life Publications for “ruining” Riva’s life. He said in his opinion, Riva’s conviction is not newsworthy because it was for a misdemeanor that did not involve children.

“This man was a priest for over 40 years, and because of a 20-year-old misdemeanor, a crime that involved consenting adults, his life has been ruined,” Delaney said. “This, in my opinion, is not news, it’s slander.”

When asked then whether the diocese condones sexual acts by priests or if Riva’s behavior was acceptable, Delaney declined comment via email.

On Monday, a secretary at St. Scholastica Church’s offices declined to comment about Riva’s resignation, and referred all calls on the matter to the diocese.

Delaney reiterated Monday that the diocese was unaware of Riva’s conviction until it was notified in recent weeks.

While last week he said he was unsure of the diocese’s policies of 20 years ago regarding priests who are charged or convicted of crimes, on Monday he said if a priest commits a misdemeanor offense the diocese’s attorneys do not notify diocese officials. Only when charges are felonies are officials notified, Delaney said.

“We have over 300 priests in this diocese, and a misdemeanor can be anything from crossing the street at the wrong place,” he said. “Misdemeanors wouldn’t even come up in most background checks.”

The diocese does have a new program in place called Protecting God’s Children, which requires all employees of the diocese, including church pastors, to participate in series of workshops designed to teach employees how to act around children in the light of priests who have been accused of child abuse.

While pastors such as Riva would be required to participate in the program, it only focuses on crimes against children, Delaney said.

Police records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act detail the crime, which occurred about 11 a.m. Oct. 24, 1992.

According to police, an officer was “on plain clothed detail” when Riva, then 50 and pastor at Immaculate Conception Parish in Elmhurst, walked past him and into the woods at the West DuPage Woods Forest Preserve. The officer said he followed Riva into the forest before Riva said to him, “Look, there is a deer over there.”

“A conversation followed,” the officer wrote in the report “… As we spoke, Mr. Riva began to rub his genitals through his clothing. After a couple of minutes Mr. Riva grabbed his penis through his clothing and began to masturbate, twice Mr. Riva attempted to rub his penis against me. Mr. Riva then turned his back to me and with his left hand reached back and placed it on my genitals.”

The officer then placed Riva under arrest, according to the police report.

The officer, who no longer works with the forest preserve, does not specify the nature of the police detail he was on that day.

According to documents from the DuPage County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s Office, Riva pleaded guilty to one count of public indecency about one month after his arrest, on Nov. 23, 1992. Documents show Riva paid a fine, received one year of court supervision and had to complete community service as part of the guilty plea.

On Friday, Delaney said the Diocese of Joliet had launched an investigation into the matter, and that Riva did not report the crime to the diocese.

“My understanding is that Fr. Riva paid a fine for this, and that was that,” he said this week. “The diocese was never aware of what happened.”

Riva, who was reached by telephone last week, would not comment on the matter, other than saying he wasn’t sure “why this is in question now, after 20 years.” He added he planned to speak with the Diocese of Joliet. Riva declined further comment when reached on Friday at the church. Other phone calls to church and school officials have not been returned.

Riva was scheduled to retire from active priesthood on July 1 — one month to the day after St. Scholastica celebrates its 50th anniversary. His retirement was planned before the diocese learned of his public indecency conviction, Delaney said, adding that Riva notified the diocese of his pending retirement last fall.

As for the Pastor of the Year award, it’s unclear if the National Catholic Education Association still plans to honor Riva this spring at its annual conference in Boston.

Robert Bimonte, executive director of the NCEA, declined to comment when informed of Riva’s criminal history. Bimonte also would not comment whether the organization would still give him the award. A follow-up call Monday went unanswered as well.

A news release announcing Riva’s award from the NCEA was removed from the Diocese of Joliet’s website last week.

Complete Article HERE!

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Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests not allowed to see Pope Benedict XVI

Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests accused Mexican Catholic Church officials on Saturday of denying them an audience with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Mexico.

Members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the Mexican Catholic Church has publicly said a meeting wasn’t coordinated because abuse victims never approached them to request one.

However, Jesús Romero, a member of SNAP and a victim of abuse when he was 11 years
“This is not only another lie, it’s another way to protect the pedophile priests that remain active,” he said.

Joaquín Aguilar, another SNAP member who was abused when he was 13, said they had hoped they would be able to meet with the pope, just like abuse victims in other countries — including the United States, Ireland, Australia, Malta and the pope’s home country of Germany — have been able to see Benedict XVI in his other international visits.

“The only thing they have achieved with this silence is make the pope look like an accomplice of all these crimes,” said Aguilar, who is suing Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera in a federal court in Los Angeles for covering up several other cases of abuse.

Bernardo Barranco, director of the Center of Religious Studies of Mexico, called the decision not to meet with victims “a mistake” by the Mexican Catholic Church.

Barranco added that by placing the blame on victims groups for allegedly not requesting a meeting with the pope, the Catholic Church showed a “tremendous lack of sensitivity” and an unwillingness to know more about an issue they know exists in Mexico.

“The pope is essentially waiting for a subordinate to ask him (if he wants to meet with victims) to decide if he wants to know” about the problem, he said.

Juan Cruzalta, member of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir, a group of Catholic women in favor of reproductive rights, said the Mexican Catholic Church has refused for many years to officially address the issue of sexual abuse by priests to avoid scandals.

“Unfortunately, the well-being of minors and obtaining justice for the victims is given less priority,” he said.

Cruzalta said the secrecy and the protection of priests shields offenders from justice and results in church policies having repercussions in civil courts.

“The church worries for the well-being of people, but from the angle of charity, not from the practice of everybody’s rights. Herein lies the great blindness of the clerical hierarchy,” he said.
The accusation against the Mexican Catholic Church came hours before the presentation of a recently released book, “The Will Not to Know,” which collects several leaked Vatican documents on the case of pederast priest Marcial Maciel.

Barranco, who wrote the book’s foreword, said the book showed the deep crisis within the Catholic Church created by the issue of child abuse.

Elsewhere in the state, protesters also responded to the pope’s visit.

According to local media, students on Thursday and Friday morning called for the protection of the secular state — church and state were separated with the constitutional reform of 1857 — and women’s rights activists demanded respect for women’s reproductive rights.

Católicas also wrote an open letter to the pope in which it criticizes the church for not having made a pronouncement against the high level of violence against women and murders in the country and for not officially recognizing the abuse of children by members of the church.

Aguilar said that by covering up the crimes, the church treated the abusers as the wronged ones.
“They are not the victims; we are the victims. Life ended for us, not them,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

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PA trial: Priests struggled with ‘sexual sobriety’

A string of Roman Catholic priests testified Wednesday in a landmark clergy-abuse case, saying they reported fellow priests to the archdiocese after finding them with pornography or in unhealthy relationships with children.

The priests, uncomfortably, are prosecution witnesses in the trial of a longtime supervisor in the Philadelphia archdiocese, Monsignor William Lynn. The former secretary for clergy is charged with endangering children by allegedly helping the church cover up abuse complaints.

The Rev. Joseph Okonski told jurors Wednesday that he found pornographic magazines and videos, and a sexually explicit letter to a seventh-grade boy, in another priest’s bedroom in 1995.

The graphic letter, which purported to be from a classmate, asked if the boy wanted oral sex. The author said he fantasized about seeing the boy getting spanked by his father. The boy was told to write “Yes” on a bulletin board at the parish school if he wanted to engage in sex acts with his “secret lover.”

Okonski said his housemate admitted writing the letter and soon left the parish. But the next trial witness said the priest landed at his rectory, where he worked with altar boys and had no restrictions on his ministry.

Prosecutors argue that predator-priests were, at best, transferred if they got in trouble, then left to seek out new victims.

The witnesses, on cross-examination, said the archbishop had the final say in priest transfers. Lynn could make recommendations, but the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua or his successor, retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, made the decision, they said.

“Inevitably, any movement of priests is done by the archbishop,” Okonski said.

The priests testified that they were put in awkward positions by the behavior of men with whom they lived and worked.

A Levittown pastor said he was tasked with finding out which priest had ordered the X-rated movies that showed up on their cable bill.

Another priest called the Office for Clergy because his North Philadelphia pastor had an all-consuming relationship with a young teen. Father Michael Hennelly said he was concerned, especially after hearing about the pastor’s last such relationship, when a fallout with the boy was said to have ended violently. Hennelly soon asked for a transfer.

“For my well-being, I couldn’t live and work there,” he said.

Hennelly later joined the Office of Clergy staff in 2004, the same year Lynn finished his 12-year stint as its director. He described working with priests trying to achieve what he called “sexual sobriety.”

St. John Vianney, a church-run hospital in Downingtown, had “Sexaholics Anonymous” meetings devoted exclusively to priests. Others attended “Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,” Hennelly said.

There are about 800 priests in the Philadelphia archdiocese. More than 60 have been accused of molesting children since 1948, although only a few have ever been charged. About 500 Catholic priests in the U.S. have been convicted of sexual-abuse charges, according to the advocacy group BishopAccountability.org.

But no church supervisors were ever charged for mishandling abuse complaints until Lynn.

Prosecutors in Philadelphia issued two explosive grand jury reports on priest sexual abuse in 2005 and 2011. They blasted Rigali and Bevilacqua but concluded they could not make a case against either, in part because of legal time limits.

New accusations led Lynn to be charged last year with felony child endangerment and conspiracy. He faces up to 28 years if convicted. Prosecutors call the archdiocese an unindicted co-conspirator in his case.

Four others were charged in the same indictment with sexually assaulting boys. The Rev. James Brennan is on trial with Lynn. Defrocked priest Edward Avery will serve 2-1/2 to five years after pleading guilty last week to sexual assault and conspiracy. And the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero are set for trial later this year. They are accused of raping the same boy that Avery assaulted.

All but Avery have pleaded not guilty.

Complete Article HERE!

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The Case for Gay Acceptance in the Catholic Church

The death penalty no longer applies to people who divorce or sleep with women during their periods, as described in the Bible. So why can’t attitudes on homosexuality change as well?

COMMENTARY
On St. Patrick’s Day I had the pleasure of speaking to about 350 Catholics who gathered together to attend a conference put on by New Ways Ministry, which is an effort to support the LGBT community in the Catholic Church. The women and men I spoke to included nuns and priests, children who had come out and parents who wanted to be supportive. Two female priests gave me special blessing and I left the meeting inspired by the devotion of those who attended.

New Ways Ministry has a critical mission, since changing the Church will help those who suffer from ill treatment not only here in the United States but around the world, where the Church has so much clout. The Church has millions of members in Africa and South America, where being gay or lesbian can lead to a death sentence.

Worse, the Church’s own teaching encourages bigotry and harm. Just last year, my father’s memorial, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, gave its human rights award to Frank Mugisha, a gay activist in Uganda whose good friend had just been brutally killed in his own home. American missionaries have encouraged the discrimination Mugisha suffers. Refuting their religious arguments is critical, and so is making a moral and religious case for gays. What we need is a transformation of hearts and minds, not merely a change of laws.

The Catholic Church’s attitude towards homosexuality is at odds with its tradition of tolerance and understanding. The actual practice of the Church is true to this tradition. What other institution separates men and women and encourages them to live together in monasteries and convents where they can develop deep relationships with those who share their kind of love?

The fight for the dignity of the LGBT community is a fight for the soul of today’s Church. Some conservatives see the hierarchy’s current, traditional teaching on sex as the Church’s defining position. They don’t really like to talk about, or even be reminded of, the Church’s teachings on immigration, or protection of the environment, or the greed that produces financial meltdowns, all of which they would find distastefully liberal.

For them there is only one issue — sex, or pelvic politics as some call it. The Pope himself pointed this out on in visit to Mexico, where he said that “not a few Catholics have a certain schizophrenia with regard to individual and public morality…. In public life they follow paths that don’t respond to the great values necessary for the foundation of a just society.”

If we wish to change the Church, we must first convey our views in language, images, and theology that reach people where they are. And secondly, we should make it clear that disagreement with the hierarchy is a critical part of our history.

The fact that so many Americans see themselves as religious, as God-loving church goers, means we have a better chance of reaching them if we use a language, a book, and symbols they understand. Polls find that 85 percent say that they believe in God and 50 percent claim that they go to church every Sunday. The fact that only 25 percent do just goes to show that you can’t trust everybody’s self-reporting.

In The Good Book: The Bible’s Place in Our Lives, the recently deceased Peter Gomes describes interviews with 400 people who had been jailed for hate crimes against gays. None felt remorse. They thought gays were the devil, so fighting them was cause for pride, not shame or regret. Laws are important, but the moral case can be even more compelling.

When my father visited South Africa in 1966, he spoke with students in Cape Town about apartheid. They defended the abhorrent practice by pointing to Biblical passages that suggested that discrimination was fine. In an effort to reach them, my father asked, “Suppose you die, and you go up to heaven, and you enter the pearly gates, and suppose, just suppose when you get there, you find that God is black.” Today we can ask, “Suppose God is gay.”

My father grasped, as did John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, that in America the leader who wishes to enlarge freedom’s sphere must appeal to an audience’s religious beliefs as well as to their understanding of American liberty. This is what I wrote about in my book, Failing America’s Faithful. While researching it, I gained many insights into the Church and its history of both prejudice and tolerance.

The Great Awakening of the 1740s gave people the idea that they could find God within themselves and need not trust preachers. As one perceptive British writer pointed out, if they don’t need rectors, soon they won’t need British rulers. Sure enough, once Americans got used to trusting themselves, they did rebel. Then the Second Great Awakening, in the 1850, instilled in Americans the idea that not only did the divine reside within them, it also resided in women and slaves. The Abolitionist movement grew from that religious revival, as did the suffragettes.

A few years ago, I read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, and to me the biggest revelation was how misogynistic it was. That made me realize that the Catholic Church was on to something when it allowed only educated priests to read the Bible. My mother’s generation was prohibited from reading the Bible, and when I told my grandmother that my father used to read the Bible to us, she was shocked, “Catholics don’t read the Bible,” she said. The Church figured that people could take passages out of context and come to unwarranted conclusions. This changed after Vatican II and now Catholic parishes offer Bible study classes.

But those outrageous passages did not deter either the abolitionists or the suffragettes. They boldly rejected them as cultural detritus. Instead, they asserted that the primary message was that all people were made in God’s image. Thus we are born to be free.

Unfortunately, a century later, in the 1970s, feminists and gay rights activists did not adopt the same strategy and tactics. I think this happened because their movement grew out of the non-religious part of the civil rights movement. Recall that the civil rights movement was split between the followers of Reverend Martin Luther King on the one hand and Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers on the other. The latter group felt that religion was weak. Why turn the other cheek? Why not fight back? This secular strain also attracted many intellectuals who were, to put it bluntly, uncomfortable with religion.

Happily, that has now changed. Women have entered schools of theology and can now show that Jesus was one of the first great feminists. Mary Magdalene is no longer thought of as a prostitute but as the “apostle to the apostles.” Gays, though, are still excluded.

Progressive Christian and Jewish believers have accepted gay rights. Theologians now argue that verses in Leviticus that call for the killing of men who sleep with men apply only to a particular historical moment. The death penalty no longer applies to people who divorce, curse their parents, or sleep with women during their period — rules that are also in Leviticus.

Obviously, some people continue to read scripture simply to sustain their preexisting prejudice against homosexuality and homosexuals. But theologians now point out that the word “homosexual” didn’t even exist until the 19th century, and it wasn’t included in the Bible until 1946.

Choose your passage. King David talks about sleeping with his friend Nathan as “better than sleeping with a woman.” The Ten Commandments don’t mention homosexuality. Nor does Jesus. In fact, our Lord teaches us that love of God and love of our fellow human being are the two most important commandments. He doesn’t exclude the love that one man can have for another, or one woman for another.

The 2000-year-old passages favored by Church authorities don’t hold up as being anti-gay. Not only is the hierarchy — the Church’s cardinals and bishops — imposing its own interpretations, its views are harmful to many men and women. I would hope that the lens through which one reads scripture would be one of love and openness to others, not fear and anger and meanness.

Contrary to conservative propaganda, though, the Vatican is not immovable. It has a long history of changing position to follow new understandings of society and morality. Usury is no longer a sin. Women are no longer considered “the devil’s gateway.” Railroads are no longer cursed as the work of the devil, and teaching that there is such a doctrine as “freedom of conscience” does not merit censure, as it did for John Courtney Murray in the 1950s: In fact, Vatican II now recognizes “freedom of conscience.” Pope John Paul II apologized for the Church’s treatment of women and its persecution of Galileo. Sex between husband and a wife is no longer just for procreation but has value in itself.

That history can continue with its position on gays — and the laity has a critical role to play in pushing for these changes. As Cardinal John Henry Newman, the foremost 19th-century Catholic theologian asserted, bishops have at times “failed in their confession of the faith.” There can be instances of “misguidance, delusion, hallucination.” He said that the body of the faithful has the “instinct for truth.”

Already, I have witnessed that instinct for truth in the argument over contraception. Despite the hierarchy’s position, 98 percent of Catholic women in the United States use contraception. I believe that Human Vitae was the Holy Ghost’s way to teach us that we must use our conscience, and not lazily rely on the hierarchy when it is in error.

At this time, when the hierarchy does not want to recognize that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, and that the one of the two most critical commandments is to love one another, it is critical to assert that God loves the LGBT community equally. Sometimes the Church moves slowly, sometimes quickly. The point is to make sure the voices of dissent are not quiet and the Holy Spirit can be heard.

Complete Article HERE!

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Lapsed Catholics explain why they leave church

As part of a survey to understand why they have stopped attending Mass, a few hundred Catholics were asked what issues they would raise if they could speak to the bishop for five minutes.

The bishop would have gotten an earful.

Their reasons ranged from the personal (”the pastor who crowned himself king and looks down on all”) to the political (”eliminate the extreme conservative haranguing”) to the doctrinal (”don’t spend so much time on issues like homosexuality and birth control”).

In addition, they said, they didn’t like the church’s handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal and were upset that divorced and remarried Catholics are unwelcome at Mass.

The findings, based on responses to a survey in the Diocese of Trenton, N.J., are included in a report presented March 22 at the “Lapsed Catholics” conference at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Conducted by Villanova University’s Center for the Study of Church Management, the survey, called “Empty Pews,” asked Catholics in the Trenton Diocese a series of questions about church doctrine and parish life to better understand why they are staying home.

While the study was restricted to one diocese, chances are the responses could come from just about anywhere in the U.S., where a 2007 report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found one-third of Americans were raised Catholic but one-third of those had left the church.

Or, as Villanova’s Charles Zech put it, “These are issues that affect the whole church.”

The responses can be divided into two categories, said Zech, who co-authored the study and is director of the Villanova center. In one category are “the things that can’t change but that we can do a better job explaining.” The other category, he said “are some things that aren’t difficult to fix.”

Zech and the Rev. William Byron, professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, conducted the survey of 298 parishioners who have stopped attending Mass.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents were female, and the median age was 53, two facts that Zech finds troubling. “That’s a critical demographic. If we’re losing the 53-year-old women, we risk losing their children and their grandchildren,” he said.

About a quarter of the respondents said they still consider themselves Catholic despite not attending Mass. About half offered negative comments about their parish priests, whom they described as “arrogant,” ‘’distant” and “insensitive.”

“One respondent said, ‘Ask a question and you get a rule, you don’t get a “let’s sit down and talk about it” response,’” Zech said. “They feel no one is willing to explain things to them.”

Respondents also said they were troubled by the church’s views of gays, same-sex marriage, women priests and the handling of the sex abuse crisis.

Criticism of the sex scandal was predictable, Zech said. “That doesn’t surprise anybody. They did not manage that well, and they are still not managing it well,” Zech said. “It hasn’t gone away.”

The respondents also called for better homilies, better music and more accountability of the church staff.

Trenton Bishop David O’Connell, a former president of Catholic University, declined to be interviewed about the survey’s results, saying through a spokeswoman that he “needed to spend time with the findings and develop his own analysis of them.”

Though the project was undertaken to learn more about why church attendance continues to decline in the Trenton Diocese, it’s findings have broader implications, Zech said. “These are issues that affect the whole church,” he said.

Although it was an anonymous survey, about one in eight respondents said they welcomed a call from a church official and provided their names and contact information for that purpose. Many more indicated they were pleased to be asked for their input.

“The fact that they took the time to respond gives us a chance,” Zech said. “If some things change, or we do a better job of representing the church’s position, we might woo some of them back.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Memo: Philly parish misled about pastor’s leave

Prosecutors read dozens of confidential church documents aloud in court Tuesday to try to prove the Philadelphia archdiocese routinely buried complaints that priests were molesting children.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in parish work.

The letters and memos read in court Tuesday centered on now-defrocked priest Edward Avery. Avery, known as the Smiling Padre, adopted six Hmong children and moonlighted as a disc jockey at parties and nightclubs throughout his three-decade church career.

According to the documents, a medical student told the archdiocese in 1992 that Avery had molested him after a DJ gig when the priest and the high school freshman were drinking heavily at a West Philadelphia nightclub. It happened again at age 19 when the two shared a motel bed on a ski trip to Vermont with Avery’s brother, he said.

Avery denied the allegations to Lynn, but then said they “could” have happened. A four-day evaluation at a church-owned hospital showed he may be bipolar and have alcohol and psycho-sexual problems. Avery was admitted to St. John Vianney in Downingtown for nearly a year of sex therapy and mental health treatment.

Avery’s parishioners were told that their outgoing, energetic pastor was on a “health leave” but heard no mention of the abuse allegation. Lynn’s lawyer said the documents show that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua gave those orders.

St. John Vianney never diagnosed Avery as a pedophile but said he should not be around adolescents or work as a DJ.

Lynn next recommended that Avery go to a Philadelphia parish with a tough pastor, although that parish had a school attached. Bevilacqua instead sent Avery to work as a hospital chaplain, with residency at St. Jerome’s Parish. The northeast Philadelphia parish was home to many of the city’s police and firefighters and had an elementary school.

Avery, 69, admitted last week that he sexually assaulted a fifth-grader there in 1999, forcing the altar boy to strip naked after Mass in the church sacristy. Instead of going on trial with Lynn, Avery pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and conspiracy and will serve 2 1/2 to five years in prison.

The Rev. James Brennan, another co-defendant, is fighting charges that he tried to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1999.

Lynn also chose to go to trial, insisting that he tried to address the long-brewing sexual-abuse problem when he served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. Bevilacqua and other superiors quashed his efforts, defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom argued Monday in opening statements.

The jury on Tuesday saw a 1994 list Lynn prepared that named 35 accused priests still on duty in the five-county archdiocese. Avery was on it and deemed “guilty” of the abuse. The list also shows whether the archdiocese could still be sued over each allegation.

Bevilacqua ordered that the list be shredded, although a copy survived, according to Bergstrom. Bevilacqua died of heart disease on Jan. 31, a day after he was ruled competent to testify at Lynn’s trial. He also had prostate cancer and dementia.

In 2002, a decade after the medical student came forward, his mother wrote to the archdiocese after seeing Avery at a party. He was still a priest and still working as a DJ.

“As a pediatric nurse, I must wonder who else was molested,” she wrote. “If he is anywhere near children, you have a problem.”

That year, the church sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston. Dioceses around the country agreed to review complaints in their files. In Philadelphia, those complaints were kept in secret archives in a locked room at the archdiocese. More than 60 priests had been accused since 1948. Many were still working around children.

A review board found the medical student’s complaint against the Smiling Padre credible, according to the documents shown in court. The archdiocese asked the Vatican to defrock Avery in 1993, saying he “has admitted an act of sexual abuse against a minor.” In 1995, the Vatican issued a decree in Latin, ending Avery’s 33-year church career.

The St. Jerome’s victim called the archdiocese in 2009. He said he had been raped by Avery, another priest and his sixth-grade teacher at St. Jerome’s. Defense lawyers question his credibility, given his long history of drug abuse and petty crime.

Avery reports to prison Monday.

Complete Article HERE!

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Savannah diocese, bishops sued over priest child abuse case

The Catholic Diocese of Savannah and two of its bishops have been sued in South Carolina over alleged sexual abuse of a minor by former priest Wayland Y. Brown.

The suit, filed Nov. 16 in the Court of Common Pleas in Ridgeland, alleged that Brown abused a Savannah youth whom he met through youth programs at Savannah’s St. James Catholic Church and school in the mid-1970s.

According to the suit, the victim, a “devout Catholic” identified as John Doe, was sexually abused by Brown on various church and school properties as well as in various locations in South Carolina.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah and bishops Raymond Lessard and Gregory Hartmayer are named as defendants in the suit.

“In approximately 1976-1979, Priest Brown sexually assaulted the minor plaintiff, John Doe, on numerous occasions,” the suit alleged.

The 25-page suit also alleged the church “knew or should have known” Brown was assaulting the victim and the church used “a policy of concealment, secrecy and obfuscation of child abuse by church employees and priests.”

The suit asks for a jury trial to determine damages.

Brown, 67, was ordained in the diocese in July 1977, allegedly over the objections of some diocesan staff, by then-Bishop Raymond Lessard and in 1988 served as associate pastor at St. James Parish in southside Savannah.

Hartmayer was installed as bishop Oct. 18.

Brown was removed from active ministry in July 1988.

Bishop J. Kevin Boland, who served between the two named bishops and is not a defendant in the civil case, started the process to remove Brown from the priesthood in February 2003.

The Vatican dismissed Brown from the priesthood in December 2004. Brown voluntarily agreed to return to Maryland in June 2002 to face prosecution on charges of molesting a Maryland teenager decades earlier.

He pleaded guilty in a Maryland court in November 2002 to charges of child abuse and battery for performing sexual acts on a teenage boy and his younger brother between 1974 and 1977.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but in April 2008 was released after serving five years based on good behavior.

He was required to register as a child sex offenders on the Maryland sex offender registry

Brown has not been charged with sexual abuse in the Savannah area, but at least one man has claimed he was molested by a former St. James priest.

“Father Brown is a convicted sex offender,” said Charleston attorney D. Scott Beard, one of John Doe’s lawyers. “According to our lawsuit, he was placed in a position of authority with young boys even though church officials knew of his inappropriate sexual behavior with minors.”

Beard said Brown “left a trail of child victims in the places where he was assigned by the Catholic Church. If Church officials had not acted recklessly in allowing Father Brown to be around children, they could have prevented John Doe and others like him from being abused.”

Diocese spokeswoman Barbara King said Friday, “We cannot comment on pending legal action.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Holy Wisdom Monastery provides church services for disaffected local Catholics

Alice Jenson’s faith took an irreversible turn six years ago.

It was Nov. 5, 2006, and she was contributing to Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Madison as a lay person, reading Bible passages from the lectern.

The same day, Madison Bishop Robert Morlino required all priests to play a recorded message from him explaining his position on three issues state residents would vote on that week, including a ban on same-sex marriage, which he supported.

When the priest hit “play,” Jenson walked out.

“It was the first time I’d ever outwardly gone against what I was raised to follow,” said Jenson, 67.

She found a new religious home at Holy Wisdom Monastery, a former Roman Catholic monastery in the town of Westport, just outside Madison. Its Sunday service, offered by the sisters who live there, retains many elements of a traditional Catholic Mass but diverges in sometimes startling ways.

Women can lead the service and preach the sermon. Gay relationships are warmly embraced. All parishioners, not just Catholics, can consume the communion wine and bread because the service is ecumenical, meaning welcoming of all Christian traditions.

It’s an alternate universe of sorts — what some think a Catholic Mass might look like today if the liberal spirit of Vatican II in the 1960s had taken root and flowered.

“We’re doing what the hierarchical church was afraid to complete,” said Jim Green, a longtime Holy Wisdom parishioner who is gay and describes himself as “a Catholic in exile.”

The service, called Sunday Assembly, is attended by people from many denominational backgrounds but has become especially popular with Catholics displeased with Morlino or church doctrine in general. Membership doubled in five years to 335, and parishioners estimate a majority are Catholics who left their regular parishes.

Detractors say the parishioners strayed too far from Catholicism to warrant the label.

Approach evolves
Though many self-described Catholics attend Holy Wisdom, it’s no longer an official Catholic Mass.

A little history: In the 1950s, a group of Benedictine nuns opened a high school at the site for girls in the Madison Catholic Diocese. Benedictines belong to a monastic religious order regulated by the canon law of the Catholic Church. Masses at the site were led by Catholic priests, often provided by the diocese.

In 1966, the nuns closed the school and turned the buildings into a Christian retreat center. The sisters, spurred by the Benedictine tradition of hospitality, gradually made the service more inclusive to all Christians. Lay people, especially women, took on greater roles.

In 2000, the Benedictine sisters went a step further, welcoming a Protestant woman to live with them. “When we chose to open our community to Protestant women, it meant other doors closed,” said Sister Mary David Walgenbach, the monastery’s head.

The sisters sought independence from the Catholic Church, and the Vatican granted it in 2006. Consequently, they no longer are tied to the local diocese. They remain affiliated with a Benedictine federation, but they have a special status, not a full membership, because of their ecumenism.

Bishop’s request
When the sisters disassociated from Rome, Bishop Morlino asked them to no longer celebrate Mass at the site so as not to cause confusion, said Brent King, a diocesan spokesman.

“Many people had visited (the monastery) over the years, and the bishop felt it would take time for people to understand that it was no longer a Roman Catholic institution,” King said, adding the bishop “was in no way unfriendly toward their desire to start a non-Catholic ecumenical community.”

The sisters understood the bishop’s position and stopped calling the service a Catholic Mass in 2006, Walgenbach said. Priests ceased to lead the service.
Today, the sisters describe the Sunday Assembly as being “for the celebration of Eucharist,” a term most commonly used to refer to Catholic communion. However, Walgenbach said some Protestant churches also use it. To many people, the service still has the essence of a Catholic Mass.

“You wouldn’t know it wasn’t a Catholic church, except for the person officiating,” said parishioner Pat Hobbins-Kemps, 64. A lifelong Catholic, she said she left her regular parish partly out of a lack of opportunities for women to lead.

Finding a home
Trisha Day, 66, said she came to Holy Wisdom after growing tired of sermons that focused on politically charged issues such as abortion and homosexuality while saying little about social justice and the poor.

Jeanne Marquis, 68, found Holy Wisdom after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I needed someone to talk about forgiveness instead of retaliation,” she said. “I needed a place where I was encouraged to ask questions.”

Ann Baltes, 44, a lifelong Catholic, said she sought a place where she and her husband, Bill Rosholt, a Lutheran, could participate in communion together.

Are these parishioners still Catholic? The answers vary.

Jenson says she’s not. “Too much divides us.”

Day calls herself “a transitional Catholic,” unsure where she’ll end up. Green said his Catholic identity can’t be taken from him. “The church is the people of God, not the institution,” he said.

Joanne Kollasch, one of the three Benedictine sisters who live at the monastery, said she “is a Catholic and will remain a Catholic,” adding, “I don’t like to be thought of as less Catholic because I’m ecumenical.”
Said Walgenbach: “The Catholic spirituality is bigger than the Roman Catholic Church.”

Both sisters said they respect the Catholic Church and Morlino and don’t seek controversy.

Detractors
Syte Reitz, a member of Madison’s Cathedral Parish who blogs about Catholic issues, said disaffected Catholics are free to start their own churches, but they shouldn’t confuse people by suggesting they still are faithful Catholics.

“Does it matter whether they are errant Catholics or not Catholics?” asks Reitz. “No matter what we label them, the laws of right and wrong and of morality still stand, and they and others will suffer from the mistakes that they make.”

Reitz said because a male priest is not presiding over the Eucharist, the bread is not being turned into the body of Christ, thus depriving attendees of the Catholic Church’s central sacrament.

King, the diocesan spokesman, said for Catholics to fulfill their obligation to attend Mass on Sundays, they must attend a Catholic Mass validly offered by an ordained Catholic priest.

Does the Holy Wisdom service qualify?

“In charity, we must respond that it does not,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

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Priest Walks Out Of Woman’s Funeral Because Of Her Gay Daughter

The battle in this country between the right and the left is raging. Since the right has no answers to the economic questions we face, they’ve decided to concentrate on dividing the country on so-called “moral” issues, one of those being the demonizing of gay and lesbian people. Little by little, they are losing the battle, as we see states individually legalizing gay marriage and recognizing that our forefathers intended that ALL are created equal and marriage is an equal right. But that doesn’t stop the right from carrying on their battle.

Something terrible happened this past weekend in Maryland and the fact that it was Maryland, a state that has just proclaimed that all are equal and has enshrined that concept into state law, goes to highlight the lengths to which the right will go. In this instance, the right was personified by Father Marcel Guarnizo, who officiated at the funeral of a former family member of mine. She was no longer a family member because I divorced the man who was her blood relative. But with social media these days, a person can remain in touch with those who, although there is no longer a family connection, are still people who are valued.

My friend Barbara, the daughter of the deceased woman, was denied communion at her mother’s funeral. She was the first in line and Fr. Guarnizo covered the bowl containing the host and said to her, “I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman and that is a sin according to the church.” To add insult to injury, Fr. Guarnizo left the altar when she delivered her eulogy to her mother. When the funeral was finished he informed the funeral director that he could not go to the gravesite to deliver the final blessing because he was sick.

I will tell you a little about the woman who drove that priest from the altar. She is kind, she is smart, she is funny and she works hard promoting the arts. She pays her bills, she cares deeply for her family and she loved her mother and her mother loved her right back. And now she will never set foot in a Catholic church again and who can blame her?

It is time for Christians of all stripes to stop and think about the teachings of the Jesus they proclaim to love so deeply and revere so much. I spent twelve years in Catholic school and the Jesus I was told about would never have turned away anyone for any reason and certainly not on the occasion of burying a parent. Fr. Guarnizo has a lot to learn about Christianity and the Catholic Church has a lot to learn about the teachings of Jesus if behavior of this sort is tolerated.

I am not about to paint all Christians with a broad brush. There are those out there who understand that the teachings of Jesus boil down to one thing. And that thing is Love. For if you love, you do not deny a person the solace of communion with the Creator, if that is their belief. You judge not, lest ye be judged. Only God knows the true heart of any person and in the end, if there is to be judgment, it will not come from some misguided, prejudiced priest who needs to go back to the seminary and learn the basics. And if he can’t find them there, then he needs to get down on his knees and pray to his Jesus to forgive him the terrible trespass he visited upon a grieving woman on the occasion of the death of her mother.

This is but one small story but it is indicative of the battle raging in America today. It is an ugly battle and one I never thought I would see. But it is here and we must deal with it. We must keep politics out of religion and religion out of politics. Perhaps if we can get back to a place where the separation of church and state are once again accepted as one of the founding principles of this country, stop trying to out-Christian each other, stop vilifying other religions and other people based on purely human and not godly concepts, we will begin to mend the fractures that are tearing us apart today. To do that, the Father Guarnizos and the Rick Santorums of the world will have to undergo a radical change of heart and I don’t think they have it in them. So it is up to the rest of us.

As for me, I send my love and condolences to my friend Barbara and all of the other family members who were made to witness such an egregious display of prejudice in such an inappropriate setting. To Father Guarnizo, I say, “Jesus would weep.”

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Vatican ruled by ‘omerta’ code of silence, whistle-blower claims

The Vatican is ruled by a climate of fear and an ‘omerta’ code of silence, a whistle-blower has claimed.

The mole claims to be one of more than 20 people within the Holy See who have leaked sensitive documents to the Italian media in the last few weeks, in an affair that has been compared to the WikiLeaks scandal and dubbed “Vati-leaks”.

The unidentified man, who said he had worked in the Vatican for more than 20 years, made the claims in an interview to be aired on Italian television on Wednesday night.

His face was hidden and his voice digitally distorted when he appeared on the TV channel, La7.

According to extracts of the interview, the whistle-blower said the Vatican was engulfed in intrigue, secrecy and a climate of intimidation.
“Maybe there is a kind of omerta to prevent the truth from surfacing. Not because of a power struggle but maybe because of fear,” he added.

He claimed to have worked in the State Secretariat, which is led by the powerful but unpopular Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, who is reported to have fallen out of favour with the Pope and his supporters.

The whistle-blower said the Vatican is a place where “you can commit a murder and then disappear into the void” – a reference to a murky scandal in the Swiss Guard in 1998, when a young soldier shot dead the corps’ commander and wife before apparently committing suicide.

The mother of Cedric Tornay, 23, the alleged assassin, has never accepted that her son would have committed suicide and has called on Pope Benedict XVI, 84, to reopen the case, amid speculation that the real killer of the three may never have been caught.

There have been long-standing accusations of an official cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church, with numerous conspiracy theories put forward for a possible motive.

The leaks have embarrassed the Vatican in recent weeks, with claims of corruption and nepotism, questions over the transparency of the Vatican bank and unconfirmed reports of an assassination plot against the Pope within the next 12 months.

The whistle-blower dismissed suggestions that documents were being leaked in exchange for money.

“Something like that is inconceivable for me. That would mean betraying what we believe in,” he said.

He urged the Vatican to reinvestigate “with zeal” one of its most enduring mysteries – the kidnap of teenager Emanuela Orlandi nearly 30 years ago.
Over the years it has been claimed that Miss Orlandi was kidnapped so that she could be used as a bargaining chip for the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill John Paul II in St Peter’s Square in 1981.

Another theory is that the girl’s father, a Vatican employee, had stumbled on documents that connected the Vatican bank with a criminal gang in Rome and that she was kidnapped in a bid to silence him.

It has even been suggested that the kidnapping was carried out on the orders of a Catholic archbishop, Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced head of the Vatican bank, known as the ‘Istituto per le Opere di Religione’. Marcinkus, an American, died six years ago.

Complete Article HERE!