Month: November 2007

Hard times ahead?

Tom Roeser offers an arresting, apocalyptic view of what would happen if Dems win the WH in ‘08.  Context is answering why Giuliani has social conservative support:

[They] may have some questions about Giuliani but they know for positive certain that no matter what Democratic president gets in, the goals of the movement will be certifiably ended-especially with appointments to the Court. There’s not even a question about that. The courts would go Left, national security would go passive, the Islamo-fascists would take heart at seeing the country repudiate the Bush legacy. Domestic terrorist strikes would increase. And something which is quite hard for the Catholic in me to rationalize-the future of Israel which is so close to the evangelical heart would be jeopardized while an ambivalent Hillary or worse yet Hamlet-like Obama would allow things to happen.

Is that grim enough for you?

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He drank, he was improper, so what?

It seems to be an advantage for one’s career as a bishop to be obtuse in matters of priestly sexual abuse patterns. 

Consider the rector of Mundelein seminary in the 90s, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who had three reports of “sexual improprieties” by then-seminarian Daniel McCormack, in prison since July for molesting five boys while assigned to St. Agatha parish on Chicago’s West Side.

“There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” Kicanas said. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”

Counseling for drinking, yes.  None for his homosexuality gone rampant?  Or — dare we say it? — for his homosexuality, period?  These were boys McCormack went after — in a black parish, by the way, where the fatherless boy is common.

Do Kicanas, newly elected as vice president of the bishops’ conference with virtual right of succession to the presidency in three years, and other bishops represent the norm with a willingness to look the other way about sexual “impropriety,” in the vast majority of cases homosexual?

He got elected, didn’t he?

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Greedy, he wrote

Cardinal George not only considers financial gain the motive force behind proposed state legislation that would widen opening for suing about sexual abuse, he said so in a letter of apology to parents of a victim of two priests, Sun-Times reports tomorrow.

“This is irresponsible, is not about the safety of children as the sponsor claims, and is clearly, to me at least, about money,” he wrote.

The victim, who is not suing, “called the letter outrageous,” Sun-Times reported.

“Victims sue for justice, not for fabulous houses,” said the man, who . . . is negotiating a settlement. “Nobody wants to live in a fabulous house that reminds you that you were molested by two priests as a boy.”

This is George at his blunt best.  He has a knack for the sharp comment that should make his coming term as bishops’ conference president interesting, if not disastrous.

The bill’s introducer, State Sen. Terry Link, a Lake County Democrat, has heard the cardinal talk this way before and has told him it’s offensive.

This is not likely to slow the cardinal down, and his no-holds-barred commentary has echoes in how auxiliary bishop Thomas Paprocki characterized increasing financial pressures from victims.

“This attack is particularly directed against bishops and priests,” he said in a recent speech, adding that the principal force behind the attacks “is none other than the devil.”

Somehow, you’d think he would reserve diabolism for a number of other heinous things.

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Pastor removed in Baltimore

What would HL Mencken say?

Baltimore’s new Roman Catholic archbishop removed a priest who was pastor of three South Baltimore parishes for offenses that include officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, which violates canon law.

Thus the Baltimore Sun.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien personally ordered the Rev. Ray Martin, who has led the Catholic Community of South Baltimore for five years, to resign from the three churches and sign a statement yesterday apologizing for “bringing scandal to the church.”

The bereaved had invited the Episcopal priest.  Martin had been in hot water for a while, having

“received advice and counsel on numerous occasions from the archdiocese, and he has repeatedly violated church teaching,” [archdiocesan spokesman Sean] Caine said. His major offense was not complying with hiring and screening policies, but he also allowed dogs in the sanctuary and did not show up for a baptism, Caine said.

He’s been given time to cool off, straighten up, fly right:

Martin, who has not been defrocked, said he has been barred from celebrating Mass publicly. He will go on an extended retreat and counseling at a monastery in Latrobe, Pa., he said.

It’s going to be a fun retreat, that’s sure.

==============

Later:

Reader D: First dogs — then Episcopalian priests — has he no shame, sir???

Blithe Sp response: In the words of the immortal Sandy, “Arf!”

Also: See latest Homiletic & Pastoral Review article on narcissism among liturgically innovative priests (not yet posted).  It’s actually all about ME, you see.

The article quotes Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can’t Sing, a 1991 book, in which Day picks up on the Happy Improviser who ends a beautiful liturgy by congratulating all who took part, spoiling the effect in his need to inject himself into the service.

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McGuire and Cardinal George: The plot is thicker

Grant Gallicho at Dot Commonweal has this about O’Malley the archdiocese’s lawyer, quoted in the Sun-Times today:

Perhaps John O’Malley and people in the archdiocesan victims assistance office aren’t aware of this, but what is described in the letters constitutes sexual abuse. If the article has the facts straight, and the archdiocese received notification that a priest was sharing a bed with a nineteen-year-old and assaulting another teenager with porn and sex talk, and failed to notify the authorities, failed to investigate (which could have led to a suspension from public ministry), then the Archdiocese of Chicago violated the Dallas Charter its archbishop had approved just six months earlier. In December 2002, no one at the archdiocese bothered to ask the father how old the other teens were? Where was the sense of urgency so soon after Dallas? Where is it now?

Comments include this from Bill Mazella:

The sense of urgency is only in coverup. We can rightly call this the “Culture of Coverup.” . . .

And this stunner from Bob Nunz:

that a VOTF rep in Chicago, along with Justice Burke, called for the non-election of Cardinal George as head of the catholic bishos Conference and likewise, Jason Berry as well.

That’s Anne Burke of the Ill. Supreme Court, mentioned in a post below.

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Pilate washed his hands, didn’t he?

Neither Cardinal Francis George nor his point man on sexual abuse, Chancellor Jimmy Lago, would comment for this article.

Why not?

The dad who contacted the archdiocese about McGuire in 2002 said he initially called the cardinal’s office, which referred him to the victims’ ministries. [sic]

Why?

In one letter, the dad says his 19-year-old had to share a bed with the priest.

Another parent’s letter relayed an alarming “pattern of behavior” McGuire developed beginning with a June 1998 trip to India with their son. At the time, the boy was 17.

“He stated that Father [McGuire] was overwhelming him with pornographic pictures and talking to him about sexual matters at every waking moment,” the parent wrote.

Remember the Colleen Dolan comment last July about Fr. McCormack, she being Cardinal George’s spokesperson?

“He has not been accused of rape. Never. There’s a big difference between abuse and assault, which is a more egregious crime.”

That’s the spirit, Colleen.

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Bishops again

This pops up in the middle of a Chi Trib story about relieving financial worries of sued dioceses:

“Many of the bishops basically abandoned their responsibilities to their flock, and why should we now have confidence in them that they will not do so in the future?” said Robert Bennett, a Washington lawyer and former head of the bishops’ National Review Board. “Enough time has not gone by yet.”

He is brother of Bill, by the way, and former lawyer for then-Pres. Clinton.  Well-connected, that is, and presumably very sharp guy.  He and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke have similar tales to tell, I’m sure, of the irresponsibility of bishops, she having headed the same committee and learned more than she wanted to know about those shepherds — as Tom Roeser reported for The Wanderer:

Anne Burke will always remember one session out-of-town with a nationally famous bishop who gave her complete assurance that all instances of sexual hanky-panky were brought to a dead halt in his diocese. The next morning she opened a newspaper and found that the bishop was on the front page, having welcomed a priest-sexual predator as a house guest. She called the bishop. “Yesterday you assured me that all matters involving the diocese had been cleaned up,” she said. “You know, you lied to me, didn’t you?” He said the priest was being used for a theological research job. She continued, “You lied to me, didn’t you.” “No, I didn’t.” “Well, the priest you hired was convicted.” “No he wasn’t.” “Really?” “He pled guilty. That’s what happened.” “Same thing.” “Well, not exactly-pleading guilty is not the same as being tried and found guilty.”

Burke smiled at that effort at the futile attempt to apply theological hair-splitting to the law. It may make it in a university theological seminar but not in a courtroom. “Why did he try to snow me?” she said to this reporter. “Did he think he could get away with it because-well, he didn’t.” Later she received a denunciatory letter from a bishop who said she was rude in some of her discussions with his colleagues. Then it became clear that she would never be given the title of Chairman but would continue as “interim Chairman.”

A delicate rebuke. One must not be rude to bishops for any reason. When reminded that she never graduated from the interim title, Burke just smiles. Rude or just following the mandate the bishops gave her, Anne Burke sat at her Supreme Court desk in Chicago last week and showed this Wanderer reporter another angry letter-like an earlier one, also from the Archbishop of Hartford, Henry J. Mansell which ripped the Board for “expanding their competence, responsibilities, activities and studies in a dynamic of autonomy.” A very tough letter. It concluded “Be assured of our continued rayers and best wishes.”

Anne Burke smiled quietly and said, “Continued prayers. How touching.”


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Quiet, mass in progress

16–year-old telling of her Traditional Latin Mass experience in a Catholic camp last summer:

“It’s quiet,” she said. “People are paying attention. In the English Mass, it’s noisy. There are babies crying. But here people are completely focused on God.”

This is a good NY Times piece that is long on appreciation if short on hope for widespread acceptance of the new-old mass.

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