Seattle-bound

Bishop Sartain
Bishop to be archbishop

Bp J. Peter Sartain of Joliet off to Seattle to be youngest U.S. archbishop.

Sartain said dealing with the clergy sexual abuse scandal will be one of his challenges in Western Washington.

The Seattle archdiocese has paid about $42 million in settlements, counseling and attorneys fees to about 300 victims over the past 23 years, with about 70 percent of the money paid by insurance companies.

On Thursday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) criticized Sartain for ordaining a priest last year who[m] Catholic officials allegedly caught with pornography on his computer a few months earlier. In January, Sartain removed the priest as parochial vicar at a parish after a boy accused the priest of sexually abusing him. The priest pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and was sentenced this month to four years in prison.

Sartain said Thursday he couldnt comment on the case.

What I have tried to do and will continue to try to do is to be very vigilant in the preparation of our priests and likewise very open to the suffering of victims, whether theyre recent or many, many years ago, he said. I will be available to meet with victims and their families because thats, I think, a very important, direct part of the process of healing that needs to take place.

Good luck.

Wheeling Jesuit enrollment reported stable

Two college students wrestling (collegiate, sc...
Fun on campus

Don’t know how much to make of this, but in view of various reports of declining Wheeling (WV) Jesuit U. enrollment in the wake of its precipitate firing of a popular president 13 months ago, this is interesting:

NEWS9 checked in with every college in the Valley. Both Wheeling Jesuit and Franciscan universities report stable enrollment. But six other schools are seeing a significant increase in students. That includes Belmont Technical College, Bethany College, Eastern Gateway Community College, Ohio University Eastern, West Liberty University and WVNCC.

Stable is not bad, and same is true of nearby Franciscan U. (of Steubenville OH), which would seem to be in the same market, vs. the other six, which are not Catholic schools.

Seller’s market

Xavier Hall, Loyola Marymount University
Xavier Hall, Loyola Marymount University

Job openings for Jesuits, but (increasingly) others may apply:

Saint Joseph’s University is looking for a president. Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles is looking for a president. University of Detroit Mercy is looking for a president. University of Scranton is looking for a president. Wheeling [Jesuit] is looking for a president.

Good-doers on parade: Catholic Campaign

Embryo
Human development at early stage

Intrepid Church Reporter at Campaign for Human Development awards:

Good show Sept. 1 at St. Stanislaus Kostka School, where 100 or more gathered for awarding of Chicago Campaign for Human Development funds. Reps of awardee organizations trooped up one after the other to be interviewed by Father “Rocky” Hoffman of Relevant Radio. It was a parade of do-gooders looking good. The hall exuded benevolence, even as a few hard-core brothers and sisters of the Alinsky-style persuasion more or less lurked in the shadows.

Read the rest at Chicago Catholic News dot com.

Soros and the culture of death

The world according to book-author Richard Poe is a world full of George Soros.  Poe is like the guy who taps on your shoulder, asks if you want to look at some feelthy pictures.  His pictures are filthy, but he doesn’t make the sale.

He made his pitch Friday 9/11 at the monthly Catholic Citizens of Illinois luncheon at the Union League Club, where the fish gave me instant heartburn.  So did Poe, whose The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, co-authored with red-diaper baby David Horowitz, was available for purchase.

He sold me on buying the book — from ABE Books, cut-rate as usual — mainly with the purpose of seeing how well he makes his case in print.  I do know that when I asked him how and when the multi-billionaire currency speculator and hedge-fund manager Soros — “the Man Who Broke the Bank of England,” after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis — supported Obama, he offered no details.  I wasn’t badgering him, just looking for details of what is otherwise clear to me, Poe having brought it up in his speech  That’s where the devil is, right?  I like to smoke Satan out, preferring to know the enemy as well as possible.

Where, then, is Soros?  Per Poe, in the forty bodies of critical-care patients found in New Orleans after Katrina, put down by doctors and nurses, some of whom freely admitted it and were praised and were not convicted for it.  One was the doc, a “palliative care” expert, who described the patient who wouldn’t die from repeated injections — “He wouldn’t stop breathing” — until in desperation the old-fashioned method was employed: firm pressure of pillow to mouth and nose.  See what I mean about feelthy?

Palliative care, also called “comfort care”?  Poe: Soros gave it a boost in 1994 by throwing millions at The Project on Death in America, which funded palliative care training programs in hospitals throughout the nation.  In this he had the help of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, whch aims “to improve the health and health care of all Americans. . . . help our society transform itself for the better.” 

The founder Johnson is of Johnson & Johnson — think Band-Aids, Tylenol, Listerine, Visine, etc.  I recommend J&J products, as I recommend Catholic teaching about non-requirement of extraordinary means in keeping someone alive — something Poe never mentioned, being basically a muckraker and not a student of such matters.

Soros is a man with a plan, Poe explained.  His Open Society Institute, “building vibrant and tolerant democracies” per its site, is a worldwide network of cells and action centers which get into the thick of things, said Poe, such as coups and takeovers and, as the Soviet Union collapsed, the sale of government-owned assets — for a song, to selected “investors,” including himself. 

He doesn’t act alone, said Poe.  Of $300 million that funded MoveOn.org, his left-wing organization-cum-major web presence, he gave only $21 million.  Other rich men follow his lead, which he takes from the United Nations, said Poe.  He has no original ideas, except his life philosophy, developed as a kid under German rule and to this day governing his behavior: no rules when survival is threatened — and he feels threatened all the time, said Poe.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Soros has his causes, all related to the 1973 new world order aimed at denuding America of its presumed excessive share of the world’s riches, cutting it down to the size of the wretched of the earth.  To which end he promotes (funds) shadow Catholic organizations such as the pro-abortion Catholics for Choice and Catholics United and the inter-denominational United Religions Initiative founded in 1996 by an Episcopal bishop and intended as a one-size-fits-all religious counterpart to the United Nations.

His projects also include planks of the leftist platform such as gun-control, repeal of don’t-ask-don’t-tell in the military — opposed in writing by thousands of generals, said Poe — and McCain and Feingold’s campaign-finance legislation, toward which Soros contributed millions in “bribes,” said Poe, who added that Wis. Sen. Feingold had once been tabbed by Saul Alinsky as a good candidate.

Don’t look for this stuff in mainline media, Poe advises.  Neither on the WorldWide Web, I have found, which is the trouble with his presentation — gossipy, sensational (making us wonder if sensationalized), inflammatory.  I, for one, was inflamed by it, and had to break away from the dining room as soon as he finished, suffering overload of feelthy-picture data grimly and desperately presented.  I look ahead to the book, when I can do a little sifting of wheat from chaff.

Bishop leaving town

This bishop goes into hiding:

BRUSSELS–Belgium’s disgraced bishop Roger Vangheluwe will go into seclusion away from the diocese of Bruges, where a paedophilia scandal forced his April resignation, the Belgian press reported Sunday.

In a statement issued by the Belgian bishop’s conference, Vangheluwe, 73, said he was leaving the Westvleteren abbey where he had sought refuge for several months to withdraw “to another place, away from the Bruges diocese.”

Vangheluwe was the first Belgian bishop to resign in April after admitting to sexually abusing his nephew between 1973 and 1986 in a wave of pedophile scandals that has rocked the Catholic Church since last November.

“I will continue in discretion to ponder my life and my future,” he said.

Sackcloth and ashes.

Ointments for all

Wheeling Jesuit University anointed the hands of its 2010 Doctor of Physical Therapy graduates as it celebrated the newest group of professional physical therapists on Friday, Aug. 27.

. . . .

The Rev. Donald Serva, S.J. opened the formal pinning and anointing ceremony with a prayer at the ceremony, held in Troy Theater. Interim WJU President Sister Frances Marie Thrailkill, OSU, was an honored guest at the ceremony, along with faculty, friends, family and WJU’s Interim Director of Physical Therapy Mark Drnach. Serva performed the anointing.

Anointing?  Once very special in Catholic circles, for priests and bishops, not to mention as a sacrament, now for physical therapists at graduation?  Not bizarre?
 
For PT’s it’s a, shall we say, consecrated phrase.  But wouldn’t a Catholic institution be somewhat reluctant to make a graduation ceremony out of it?
 
Later, Reader D:
I agree, it is somehow trivializing or minimizing the sacred ceremony of anointing . . . . This is the Improv Church. Goes along with the concept of priesthood of the laity. At a certain point, the symbolism becomes confusion and laity will think there is no such thing as the Order of Melchisadech, and Father Ted or Joe or Tim may agree with them.
Rather, a misunderstood priesthood of laity?

Father Owino, bishops, college officials

Rev. Felix Owino, the Nigerian priest who most recently taught at Wheeling Jesuit University, has his hearing Sept. 1 [see comment below] in Virginia on charges of molesting an underage girl, and in three other states, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is turning the heat on bishops and college administrators to pursue other allegations about him.

SNAP wants Manchester Bishop John McCormack, Wheeling Bishop Michael Bransfield, Allentown Bishop John Barres, Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik, and officials at all three colleges [where Owino taught] (Wheeling Jesuit, Magdalen, and Duquesne) to disclose any allegations of sexual abuse against Owino in their dioceses or schools and seek out others who may have seen or suspected his misdeeds.

The group is also urging any current and former students and employees at the colleges to ask their colleagues about Owino. They believe that anyone who has seen, suspected or suffered Owino’s misconduct should “come forward, call police, protect others and start healing.”

In support of their position, SNAP leaders cite other cases:

The group is especially prodding the officials at Magdalen College [in Warner, NH] to ‘come clean’ about any allegation of abuse against Owino while he worked there.

“In repeated phone conversations and e mails, two credible New Hampshire residents have told us about three instances in which Owino engaged in alleged sexual misconduct with adults,” said Judy Jones, SNAP’s associate Midwest director. “We understand that the college staff already knows about these instances but to be safe, we’re writing them later today and sharing with them what we’ve heard.”

In the Pittsburgh diocese, Owino worked at Duquesne University and St. Bede’s parish off and on between 1997 and 2005.

Most recently, he worked at Wheeling Jesuit College in Wheeling. He also was pastor at St. Paul’s church in Weirton, WV.