Tag: Catholic Church
Considerations on the Great Reset and the New World Order
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Via Inside The Vatican
No one will be part of the New World Order
unless he carries out an act of worship to Lucifer.
No one will enter the New Age unless he receives Luciferian initiation.
—David Spangler, Director of the United Nations Planetary Initiative Project (Reflections on The Christ, Findhorn, 1978)
For more than a year and a half we have been helplessly witnessing the succession of incongruent events to which most of us are unable to give a plausible justification.
The pandemic emergency has made particularly evident the contradictions and illogicalities of measures nominally intended to limit contagion – lockdowns, curfews, closures of commercial activities, limitations of public services and classes, suspension of citizens’ rights – but which are disavowed daily by conflicting voices, by clear evidence of ineffectiveness, by contradictions on the part of the same health authorities.
There is no need to list the measures that almost all the governments of the world have taken without achieving the promised results.
Continue reading “Considerations on the Great Reset and the New World Order”
INTO THE LIARS DEN
The Coming New Schism within the Catholic Church?
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Just when you though the chaos of the 2016 Elections in the States was unusual, we are witnessing the fragmentation of society at every level and around the globe. There is a trend toward the end of one of these Private Waves and that is the polarization of groups. Yes Democrats and Republicans always fought on Capitol Hill, but the people accepted the election and moved on. This time, there are funds being raised and Obama has refused to leave Washington waging war against Trump and Jarrett is his commander and chief. Europe is polarized between left and right and the French system has completely collapsed so it has become to impossible to forecast a party since they have disintegrated into a free-for-all.
Continue reading “The Coming New Schism within the Catholic Church?”
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” – H.L. Mencken
“The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.”– Andrew Carnegie
I’m 53 years old. The older I get the less sure I am about things I was sure about when I was 25 years old. I believed stocks for the long run was an unquestioned truth. I believed our economy was based on free market capitalism. I believed stock prices were based upon profits and cash flows. I believed a home was a place to live – not an investment. I believed the Catholic Church was run by good men doing good things. I believed journalists and the media were watchdogs working on behalf of the public. I believed our military was protecting our interests. I believed politicians legislated on behalf of the people. I believed the main purpose of bankers was to loan money to businesses and consumers in order to support economic growth. Boy, was I dumbass.
My skeptical nature, reliance on data I’ve personally vetted, and judging our leaders based on what they have done versus what they say, has allowed me to escape the Matrix. I wasn’t truly awakened until I watched Bush, Cheney, Powell, the rest of the neo-con prevaricators and fake news mainstream media utilize propaganda to railroad Americans into a $6 trillion unnecessary war, resulting in 36,000 American casualties, the destruction of a country and the creation of thousands of new Muslim terrorists.
The End of the High Church
Guest Post by The Zman
Years ago, I had cause to be at the Episcopal cathedral in Albany for a mass. A friend was being ordained into the church as a priest, so I went up to celebrate the occasion with his family. I noted the subtle beauty of the church, particularly inside. It just oozed tradition, which is quite imposing in the spiritual setting. The outside of the building was rather plain, which is what made the inside impressive. I walked in expecting a utilitarian facility and instead I walked into a beautiful cathedral with arches and stained glass.
The mass was not well attended, despite the fact there were half a dozen people being minted as priests that day. My guess, at the time, was that most of the people were relatives of the condemned. Talking a bit with some people after the mass, I was told that attendance at Episcopal services in the area was down to a sprinkling and most of the regulars were old people. If what I saw in Albany is typical for the church as a whole, I’d bet they are finished in a generation at best. A church without worshipers is a building.
Doing God’s Work – San Francisco Church Sprays Homeless People with Water to Keep Them Away
Guest Post by
I’ve covered the plight of the homeless in America in recent years as another manifestation of the erosion of decency, empathy, morality and kindness throughout much of our culture. As a society, we’ve become increasingly obsessed with youth, materialism, power and short-termism, tossing aside wisdom, real joy, soulfulness and connectivity. One of the symptoms of this unfortunate transformation can been seen in how we treat the least fortunate and most vulnerable around us, particularly the homeless (see: In 33 U.S. Cities, Feeding the Homeless Has Been Criminalized).
Of all the institutions you’d hope to take a different stance toward the weak and struggling, places of worship would be at the top of the list. Not so for Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, which admittedly sprays sleeping homeless people with water in order to keep them away.
From CBS:
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — KCBS has learned that Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways.
The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night.
The shower ran for about 75 seconds, every 30 to 60 minutes while we were there, starting before sunset, simultaneously in all four doorways. KCBS witnessed it soak homeless people, and their belongings.
MORALLY BANKRUPT
This is why I continue to no longer support the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. I will never give them another dime of my money. The Catholic Church is the richest entity on the planet. They own more real estate than any other organization in the world. They own works of art worth billions. The hierarchy of the church knew for decades about the sexual abuse of children at the hands of pedophile priests. They covered it up. They allowed priests to be moved to other parishes and continue their deviant behavior. They allowed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent children to be destroyed. They have used the statute of limitations to avoid prosecution. They have paid off families, while still keeping priests protected. The cover-ups continue. The Philadelphia Cardinal used church funds to pay the bail for a convicted priest a few weeks ago. That priest was responsible for re-assigning known pedophiles to other parishes. The Cardinal is also selling off all the Catholic owned nursing homes to raise cash for lawsuits. He is disgusting human being.
Parishes across the country are now using bankruptcy laws to avoid their financial responsibility for the actions of their Cardinals, Bishops and priests. I find it revolting and evil. The Catholic Church has the money to pay for their sins. But the hierarchy of the church wants to retain their wealth, exert power and control over their flock. The new pope has shown promise, but until he purges the Catholic church of all these evil Cardinals, Bishops, and priests, I will not be part of their church.
Catholic Diocese Of Stockton Files Bankruptcy; Priest Sexual-Abuse Scandal Blamed
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/15/2014 10:50 -0500
Between lack of cash flows, insurmountable liabilities, an untenable pension funding, even insider fraud, we thought we had seen all the various reasons for filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. And then along came the Catholic Diocese of Stockton which announced that it would join its host city and seek bankruptcy protection “in the wake of the church’s sexual-abuse scandal.” As WSJ reported, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire said in a news release Monday that the diocese would seek bankruptcy protection Wednesday, explaining that reorganization was the only option for dealing with mounting legal costs related to abuse by priests. The bishop said the diocese has spent $14 million in legal settlements and judgments over the past 20 years dealing with abuse allegations, and doesn’t have funds available to settle pending lawsuits or address future allegations. The punchline: “Very simply, we are in this situation because of those priests in our diocese who perpetrated grave, evil acts of child sexual abuse.”
In the Stockton diocesan bankruptcy, the parties will likely agree on a figure that the diocese would pay, in addition to potentially pulling in funds from insurers. However, the diocese says it holds “relatively little property and assets.” Other holdings, including schools, parishes and several parcels of land, are incorporated separately.
And so the Stockton Catholics became the 10th US Diocese after Milwaukee; San Diego; Spokane, Wash.; Davenport, Iowa; Portland, Ore.; Tucson, Ariz.; Fairbanks, Alaska; Wilmington, Del.; and Gallup, N.M. to file bankruptcy. In addition, the Christian Brothers Institute, which operates Catholic schools and orphanages, also filed because of sexual abuse liabilities.
The Chapter 11 filing would halt pending litigation against the diocese and likely would ultimately allow it to discharge liabilities stemming from sexual-abuse allegations by setting up a trust to compensate victims. The diocese said it hopes to arrive at a resolution with victims and insurers through the process.
Joelle Casteix, western regional director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called the bankruptcy “problematic on a lot of different levels,” noting that it would let the diocese avoid future civil cases.
However, while the local catholics’ financial woes may be put on temporary hold, their civil troubles are only starting:
Separately, a grand jury Monday indicted a former priest with the diocese, Michael Eugene Kelly, and a warrant for his arrest has been issued. Calaveras County authorities are seeking Mr. Kelly’s extradition from Ireland to face charges of three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child, and one count of oral copulation with a child. Mr. Kelly faces 14 years in prison if convicted.
Not surprisingly, the Catholic church which itself is embroiled in numerous financial scandals recently, was unable to come to the Diocese’s rescue even though it has already paid out an estimated $2.2 billion to cover settlements, therapy for victims, support for offenders, attorney fees and other costs, according to a report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
And with this filing, we are fairly confident we have seen every possible bankruptcy filing reason.
IS THERE NO SHAME?
WITH THE SANDUSKY TRIAL UNDERWAY I THOUGHT IT WAS WORTH REPOSTING THIS ARTICLE FROM 7 MONTHS AGO. NOTHING HAS CHANGED MY CONCLUSIONS.
“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth. ” ― William Faulkner
I wish I could believe William Faulkner’s advice was possible in the world we live in today. But sadly, I am losing hope in our civilization. We seem to have entered a death spiral with little likelihood of pulling out. Our society has become so degraded and our populace so apathetic and willfully ignorant, that I think we are too far gone to recover. Honesty, truth and compassion have been soundly defeated by injustice, lying and greed. Our technologically advanced society has become a stinking cesspool, devoid of humanity, common sense and morality. Those with the power and wealth who control our country do not concern themselves with quaint concepts like good and evil, right and wrong, or moral and immoral. Sociopaths see no obligation to society, humanity, or posterity. They only care about themselves, their wealth, their status, their reputation, and their control of others. They are incapable of feeling shame or remorse. They blindly march forward towards their own and society’s self-destruction.
Joe Paterno was fired by the Penn State Board of Trustees on Wednesday night as head football coach of Penn State. It was the first good decision that has been made in the last two decades by the leaders of Penn State. The man was told that his Defensive coordinator was seen in the locker room shower raping a 10 year old boy in 2002. He did not call the police and report this crime. He and the other top officials at Penn State brushed this crime under the rug, allowing at least seven more young boys to be raped by this monster. The 28 year old graduate assistant not only did nothing to stop the crime he witnessed, but he accepted a position as an assistant coach, knowing that Paterno and the Athletic Director never did anything to hold Sandusky accountable for his crime. Sandusky was still on campus working out as of last week. The actions of all the players in this disgusting example of how far our society has degenerated are enough to make someone lose all hope for humanity:
- Jerry Sandusky creates a charitable organization so he can gain access to little boys. Multiple incidents are witnessed on campus from 1994 through 2002. A mother reports Sandusky to the Penn State police in 1998 and nothing is done by the men in the Administration. The investigation is dropped, but Tim Curley forces Sandusky to retire in 1999. It is clear that everyone in the top echelon of Penn State knew Sandusky was a deviant pedophile. But letting it become public would have been a black mark on the football program and could have reduced the huge profits generated by Paterno’s kingdom.
- After his forced retirement he is still given access to the campus and locker room facilities. He is caught having anal sex with a 10 year old boy in the locker room shower by a 28 year old man, who chooses not to intervene and save the boy. Joe Paterno does the absolute minimum when informed of this horrific crime. After this crime is covered up by all the key men running the show at Penn State, it just becomes business as usual for Joe and his cronies.
- Sandusky continues to rape little boys for the next eight years because of the cowardice and complete lack of morality exhibited by the men in high places at Penn State.
- With the issuance of the grand jury report last week, the psychotic nature of these men was on display for the world to witness. In a stunning display of arrogance and hubris, Paterno and the President of Penn State announced their full support for the Athletic Director and VP of Finance who were arrested. These men did not think they did anything wrong. They clung to the fact that they adhered to the laws created by other men. In a despicable display, Joe Paterno led a cheer at a pep rally in front of his house with his arms raised in victory. At least eight boys had their lives ruined and Joe Paterno leads a cheer.
- The Board of Trustees summoned the courage to fire Paterno and the President last night. In another display that makes me wonder about the future of our country, thousands of students rioted in support of Joe Paterno, breaking windows, turning over news vans, and starting fires. Are these young people incapable of critical thinking and are just driven by emotion and mindless rage? Can’t they distinguish between facts and lies? Do they care more about football than innocent children being raped?
I have been blind with rage for the last week as I’ve watched the powerful men of Penn State attempt to retain their power and reputations at the expense of truth, honesty, and accepting responsibility for their actions and willful inaction. As I’ve watched this tragedy unfold I was struck by the thought process of rich men in positions of power. They have huge egos and believe they are above the law. They think so highly of themselves they believe they can make the rules and ignore the laws which the little people must follow. They have no moral compass whatsoever. They cannot be shamed. The most despicable behavior by prominent men has been willfully overlooked because these men generate $50 million of profit per year for the university. Their sociopathic desire to protect their reputations and power has led to a scandal of such epic proportions that it will haunt Penn State forever and has permanently damaged the institution.
This is an institutional cancer that eats away at the fabric of our society. It is not isolated to Penn State. It is a societal sickness that threatens to overwhelm every facet of our lives. There is a constant thread that runs through every incident that comes to light. In 99% of the cases it is men protecting men. Money and greed always trump morality and truth. The exact circumstances can be observed in the priest abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in the last five years. Pedophile priests have existed within the Catholic Church for decades. The Penn State situation shows that pedophiles exist everywhere in our society. The bottom line is that they are sick men and need to be locked up and kept away from little boys. There is no more heinous criminal act than a grown man raping a little boy. Anyone who does this is pure evil and must be punished.
The Catholic Church’s wealth is almost beyond measurement. There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. The pope is one of the most powerful men on earth. Cardinals and bishops throughout the world wield tremendous influence over their flocks. As young Catholic boys you are taught that priests represent Jesus Christ on earth. They are treated with reverence and fear by little Catholic boys. Little Catholic boys would never question the motives of a priest. They are taught to obey, because a priest is the same as Jesus Christ. These beliefs allowed pedophile priests to prey on thousands of little boys around the world for decades with little or no backlash. Those crimes were horrific enough by themselves, but the actions of the bishops, cardinals and even the popes who have known about these crimes make it ten times worse. Again, powerful men will ignore rules, regulations, laws and simple human decency in order to protect their wealth, power, and reputations. Cardinals and bishops knew that priests were raping little boys and their solution was to transfer them to another parish where they could find fresh meat. The thought never entered their minds to turn these perverts in to the police. Their only concern was how a scandal would impact their beloved institution. Little boys were sacrificed at the altar of the Catholic Church by evil men.
The cover-up continues to this day. The Catholic Church uses the statute of limitations as their defense against the continuous stream of cases that continue to mount. They secretly pay out hundreds of millions to the victims as long as they promise to keep quiet. They use bankruptcy laws to close down parishes and avoid paying civil penalties for the crimes committed by its hierarchy. They hire public relations firms to create false and misleading stories designed to obscure the truth about the biggest criminal conspiracy in history. The powerful sociopathic men who were supposed to represent Christian teachings have destroyed the lives of thousands of boys in order to protect their institution. The end result is that in addition to the thousands of lives destroyed by the pedophile priests, hundreds of thousands of Catholics have lost faith in the leadership and have abandoned the church. The wealth these sociopaths attempted to protect has been eroded as donations have dried up and lawsuit payouts have mounted.
Not only have our educational and religious institutions failed us, but our financial and political institutions have spectacularly self-destructed over the last decade. Shockingly, these institutions have been run predominantly by men. At one time banks were stodgy institutions that abhorred risk and methodically made profits year after year by lending to people and businesses capable of paying them back. Investment firms were partnerships. If any one partner was to take an excessive risk, they could wipe out the personal wealth of the other partners. Therefore, they never took excessive risks or used excessive leverage. Their boring business model generated modest profits year after year. The officers of banks and investment houses were well compensated, but not excessively so. The leaders of these firms were children of the Great Depression. They understood bad times.
During the 1990’s they were displaced by a new generation of leaders. This has not turned out well for our country. These psychopathic CEOs were given the green light by their fellow psychopaths in Congress and at the Federal Reserve to loot and pillage to their heart’s delight. This conspiracy of thieves broke down the barriers between traditional banking and gambling using excessive leverage. They captured the regulatory agencies that were supposed to police them and leveraged their bets 30 to 1. They created fraudulent mortgage instruments designed to lure the stupid and crooked. They marketed debt to anyone with a breath and ability to scratch an X on a piece of paper. They designed derivatives so complex that even their own Harvard MBAs couldn’t figure out how they worked. They bribed rating agencies into stamping a AAA credit rating on crap so toxic that they joked about the idiots they were selling it to. They shorted the very same derivatives they were selling to their clients. These psychopaths raked in hundreds of billions in fees, salaries and bonuses, while detonating a nuclear bomb on the worldwide financial system.
When their bets came up craps, they had the gall to hold the American people hostage for trillions in bailouts. Their fellow psychopaths in Congress gladly forked over the money. Rather than mend their ways, these evil men have returned to their excessive risk taking and continue to pay themselves billions in compensation, while the American middle class is smothered to death under mountains of debt. These evil Wall Street geniuses have shown no remorse as seven million people have lost their jobs and millions more have lost their homes due to the greed and avarice displayed on an epic scale.
Wall Street bankers exhibit the epitome of psychopathic behavior, showing lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others. Though lacking empathy and emotional depth, they often manage to pass themselves off as average individuals by feigning emotions. These Wall Street bankers will never willingly accept responsibility for their actions. They continue to use their wealth and power to control the politicians in Washington DC and the misinformation propagated by the corporate media they control. They own and control the Federal Reserve and will print money until the whole system collapses in a spectacular implosion that destroys our financial system. They only care about their own wealth, influence and status. They have no shame.
When I consider all that is wrong in our society, I become despondent, angry and despairing for the future of our country. It seems that everyone in positions of power across the spectrum of education, religion, finance, and politics are psychopaths, bent upon self-destruction no matter the cost to society or unborn generations. Our nation has degenerated into an egocentric, self-loathing, vain, shallow excuse for a civilization. There is anger flaring up, but it is just as likely to be misdirected and misinformed. The lack of critical thinking skills and the overwhelming effects of media propaganda has so degraded the intelligence of the populace that when the system breaks down in the next few years, the masses will clamor for a savior rather than seeking truthful answers and willingly making the sacrifices required to get our nation back on track. This country will get what it deserves – a despotic ruler and a brutish civilization governed on the basest of principles. This is what happens when a society rewards lying and greed over honesty and compassion. There are consequences to actions and inactions alike. We’ve made our choice.
LOSING MY RELIGION
The Catholic Church is a corrupt institution that has allowed evil to flourish within its heirarchy. Nothing has changed. The evil men must be thrown in jail. Those who stand up for the Cardinals and Bishops who have covered up this evil are just as guilty. Power corrupts whether it be in government, finance or religious institutions.
http://youtu.be/if-UzXIQ5vw
Nun Calls Out Monsignor Lynn
A nun who was sexually abused as a minor by a predator priest called out Monsignor William J. Lynn Thursday from her perch on the witness stand.
It was a dramatic confrontation as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial wrapped up its seventh week of testimony. Lynn is on trial for allegedly conspiring to endanger the welfare of children by allowing abusive priests to continue in ministry
All along, the defense mantra has been that the monsignor was just a cog in the wheel down at archdiocese headquarters on 222 N. 17th St., and that the ultimate villain in the case was the guy who wielded the ultimate power in the archdiocese, the conveniently dead Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua.
But the nun on the witness stand refused to play along.
It started when Thomas Bergstrom, a defense lawyer for Msgr. Lynn, tried to get the nun on cross-examination to agree that Msgr. Lynn did not have the power to remove a pastor who had sexually abused her and at least 10 other young women.
“He [Lynn] had the power to suggest it,” she said, referring to the removal of the pastor. And then on redirect, when the prosecutor asked her about the power Lynn had as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy, the nun said that Lynn had the simple power of just saying no.
Instead of going along with the power structure, the nun said, “You can also say, I cannot do this.”
It was a simple, but powerful declaration coming from a nun who herself was an administrator down at archdiocese HQ, and also as a young woman, a victim of sex abuse from a pervert priest.
The nun, who did not want to be identified, wasn’t finished.
“I would think that his [Lynn’s] recommendation would be heard,”she told Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington. And if it wasn’t, Lynn could have told the cardinal, “I cannot go on; if it isn’t done that way, I can quit.”
The nun’s firm but understated conviction about the need to simply do the right thing sent a ripple of excitement through courtroom spectators, which included victims of sex abuse, and activists hoping for the impossible, reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It also raised an age-old question, namely why do the women in the Catholic church usually have more balls than the men?
Before she called out the monsignor, the nun told her story about how she had been abused by the notorious Father Nicholas V. Cudemo, a serial rapist who used mind control and guilt to dominate his victims.
The nun, dubbed “Sister Irene” in the 2005 grand jury report, was Father Cudemo’s second cousin. The priest also abused the nun’s sister, and a younger cousin, in addition to at least eight other young women.
The witness was 15 years old when Father Cudemo took her to baseball and basketball games at Archbishop Kennedy High School, where the priest was a teacher. While driving her home one night, Cudemo pulled over, and started kissing her passionately. “He got on top of me,” the nun testified. “His hands were literally all over me.”
The witness told the jury that she had dated boys before, but had never experienced such “intense passion or strength.”
Then, when she was 16, it happened again. Father Cudemo drove her home, this time with a carload of other kids. While driving, he took her hand and “placed it on his penis strongly,” she said, and then he just held her hand there.
“I just went numb,” she said. Father Cudemo would call up the victim and tell her she was “his favorite cousin,” and he would explain his behavior by saying, “cousins have these kinds of relationships.”
In 1991, Sister Irene found out that Father Cudemo had sexually abused her younger cousin, identified in the grand jury report as Ruth. The abuse of Ruth began at 10, and included an abortion at 11. Sister Irene was shattered by the news.
“I really felt for the first time in my life I was confronting evil,” she told the jury. So the nun, her sister, and her cousin Ruth went to the archdiocese on Sept. 25, 1991, to report the abuse. They told Msgr. James E. Molloy, vicar for administration, and his assistant, Msgr. Lynn, that they wanted Father Cudemo removed from his post as pastor of St. Callistus Church.
Molloy told the victims, “It’s not that easy to remove a pastor at this time,” the nun told the jury. When the victims suggested the archdiocese notify parishioners at St. Callistus about what the priest had done to his victims, they were told it would be “defamation of character” and “calumny.”
EVIL
“Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. From its ether of manifestation that is garlanded in perpetual darkness, it not only influences and seeks the ruination and destruction of everything that resides in our universe, but rushes to embrace its own oblivion as well.
To accomplish this, however, it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain. For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate. This then becomes the condition of evil’s existence: the baneful ideologies of those who wantonly chose to ignore the needs and rights of others, inducing oppression, fear, pain, and even death throughout the cosmos. And by these means, evil seeks to supplant the balance of the universe with its perverse nature.
And once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself. And within that terrible instant of unimaginable exploding quantum fury, it will burn brighter than a trillion galaxies to herald its moment of ultimate triumph. But a moment is all that it shall be. And a micro-second later when the last amber burns and flickers out to the demise of dissolving ash, evil will leave its legacy of a totally devoid universe as its everlasting monument to eternal death.”
― Adam Turquine – from sequel to Beyond Mars Crimson Fleet
PATERNO MUST GO TO JAIL
This is very simple. Anyone who has read this blog for the last couple years knows how I feel about the Catholic Church and their cover-up of priests fucking little boys. My unequivical position has been and continues to be that anyone within the Catholic Church heirarchy, up to and including the Pope, that knew about children being molested and fucked by predator priests and did not report it to the police is as guilty as the predator and should spend the rest of their lives in the general population of a prison.
Joe Paterno and the President of Penn State University were told that Sandusky molested a young boy in the showers of their lockeroom, 9 years ago. They did not report it to the police. Sandusky then went on to molest and fuck many young boys over the following years. Paterno & the President of Penn State are as guilty as Sandusky and should go to jail. They knowingly chose to protect the “reputation” of Penn State at the expense of innocent children whose lives have been ruined by this monster. They made the wrong fucking choice and they deserve to go to jail.
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND HERE!!!!!
Powerful football coaches and powerful cardinals and bishops have done the exact same thing. They have protected their power and reputations by allowing innocent boys to have their lives ruined. They deserve to burn in the deepest depths of hell.
NATION: Paterno’s illustrious career faces tarnished end
Published: Tuesday, November 08, 2011
By Dan K. Thomasson
[email protected]
Few things are quite as pathetic as a revered hero who stays around too long and suddenly becomes embroiled in a scandal that threatens to undo the saintly image most everyone expected he would take to his grave.
But that is exactly what octogenarian Joe Paterno faces only a few short weeks after becoming the coach with the most victories in college football history.
It turns out that the longtime mastermind of the Pennsylvania State University’s elite gridiron program reportedly knew for nine years or so but did nothing about the degrading sexual activities of one of his most trusted assistants, his former defensive coordinator who was arrested over the weekend on charges of abusing eight boys over 15 years. Jerry Sandusky had been running a foundation to help needy children.
What in the world was Paterno thinking?
I must confess here that I never have been a fan of his. I thought among other things that he didn’t have the grace to give the proper credit for his team’s successes to those who for most of the last years actually have been running things.
But my real antipathy toward him stems from an incident involving my youngest son, who as a budding player was invited to Paterno’s elite summer camp and came back angry and dismayed to report being snubbed when he and other attendees approached the great man to say hello.
If the Pennsylvania Aattorney General’s report can be believed, and there is no reason not to, Paterno was informed in 2002 by a graduate assistant who said he saw the defensive leader, Sandusky, abusing a 10-year-old boy in the locker room.
Paterno informed the athletic director but no one told the proper authorities. It seems obvious the school was more concerned about the potential damage to its program than the welfare of the youngsters. They reportedly just told him not to bring anymore kids around the football program.
That callous disregard can be expected to cost the university big time. Two of the officials, the vice president for finance and the athletic director, allegedly have been charged with perjury and failing to report a crime. Meanwhile, the university’s president foolishly issued a statement supporting the two officials.
Paterno has not been charged, but the impact of this is nearly as bad for him as if he had been, considering the depravity of the situation and his failure to personally take the case to law enforcement officials.
I couldn’t help but compare this to a widely reported case involving a 26-year-old man convicted in Florida the other day of having pornographic images of children on his computer. It was his first arrest, he had no record of any kind, and there was no evidence that he had ever been accused of molesting any one, child or adult. He was given life imprisonment without parole solely on the basis of having downloading the images.
He had turned down an offer to plead guilty in exchange for a 20-year term. So the prosecutor filed more serious charges. His sentence was exactly the same as is expected for a murderer recently convicted in an unbelievably brutal slaying of a yoga-store employee here.
If he had abused or molested a child, the young man would have been given a much lighter sentence. The judge’s startling ruling, based on the argument that anyone downloading these images is guilty of furthering the depraved child porn industry, is being appealed.
In the Penn State case, Sandusky faces a long time in prison if convicted. It may be a life sentence, given that he is 67. He is out on $100,000 bond. I would have made it $1 million.
But the troubling question remains as to the responsibility, morally and legally, of those who aided and abetted his despicable actions by remaining silent.
No mitigating explanation of any kind would be acceptable from any of them. There might be a tendency to excuse Paterno because of his age. But if his mental faculties are good enough to run a major college football program, they’re good enough to know right from wrong.
How sad for the coach who has stayed around too long.
Email Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at [email protected].
PATHOLOGY OF CATHOLIC CHURCH
The coverup of priest sexual abuse continues from the Vatican down. Truly disgusting. Men protecting their wealth and power.
WWJD
Cloyne facts expose the pathology of the church
OPINION: Unless the Catholic hierarchy examines its obsession with power it cannot reform itself
MUCH OF the Cloyne report brought no surprises to the people of Ireland and those of us in other countries who had anticipated its publication. In many ways it was a continuation of the revelations that came with the three commission reports that preceded it.
The report was met with the expected “heartfelt” expressions of regret, apology and even shock by officials of the Catholic Church, followed by promises of reform and the promulgation of yet more procedures, policies and boards. By now the Irish people, however, are beyond suspicion and cynicism. They have broken through another layer of the protective clerical veneer and have named the responses for what they are: a mendacious smokescreen.
It is no consolation to the Irish people but they are certainly not alone. This debacle in the Diocese of Cloyne is reflected in the recent publication of the report of the grand jury in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Five years after a first jury exposed widespread cover-up and shameful treatment of victims, followed by the usual promises to clean up the mess, a second grand jury found that the expressions of regret and promises of reform were a deceptive cover for an intentional lack of commitment to bring justice to victims and protect children.
Cardinal Seán Brady said that “grave errors of judgment were made and serious failures of leadership occurred”. Bishop John Magee admitted that the diocese “did not fully implement the procedures set out in church protocols”. What happened in Cloyne and in Ferns, Dublin, and the institutions cannot be dignified as “grave errors of judgment” or incomplete implementation of church protocols. The systemic sacrifice of the emotional, psychological and spiritual lives of innocent children for the sake of the image and power of the hierarchy was no error.
The commission of investigation into abuse in the Cloyne diocese learned that the destructive response to the reports of sexual abuse was not accidental or isolated but embedded in the fabric of the clerical culture. The members of all four commissions are to be highly commended for their courage in rising above the long-standing tradition of unquestioned deference to the hierarchy to reveal in detail the disgraceful and infuriating systemic disregard of the innocent children.
The three preceding reports were indeed shocking and scandalous. But the report carries the revelations even further in three important ways: naming the Vatican as an integral part of the problem; exposing the cynical use the concept of “pastoral care” as an excuse for obstructing justice; and acknowledging that the church cannot be trusted faithfully to comply with its internal regulations, much less the demands of the civil law.
When the reality of widespread sexual violation of the young by clergy was first exposed in the US in 1985, Pope John Paul II and the Vatican remained mute for six years. When questioned, Vatican spokesmen distanced not only themselves but the rest of the world by asserting it was an “American problem”. In his first public statement on June 11th, 1993, the pope tried to shift the blame to the secular media, whom he accused of “sensationalising” evil. He concluded his letter with: “Yes dear brothers, America needs much prayer lest it lose its soul.”
It was not long before tragic events in Newfoundland, Austria and Ireland clearly dislodged the papal efforts at denial. The recognition of widespread sexual molestation by clerics in several continental European countries, in South America and most recently in the Far East, have confirmed this is a worldwide problem not only of sexual violation by dysfunctional clerics but, even worse, a problem of intentionally self-serving and destructive responses by the bishops.
THE DIRECT ROLE of the Vatican in enabling and even directing the cover-up, stonewalling and obstruction of justice has been suspected for years. The report made a vitally important breakthrough by describing in concrete detail the essential role the Vatican played in the disgrace of the diocese.
The report points to two serious deficiencies in the Vatican response. The first is the papal nuncio’s refusal to co-operate with the commission during the Dublin and Cloyne investigations, as well as his lukewarm response to the horrific contents of the report. The second and far more treacherous aspect is the direct attempt to sabotage the Irish bishops’ 1996 policy document Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response .
The commission found this document contained a “detailed and easy to implement set of procedures”. Yet, before it could adequately be put into practice, the papal nuncio, Archbishop Luciano Storero, sent the Irish bishops a letter passing on the concerns of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy. The letter clearly reflected the reactionary attitude of Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, who was prefect at the time. He erroneously labelled the policy “merely a study document”.
This most outrageous and at the same time erroneous sentence gave the Irish bishops licence to ignore their own procedures but also the civil law.
The Vatican response has been the defence of the hierarchy and the scandalous lack of concern for the victims. There are the expected expressions of regret, sorrow and promise of prayers which serve only to confuse and even anger the victims and are a very thin cover for the consistent pattern of self-serving support and protection of the bishops.
The clerical culture that cannot comprehend the depth of evil and destruction it has enabled has failed to internalise the reality that in this 21st century sacrificing the welfare of innocent children to maintain the image and power of an ecclesiastical aristocracy is a disgrace that will be the catalyst for an inevitable and profound change in the nature of the institutional church.
The rapid disintegration of the absolute control of the Irish hierarchy over Irish society is the result not of the lack of faith of the Irish people, as some in ecclesiastical leadership would like to believe, but in the lack of fidelity of the leadership to the people whom they have sworn to serve.
Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, Bishop Magee’s point man, openly opposed the framework document because it did not provide an adequate pastoral response. This masks a fundamental misunderstanding and misapplication of an authentic expression of pastoral care which is not an excuse for minimising the fact sexual violation of a minor is a serious crime in both canon and civil law.
WORSE STILL WAS the use of pastoral care as a justification for protecting the accused priests at the expense of justice for the victims. The report saw the misuse of the pastoral concept as a “scheme whereby counselling was provided to the complainant in a manner which was hoped would not attract any legal liability to the diocese”.
There is no evidence of effective pastoral care in the past or even today, only crisis management. There is no evidence from any of the four reports that the overriding concern of the hierarchy and clergy has been the physical, emotional and spiritual welfare of the victims. What would true pastoral care have looked like? Upon receipt of a report of the sexual molestation of a child or adult, the bishop’s first (and often only) concern would not be the maintenance of secrecy and protection of the priest. Rather, he would immediately seek out the victim and the victim’s family to make clear to them that in their hour of pain, confusion and humiliation at the hands of a cleric, they and not the cleric are the most important people in the diocese and indeed in the church.
The third breakthrough is the realisation that any structures or policies created by the church depend on the commitment of the bishops and the support of the priests. In Cloyne and elsewhere the bishops made promises, created policies and appointed boards and then proceeded systematically to subvert their rules and those of society.
Marie Collins, in her recent interview on RTÉ’s Prime Time , spoke the truth when she said that the promises and policies that have streamed from the bishops mean nothing. The report clearly reflects this sad reality: “It seems to the Commission that continuing external scrutiny is required.” Outside monitoring with serious consequences for neglect, and mandatory reporting by all clergy with possible jail time as a consequence for failure, are necessary responses.
The commission has probed deeply into the dysfunctional clerical culture of the Cloyne diocese. With this report, the threshold to a new level of awareness has been reached. The findings and conclusions, as probing and shocking as they may be, are not enough. What we have seen exposed in all four reports but most shockingly in the Cloyne document is the toxic nature of the clerical culture at the heart of the institutional church.
We must demand answers to even more radical questions. What is it about this culture that justifies living in an alternate reality that places image and clerical security far above the welfare of innocent children? Why does the “people of God”, as Vatican II described the church, need to function like a monarchy with an attendant clerical aristocracy?
Why the narcissistic obsession with power, secrecy and control? Until the bishops and priests look deeply into this culture and acknowledge its pathology, the outrageous behaviour exposed in the report will be part of a shameful history.
Fr Thomas Patrick Doyle OP, a US Dominican priest with a doctorate in canon law, is a renowned and outspoken advocate for church abuse victims.
IT WAS JUST A TRAINING ISSUE
Thank God the Conference of US Catholic Bishops was able to clear up the priest abuse issue. It was the fault of Woodstock and poor training. I guess the thousands of predator priests were out sick at the Seminary on the day they taught them to not stick their dicks into the mouths of 10 year old boys. Below is a link to the latest Catholic Heirarchy coverup. They can keep writing reports to rationalize and try to explain the indefensible. Until Bishops and Cardinals are taken away in handcuffs, I will not believe a word these corrupt evil men spew out to the public.
http://www.usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context.shtml
It takes a comedian to make this issue as clear as can be. The Catholic Church is in denial and is still in coverup mode. I hope they are losing billions in contributions. They deserve to pay dearly for their evil acts.
“Do: Give sermons, counsel your flock, preach the good word. Don’t: Molest anyone… ever!” –Stephen Colbert
Flawed analysis in priest report
The idea that individuals are responsible before God for their sins and before the law for their crimes is nearly universal.
But a report released last week that explores the context and causes of child sexual abuse by priests in this country at times seems to downplay personal responsibility and lays the blame on the permissive society of the 1960s and 1970s. That’s a shame, and it calls for a firm and quick response from the church itself.
The report, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was undercut by one of its main conclusions: namely, that the hippies of the ’60s and the libertines of the ’70s were in some ways responsible for some priests’ reprehensible actions.
Any attempt to deflect responsibility away from those who actually perpetrated the abuse (and those in the church hierarchy who aided and abetted it) is absolutely antithetical to the principle of individual responsibility, enshrined in both American jurisprudence and Christian theology.
Elsewhere in the report, the authors use the word “vulnerability” in describing priests who committed the crimes.
The use of that word is bitterly ironic as applied to these priests. It was they who found and abused their young, truly vulnerable victims. And priests are called to rise above sin, not descend to its most disturbing fringe.
The report also makes a distinction between those priests who preyed on teenagers and those who abused prepubescent children. While that may matter to the psychiatrists who diagnosed and treated them, it is of no comfort to a 14-year-old abuse victim that his attacker was not, technically, a pedophile, but some other classification of deviant.
In explaining the downward trend of such incidents since the mid-1980s, the report points to the victims’ advocates groups calling for justice and tougher responses to abuse by bishops.
But for far too long, Catholic leaders looked the other way. Many people, male and female, gay and straight, came of age in the decades marked by changing mores. However, very few of them ever decided, even at their most promiscuous, to sexually abuse a minor. Too many priests did. And they got away with it for far too long.
The value of this study is in its painstaking and quantitive analysis of the scandal. Unfortunately, some of its conclusions are lacking the rigor of its statistical models.
What is called for now is a response from the Catholic Church that recognizes the role of personal responsibility — for priests and for members of the church hierarchy who allowed these acts to go on for decades.
Church Report Cites Social Tumult in Priest Scandals
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: May 17, 2011
A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.
Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.
The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.
But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.
The report was released Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, but the Religion News Service published an account of the report on its Web site on Tuesday. A copy of the report was also obtained by The New York Times. The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse in society at large.
The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. Priests who abused minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that distinguished them from priests who had not abused, the researchers found.
Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, while liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither flank.
The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church.
Many more boys than girls were victimized, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, in parishes, schools and extracurricular activities.
In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.
“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.
That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.
The report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2002,” is the second produced by researchers at John Jay College. The first, on the “nature and scope” of the problem, was released in 2004.
Even before seeing it, victims advocates attacked the report as suspect because it relies on data provided by the church’s dioceses and religious orders.
Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site that compiles reports on abuse cases, said, “There aren’t many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there’s a vast gap — a multiplier of two, three or four times — between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.”
David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the report contained no surprises, it had nonetheless been a disappointment because it did not include recommendations for far-reaching reforms, including limiting the power of bishops. Mr. Clohessy said this was critical because bishops had covered up many instances of sexual abuse by priests in the past.
“Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that says what they’ve said all along, and what they wanted to hear back,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’ve found that they needn’t even consider any substantive changes.”
Robert M. Hoatson, a priest and a founder of Road to Recovery, which offers counseling and referrals to victims, said the idea that the sexual and social upheavals of past decades were to blame for the abuse of children was an attempt to shift responsibility from church leaders. Mr. Hoatson said he had been among those who had been abused.“It deflects responsibility from the bishops and puts it on to a sociological problem,” he said. “This is a people problem. It wasn’t because of the ’70s, and it wasn’t the ’60s, and it wasn’t because of the 1450s. This was something individuals did.”
Kristine Ward, the chairwoman of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, said the cultural explanation did not appear to explain why abuse cases within the Catholic church have shaken places from Australia and Ireland to South America. “Does the culture of the U.S. in the 1960s explain that? It’s hard to believe,” she said.
William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic group, however said he believes permissiveness in the church in the 1960s and 1970s – particularly at seminaries – had been a significant reason for the rise in sexual abuse. Mr. Donohue said that while he generally supported the report’s findings, he believed that the study seemed to have purposefully avoided linking abuse cases with the increase in the number of gay men who became priests during the 1960s and 1970s. “The authors go through all sorts of contortions to deny the obvious – that obviously, homosexuality was at work,” Mr. Donohue said.
In Philadelphia, where a grand jury in February found that as many as 37 priests suspected of behavior ranging from sexual abuse to inappropriate actions were still serving in ministry. The archdiocese initially rejected the grand jury’s findings, but soon suspended 26 priests from ministry.
An essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal last week by Ana Maria Catanzaro, who heads the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which is supposed to advise the archdiocese on how to handle abuse cases, said that the board was shocked to learn about the dozens of cases uncovered by the grand jury. Her essay raised questions about whether bishops provide accurate data even to their own, in-house review boards.
Still, the John Jay report says that when it comes to analyzing the incidence and causes of sexual abuse, “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church.”
Because there are no comparable studies conducted by other institutions, religious or secular, the report says, “It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations.”
BILLY’S STORY
BELOW IS BILLY’S STORY DIRECTLY FROM THE GRAND JURY REPORT. I COPIED IT FROM A PDF, SO THE FORMATING IS OFF.
OTHERS CAN WORRY ABOUT THE RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED PRIESTS AND THE REPUTATION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. I WORRY ABOUT THE CHILDREN.
This Grand Jury investigation began with the tearful testimony of “Billy.” Billy
was a 10-year-old student in Barbara Mosakowski’s fifth-grade class at St. Jerome
School in Philadelphia when two priests molested and orally sodomized him during the
1998-99 school year. Billy had signed up to be an altar boy at St. Jerome Church because his brother, who was three years older, had been one. He also participated in the“maintenance department” of the school’s bell choir, meaning that he took the bells out of their cases before choir practice and put them away at the end.
Rev. Charles Engelhardt abused Billy in the church sacristy after Mass.
Billy’s first uncomfortable encounter with a priest took place after he served an
early morning weekday Mass with Rev. Charles Engelhardt. While Billy was cleaning up
in the church sacristy, Father Engelhardt caught him drinking some of the leftover wine.
The priest did not scold the 10-year-old altar boy. Instead, he poured him more of the
sacramental wine and began asking him personal questions, such as whether he had a
girlfriend.
While discussing such matters, Father Engelhardt pulled pornographic magazines
out of a bag and showed them to Billy. He asked the boy how it made him feel to look at
pictures of naked men and women, and which he preferred. He also told Billy that it was
time for him to become a man, and that “sessions” with the priest would soon begin. With that enigmatic statement, Father Engelhardt let Billy go to school. At the time, the fifthgrader did not understand what the priest meant; he just put the episode in the back of his mind, and went about what he was doing.
About a week later, Billy served another early morning Mass with Father
Engelhardt. When they were in the church sacristy afterwards, the priest instructed Billy
to take off his clothes and sit on a chair next to him. As the boy nervously complied,
Father Engelhardt undressed himself, and then began to caress the 10-year-old’s legs.
He repeated to Billy that it was time for him “to become a man,” and proceeded, in Billy’s words, both “to jerk [Billy] off” and to perform oral sex on him.
At Father Engelhardt’s direction, Billy next fondled the priest’s genitals, and then
got on his knees and put the priest’s penis in his mouth. Father Engelhardt called Billy
“son,” and told him he was doing a good job as he instructed the boy to move his head
faster or slower. After ejaculating on Billy, Father Engelhardt told him he was
“dismissed.”
About two weeks later, Father Engelhardt asked him if he was ready for another
session, but Billy emphatically refused.
Rev. Edward V. Avery learned that Father Engelhardt had abused Billy, and then
did the same thing.
Father Engelhardt left Billy alone after his unsuccessful attempt to arrange a
repeat “session,” but the boy’s ordeal was far from over. A few months after the
encounter with Father Engelhardt, Billy was putting the bells away after choir practice
when Father Edward Avery pulled him aside to say that he had heard about Father
Engelhardt’s session with Billy, and that his sessions with the boy would soon begin.
Billy pretended he did not know what Father Avery was talking about, but his stomach
turned.
Soon after the warning, Billy served a Mass with Father Avery. When Mass was
ended, Father Avery took the fifth-grader into the sacristy, turned on music, and ordered
him to perform a “striptease” for him. Billy started to undress in a normal fashion, but
Father Avery was not satisfied and directed him to dance while he removed his clothes.
Father Avery sat and watched Billy with an “eerie smile” on his face, before
getting up and undressing himself. When they were both naked, the priest had the boy sit on his lap and kissed his neck and back, while saying to him that God loved him and
everything was okay.
Father Avery fondled Billy’s penis and scrotum, and then had Billy stand so that
he could perform oral sex on the boy. As the priest fellated the 10-year-old, he stuck his
finger in Billy’s anus, causing him to react in great pain.
After sucking on Billy’s penis for a while, Father Avery announced that it was
time for Billy to “do” him. He directed the 10-year-old to fondle his genitals and then put
the priest’s penis in his mouth and suck on his scrotum. The session ended when Father Avery ejaculated on Billy and told him to clean up. The priest told Billy that it had been a good session, and that they would have another again soon.
They did, a few weeks later, following an afternoon weekend Mass. As Billy was
cleaning a chalice, Father Avery again directed the 10-year-old to strip for him. When
Billy did as he was told, the priest fondled and fellated him again and, this time, licked
his anus. He made Billy “jerk him off” as he performed oral sex on the boy. After Father
Avery ejaculated, he left Billy in the sacristy.
From then on, Billy avoided serving Mass with Father Avery by trading
assignments with other altar boys. But, like many children who are sexually abused, he
was too frightened and filled with self-blame to report what had been done to him.
Sixth-grade teacher Bernard Shero raped Billy in the back seat of a car.
Billy had a slight break over the summer between fifth and sixth grades. He went
to the New Jersey Shore with his family and, for that period, did not have to serve Mass
with Father Engelhardt or Father Avery. But when he returned to school in the fall, he
found himself in the sixth-grade classroom of Bernard Shero. Shero, according to Billy,
was “kind of a creep.” He touched students when he talked to them, and would put his
arm around students and whisper in their ears. Billy testified that Shero’s conversations
with students were inappropriate, and that he would try to talk to Billy about intimate
things.
One day, Shero told Billy he would give him a ride home from school. But
instead of taking Billy straight home, he stopped at a park about a mile from the boy’s
house. When Billy asked why they were stopping, Shero answered, “We’re going to have some fun.” The teacher told Billy to get in the back seat of the car. He directed his
student to take his clothes off, but then became impatient and started helping Billy to
undress. Shero then fondled Billy’s genitals and orally and anally raped the now 11-year old boy. Shero was only able to get his penis part-way into Billy’s anus because the boy
screamed in pain. The teacher then had Billy perform the same acts on him. As Billy did
so, Shero kept saying, “It feels good.”
After raping Billy, Shero told him to get dressed. He then made the fifth-grader
walk the rest of the way home.
Billy suffered physical and emotional harm as a result of the abuse.
Although Billy was too frightened to directly report the abuse as a child, he
experienced otherwise unexplained physical problems that corroborated his testimony
before the Grand Jury. In the fifth grade, when Fathers Engelhardt and Avery were
having their “sessions” with him, Billy complained to his mother of pain in his testicles.
In the sixth grade, when Shero raped and orally sodomized him, he went through an
extended period when he would gag and vomit for no reason. His mother took him to
doctors for both conditions, but there was never a diagnosis. Billy’s mother turned over to the Grand Jurors her records of her visits to doctors with Billy.
Billy’s mother also told us of a dramatic change in her son’s personality that
coincided with the abuse. His friends and their parents also noticed this personality
change. Billy’s mother watched as her friendly, happy, sociable son turned into a lonely,
sullen boy. He no longer played sports or socialized with his friends. He separated
himself, and began to smoke marijuana at age 11. By the time Billy was in high school,
he was abusing prescription painkillers, and eventually he graduated to heroin.
It was at an inpatient drug treatment facility that Billy first told someone about his
abuse. Billy’s mother testified that she probably should have suspected something before then, because she found two books about sexual abuse hidden under Billy’s bed when he was in high school. She asked him about the books at the time, but he covered up for his abusers by telling her that he had them for a school assignment.
The Philadelphia Archdiocese had assigned Father Avery to St. Jerome even though Msgr. William Lynn, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, and other high-ranking officials knew he had abused another boy and could not be trusted around adolescents.
In at least one instance, the blame for the abuse Billy suffered did not lie with the
perpetrators alone. The Secretary for Clergy, Monsignor William Lynn,1 who is now the
pastor at St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, had recommended Father Avery for
assignment to a parish with a school. He then failed to supervise or restrict his contact
with adolescents in any way. Msgr. Lynn did this even though he knew that Father Avery had sexually abused another boy and could not be trusted around children.
While we cannot know Msgr. Lynn’s motivation for this abhorrent decision to
allow a known child molester unfettered access to children whose parents had entrusted
them to the Archdiocese’s care, we know that it gravely endangered the welfare of the
parish children – a danger that was tragically realized in Billy’s case.
Seven years before Father Avery abused Billy, the Archdiocese learned he had
abused someone else.
Seven years before Father Avery abused Billy, Msgr. Lynn, Cardinal Anthony J.
Bevilacqua, and other Archdiocese officials learned that the priest had molested another
altar boy. “James” was a 29-year-old medical student, with a wife and child, when he
wrote to the Archdiocese in the spring of 1992 to report that Father Avery had abused
him in the 1970s and 1980s. He enclosed a copy of a letter that he had just sent to Father Avery, in which he told the abusive priest:
I’ve been carrying a burden for all these years that is not justly mine to
bear. . . . It all began when I was a young boy and you came to my church.
I thought you were funny and you let me help you at dances and other
functions. You made me feel valued, included, and special. I trusted,
respected, and loved you, and you taught me many things about
construction, driving, and gave me my first beer. I truly believed you had
my best interest at heart, that you cared about me in a fatherly way.
Then one night after I had helped you at a dance and had quite a lot to
drink I awoke to find your hand on my crotch. I was terrified. . . .
I’ve never told you until now because I’ve been afraid and I’ve always
blamed myself for what happened. I always thought there was something I
did or said or a way I acted that made you think it was alright to do what
you did. I would think that you’ve been such a good friend to me that
maybe these activities were alright.
I knew one thing, I didn’t want you to touch me that way and I didn’t want
sex with you or any other man. I was determined after that night that I
would never be hurt by you again. I would always be safe from that kind
of intrusion. I became distant and depressed, my ability to trust men
shattered. I am only now undergoing the long recovery process from
wounds I suffered at your hands. I have let too much of my life be
controlled by this terrible wrong you committed.
YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO HURT ME THE WAY YOU DID.
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO HURT ANYONE ELSE THIS WAY.
I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME.
ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS MATTER IS YOURS.
I WILL NO LONGER CARRY THIS BURDEN FOR YOU.
MY ONLY RESPONSIBILITY IS TO GOD, MYSELF, AND FAMILY.
James told the Archdiocese that he sought neither money nor scandal. He merely wanted to make sure that Father Avery was not still a threat to others.
On September 28, 1992, Msgr. Lynn and his assistant, Father Joseph R. Cistone,
who is now the Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, interviewed James. James told them that
he had met Father Avery in 1976, when he was an altar boy and the priest was assistant pastor at Saint Philip Neri Parish in East Greenville. Father Avery would take James and other altar boys to his beach house in North Wildwood and give them alcohol. Father Avery gave James his first drink at age 12.
James told Msgr. Lynn and Father Cistone that Father Avery first touched him on
an overnight with a group of altar boys at the priest’s house on the Jersey Shore. Father
Avery had entered the loft where the boys were sleeping, and had “wrestled” with them
and “tickled” them. Several times, Father Avery put his hand on the boy’s crotch.
In September 1978, Father Avery was transferred abruptly to Saint Agatha-Saint
James Parish. James’s mother, Mary, described how, “One Sunday Father Avery was
saying Mass and that Wednesday he was gone, transferred for some unknown reason.”
After his transfer, Father Avery, who moonlighted as a disc jockey at bars,
weddings, and parties, continued to invite James to assist him on disc jockey jobs.
During James’s freshman year in high school, he took the boy to Smokey Joe’s, a bar on the University of Pennsylvania campus. There, the boy and the priest were served large amounts of alcohol. James told Msgr. Lynn that the priest took him back to his rectory for the night. When the then-15-year-old awoke, he was in Father Avery’s bed with the priest, and Father Avery had his hand on James’s genitals.
James related to Msgr. Lynn a similar incident that occurred on a ski trip to
Vermont when James was 18 years old. Again, Father Avery slept in the same bed with
James and fondled the boy’s genitals.
Msgr. Lynn and Father Cistone next interviewed Father Avery, who told them
that he was drunk the night of the Smokey Joe’s incident – as was the 15-year-old – and did not recall much. He acknowledged that it “could be” that he did what was alleged, but claimed that he could not remember. He told Msgr. Lynn that if he touched James in Vermont while sleeping in the same bed, it was “strictly accidental.” He would later admit to a District Attorney’s Office detective, however, that he did fondle James’s
genitals on the Vermont trip.
Father Avery also informed Msgr. Lynn in 1992 that he had adopted six Hmong
children – three girls and three boys. Archdiocese officials did nothing over the years to
investigate the welfare or safety of these children entrusted to the accused child molester.
Msgr. Lynn summarized his interviews with James and Father Avery in a memo
to Cardinal Bevilacqua and, according to procedure, recommended that Father Avery be sent for evaluation at Saint John Vianney Hospital, an Archdiocese hospital in
Downingtown. The Cardinal approved the recommendation in late 1992.
Father Avery was evaluated and treated at an Archdiocese hospital; even it
recommended that any future ministry by the priest not include adolescents.
After four days of evaluation from November 30 through December 3, 1992, the
Anodos Center, a part of Saint John Vianney Hospital in which sexual offenders in the
clergy are evaluated and treated, recommended in-patient treatment for Father Avery.
Msgr. Lynn reported to Cardinal Bevilacqua that the center had found Father Avery’s
account of his involvement with James vague and inconsistent, that he seemed to have a mood disorder, and that he likely abused alcohol.
On December 15, 1992, the Cardinal, who had allowed Father Avery to remain
the active pastor of a parish for ten and a half months after James reported the sexual
abuse to the Archdiocese, approved the recommendation for in-patient treatment at the
Anodos Center.
After Father Avery spent six months at Saint John Vianney, during which time
James came to the hospital to confront the priest, it was determined that treatment should continue. Msgr. Lynn’s memos to the file, which up to that point had thoroughly
documented the relevant facts and all the recommendations that he had provided to the
Cardinal, became sparse.
The Archdiocese maintains what it calls “secret archive files,” which should
include all information relating to complaints against priests, such as those involving
sexual abuse of minors. This file for Father Avery contained only a few scrawled notes in Msgr. Lynn’s handwriting from the time the priest was at St. John Vianney. The notes
stated that treatment is to be continued; that Avery “got into shame” after meeting with
James at the treatment center; that the priest was “in denial;” that there was a question of whether there were other victims; and that Father Avery was “upset” and “angry.”
The next memo in the secret archive file, dated August 24, 1993, was written by
Msgr. Edward P. Cullen, the Cardinal’s number two man and the vicar for administration, who went on to become the Bishop of the Allentown Archdiocese. In this memo, Msgr. Cullen passed along Cardinal Bevilacqua’s instructions to Msgr. Lynn. The Cardinal wanted his Secretary for Clergy to falsely explain Father Avery’s resignation to his parish as a matter of health, rather than inform parishioners of the truth – that the priest had molested at least one altar boy, and could not be trusted around adolescents.
Msgr. Cullen’s memo stated:
Cardinal Bevilacqua responded by saying that the Regional Vicar [Charles
Devlin] should handle this matter. Monsignor Devlin should note that
Father Avery resigned (if, in fact, you have his letter of resignation) and
that the fundamental reason for his resignation is related to his health.
Cardinal Bevilacqua further thought it would be helpful if Monsignor
Devlin had a letter from Father Avery . . . which would be addressed to the
parishioners thanking them for their support and indicating that his
decision to resign was essential for his health.
The next day, August 25, 1993, the Cardinal received Father Avery’s resignation
as pastor at St. Therese of the Child Jesus in Philadelphia. In his letter, the priest noted
that he had met with Msgr. Lynn, and he maintained the ruse that he was resigning
“because my present state of health needs more attention.”
In Cardinal Bevilacqua’s testimony before the previous grand jury, he tried to
explain this deception of parishioners by claiming that the mention of health referred to a bipolar condition and alcoholism. Saint John Vianney had, however, informed the
Archdiocese months before that Father Avery was “NOT bipolar.”
Msgr. Cullen testified before the previous grand jury that Cardinal Bevilacqua
was insistent, in all cases involving the sexual abuse of minors by priests, that
parishioners not be informed of the truth. In accordance with that policy, Msgr. Lynn lied
to a parishioner in a March 1993 letter, claiming that, while Father Avery was at Saint
John Vianney, “there have never been anything but compliments heard in this office
about Father Avery.” He wrote to another parishioner in July 1993 about the reason for
Father Avery’s absence: “Let me assure you that is what they are – rumors.” Msgr. Lynn
told that parishioner that Father Avery had requested a health leave.
Father Avery was discharged from Saint John Vianney on October 22, 1993. In a
memo to Msgr. James E. Molloy, then the assistant vicar for administration, Msgr. Lynn
listed the treatment center’s recommendations. These included “a ministry excluding
adolescents and with a population other than vulnerable minorities; a 12-step Alcoholics
Anonymous meeting for priests; and any further involvement with the Hmong be in an
administrative or pastoral capacity.” Saint John Vianney also advised that an aftercare
team was necessary to keep watch over Father Avery.
Despite the treatment center’s report, Msgr. Lynn concluded his memo by
recommending that Father Avery be assigned as an associate pastor at Our Lady of
Ransom, a parish in Philadelphia with an attached elementary school. Msgr. Molloy
forwarded Msgr. Lynn’s memo to Cardinal Bevilacqua.
Cardinal Bevilacqua assigned Father Avery to live at St. Jerome and allowed the
known abuser to perform Masses with altar boys.
Cardinal Bevilacqua followed Msgr. Lynn’s inexplicable recommendation to
assign Father Avery to reside at a Philadelphia parish with an attached elementary school, though the Cardinal chose Saint Jerome instead of Our Lady of Ransom. In a December 7, 1993, letter to Rev. Joseph B. Graham, the pastor at St. Jerome, Msgr. Lynn wrote that Father Avery had been asked to help in the parish as much as he was able. Msgr. Lynn did not mention in his letter that Father Avery’s interaction with children at St. Jerome should be restricted or supervised in any way.
Msgr. Lynn ignored repeated warnings that Father Avery was not complying with
supposed restrictions on his activities.
After assigning Father Avery to live at St. Jerome, a parish with an elementary
school, the Archdiocese hierarchy did virtually nothing to minimize the continued danger
that the priest posed to children. Archdiocese officials followed few, if any, of the
therapists’ recommendations.
Saint John Vianney personnel repeatedly told Msgr. Lynn that Father Avery’s
aftercare team was not in place and was not meeting as it should. In fact, the team that the Archdiocese supposedly relied on to supervise Father Avery (Father Joseph Sweeney, Father Graham, and Msgr. Lynn) did not meet for more than a year after the priest’s release from the treatment center. Father Graham, the pastor, denied even knowing he was on such a team.
A chaplain at the hospital, Father Michael Kerper, warned Msgr. Lynn frequently
that Father Avery was neglecting his duties and was instead booking numerous disc
jockey engagements. Msgr. Lynn’s notes record that even Father Graham called to
complain that Father Avery was doing too much disc jockeying.
In February 1995, Father Kerper took it upon himself to inform Msgr. Lynn that
Father Avery had booked party engagements for 25 of the next 31 Saturdays. Msgr. Lynn brushed off the Saint John Vianney chaplain and disregarded the implications of Father Avery’s access to young people – even though he knew these activities involved
precisely the kind of situations the priest had exploited to sexually molest James.
Msgr. Lynn and his colleagues also appear to have ignored Father Avery’s
continued involvement with the Hmong, despite Saint John Vianney’s explicit
recommendation to limit his contacts with that community. According to Cardinal
Bevilacqua, restrictions on an abusive priest’s ministry are normally documented in his
file. There is nothing, however, in Father Avery’s file to suggest that his access to the
Hmong children whom he adopted, or his non-pastoral relationships with the Hmong,
was ever restricted or even monitored.
Archdiocese documents indicate that, in 1996, Msgr. Lynn was aware that Father
Avery was still deeply involved with the Hmong community – three years after therapists
had urged that he be kept away from “vulnerable minorities.” There is no indication that
church officials ever checked on the welfare of Father Avery’s “adopted” children – even
though Msgr. Lynn and the Cardinal were the only people in a position to protect those
children, having concealed from the community that the man entrusted with their welfare
was an accused child molester.
Msgr. Lynn protected Cardinal Bevilacqua while endangering parish children.
Between 1994 and 2002, the only thing that concerned Msgr. Lynn sufficiently to
suggest a meeting with Father Avery was the priest’s repeated requests to attach Cardinal Bevilacqua’s signature to endorsements for various certifications and programs. The Cardinal did personally endorse Father Avery for certification by the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, which asked the Cardinal to vouch for the priest’s “high standards of professional competence and moral and ethical conduct.” But the next time such an endorsement was needed, Msgr. Lynn interceded to protect Cardinal Bevilacqua.
In September 1997, Msgr. Lynn met with Father Avery to tell him that the
Cardinal could not complete a questionnaire for his admittance to a doctoral program at
Chestnut Hill College, explaining that “Cardinal Bevilacqua must be careful as to what
kinds of endorsements he gives.” Msgr. Lynn was not, however, telling Father Avery that the Archdiocese would not vouch for his good character – only that the Cardinal’s name could no longer appear on written endorsements. Msgr. Lynn furnished the necessary character reference himself, citing honesty as one of Father Avery’s strengths, and Father Avery enrolled in the college program.
During the same September 1997 meeting with Father Avery, Msgr. Lynn told the
priest that he had received an e-mail from James. In fact, he had received the e-mail a
year earlier. In September 1996, James wrote:
What in the end happened to [Father Avery]. I’m not
asking for details. What I want to know is – is he
rehabilitated or in a situation where he can’t harm others?
Will the diocese vouch for the safety of its children? For
my peace of mind I have to know.
Msgr. Lynn wrote in his memo of the September 1997 meeting that he told Father Avery
that he had responded to James “that the Archdiocese had taken proper steps in the
matter, without stating where Father Avery was stationed.”
Msgr. Lynn continued that he told Father Avery “he should be more low-keyed
than he has been recently.” He then noted: “Father Avery, at first, did not seem to
understand what I was talking about, but after we had been talking for a while it finally
dawned on him what I was saying.”
Msgr. Lynn did not say in his memo what Father Avery had done recently to
prompt this warning. In fact, Msgr. Lynn’s obscure language, the pride he seemed to take
in relating to Father Avery that he had not told James that the priest was living in the
rectory of a parish with a school, and the warning to the sexual predator to be “lowkeyed” all seem like the product of someone trying to aid and abet an abuser in escaping detection. They are certainly not the product of someone trying to protect children from a predator in their midst.
In 1998, Msgr. Lynn wrote another memo to the file explaining why Cardinal
Bevilacqua could not recommend Father Avery as a chaplain to the Veteran’s Hospital.
The problem was that the Cardinal would have to write a letter saying there were no
allegations against Father Avery, which obviously was not true. Msgr. Lynn also wrote
that he still had “concern” about Father Avery because the priest “still seems to minimize his behavior.”
Again, Msgr. Lynn in the memo did not specify the “behavior” he was referring
to. In any case, Father Avery stayed at St. Jerome, serving Mass with children and
hearing their confessions. He also kept working as a disc jockey, because no one made
him stop. Msgr. Lynn wrote this memo a few months before Father Avery molested Billy.
The 1992 allegation against Father Avery was not officially deemed credible until
2003 – after a grand jury had launched an investigation.
In June 2002, 10 years after James first reported the abuse by Father Avery, he
called Msgr. Lynn in frustration. James told Msgr. Lynn that Father Avery was still
engaging in the same activities that led to his abuse. He informed Msgr. Lynn that Father Avery was working parties as a disc jockey, and expressed concern that the priest was around minors drinking alcohol. James told Msgr. Lynn he felt he was not being “heard as credible.” The victim offered more details of the priest’s past behavior with him and other boys, and he gave names of those who could corroborate his story.
James had explained to Archdiocese officials when he first came forward in 1992
that writing his letter confronting Father Avery was the most difficult thing he’d ever
done. He had been unable to do it for more than a decade. He expected that when he
finally mustered the courage to act he would find some resolution and be able to move
on. He had presumed the Archdiocese would act on his information to keep Father Avery away from other boys.
James told Msgr. Lynn that he wanted Father Avery to “own up” to what he had
done, and he wanted the Archdiocese to protect other children. Most of all, he said, he
wanted to know he was believed. Yet Msgr. Lynn refused to tell this 29-year-old victim,
who sought nothing but to place the responsibility for his molestation where it belonged,
and to protect other children from experiencing the same trauma, that he was believed.
Meanwhile, Father Avery continued to minister at St. Jerome. He testified before
the previous grand jury that he continued to celebrate Mass, with altar servers, usually
twice a weekend. He told the grand jury on April 25, 2003, that he was still permitted to
hear confessions of the grade-school children. He said he was never told to restrict his
activities with the children of the parish.
On June 2, 2003, a little over a month after Father Avery testified before the
grand jury, Cardinal Bevilacqua finally launched an investigation into the 1992
allegations. Following a review of the investigation by an Archdiocesan review board,
Cardinal Justin Rigali, who succeeded Cardinal Bevilacqua in 2003, found James’s
allegation “credible.” Cardinal Rigali removed Father Avery from all assignments and
prohibited him from performing public ministry on December 5, 2003. That was five
years too late to protect Billy – and who knows how many other children.
EVILNESS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH – UPDATED
UPDATE
I am updating my post from yesterday and making it my featured post. I’m so infuriated by this story that I’m seeing red. The local radio station was reporting the story this morning and they said that the reason the Grand Jury did not indict Cardinal Bevilacqua was because he is 86 years old and in poor health. Since when does your age have anything to do with whether you have committed a crime. And make no bones about it, this man committed a horrific crime. He knowingly allowed deviant evil predators to rape 10 year old boys. He transferred these fiends to other parishes, allowing them to rape again. This man should be thrown into prison like a common punk criminal.
The evil acts of these priests is almost beyond comprehension. You need to understand the point of view of a 10 year old boy in Catholic school. You are in 4th grade. You still play with army men. You play little league baseball. You are taught from 1st grade on that priests are Jesus Christ. You are in awe of priests. You are a little bit afraid, because they have the power to forgive your sins. A priest is an all-powerful figure. Now imagine your ten year old son with a priest’s dick in his mouth and the priest sticking his dick in your ten year old son’s ass. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If anyone had done this to my sons, I would get a gun and I would kill these deviant fuckers. I would not care about the consequences. First I would beat them within an inch of their lives and then I’d put a bullet in their heads. Then I’d go to confession, say I’m sorry, say 5 Our Fathers, and then according to the Catholic Church everything would be OK.
Think about the fact that Bishops, Cardinals, and even the Pope not only covered up these acts, they shipped these deviants to other parishes. When told of these acts, Cardinal Bevilacqua’s first question was whether the statute of limitations was up. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!
I was born Catholic. Do I believe in God? Yes I do. I do wonder how he can allow this to happen, but I do believe in God.
Do I believe in the Catholic Church? NO I DO NOT. The Catholic Church is an Institution made by men for the benefit of men. The MEN who run the Catholic Church care about power and money. They are no different than Wall Street Bankers. These MEN have not been brought to justice. The Catholic Heirarchy is Evil because they have committed evil acts. Until they are brought to justice anything the Catholic Church does or says is suspect.
YESTERDAY
It has been many months since my last post about the Catholic Church Sexual Abuse coverup. The Phila Archdiocese had been shaken by a priest abuse scandal a few years ago. When the list of evil child fucking priests was revealed, I saw the name Father Shea on the list. He was the assistant pastor at my parish when I was a kid. Not only did this little boy fucker not go to jail, Cardinal Bevalaqua didn’t even defrock him. He lives out his days in the St Francis Home for elderly priests in Darby, PA. It seems that the statute of limitations was up for all the abuse cases put forward by the Grand Jury.
The part that infuriated me was not that there were child fucker deviant priests. There are sexual deviants all over the place. The heirarchy of the Catholic church – Pastors, Bishops, Cardinals and even the Pope, covered up this sexual abuse. They did not turn these evil scum over to the police. They knowingly transferred them to other parishes where they could satisfy their evil urges again and again. For these acts, the heirarchy of the Catholic Church deserve to burn in the hottest part of HELL.
The Catholic Church PR machine assured the public that they had rooted out the evil sexual predators and the scandal was a thing of the past. Pass the collection plate please. No one in the Catholic heirarchy went to jail. No Cardinal or Bishop was defrocked. The Pope has been implicated in the coverup. The Catholic Church is the richest church on earth. They fight every accusation. They pay hush money to the families of the victims. They close parishes and don’t build new high schools because they have to keep paying millions to the victims. All done in secret.
But the truth keeps being revealed. Below is one of the most disgusting stories you will ever read. The Grand Jury has just issued a 128 report of evilness that will make your blood boil. I have provided a link to the report, but I’ve posted the first 5 pages below for your enjoyment. This evilness permeates the Philadelphia Archdiocese. The current and past Cardinals of Phila should go to jail.
I spent 12 years in Catholic School. I went to church every week. I’ve sent all three of my boys to Catholic School. In the past year, I’ve become so disgusted by the leadership of the Catholic Church, that I stopped going to Mass and giving them any money. I will never give another dime to this corrupt evil organization. They are no better than the mafia or the criminal banks that I rail about.
I judge people and organizations by their actions, not their words. The actions of the Catholic Church are vile, evil and disgusting. These MEN portray themselves as holy and representing Jesus Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. May they all burn in hell.
http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/clergyAbuse2-finalReport.pdf
4 priests charged in sex abuse investigation
By David O’Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Monsignor William Lynn, former head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office for Clergy, has been charged for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abuse by priests, District Attorney Seth Williams announced today.
Two felony counts of endangering the welfare were lodged against Lynn follow a grand jury investigation, Williams said at a news conference.
Williams also announced the Revs. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, and Bernard Shero, 47, a former 6th grade teacher at St. Jerome’s School in Northeast Philadelphia, had been charged with raping and sexually assaulting the same boy in the parish between 1998, when he was 10 years old, and 2000.
Another priest, the Rev James Brennan, 47, is charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 1996.
All five men were arrested today, official said.
Williams said Lynn, who was the Archdiocese’s Secretary of the Clergy from 1992 to 2004, “supervised two of the abusers . . . knew they were dangerous and chose to expose them to new victims.”
Since 2004 Lynn has served as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Downingtown, a parish of nearly 4,000 families.
As head of the clergy office, Lynn oversaw all priest personnel issues, which included advising Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, on the assignment of priests; interviewing persons who reported sexual abuse by a priests; and overseeing the treatment of clergy known to have abused children.
In a message to church deacons, Rigali said he could not comment directly on the grand jury report because he had not yet received it.
But, he added: “I know the release of this report will be painful and my deep concern is for all of those who have been abused. I urge all the faithful of the Archdiocese to pray for, to extend every concern for and remain open to understanding the experience of the victims. It is in that spirit that we reflect upon the grand jury’s actions and the recommendations they make.”
At Lynnn’s church in Downingtown, workers in the parish office declined comment, abruptly referring reporters to Donna Farrell, the archdiocesan spokeswoman.
When an Inquirer reporter began to speak with a female parishioner outside the building, one of the workers ran out, grabbed her, and pulled her inside.
Several other parishioners expressed shock at news of the charges but declined to give their names. A man arriving for choir practice said he did not have enough information to comment. A woman who pulled up at the adjacent church school – which her daughter attends – said she did not want her remarks to reflect adversely on the school.
“We love this school,” she said. “I’m absolutely stunned; we totally trusted him.”
Today’s charges come nearly 5 1/2 years after a Philadelphia grand jury excoriated the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for an “immoral cover-up” of its sexually abusive clergy, and for creating what it said was a climate that exposed hundreds of children to assault.
Although the 2005 report directed much of its ire at Bevilacqua, the Roman Catholic archbishop from 1988 to 2003, it mentioned Lynn 652 times – more than any other member of the archdiocesan hierarchy, including Bevilacqua.
“Secretary for Clergy Lynn . . . treated victims as potential plaintiffs. Not only did they not receive apologies acknowledging their abuse, but many were bullied, intimidated, lied to, even investigated themselves,” the report said.
It also accused Lynn of repeatedly failing to investigate abuse charges, reassigning abusive priests, and concealing their crimes from civil authorities and the Catholic laity.
“It became apparent to the Grand Jurors that Msgr. Lynn was handling the cases precisely as his boss [Bevilacqua] wished,” it said.
The assistant district attorneys who wrote the scathing, 468-page report in 2005 said their office had sought ways to bring criminal charges against several archdiocesan leaders but were frustrated by Pennsylvania’s “inadequate” state laws, such as the statute of limitations.
OPENING PAGES OF THE GRAND JURY REPORT
In September 2003, a grand jury of local citizens released a report detailing a sad history of sexual abuse by priests of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. That abuse was known, tolerated, and hidden by high church officials, up to and including the Cardinal himself. The previous grand jury was frustrated that it could not charge either the abusers or their protectors in the church, because the successful cover-up of the abuse resulted in the expiration of the statute of limitations. Now, measures taken in response to the previous report have led to new information about more recent abuse, which this grand jury was empaneled to investigate. The fact that we received that information, and from the church itself, is some sign of progress; and this time there will be charges. The present grand jury, however, is frustrated to report that much has not changed. The rapist priests we accuse were well known to the Secretary of Clergy, but he cloaked their conduct and put them in place to do it again. The procedures implemented by the Archdiocese to help victims are in fact designed to help the abusers, and the Archdiocese itself. Worst of all, apparent abusers – dozens of them, we believe – remain on duty in the Archdiocese, today, with open access to new young prey.
Billy and Mark
This grand jury case began because two men came forward, while still young, to say what was done to them as children. By no means do we believe that these are the only two parishioners who were abused during this period. It remains an extraordinarily difficult thing for adults to tell authorities that they were taken advantage of, in the most intimate, shameful ways, by people they trusted. Their stories must be told, however, because they reveal a great deal about the current treatment of sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Twelve years ago, Billy was a 10-year-old altar boy in the fifth grade at St. Jerome School in Philadelphia. “Billy” is a pseudonym; he is still reluctant to name himself publicly, although he knows he will have to do so soon. While alone with him in the sacristy, Father Charles Engelhardt began to show Billy pornographic magazines. Eventually, the priest directed Billy to take off his clothes, and to put his penis in the priest’s mouth. Then the priest reversed positions, until he ejaculated on the boy. After that, Billy was in effect passed around to Engelhardt’s colleagues. Father Edward Avery undressed with the boy, told him that God loved him, had him engage in oral intercourse, and ejaculated on him. Next was the turn of Bernard Shero, a teacher in the school. Shero offered Billy a ride home, but instead stopped at a park, told Billy they were “going to have some fun,” took off the boy’s clothes, orally and anally raped him, and then made him walk the rest of the way home.
That was the beginning of a longer journey. Billy stopped talking with friends and started smoking marijuana. He would often gag and vomit for reasons the doctors could not discern. He checked books out of the library about sexual abuse. By high school he was taking pills, and then heroin.
The second victim, Mark, was only nine when he first met Father James Brennan, a parochial vicar at St. Andrew Church in Newtown. Father Brennan became a family “friend” who often visited the house. Mark, though, was the subject of special attention from the priest, who persistently wrestled with the boy, rubbed his back and shoulders, and openly brought up sex talk. When Mark was 14, in 1996, Father Brennan was finally ready to make his move. He arranged with Mark’s mother for a “sleepover” at an apartment the priest was renting. Once he had the boy there, Brennan showed him pornographic pictures on his computer, bragged about his penis size, and insisted that Mark sleep together with him in his bed. Then he lay down behind the boy and put his penis into the boy’s buttocks. Mark told his parents what happened, and they confronted Brennan, but he denied it and they believed the priest. From that point, Mark suffered depression, dramatic weight loss, and drug and alcohol addiction. Ultimately he attempted suicide.
FACES OF EVIL
Above is a description of the evil acts of evil people. The worse part is the coverup by the heirarchy of the Church. This man, Cardinal Bevilacqua knowingly allowed boy raping priests to be shielded from authorities and transferred to other parishes, while using the legal system to protect the Catholic Church from crimes. He authorized the payment of millions in hush money to keep the families of victims silent.
The exploits of Father Lynn are detailed above.
Cardinal Krol was the head of the Phila Archdiocese when I was a kid. He confirmed me. He also knowingly moved deviant rapists from parish to parish where they could prey on little 10 year old boys.
Father Thomas Shea was the asst pastor at St. Joseph’s parish in Collingdale when I was a kid. He had raped boys at St. Huberts. They transferred him to St. Josephs where he raped at least two boys, one who later committed suicide. He resides in an old priests home, never being charged because of the statute of limitations.