The Vatican to Catholics: Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Bishop Livieres, looking like a kindly Lex Luthor.

Below is the press release from SNAP on the Bishop Livieres issue.  

It had appeared as if Livieres had been the first and only bishop removed from office since the Sex Scandal broke over ten years ago.  And even though his case was particularly egregious - making an accused child molester his vicar general, even after being warned by other bishops that the man was a danger to others, and then lashing out against the Vatican publicly - still this appeared to be good news.  It appeared as if Pope Francis was setting the bar very low, but at least he was setting the bar.  After all, if you won't sack a bishop for making an accused child molester and scam artist his vicar general and allowing him continued access to boys, then how serious are you about reforming the very worst element in the Church?

And indeed for the first time since the crisis, the Vatican seemed to be getting serious about the problem, forcing into "house arrest" an archbishop and former Vatican envoy who is reported to have been molesting boys in the Dominican Republic and who was discovered to have over 100,000 pornographic images of children on his computer.

But now the Vatican makes it a point to slap some cold water in our faces.  

Bishop Livieres has NOT been removed for enabling and promoting an accused child molester and scam artist, but for other reasons that apparently the Vatican regards as none of our business, allowing Livieres to spread the story that it's all a right vs. left power struggle.

This is disheartening.  I had written last week that the forces of corruption can only oppose the Spirit of God with an "arm of flesh", and that remains true.  But this same Spirit of God seems quite emphatic here.  We are not to put our hopes in mere men - including our popes and bishops.  Indeed, it seems, we are not even to trust them.

***

For immediate release: Sunday, Sept. 28

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

Vatican officials now deny that a controversial bishop in Paraguay was ousted because he hired and promoted a credibly accused abusive cleric who faced allegations of sexual misdeeds in Argentina, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. (He is Fr. Carlos Urruigoity.)

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1404005.htm   

That's basically what we said several days ago:

http://www.snapnetwork.org/rome_evidence_suggests_bishop_not_ousted_due_to_abuse

http://www.snapnetwork.org/intl_paraguay_bishop_ousted_snap_responds

So many people so desperately want to believe that Francis is really addressing the church's continuing abuse and cover up crisis that they interpret his words about the scandal in the most favorable light possible and then allow themselves to feel comfortable and complacent instead of skeptical and vigilant. It's a real shame.

We endanger kids and insult victims when we leap to the most rosy conclusions possible about Catholic officials and their handling of this on-going crisis. Let's give the benefit of the doubt to innocent kids, wounded victims and betrayed Catholics, not to one more popular and powerful Catholic official.

Even now, after decades of horrific disclosures about the complicity of the church hierarchy in child sex crimes, many of us find it hard to accept that a seemingly wonderful priest can molest kids or that a seemingly wonderful bishop can protect predators. And we evidently find it hard to accept that a seemingly wonderful pontiff can continue doing very little to reverse centuries of recklessness, deceit and secrecy with clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

Pope Francis Does the Right Thing

The Buenos Aires Herald reports ...

Pope sacks Paraguayan bishop accused of protecting abuser priest

Pope Francis has dismissed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who was accused of protecting a priest suspected of sexually abusing young people in the United States, the Vatican said today.

The Argentinian-born pontiff has vowed zero tolerance against Roman Catholic clerics who sexually abuse minors after a series of scandals hit the Church in a number of countries around the world over many years. Last May, Francis called such abuse an "ugly crime" and likened it to "a Satanic mass".

A statement said the pope had removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his post as head of the diocese of Ciudad del Este and named another bishop to run it as an administrator for the time being.

The pope's sacking of the bishop came after a Vatican investigation of the bishop, the diocese and its seminaries, said the statement, which gave no details.

Vatican sources said the bishop had refused to resign following the investigation of the accusations and reports of irregularities in his diocese.

According to reports in Catholic media while the Vatican investigation was in progress, Livieres Plano had promoted a priest in his diocese who had been accused of sexual abuse while serving in the United States.

A US bishop had told Paraguayan Church officials that the priest, an Argentinian national who had been promoted to a senior position in the Paraguayan diocese by Livieres Plano, was a "serious threat to young people", according to the reports.

Livieres Plano had defended both himself and the priest, saying the charges against them were unfounded.

The dismissed bishop, a member of the conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei, had also become a polarising figure in the Paraguayan Church and often clashed with more progressive clerics.

The Vatican said Pope Francis had taken the "onerous decision" to remove Livieres Plano after careful examination of the results of the Vatican investigation. He has previously said bishops who covered up abuse would be held accountable.

The dismissal of Paraguayan bishop came two days after the pope approved the arrest in the Vatican of a former archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic.

This is huge.  The priest in question, Fr. Urrutigoity, if reports about him are true, is one of the most dangerous men in the Church, and something seemed to be rotten indeed in Ciudad del Este.

I'm wondering if Opus Dei (itself a compromised organization) will have the chutzpah to try to spin this in Bishop Livieres' favor.   Will the right wing of the Church and the Rad Trads paint this as the persecution of a conservative bishop by a liberal pope?  Will blowhard Bill Donohue, who is paid an obscene salary to lie about disgraced "conservative" heroes like Bishop Finn and Maciel, jump to Livieres' defense?  Or will people realize that this is not only the right move by Pope Francis, but a brave and bold one?

It's sad that these days simply doing the right thing in the Church appears brave and bold.  But until enablers and liars in the episcopacy are sacked, the Scandal will continue.

This much at least we know.  Livieres himself will go on the attack, as he did after the Vatican suspended ordinations in his diocese.  And the money and power behind Urrutigoity will rally to defend him or at least to hide him for the time being.

But at least, every once in a while, someone in the Church does the right thing.  This time it was the Pope.

Dialogue with Spam

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Here's a fun one that invites a dialogue ...

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US Bishops to Catholics: "We Wear the Mitres, You Wear the Dunce Caps"

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in my opinion the most beautiful of Marian feasts.

In today's Mass, there is an optional sequence to be sung or prayed.  It is the Stabat Mater, a 13th century hymn, whose stanzas are made up of rhyming couplets followed by a third line that rhymes with the next stanza's third line: AAB, CCB - like so ...

At the Cross her station keeping,

Stood the mournful Mother weeping,

Close to her Son to the last.

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,

All His bitter anguish bearing,

Now at length the sword has passed.

This is from the 19th century translation by Edward Caswall of the original Latin hymn.

But in the official version of Caswall's translation, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops have placed on their website some very odd changes, such as this ...

Let me mingle tears with you,

Mourning him who mourned for me,

All the days that I may live.

What the hell???  The official version on the website (and I assume in the Missals) includes only 16 of the 20 stanzas, which is strange - but far stranger are stanzas like this in which nothing rhymes with anything and which throws the whole hymn off.

... until you realize that this is done for our benefit because we're just so flipping stupid.  Because Caswall's translation of the above stanza rhymes, and it runs like this ...

Let me mingle tears with thee,

mourning Him who mourned for me,

all the days that I may live.

Oh!  That's it!  Since we're too ignorant and moronic to know that Thee means You, the bishops take care of that for us by destroying the rhyme and pretty much ruining the hymn.

Of course we don't know that Thine means Yours either, so they take care of that for us, too ...

Virgin of all virgins blest!

Listen to my fond request:

Let me share your grief divine.

Let me to my latest breath,

In my body bear the death

Of that dying Son of yours.

Our Lady of Sorrows?  More like Our Lady of Annoyance.

  

The Attitude Behind the Scandal

Rabbi David Kaye, from To Catch a Predator

There's an episode of To Catch a Predator, the reality show in which men try to have sex with underage boys and girls, and are then recorded in a confrontation with the show's host who reveals that they've been caught on video and that the whole set up is a law enforcement sting - there's an episode where a Jewish Rabbi "essentially tried to rape a 13-year-old boy" and is caught red handed.

Though clearly guilty, the rabbi blames the show's host and pulls a "how dare you suggest such a terrible thing about me!  I'm a religious leader!" pose.  The rabbi's attitude is exactly the sort of thing you see from people who not only abuse positions of power, but who feel entitled to positions of power.  I've been dealing with it in the Catholic Church, sometimes on a personal level, for all of my 14 years as a Catholic.

In fact, a prominent bishop whose history shows a repeated tendency to lie in order to save face and whose record with regard to sexually abusive clergy is filled with shameful displays of half-truths and cowardice, and who's particularly famous for protecting his favorites at all costs, pulls exactly this haughty "how dare you!" attitude when his lofty status is called into question.  He even went so far recently as to claim he has a "stellar" record in handling cases of clerical abuse of minors - which he demonstrably doesn't, and hasn't for more than thirty years.  But how dare we question it!

I mention all of this because I think it gets to the heart of why we allow abuse.

If you think about it, it's not so surprising that there are predators out there who prey upon helpless victims.  Like all evil, we know that that sort of thing is always among us, and we know it's always an aberration.  We live in a world where Goodness is normal (thank God) and where such acts, though always present statistically in any group and always present perhaps as temptations in every heart, are rare.  So to learn that respected figures such as priests or college football coaches or entertainment celebrities are capable of such things is really not what this scandal is made of.

What's closer to the core of this is the systematic flaw, the corruption of an entire system, which serves to protect abusers and thereby to enable abuse.  The best example of this in the Catholic Church is the Legion of Christ, an organization deliberately designed to enable and protect the hellish acts of its founder, an organization which is systematically compromised at a core level.  

But more than that.  We all know how rotten systems can get, from the police department of Ferguson, Missouri to the Federal Government of the United States.  It's not even, then, systematic corruption that enables this evil - for systems are simply constructs of individual people.

What's much closer to the core here is this attitude - this attitude that is simply a manifestation of the deadliest of all sins - pride.  The how dare you! attitude.  The Rabbi Caught with His Pants Down attitude.

***

We see this attitude in action in a story that Rod Dreher relates today, a story that's ten years old and still being told.  Dreher refers to his actions in 2004 when he broke a story about a priest in his own parish who was accused of abusing a teenage boy, but who had managed to avoid the consequences of his accusation by flouting Church law.

Interestingly, this priest (Fr. Clay) was associated with the (reportedly) erstwhile cult leader, financial huckster and alleged child abuser Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity.  There are conflicting reports still up on the internet about the details behind the Fr. Clay story, but this seems to be what happened.

Fr. Christopher Clay was a diocesan priest incardinated in the diocese of Scranton, PA, whose ordinary in 2002 was Bishop Timlin.  Clay was one of three priests accused at that time of raping a teenage male victim - Fr. Urrutigoity and one of his associates being the other two men accused.  Timlin removed Clay from ministry and Clay moved to Texas "where he attempted to recover from the stress of his encounter with the District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania" (in the words of Randy Engel).

In Arlington, Clay approached his friend Fr. Allan Hawkins of St. Mary the Virgin church, who allowed Clay to function as a priest at the parish.

Now there is some confusion as to whether Clay had been, at the time, "suspended" in Scranton by Timlin, that is, stripped of his faculties and barred from publicly saying Mass or administering any of the other sacraments.  What is clear is that Clay was not excardinated from the diocese of Scranton and incardinated into the diocese of Fort Worth - which amounts to the same thing.  Clay was not allowed to present himself as a functioning priest in Fort Worth, per Canon Law.

This may sound nit-picky, but even Wikipedia can explain incardination ...

The purpose of incardination is to ensure that no cleric, whether deacon or priest, is "freelance", without a clear ecclesiastical superior to whom he is responsible.

When Clay's friend Fr. Hawkins in Arlington approached Bishop Timlin of Scranton privately to ask if Timlin would object to Clay's functioning as a priest at St. Mary the Virgin, he was flouting the rules and subverting Canon Law.  This is why the chancellor of Scranton (the chancellor!) was surprised to learn that Clay was saying Mass in Texas.  

James Early, chancellor of the Scranton Diocese, said Father Clay had told him he had a job in Texas reviewing medical insurance claims.

"He should not be functioning in any capacity as a priest," Mr. Early said.

But eight full years after this all broke, the diocese of Scranton (now under the leadership of a new bishop) ...

... states it has learned that Father Clay has continued to present himself as a priest and dress in clerical garb.  Specifically, the Diocese has been advised that Fr. Clay attended Mass in the Diocese of Fort Worth, where he now resides, dressed in cassock, surplus and stole. The Diocese also relates that Fr.Clay has involved himself in the training of altar servers in Fort Worth and buying them gifts, without the knowledge of the pastor involved, and that the Bishop of Fort Worth has now issued a precept barring Fr. Clay from entering upon the grounds of any parish in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Fr. Clay has now been suspended by the Bishop of Scranton following Fr. Clay’s failure to follow his Bishop’s direction to return to the Diocese of Scranton.  

So Fr. Clay is what you might call a "piece of work".  And very much in the mold of Urrutigoity and his crew, whose own story parallels Clay's in many ways, except it involves a wild area in Paraguay and a diocese that seems to have some very serious problems.

And yet ... how did Fr. Hawkins, the pastor of St. Mary the Virgin, respond back in 2004 when this story broke?  The same Fr. Hawkins who skirted Church law - and a crucial element of Church law - by not approaching his own bishop to incardinate Fr. Clay?  The same Fr. Hawkins who entered into an under the table deal with the bishop of Scranton, a bishop who also flouted Church law and kept things so quiet that he didn't even inform his own chancellor about the matter?  How did Hawkins respond when the truth came out?

Hawkins pulled the Rabbi Caught with His Pants Down move (see above).

How dare you!  This man is a holy priest!  A friend of mine!  Rod Dreher, the journalist who made this mess, is not even an official parishioner here!  What a terrible thing gossip is!  Pray for this good and maligned Father Clay, who may or may not have raped a drunken teenage boy, but who was affiliated with a fraudulent religious order, whose leader shows every sign of being a serial predator and cult-leader in the making, and whose bishop, like me, doesn't even follow basic Canon Law.  Oh, how the righteous suffer!

I'm paraphrasing and parodying, of course, and you have to read between the lines, but anyone who's been on the receiving end of this tone, of this attitude, of this pride, knows this act very well.

Especially the host of To Catch a Predator - who gets it all the time.

When Your Mission Statement is Soaked in Sex

One of my Facebook friends can't quite understand why I think this paragraph from the Mission Statement (such as it is) of the so-called Culture Project is drenched with sex (called "chastity" on the Project's impossible to load website) ...

"The experience was the same, though in different forms, textures, and places around the world. It was savoring a glass of red wine under the New York City skyline or trekking through the paths of the Pocono mountains; it was sitting in an old church or walking along the oceanside; it was reciting poetry or crafting a piece of music or falling in love; it was the personal experience of pressing against reality and finding deep questions and longings aroused. Among the raw questions and desires, one thing remained certain – they had fallen in love with something greater than themselves."

Perhaps if I changed some of the phrasing into pick-up lines it might help.

• Hey, beautiful, I'd like to press against your reality.
• I find that you have aroused a deep question within me.
• Let's drink some red wine and hike the Poconos (and I do mean poke - but I don't mean nose)
• Both my questions and my desires are raw, baby.  Rawwwwwwrrrr.

Thomas L'anneaux (the worlds only Chesterton fan who is also a psychiatrist living in Hawaii) comments upon this strange projection of sexual desire without sexual fulfillment into all aspects of life ...

You know how the Yogis are always smiling on their bed of nails? 

It's curious how the very people who talk about transfiguring the instincts, have a very happy-go-lucky way of flattening them. 

I think you're on to something Kevin, and I'm sure that St. Paul didn't try to turn the "if you burn with passion" into some kind of mysticism.  [My note: see 1 Cor. 7:9)

"The modern world has a curious way of both encouraging the appetites, and crushing the instincts." - GKC

Thomas admits he's paraphrasing that last quotation, which he drew from memory.  The actual quotation is ...

For this is a strange epoch; and while, in some ways, we have quite dangerously encouraged the appetites, we have quite ruthlessly crushed the instincts. 

That's because appetite without instinct is a kind of lust without common sense; it's desire without the simple end for which desire was made.

Deny the simple thing that sexual desire is for (which is not just sexual union, but more fully the establishing and supporting of a family, making babies, living out romantic love in very unromantic ways) and that very sexual desire soaks every thing in sex, including your Mission Statement.

***

Meanwhile, I have written a Mission Statement for this blog.  Tell me what you think ...

Through the various eclectic experiences of life, a life lived with passion, the passion that wells up deep within us as we gaze heavenward on a starry night and see (glass of sherry in hand) the Milky Way spread like a semen stain across the cosmos, we find (don't we?) the rawness of the longing, the grand climax of human existence, which is - as we are all too well aware on those nights we've Skyped and your eyes glisten with that desire to go beyond the mere platonic embrace of two minds tumbling together in nakedness as one - the deep answers to our rawest interior burning: we find God himself; or something very much like him (don't we?) ... what's your name again?