Waiting for Godot to Leave

Grant Gallicho concludes his excellent eight part series at Commonweal on the "Curious Case of Carlos Urrutigoity" here. The conclusion is a bit anti-climactic.  The only major player to suffer any kind of serious consequences for this long and tawdry affair seems to be Bishop Livieres of Ciudad del Este, who was asked to resign by Pope Francis back in September.  Meanwhile, Urrutigoity and his crew of followers and supporters are still out there, many of them are still functioning as priests, at least one of them  continues to fund raise despite his association with the Society of St. John - an organization whose founder allegedly engaged in sex abuse and financial fraud - and I am told that even though Urrutigoity's associate Eric Ensey has been "defrocked" he still continues to present himself as a priest.

Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register It pains me to point out that National Catholic Register, once a fairly solid and trustworthy publication, has become the only mainstream journal (to my knowledge) to buy into the trad hysteria over the removal of one of the worst bishops in the world.

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,...

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 sour...

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: AA B, CC B - 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 off...

If atheists are right, and there is no God, then let's burn down all the churches, for they're all monuments to lies.  If Catholics are right, and there is a God and He is who He says He is, then when He says, "Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" ( John 8:32 ) we'd better realize He means it.  That much, at least, Catholics should have in common with atheists: a devotion to the Truth. But if we are too scared to be loyal to what is True, then we will also fail in being faithful to what is Beautiful and what is Good.  The prince of Lies and the God of Truth don't really mix that well. I write a lot about Unreality on this blog, by which I mean a religious attitude that is divorced from the reality of life.  Unreality is a form of idolatry, of using the things of God for your own small-minded purposes, of leaning on the Church to support your tottering house of cards, of being contrived and artificial, of adopting airs and affectations, o...

Dick Cheney's stunt double, Bill Donohue of the Catholic Defense League. Refusing to address a single one of the facts whistle blower Jennifer Haselberger has revealed in her deposition, in her interviews, and in the abundant documentary evidence that supports Haseblberger's claims about the scandal in St. Paul, Catholic Defense League's Bill Donohue instead goes after Haselberger personally. And why not?  This is a tactic demagogues of all shapes and sizes have used throughout history.  Avoid the evidence, don't engage on the issues, instead use personal attacks to discredit your opponents.  It may not be the most Catholic or Christian thing to do - but hey, it's us vs. them , so anything goes, right? Now if Donohue wanted to come after me or pretty much any other Catholic I know, and if he did his digging, he could find a ton of embarrassing and incriminating details that would make it hard for any of us to show our faces in public again.  I have yet to...

One of the things revealed in the documents that have been released concerning the Fr. Kolar case in St. Paul is that after Kolar was sent away for treatment and it became obvious that he was both initiating sexual contact with adult women he was counseling, and also abusing a minors - and after the psychiatrists who evaluated him indicated the he had a serious personality disorder, the archbishop and his cronies decided that their options were either ... 1. Make Fr. Kolar DIRECTOR OF GUIDANCE at the seminary (where he could guide and form young men who were becoming priests) 2. Put him to work AT A PARISH (where he would be free to counsel more young women.  Note that the archdiocese made a point of not informing any laity of Fr. Kolar's abusive behavior, so women approaching Fr. Kolar for counseling at a parish would not know the risk they were taking.) And in neither case would any of the bishops around the country be informed of Kolar's previous work in NET Minist...

A s reported yesterday by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch  (my emphasis in bold / my comments in italics) ...  On a morning when a historic sexual abuse trial was supposed to begin, the Archdiocese of St. Louis announced a settlement in a civil lawsuit against a defrocked priest. The first trial involving the archdiocese since the sexual abuse crisis broke in 2002 was set to begin Monday morning. [My Note: all the rest, 60 or more, have been settled out of court or dismissed]. The lawsuit involves a woman who claims she was abused by former priest Joseph D. Ross from 1997 to 2001 while attending St. Cronan Catholic Church. The woman, ... alleges the abuse began when she was 5 or 6 years old. The archdiocese maintains that the allegations made in the lawsuit are false and denies Jane Doe was ever abused by Ross.  ... At the request of the plaintiff, details of the settlement will remain confidential , Pesha said.  While the archdiocese denied Ross ...

Bill McClellan writes an open letter to Archbishop Carlson in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Some excerpts ... Good morning, Your Eminence. How you doing? Don’t answer. I know how you’re doing. You’re still reeling from the  release of that transcript of a deposition from Minnesota  in which you claimed you couldn’t remember whether you used to know it was a crime for an adult to have sex with a child. That didn’t play too well, did it? Especially because at the very time you supposedly weren’t sure about the legality of molesting kids, you were writing memos to your boss about the statute of limitations for such a crime. If you knew about a statute of limitations, you had to know it was a crime. Or am I missing something? Again, don’t answer. I am not here to harangue you. I’m on your side. As far as I’m concerned, “Thou shalt not lie” is strictly Old Testament stuff. You need some public relations help, Your Em. Nothing against the people you have on s...

A great archeological find.  I provide translation below. Q. Are you the Son of God? JESUS. I really don't remember. Q. Did you say you would destroy the temple and build it in three days? JESUS. I have no recollection of that.  Do you have that in a document? Q. I have a document here that quotes a number of things you said. JESUS. I don't remember that document.  May I see it? Q. Before I show it to you, I'm asking if you recall the events it describes, such as chasing the money changers out of the temple.  Did you do that? JESUS. Is that recorded in the document? Q. I'm asking you if you have any recollection of that outside the document? JESUS. I have done many things.  I don't remember every one of them. Q. Did you heal a blind man on the Sabbath? MR. THURM. Objection.  Leading the witness, and a vague time frame.  Which Sabbath? Q. I'm asking if you healed a blind man on any Sabbath. JESUS. I would not dispute th...

So you want to be the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, do you?  (See Bad Bishops: Same Old Spin - Different Day ). Submit your resume and answer the question below. Given the following scenario ... A priest under your control and care admits to having homosexual or bisexual desires.  This priest likes to wrestle with 14-year-old boys.  Let me repeat that: this priest likes to wrestle with 14-year-old boys. This priest admits that while wrestling with a 14-year-old boy, he grabbed his genitals, on two different occasions.  The second time he did so, the boy became enraged and refused to talk to the priest the rest of the day, at an event for the boy's family. The priest is indicted, tried and convicted on a charge of aggravated sexual conduct.   The conviction is overturned on a technicality.  The appellate court orders a retrial. To avoid a retrial, you strike a deal with prosecutors, agreeing to remove said priest from any ministry...

There is a pattern and it's a sick and strange one. Over the months, I have written at length about Kansas City Bishop Finn's dreadful handling of a sex abuse case in his diocese, and have taken quite a bit of heat from the True Believers, who swallow uncritically the cult-like notion that criticizing a bishop who endangers children is the equivalent of hating Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.  (If you really want to have fun, read the whole series here ). Archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers Now we have Archbishop Myers in New Jersey and sex abuser Fr. Michael Fugee.  The case is so much like the Finn case that it's weird.  Frank Weathers and Mark Shea  have articles on the case, in which they link to local New Jersey reports, which themselves link to the original source documents at the heart of the matter, including this one , which apparently nobody wants to read. I won't go into details, since if you're interested you can find the details at this l...