De-homosexualization of the Catholic Church

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CJW: Yes GM - that's the whole point! Stealth apostasy involves a lot of pretending on the part of the deceivers. They can be considered even worse than atheists/agnostics/skeptics who attack Christian belief from the outside of the church (meaning, all believers) because they are doing their dirty deeds from within individual church congregations.

'Individual church congregations', you say? That doesn't jibe with Ratzinger's directive that all abuse cases worldwide were to be reported to his office and kept under pontifical seal.
This isn't like the army, lady, where the commanding general may well be unaware of the crimes committed in his name. John Paul II knew. Benedict XVI knows. The former, it seems, tried to deny it existed; the latter has been trying to keep a lid on it, or at least restrict the damage.

Of course, as a non-believer, your focus is on the temporal and physical results of such deception. John MacArthur (and I, via previous comment) are attempting to point out the seriousness of the spiritual deception.

Since this 'spiritual deception' seems to affect people in the here-and-now, the attempts to set it right should also be done in the here-and-now.
Or do you feel that the victims should live with the guilt and shame for 50 or 60 years, and then it will all be miraculously removed when they get to heaven?

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From The New York Times, 23 April 10:

Belgian Bishop Quits Over Sex Abuse
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME —The longest-serving bishop in Belgium resigned Friday after admitting to sexually abusing “a young man in my close entourage” many years ago, becoming the latest cleric to quit in a spreading abuse scandal.

The development dealt a new blow to the Roman Catholic Church, and marked a new entry in a corrosive catalog of disclosures that has damaged its credibility and shaken the trust of many believers in their spiritual leaders.

In a statement issued by the Vatican on Friday, Roger Vangheluwe, 73, the bishop of Bruges since 1984, said that the abuse had occurred “when I was still a simple priest and for a while when I began as a bishop.”

“This has marked the victim forever,” the statement said.

The bishop said he had on several occasions asked the victim and his family to forgive him but the wound had not healed, “neither in me nor the victim.” A media storm in recent weeks had merely deepened the trauma, he said.

“I am enormously sorry,” he said. Earlier this week, in a rare, direct comment on the issue, Pope Benedict XVI promised that the church would take action to deal with the crisis.

The bishop’s resignation came just one day after church authorities in Germany said that Bishop Walter Mixa, one of the country’s most prominent and outspoken conservative clerics, had tendered his resignation to the pope after being accused of beating children decades ago.

On the same day, the Vatican said the pope had accepted the resignation of Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare and Leighlin, Ireland, under a code of canon law that allows a bishop to resign before the retirement age of 75 for a “grave reason” that makes him “unsuitable for the fulfillment of his office.”

In Britain, which the pope is planning to visit later this year, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales issued an apology to victims of sexual abuse by priests and called the abuse crisis a “profound scandal” that had brought “deep shame to the whole church.”

The bishops designated the four Fridays in May as special days of prayer.

Bishop Vangheluwe is the first Belgian bishop to step down since the abuse scandal began to emerge months ago in several European countries, particularly Germany and Ireland.

The bishop’s statement was also read out to reporters at a news conference in Brussels by Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, who called Bishop Vangheluwe a “generous and dynamic bishop,” but said that his transgression would shock many.

“We are aware of the crisis of confidence his resignation will set in motion,” Archbishop Leonard said. But he stressed that the Catholic Church in Belgium was determined to “turn over a leaf from a not-very-distant past when such matters would pass in silence or be covered up.”

The resignation came 10 years after the church in Belgian set up a commission to look into complaints of abuse that frequently seemed at loggerheads with the church leadership.

Earlier this year, Archbishop Leonard admitted in an Easter homily that, as the Vatican leadership confronted persistent accusations of abuse, “the reputation of church leaders was given a higher priority than that of abused children,” The Associated Press reported.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

Hmmm...so the bishop sought his victim for forgiveness, eh? I thought that only came from Jeeezus!
What about the (no longer young) man himself? Does he still go to church, and how could he stand it, knowing that a priest who had violated him had risen through the ranks?

People pursue Obama's past with far more vigor than that of their local ecclesiastics, and with far less reason, IMO. The actions of a president often fade after a decade or so; those of a naughty vicar* can last for decades, as we have seen.
Although he has stepped down as bishop, Vangheluwe said nothing about leaving the Church, however; and at 73 he can reasonably be expected to hang around another 15 years or so. They'll probably retire him to a seminary in East Podunk until the storm subsides, and in five years he may be heard from again, giving advice to other theologians.

*Monty Python reference...never mind.

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This is how the RCC is defending sex with children now?...

Brazilian archbishop: all teenagers are 'spontaneously homosexual'

Honest. That's what he said. If you don't believe it, go here, and read what else he said.

Be glad you got out when you did, hostess!

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The witless Christian in this case is the subject of the previous post, who obviously likes to play the 'blame the victim' game.

One comment by Archbishop Grings that was unpublished by the Telegraph but was published elsewhere clarifies his reasoning...a little bit...

"We know that the adolescent is spontaneously homosexual. Boys play with boys, girls play with girls," he said. "If there is no proper guidance, this sticks. The question is — how are we going to educate our children to use a sexuality that is human and suitable?"

Now I understand! Boys play with boys, and if there is no proper guidance, this sticks!
Well, then, we know what to do! Abolish all armies! Until quite recently, armies were composed exclusively of men. Who'd have guessed that there was such temptation among soldiers in foxholes? When they weren't ducking enemy rounds, they were seeking holes of a different kind. Who knew?
Or maybe it's navy "snipes" down in the boiler rooms, their sweaty, half-naked bodies gleaming in the firelight...who knew? Well, obviously the Archbishop did...!
We could eliminate all such enticements by simply forbidding any large gatherings of men! Of course, it's not as biblical as killing the offenders, but those damned secularists won't let him do that anymore.

Of course, we'd also have to eliminate all sports teams, as well as any place for men to gather and watch them. Sports is the penultimate example of 'boys play[ing] with boys', and unlike war, it's usually not fatal. I know of more than a few women (including yourself?) who wouldn't especially like that. However, large groups of women watching men at sport is a great way for the men to show themselves off. There's no telling what it might do to the women!

If Archbishop Grings had ever bothered to study human sexuality, he would have known that boys and girls learn how to play with each other soon enough—far too soon for most of their parents! When the hormones switch on, boys decide very quickly that they don't want to hang with the other boys all the time, and girls too start developing reasons to keep the boys near them, not away from them.
But there I go again, thinking sexuality is mainly a biological matter, not a moral one.

Something else just occurred to me. If, as the Archbishop says, this could lead to public acceptance of pedophilia... wouldn't that just make things easier for future generations of predator priests?

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”And the hits just keep onnnn comin'!!”

From The Modesto Bee (CA), 04 June 2010:

Church pays abusive ex-priest
Diocese says $94k guaranteed O'Grady left clergy
By Sue Nowicki
snowicki@modbee.com

Oliver O'Grady has been called the Hannibal Lecter of pedophile Catholic priests. He has been gone from the Stockton Diocese for 17 years, but the civil lawsuits keep coming — 22 to date, resulting in $18.7 million paid to victims.

And Saturday, when O'Grady turns 65 in his native Ireland, an annuity purchased by the diocese seven years ago will pay him about $788 a month for 10 years, totaling $94,560. There is nothing the diocese, its parishioners or his outraged victims can do about it.

"He gets rewarded. I get very frustrated," said Nancy Sloan, 45, who was sexually abused by O'Grady when she was 11. "The church has certainly gone back on its word countless times. I don't know why it wouldn't even cross their minds to go back on the annuity — give it back to a victims fund."

O'Grady has admitted abusing many children of various ages, boys and girls, and said he slept with two mothers to get access to their children. He was convicted of child sexual abuse in 1993 and spent seven years in prison.

Some blogs and news reports have called the payments "hush money," part of a deal to keep O'Grady from testifying against former Bishop Roger Mahony and other diocesan officials accused of knowing about his abuse but moving him from parish to parish.

"That's not true at all," said Bishop Stephen Blaire, who said he was the one who arranged the annuity after he took over leadership of the diocese in 1999.

The truth, Blaire said, is that he fervently wanted O'Grady to be stripped of his priesthood. His faculties, or authority to exercise his priesthood, already had been taken away. But defrocking a priest was a
"long and cumbersome process," one with "no guarantees," especially a decade ago, Blaire said.

The only sure way to make that happen was for O'Grady to request a change in status.

"He was going to be paroled in November 2000," Blaire said. "I was determined that he not leave prison as a priest. His lawyer told me O'Grady would consider seeking laicization if a pension annuity would be made available to him.

"I found it distasteful to provide an annuity as part of the arrangement. But I wanted to provide some measure of justice or peace of mind for his victims that he could never again use his priesthood to damage families. I didn't see any other way of guaranteeing that he would be out of the priesthood."
Blaire knows the annuity payments are "going to be perceived badly. But there was a reason."

'Rare, but not unheard of'

The annuity cost the diocese nearly $11,000 annually over a seven-year period and was paid for in 2009. The payments will be made to O'Grady from the insurance company.

Buying an annuity is "rare, but not unheard of," said Mary Jane Doerr, associate director of the office of Child and Youth Protection for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C.

The more common thing is for a defrocked priest to retain any pension he earned from the diocese, she said. O'Grady doesn't receive a pension.

"Yes, he did a terrible thing," Doerr said, but a bishop has a responsibility to take care of priests in any case — he can't just kick them to the curb.

The lack of safety around O'Grady was highlighted when the ex-priest made international news in April.

He'd been living in the Netherlands for about 18 months and going by the name "Brother Francis," his middle name. He worked as a deacon in a small Rotterdam church, volunteered at a shelter for women and children, and worked at McDonald's as a children's party coordinator.

People there recognized him after a promotional piece for a 2006 documentary about O'Grady, "Deliver Us From Evil," ran on TV. He was questioned by police and fled back to Ireland.

Ireland accusations emerge

O'Grady arrived in the Stockton Diocese at age 25 from his native Ireland in 1971 and was assigned to St. Anne's Parish in Lodi.

He recently has been accused of sexually abusing children in Ireland before he came to this country.

The first recorded abuse complaint to the Stockton Diocese against O'Grady came in 1976, when Sloan told her parents the cleric had sexually abused her at a Catholic summer camp and at the St. Anne's rectory. O'Grady was serving as an assistant priest there.

Although O'Grady, when confronted by St. Anne's pastor, wrote a letter of apology to Sloan and her parents acknowledging the abuse, then-Bishop Merlin Guilfoyle kept him in ministry, moving O'Grady to Sacred Heart Parish in Turlock.

No one knew for more than 20 years that O'Grady also had abused Ann Jyono from the time she was 5 in 1973 until she was in junior high school. Jyono's mom, also a native of Ireland, and her father often invited O'Grady into their Lodi home. They have said they felt blessed by seeing the Irish priest saying his morning prayers, never suspecting he forced sex on their daughter during the night.

In published reports in 2005 and 2006, Jyono said she never told of the abuse because her father often had said he loved her so much and he would kill anyone who hurt her. She asked a childhood friend, "What happens when a man kills someone else?" She was told the man would go to prison forever. So she thought she was protecting her father by keeping quiet.

The truth came out in 1993 after O'Grady called the Jyonos to tell them he had been arrested. Ann Jyono's parents believed in O'Grady's innocence and were going to help raise his bail with a second mortgage and by dipping into their retirement funds. Then the truth came out — their daughter told them their charming Irish priest friend had abused her for years.

Labeled most dangerous

Patrick Wall, an attorney with a Southern California law firm that has filed many of the priest sex abuse lawsuits in the state, said O'Grady "is the Hannibal Lecter of the clerical world ... one of the top three most dangerous pedophile priests in the world."

But the knowledge of his abuse evolved slowly.

A criminal investigation was begun against O'Grady by Stockton police in 1984 after he told his therapist he had fondled a boy. He served at the city's Church of the Presentation at the time. The police closed the case for lack of evidence, and Mahony moved the priest that same year to a parish in San Andreas. Although there was no school attached to the parish, O'Grady later said he continued to have plenty of interaction with children.

Mahony promoted O'Grady to pastor the next year — a couple of months before Mahony became archbishop of the Los Angeles Diocese. Bishop Donald Montrose followed Mahony in Stockton in 1986. Six years later, he sent O'Grady to St. Anthony's Parish in Hughson. One year later, in the summer of 1993, O'Grady was arrested.

Criminal case from brothers

That criminal case arose out of O'Grady's longtime sexual abuse of James and Joh (pronounced Joe) Howard. Although they, like Sloan, lived outside the diocese — the Howards grew up in Merced — O'Grady visited them often.
James Howard, in a 1998 San Francisco Chronicle story, called O'Grady "the family priest" who also molested four of his seven brothers and sisters. But because of the statute of limitations, legal action could be taken only for the sexual abuse against James and his younger brother, Joh.

O'Grady was convicted in the criminal case. He was sentenced to prison for 14 years, but — in accordance with common practice at that time — was released in seven. He was still in prison in 1998 when civil lawsuits filed on behalf of the brothers reached the trial stage.

Jeff Anderson, an attorney from St. Paul, Minn., represented the Howard brothers, along with Larry Drivon of Stockton. Those lawsuits ended with the jury awarding the brothers $6 million in compensatory damages and $24 million in punitive damages. That $30 million was reduced during the appeal process to $7.6 million, plus a "second phase" that brought in about $4 million more from the diocese's insurance company last year, Anderson said.
Anderson, reached by phone in Los Angeles on Wednesday, called O'Grady's pending annuity payments "outrageous."

"Why would they pay him after he's been deported, after he's been convicted?" Anderson asked. "He's deserving of no money, certainly from them."

Ire aimed at Mahony

Mahony, in particular, remains a target of victims and their attorneys, possibly because the other two bishops in office when O'Grady served in the diocese have died.

"I was almost as upset by Guilfoyle as I am with Mahony, but (Mahony) had several occasions to remove (O'Grady) and didn't," Johnson said. "He holds a very high office and to this day has the same deceitful attitude ... by his failure to acknowledge his omissions and admit the crimes of O'Grady in the 1980s. He is a fugitive from the truth, either because he cannot see or he will not see."

"That's not right. It's not supported by facts," said Mahony's spokesman, Tod Tamberg.

Mahony, now a cardinal, has testified in depositions that he didn't know about O'Grady's sexual abuse.

"He was unaware of a secret file from the tenure of the previous bishop dealing with a complaint about O'Grady," Tamberg said. "After a diocesan investigation turned up no confirmation of misconduct, O'Grady was moved to a new parish (in San Andreas) because two retired priests who could help with his maturation lived there. Only after Bishop Mahony had left for Los Angeles did O'Grady's horrible actions and lies begin to see the light of day."

And the lawsuits continue

Anthony DeMarco is a Beverly Hills attorney who represents a "John Doe" client. The man, now 31, claims he was 6 when he was molested by O'Grady in the Stockton parish. That lawsuit will go to trial in November.

DeMarco also represents the man's older sister in another lawsuit. That one is on appeal to the state Supreme Court over a statute of limitations issue.

"They're struggling to get by," he said of his clients. "They have massive emotional problems that require medication and therapy. It's like putting a bomb in their lives. It has dramatically affected every relationship they've ever had."

The statute of limitations says claimants must be younger than 26 in child abuse cases, but there are exceptions because of a state law passed in 2002.
That means more O'Grady lawsuits could be filed for several years, further upsetting area Catholics who are tired of hearing his name. The most recent lawsuit was filed just last year, said Paul Balastracci, the longtime diocesan attorney.

The ultimate healing of victims — not lawsuits or annuity payments — is the most important thing, he said.

"None of it changes the fact that (O'Grady) did what he did," said Balastracci. "The diocese is doing the best they can to help the survivors of this."

Bee staff writer Sue Nowicki can be reached at snowicki@modbee.com or 578-2012.

This article is protected by copyright and should not be printed or distributed for anything except personal use.
Copyright © 2010, The Modesto Bee, 1325 H St., Modesto, CA 95354

Not exactly the same as hanging a millstone around one's neck and casting them into the sea, is it?

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Well, not quite...but it probably felt that way to those on the other side of the police badges.
Somebody was going to do it sooner or later. Somebody was going to show the Vatican that they really meant business. But it wasn't the USA, or Germany, or Ireland, but...Belgium??

Pope deplores Belgian sex raids, stresses autonomy
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
June 27, 2010

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI lashed out Sunday at what he called the "deplorable" raids carried out by Belgian police who detained bishops, confiscated computers, opened a crypt and took church documents as part of an investigation into priestly sex abuse.

Benedict made a rare personal entry into the escalating diplomatic dispute with Belgium, issuing a message of solidarity to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference and other bishops who were detained in the June 24 raid.

He said justice must take its course, but also asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate clerical abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities.

It was first time the pope himself had commented on the raids, and his message to Monsignor Andre Joseph Leonard capped a daily ratcheting up of the Vatican's criticism. On Saturday, the No. 2 Vatican official said the raids were unprecedented even under communism.

Belgium's justice minister defended the searches on Sunday, saying the bishops were treated normally and that the search warrant was fully legitimate.

In the raids, police searched the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and his personal computer, just as the country's nine bishops were starting their monthly meeting. The men were held for nine hours and — along with diocese staff — had to surrender their cell phones.

In addition, police opened at least one tomb of a prelate — a violation that has particularly galled the Vatican.

Police and prosecutors have not said if Danneels is suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.

Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people — mostly men now in their 60s and 70s — who have lived with the shame of abuse.

Benedict said he wanted to write to Belgium's bishops "at this sad moment" to express his solidarity "for the surprising and deplorable way in which the searches were conducted." He noted that the monthly meeting of the bishops was set to discuss clerical abuse.

Belgium's Catholic Church has been stunned following the resignation in April of its longest-serving bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, who stepped down after admitting to having sexually abused a young boy during the time Danneels was archbishop.

The revelation came as hundreds of cases of abuse were being reported across Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, exposing cover-ups by bishops and evidence of long-standing Vatican inaction to stop it.

In his message Sunday, Benedict stressed that such crimes are handled by both civil and canon law "respecting their reciprocal specificity and autonomy."

"In that sense, I hope that justice takes its course, guaranteeing the fundamental rights of people and institutions with respect to the victims, recognizing without prejudice all those who are committed to collaborating with justice and refuting all that which seeks to obscure its noble goals," he wrote.

The Belgian justice minister, Stefaan De Clerck, stressed that the procedures used in the raids were correct and that the bishops were treated normally, according to the Belga news agency. He bristled at the criticism by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican No. 2, saying his suggestion that the raids were unprecedented even under communism had been excessive, based on false information.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press

Who would have ever imagined priests protesting against a sex raid? What a strange world!

I'm sure it was all conducted with as little fanfare as the police could muster. No Untouchables-style tactics, no battering rams on the church doors, no richly-garbed ecclesiastics shielding their faces from the cameras as they were hustled into the paddy wagons. Belgians are as pious as any other European, and even the Germans wouldn't have brought in the dogs and tear gas, right?

The bishops were detained (no one was arrested or charged). Computers and documents were seized, including one of which had been hidden in a crypt. I'll bet this all didn't just come out of nowhere. The Justice Minister almost certainly gave the church authorities notice to “submit so-and-so or face legal action” and the Church didn't submit. Police raids cost money, after all, and I doubt the Minister would have authorized it unless he felt he had a case.

Admin, if this were to happen here (and it could), would you and the mighty American Defense Fund come riding to the rescue—to defend men who, in this case, are the moral equivalent of NAMBLA, whom you so despise?

The RCC has 'autonomy' in Vatican City. Outside it, the RCC is subject to the laws of the nations its people reside in. I am not aware that any of those nations sanction what these...people...are accused of. Even in former Communist countries, such activity was frowned upon. Communists were/are very puritanical; keeping your eyes on his/her body means taking your eyes off the goal. Neither secular nor ecclesiastic tyranny can tolerate human happiness!

What has the Church's autonomy brought? Decades of not only the physical and mental rape of children, but decades of foot-dragging and cover-up. The documents exist. Some go back to the WWII era. Some suspected what was going on, and didn't talk. Some knew what was going on, and convinced others not to talk. Many people did wrong, and many more had wrong done to them. For an institution which has constantly said “all things shall be revealed in time”, it seems that time has come.

The former Archbishop is named Godfried Danneels? W.C. Fields, wherever he is, must be roaring with laughter—you can't make this stuff up!

Peccantem virum iniquum involvet laqueus et iustus laudabit atque gaudebit. --Proverbs 29:6

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Even when I don't look for them, the stories pop up like mushrooms...only not as wholesome.

From the Republican-American, Waterbury, CT, 06 July 2010:

Police say priest had secrets
Gray accused of stealing from church to pay for male escorts
BY JONATHAN SHUGARTS | REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

WATERBURY — To many of his supporters, the Rev. Kevin Gray is a humble servant of God who helped those in need, sacrificed for his flock and preached the Gospel at Sacred Heart Church in sermons described as soul-touching.

But police say a months-long criminal investigation has revealed the 64-year-old Gray was leading an extravagant double life that his parishioners never knew about.

That secret life included male escorts hired in New York, $200,000 in restaurant bills — including dinners at Tavern on the Green — and hotel stays in the lap of Manhattan luxury, expenses amassed by Gray and paid for with the church's money, police say.

Detectives say they discovered Gray, a well-respected Catholic priest and former leader of several city parishes, siphoned roughly $1.3 million from Sacred Heart to pay for a lavish lifestyle usually reserved for the wealthy.

Gray is expected to surrender to police today on a felony charge of first-degree larceny, a crime that could lead to 20 years in prison. Police say for the past seven years he cut checks from the church bank account to pay for designer clothes by Armani and overnight stays at Madison Avenue hotels, among a list of other expenses.

Although police believe Gray told his congregation he was battling cancer, detectives have determined Gray has never had cancer.

"I think that's how he explained his absence from the parish," said Capt. Christopher Corbett, a police spokesman.

Police have investigated Gray since May, when the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford came across financial "discrepancies" during an internal investigation. Archdiocese officials presented their findings to police, who say they've confirmed Gray embezzled the funds.

To read the complete story see Tuesday's Republican-American or our electronic edition at http://republicanamerican.ct.newsmemory.com.

(all emphases mine, of course. --GM)

Hoooo boy! Financing his homosexual lifestyle with church funds!
I figure that he probably studied church history over the years and concluded that popes and priests lived like that during the Middle Ages, and since America is such a wealthy country, he wondered if he shouldn't try that himself. Silly me—I thought that only people like Benny the Hinn did that!

He made people believe he had cancer? Why? Death comes to us all, and he, being a man of God, should have been better prepared for that eventuality than the rest of us, ready to face it with serenity and dignity. I doubt he'll have that now.

So...is this a crisis of faith, in which the civil authorities have no business intervening, or is it straight-up embezzlement, in which case Gray should be exposed to malleus lex? No, wait...yeah, it says that church officials reported this to the police, so the 'crisis' defense is shot.

At least he confined his homosexuality to consenting adults, not intimidated children, but I don't think that will count for much in the long run.