Former Catholic Church watchdog says clergyman used smear tactics

Chicago Sun Times ^ | October 1, 2003 | Rachel Zoll

[american colleen]

Former Catholic Church watchdog says clergyman used smear tactics

October 1, 2003

BY RACHEL ZOLL

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who resigned this year as head of a watchdog panel on clergy abuse, has told a conservative Roman Catholic magazine that a clergyman tried to undermine him by circulating a letter that accused him of keeping a mistress.

Keating said the letter -- which eventually made its way to top American church leaders -- also claimed he never attended mass.

''I was stunned and outraged,'' Keating said in an article he wrote for the October issue of the magazine Crisis. ''Every word was a lie.''

Keating recounted the incident as one of the events that led to his June resignation as chairman of the National Review Board.

U.S. bishops formed the lay panel in 2001 to monitor compliance with their new discipline policy on abuse, but Keating's pointed criticism of how dioceses had handled the crisis led some Catholic leaders to question whether he should be chairman.

He stepped down after angering many in the church by saying bishops were as secretive as the Mafia.

Keating, who has been married for 31 years, did not reveal the name of the person who wrote the letter but said it was ''purportedly written by the vicar general of Oklahoma City, a priest and the diocese's number-two official to his counterpart in Chicago.''

The Rev. Edward J. Weisenburger is listed in the 2002 Official Catholic Directory as the vicar general in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The Rev. James A. Kastner is listed as co-vicar general.

Weisenburger released a statement Tuesday night saying Kastner is in a nursing home and ''could not have been involved.'' Regarding his own role, Weisenberger said only that, ''I am unaware of Governor Keating contacting Archbishop [Eusebius] Beltran or myself about a letter purported to have been written by the vicar general of the Oklahoma City Archdiocese to the Vicar General of the Chicago Archdiocese, whom I do not know.''

Asked in a phone interview whether he was denying having written the letter, Weisenburger declined to comment further.

AP

[american colleen]

Interesting.

[american colleen]

Didn't see this posted yet.

[sinkspur]

Weisenburger is obviously the author of the letter, and is guilty of slander. Unless he apologizes, publicly, to Keating, his sin should not be forgiven by any confessor.

What a slimy thing to do, but, clerics have no special claim on holiness just because of the collar around their necks.

[317y]

I thought that Keating was the wrong man for the job and he lived down to my expectations. But this effort to smear him is disgraceful.

[Salvation]

Some of us had some suspicions along these lines.

Why did they want Keating out?

[sinkspur]

On the contrary, Keating was the right man for the job. He had the bishops pegged ("mafiosi") and was not intimidated by the "Most Reverend" that these guys carry around on the front of their names.

He must have struck a nerve, at least in Oklahoma City. These churchmen continue to destroy what little credibility they have in the public eye.

[Salvation]

**On the contrary, Keating was the right man for the job.**

This was my impression too. Guess he got too good at investigating the bishops too fast!

[317y]

Like the popular press, Keating choose to ignore the real problem, gay priests. Here is an exchange between a wired detective and a now convicted abusive priest:

Burkhart and McBride dined on crab cakes and chatted lightly. After dinner, McBride turned the conversation to the recent Catholic Church scandal. He hoped that, when it was all over, the church would recognize that priests are sexual beings too -- and that some are gay.

"Back in the 1960s, would you have ever come to a place like this?" Burkhart asked. "I mean, in this town, where you were working?"

"Probably not, no," McBride said. "Realistically, in 1960, no."

"And in certain places it looks like the seminary on Saturday night now," Burkhart joked.

"Yeah, that really is how it is," McBride said.

They compared notes on seeing clergy in gay bars. Then Burkhart stammered as he asked McBride a personal question: "So, whenever you had sex . . . were you bound to go to confession and confess it before you said Mass, or . . .?"

"Well, you were supposed to, yes," McBride said.

"Do you think all these priests do?"

"No," McBride said. "I think they changed their minds and decided it's not a sin."

---

I posted the article here this morning:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/992919/posts

[maryz]

It is indeed interesting. My copy of Crisis just came yesterday; I haven't had a chance to read the article yet.

[sinkspur]

Like the popular press, Keating choose to ignore the real problem, gay priests.

How do you know? He was only heading this thing up for less than a year.

The primary problem was bishops covering up criminal activity and not coming clean on which priests in their dioceses were abusers.

Besides, the commission was not hired to give moral admonitions to the USCCB; its charter was to determine which bishops were adhering to guidelines the bishops themselves had agreed to.

[317y]

He had his chance. Instead, he made strange statements and gave "moral admonitions":



“Remember, it was Martin Luther who suggested early in his efforts that the lay community get involved in reforming the Church so there would not be a collapse of faith by the faithful,” Keating said, answering critics who say laity boards should not seek removal of bishops.

“Unfortunately, in retrospective, Martin Luther was right,” he said. “Just think what positively could have occurred if lay people in the 16th and 15th centuries had been involved. None of us is a theologian, and every one of us [on the board] recognizes the authority of those who speak for the religious part of the Church. But the human part needs more lay involvement, to make sure these types of calamities don’t occur again.”

[sinkspur]

What's "strange" about that? Keating is right, and Luther was right about lay involvement confronting corruption in the Church in his time.

And laymen are (in case you hadn't noticed) having a hard time thinking of the bishops (as a whole) as arbiters of morality after covering up criminality.

The American bishops didn't even bother issuing a statement on the Iraq War, they're so compromised.

[317y]

This says it all:

They compared notes on seeing clergy in gay bars. Then Burkhart stammered as he asked McBride a personal question: "So, whenever you had sex . . . were you bound to go to confession and confess it before you said Mass, or . . .?"

"Well, you were supposed to, yes," McBride said.

"Do you think all these priests do?"

"No," McBride said. "I think they changed their minds and decided it's not a sin."

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

Here is to hoping the next Pope cleans house, in a big way (and a conservative way).

[sinkspur]

I guess you don't want to talk about Keating any longer.

OK. Have a nice day.

[St.Chuck]

I've read Keating's apologia in Crisis. I wasn't impressed. He had problems with his fellow board members from the outset. He never gives evidence that supports his comparison of the clergy with the Cosa Nostra. He talks about being emboldened and rejuvenated after a trip to Fatima, but quits the board anyway. The reason he gives for resigning is not very clear to me.

" My Church-the Church I love -doesn't exist in an environment of grand jury subpeonas and secrecy. I feel this even more strongly today."

I have not heard of any other board members defending Keating or supporting Keating's ill-advised statements.....or resigning in fraternal solidarity. That says more than Keating's self-serving quasi-explanation.

[Domestic Church]

If the new Cardinal from Sudan becomes Pope I think he will be very efficient at cleaning house. He has seen the frontline war in the battle against Christianity, he has been galvanized and he will recognize the enemy in it's various cloaks and aliases. He is a soldier of Christ not a politician. The faithful will follow his humble yet courageous lead into the battle ahead.

[Dajjal]

Bumpus ad summum

[maryz]

I read Keating’s article this morning. There’s a very moving passage near the beginning of his own experieince as an altar boy: in his life, “. . . the first introduction to the eternal, the sublime, the wonders of a promised salvation, was as an altar boy. . . . If I were special to God in heaven, I’d better act like it on earth.” He goes on:

And that’s what’s stunning and mystifying about the sex-abuse scandal. Didn’t these men learn a thing from ears in the seminary and at the knees of Christ? Didn’t they know they were supposed to be better than themselves? Didn’t they understand that they were expected to be bigger than themselves?

As an FBI agent, my service was to the shield. To fidelity. To Bravery. To integrity. The Hoover credo was brutal but effective. If you partner screwed up and you didn’t report him, both of you were fired. You never embarrassed the shield. You were expected to be bigger than yourself. This same tradition followed me as a U.S. attorney. As an officer of the court, one didn’t condone or suborn perjury. Winning wasn’t everything. You were part of a larger mosaic. You had to be better than yourself.

Naturally, to me in Boston, the description of the FBI in his day was almost as wrenching. And, of course, a lawyer to whom “winning isn’t everything” is a species pretty much unknown to me. Is the Church scandal merely part of a wider corruption, or has corruption in the Church actually infected the larger society?

I believe there are still some good religious orders. However, Keating dealt with some orders while he was on the committee.

The question of whether they were under the Dallas charter occupied some discussion. Then there was the issue of whether a “community” should shelter its own. Should a religious order turn a sex offender over to the police? Should it expel him from the community or should it continue to embrace him as a troubled member, though he stood accused of the rape of young boys?

One representative of the order community passed around a small pamphlet addressed to the accused, detailing ways in which such an individual might be comforted the travails of the accusation and the prosecution process. (One suggestion was that an offending cleric take up woodworking to reduce his trauma.) Nowhere was there any mention of the victims.

Based on the article, I like Keating. He does, BTW stand by his Cosa Nostra comment that so sullied the ears of the pure Roger Cardinal Mahoney (apparently he found it far more offensive than any aspect of the scandal itself). He ends with the quote from St. Catherine of Siena’s letter to Gregory XI, so familiar to us on FR: “So uproot from the garden the stinking weeds full of impurity and avarice and bloated with pride . . . .”

[ninenot]

Well.

This is a tough one. I think Keating is a good guy--but his allegation is serious. I notice that the Tulsa VG did not deny the allegation, nor did he answer the real question.

I hope K's story is not true--because I fear that it IS. I know more than a few snakes who wear collars (living in Milwaukee assures one of that...) and I despise them all, thoroughly. But one sort of hoped that Tulsa didn't have that problem

Question: is Beltran considered to be a 'liberal' or a 'conservative'?