“You accused priests of giving mafia thugs absolution in exchange for promised donation.”
They get their absolution. They give their donation. The link is not explicit, but understood. Who can find fault with Dom Carlucci (spelling?), who runs a private commercial waste disposal in Crown Heights and lives in Staten Island, if he pays for new pews and an altar at his local Staten Island parish. The crimes he commits are not on TV, just an implicit understanding on Kingston and Utica Avenues that he does their garbage pickups, though it stinks up the streets. Otherwise, bad things happen to recalcitrant merchants. These facts are under the seal of the confessional, and the penance does not include giving up his enterprises and turning himself in to the police. And the church is well furnished and financed, with some charitable work as well.
But he’s small potatoes. The real bastards are the politicians, who maintain the façade of “good Catholics” while standing for gay marriage, abortion, “gender affirmation” for children, etc. They pay well for the privilege. What the terms of their absolutions are is between them and their confessor. But it’s mutually profitable. Main thing is, they get to be called “good Catholics” despite the obvious falsehood.
And lest you think I’m pointing fingers exclusively at your church, I remember when Chuck Schumer represented the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Then one day, suddenly, he represented me in Far Rockaway, and the rabbis in charge of my eldest son’s yeshiva couldn’t say enough or do enough for old Chuck, short of getting down and fellating him in public.
Chuck is now the senior Senator for New York and the Senate Majority Leader, and the rabbi in question is whoring for the next Democrat politician.
Mafia thugs? Small potatoes. They’re more savory than Dem politicians any day. And they corrupt churches, synagogues, yeshivas and mosques and madrasahs alike with their pernicious miasma. They’re wholesale. Dom Carlucci is retail and local only.
I’m in Israel and happily away from that mess, and blissfully unaware of its parallels here, because my Hebrew is good, but not fluent enough to follow the fast talkers who bring us the news and make it here.