Documentary: Priest and Predator

Oct. 9, 2006 issue - "Deliver Us From Evil," a gripping new documentary opening in theaters next week, profiles Father Oliver O'Grady, a convicted pedophile who spent 22 years molesting children in parishes throughout California, where he served as their priest. In the film, O'Grady describes his sexual attraction to boys and girls, and details how church authorities, including Roger Mahony, now head of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, moved him from parish to parish. Other chilling moments include interviews with O'Grady's victims, their families, and never-before-seen deposition testimony from Mahony, who denies knowing about O'Grady's predilection

A minority of queers and perverts invaded the Catholic church and hollywood will use it to attack ALL of Christianity. However, the sexual deviants outside the church are given a pass, even exalted, and form alliances like the NAMBLA and GLBTp (note p is lower case to avoid emphasizing the obvious to the uninformed).

As everyone knows, stories of sexually deviant priests have become common in recent decades, and it seems the "lavender mafia" (as the large cabal of ecclesiastically powerful homosexual priests are referred to by their fellow priests) continues to do its damage to the priesthood.

But recently I came across what I believe is an even more disturbing story that claims two longtime Florida priests, one a Monsignor, had embezzled $8 million from parish coffers over a period of 40 years. Some of the money went to finance the tuition fees and mortgage payments of girlfriends. One of the accused was notified of the charges while on a luxury cruise in Australia.

What many of the faithful in the pews don't sufficiently realize is that a significant number of priests, and not necessarliy only those in the lavender mafia, merely mouth professions of faith, while privately holding views that are anything but faithful to Catholic doctrine. The pervasive diminishment of true faith in the metaphysics of religion in today's world has wormed its way into the consciousness of a great many people, even among those who are supposed to protect and cherish the chalice of belief. Cynicism, and cynical acts like embezzlement, exist in higher numbers in the priesthood than the outside world knows.

These two were Irish priests (from Ireland, that is) who had been there for a long time, in what is arguably one of the most corrupt dioceses in the country, stuffed to the gills with financial misdoings, homosexual scandals, and now this. The diocese has a new bishop, who appears to be orthodox and ethical and is certainly going to have his hands full.

Florida got a number of Irish priests in the 1970s, since many parts of Florida were basically considered mission territory. One of these men had been here 40 years, although I don't know how long he'd been embezzling.

We had a Filipino priest up here in North Florida who was doing the same thing - embezzling from the parish and sending the money to his girlfriend and kids in the Philippines. Our new bishop seems to have found out about it quickly, turned him over to the police, refused to pay his bail, and he is now in jail!

The thing that really disgusts me, though, about all of these scandals, is how often the Oprahfied parishioners will actually come out and ask that these guys not be prosecuted.

"Oh, poor Father, he's such a nice guy, so what if he stole a couple of million dollars/fondled an altarboy/sells drugs out of his condo? He must have been stressed. We're all sinners, aren't we?"

I think one of the big problems is that even the parishioners protect these clerical criminals. We have created a weird feel-good culture of irresponsibility and immaturity, with absolutely no faith whatsoever, in our modern Church.

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