Posted on 12/15/2002 8:34:40 PM PST by Notwithstanding
Their so-called smoking gun theory boils down to this: the pope in 1999 recommended that a defrocked priest ought not return to the area where he committed his offenses. They take this eminently sensible advice and use it as a hammer to bludgeon the pope. Just so everyone understands what’s going on here, what the pope did was to say that a former priest—someone who had been returned to the status of a layman—ought to start a new life in a new location. Isn’t this what parole boards recommend to released inmates—that they not return to the neighborhood that nurtured their maladies? Shame on Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly and others for disseminating this mindless charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicleague.org ...
I have disagreed with you before, but I agree with you here.
My opinion is that the JP II is basically like "John Gill" from the old Star Trek series...too old and infirm to do anything except to be a showpiece, and the "Lavender Mafia" control the info and access to him, and are the real power in the RCC hierarchy...just my take, as I have no proof that he is evil...(yet)
I honestly think that some of JP II's critics fantasize on the one hand that the pope has infinite power over anyone ever baptized Catholic and OTOH is a miserable failure precisely to the extent that he does not wave his imagined magic wand in line with the desires of the malcontent posting.
True, but one wonders just how far this all goes, when someone like Law will get a position in Rome, instead of jail.
WRONG! The Pope was not "relocating" him. The Pope was formally, and permanently, removing him from the priesthood.
with that of a parole board,(A parole board comes into play after a crime has been paid for with hard time in a cell!)
RIGHT! According to my information, that is exactly where the perp in question was when the Pope wrote his decree -- doing "hard time in a cell". Burns (the molester) was convicted of child abuse in NH in 1996. The Pope's decree was written in 1999.
The parole board analogy is exactly appropriate.
The perp in question was already convicted and imprisoned when the Pope wrote his decree.
That isn't what he said, and please don't repeat something like that, because before you know it, it will be treated as Gospel around here.
What the decree said was that the laicized perp should move away, but that the local bishop could exempt him from that part of the decree if, in his judgement, it would cause no scandal for him to stay.
Scandal is a technical term meaning danger to the faith and morals of innocent parties.
The Pope said nothing about sending him "where nobody knew of the scandal". Those are words you put in his mouth.
As I have now pointed out in about 6 different posts, the perp had already been convicted. Technically, his pedophile status and criminal record were a matter of public record. However, the fact that he had been a priest is not, and that is why he was ordered to move away from the areas where he had been a priest.
This is evidently customary in such decrees and has nothing to do with sexual abuse or this particular sequence of events. A priest forcibly laicized for pilfering the collection basket would also have been ordered to move away.
If you think that the existence of despicable perpetrators of despicable sins among clergy who abandon their vows for the sorry pottage of faggotry, or the cowardice of craven bishops who cover up such despicable sins and play musical chairs with the perverts, is going to affect the faith of any adequately catechized Roman Catholic, you are wrong. The Mass is still the Mass. The sacraments are still the sacraments. The truth of Catholicism still is and always will be the Truth.
Furthermore, no amount, no volume, no combination of instances of weepy, wailing emotional slop will justify the likes of Attorney Garabedian, Attorney MacLeish and many whom they represent in their riudiculous pretense that they should have some say in the governance of the Church itself. They should not. No one in the pews should. No one outside the fold should. We trust that none will. However terrible the experiences of those victimized by their perverted pastors, they have no general or special qualifications whatsoever to dictate terms of Church governance. Eventually they will return to the obscurity for which they are so much better qualified. The Roman Catholic Church is not going to degenerate into their little soap opera of victimhood. Pay them their damages to the extent of archdiocesan resources and move on to the next emotionalism of the moment: "Neighbor kills child's pussycat: details at ten!!!!! There oughta be a law!!!" It is Bernard Cardinal Law, Bishop Thomas Murphy, Bishop Banks, Bishop Thomas Daily, Bishop O'Keefe, and Bishop John McCormack who are responsible for the Boston coverups and obstructions of justice. It is the job of the government to investigate, charge, try, convict and, if appropriate as I think it is, to incarcerate each and every one for a long time, while taking careful opportunity to see to it that the miscreant lavender queens and child molesters in the priesthood also be jailed to the extent the law allows.
As a Catholic, I will applaud each and every jail sentence as one more step in purging and purifying the Roman Catholic Church in America of these liberal pests and pederasts and justice obstructors and AmChurch denizens who have done such damage to the institution of the Roman Catholic Church here which they were entrusted to lead.
There are probably others who deserve jail as well. I personally root for William Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore who threatened parents objecting to lesbian how and why to do it courses at Loyola Girls High School in Baltimore and Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles as next to go. If a thoroughgoing purge of the American Church is not possible during this papacy, I expect that such a purge will be a major part of the policy enacted by the next conclave beforee it chooses the next pope, hopefully a young and vigorous pillar of orthodoxy who can wield a flaming sword against the deep corruption here.
All that having been said, make no mistake about it, many who are non-Catholic critics on this issue go far beyond truth and justice to seek opportunistically to score points off Jesus Christ's own Church. Catholics who are Catholics recognize that agenda as the malicious bigotry that it is.
The sinner who has the Truth has more truth that the less sinful person who has not the Truth.
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