Posted on 02/21/2006 7:45:34 AM PST by NYer
The Vatican has defrocked a local priest accused of sexually abusing an altar boy who later committed suicide, the Archdiocese of Seattle announced Monday.
Gerald Moffat, 75, most recently a pastor at St. Hubert Parish in Langley on Whidbey Island, had been on administrative leave since July 2002, when molestation allegations against him first surfaced.
Moffat continues to deny the accusations, according to his attorney Steven Moen, who represented Moffat in two lawsuits involving accusations of sex abuse.
The archdiocese's announcement comes little more than three years after one of Moffat's alleged victims, Jeff Alfieri, committed suicide in the parking lot of Holy Family Catholic Church in Kirkland.
Alfieri, 43, sued in 2002, contending that Moffat had repeatedly sexually abused him while he had been an altar boy at the church in the early 1970s.
Moffat considered Alfieri's death "very unfortunate," Moen said, but he has always maintained he is innocent.
The archdiocese settled the Alfieri case for $600,000 in June 2005, though his parents said at the time that the monetary award did little to assuage their grief or reassure them that Moffat would be held accountable.
That settlement was separate from Monday's action.
The archdiocese formed a panel of lawyers, church officials and therapists in 2003 to review cases against priests such as Moffat and recommend whether they should be defrocked or allowed to return to the ministry.
In Moffat's case, the archdiocese and the review board recommended he be defrocked and forwarded their findings to the Vatican for final action, archdiocese spokesman Greg Magnoni said.
The Vatican concurred, and in a written statement released Monday, Archbishop Alex Brunett said the decision is final.
"I am deeply sorry for harm to any victim of clergy child sexual abuse," he said. "My hope is that this decision will bring resolution, healing and closure to all involved."
In addition to being stripped of his title, Moffat is also prohibited from wearing clerical clothes or publicly presenting himself as a priest.
Moffat has been retired for several years, Moen said, so the likelihood of his returning to the active priesthood was slim. In addition to Kirkland and Langley, Moffat also served at St. James Cathedral in Seattle and Our Lady of Sorrows in Snoqualmie.
As of this month, the archdiocese has settled more than 200 sexual-abuse cases and paid out more than $20 million, Magnoni said Monday. That count does not include abuse cases resolved without litigation, he said.
Jenkins asks us to consider why there is no such term as "pastor pedophilia"? It is not for lack of pastors involved in sexual abuse, rather it has much to do with the way the issue of pedophilia has been "framed" by our social constructionists. For example, who ever heard of Tony Leyva?
In the 1980s, Leyva had abused perhaps one hundred boys in several southern states, but few of us ever learned of it. Leyva had the distinction of being a Pentecostal minister and was, therefore, not within the "frame" of those who were busy constructing reality. The same is true of the three brothers, all Baptist ministers, who were charged with child molestation in the 1990s: the public learned little about this highly unusual series of cases because it was not deemed worthy of dissemination by those fixated on Catholic scandals.
Were it not for the way the problem of clergy sexual abuse has been socially defined, the public would know that the problem is hardly confined to the Catholic community. Indeed, as Jenkins has written, "In reality, Catholic clergy are not necessarily represented in the sexual abuse phenomenon at a rate higher than or even equal to their numbers in the clerical profession as a whole." The biggest difference between the Catholic and Protestant clergy in relation to this problem is due mostly to reporting procedures: there is no counterpart among Protestants to the highly centralized data keeping done by the Catholic Church, hence it is often difficult to make comparisons between the clergy of the two religions.
A Review Essay of Philip Jenkins's Pedophiles and Priests
Why are children at greater risk of sexual abuse in public schools than they are in a Catholic Church if celibacy is the "root of the problem"?
Why are children being molested by protestant ministers if celibacy is the "root of the problem"?
What are the vast majority of pedophiles married men if celibacy is the "root of the problem"?
If the requirement was not there, heterosexual men would come forth to serve.
If celibacy is the "root of the problem" in attracting heterosexual men then why is there a clergy shortage in the Greek Orthodox Church, which ordains married men, the 21 of 22 Churches in the Catholic Church that, as a norm, ordain married men and a shortage of ministers in most, if not all, protestant denominations?
not so aberrant among a celibate clergy.
Actually, if you had read any of the credible research on the topic, most of which has been written by protestants, you'd know that the number of abusers, as a percentage, is lower in the Catholic Church than it is in protestant denominations.
Of the ~400,000 Catholic Priests in the world, how many are abusers? When answering, make sure you cite a credible, verifiable source.
I don't believe your statistics for a minute. They've been disproved countless times on FR.
And your questions side-step the problem being discussed. Heterosexual abuse is not the topic.
Homosexual pederasty is the topic.
And that particular sociopath is attracted to all-male environs.
Deal with it. If the RC church were really sincere about ridding itself of this cancer, they would defrock this guy, not just "almost" defrock him.
Do you think he deserves to keep his frock?
See post #23.
As long as you go on believing this "reporting procedure" fairytale, the problem will only continue to destroy the next generation.
If the requirement was not there, heterosexual men would come forth to serve.
Well, we can agree that homosexual predators are attracted to the priesthood. Catholics all need to be vigilant about their priests. We can't just let 'someone else' worry about it. That attitude turned into a disaster for us.
However, in my own experience, the overwhelming majority of priests I have known seem to be heterosexual in orientation. As much as one can tell without putting them on a lie detector anyway. They really do 'come forth to serve' and have "renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven". As incomprehensible as it is to me, they apparently manage to keep the vows they made to God.
Marriage wouldn't be a cure-all. There are a few news stories of married clergy engaged in homosexual abuse of minors available on the net. I think it has become more newsworthy after the Catholic disaster hit the papers to write these stories involving Protestant clergy. Marriage is just another cover for some homosexual predators. They are predators. If you require them to go under deeper cover, they will.
If the CMR numbers are accurate, there are 70 allegations per week of sexual misconduct and 25% involve clergy, presumably married clergy. That's 17 per week. That's a big number. If lawsuits and out of court settlements are involved in 21% of those, there is some credible evidence in support of those allegations, that's more than 3 per week. Every week. That's a big number.
Presuming that the overwhelming majority of those involve opposite sex victims, it still remains sexually deviant behavior. What happens to minor victims of sexual abuse is perversion. It isn't any less horrific because the abuser is of the opposite sex.
On this point, we differ.
Homosexual abuse derails and destroys to the core. To say they are the same is actually saying the two inclinations are the same, just inappropriately directed.
I think you need to rethink your opinion. It's part of the problem.
"If the CMR numbers are accurate, there are 70 allegations per week of sexual misconduct and 25% involve clergy, presumably married clergy."
The article actually said "about 25 percent were paid staff members (including clergy)". I think you will find that the actual number of clergy is small in comparison to the other paid staff like choir directors, organists, youth workers etc. Most allegations of sexual misconduct against married clergy arise from seduction during counseling of the opposite sex.
I think you need to rethink your opinion.
After a lifetime of a professional relationship with Child Protective Services, I'm unlikely to change my opinion without experiencing something other than what I have experienced. All the victims and abusers have names.
Abuse victims aren't human beings to the predators, they are things to be used. They are objects and their degradation is an exertion of power by the abuser. That 'derails and destroys to the core' of every victim. So yes, from what little I know, the two inclinations have the same motivation. Abuse of a minor is not sex as a normal person thinks of it.
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