Bishop Has Travelled in Southeast Asia [Lahey]

OTTAWA — Bishop Raymond Lahey, who has been charged with possessing child pornography, has travelled to Thailand, a spokeswoman for the church said on Wednesday.

"It was no secret that he travelled to Southeast Asia in the past," said Marilyn Sweet, communications officer for the archdiocese of Halifax. "I don’t know how many times but I certainly know that he had travelled in Southeast Asia."

In a column at halifaxnewsnet.ca this week, radio host Rick Howe wrote that the bishop’s history of travel to sex tourism destinations such as Thailand and Cambodia explained why border officials searched the bishop’s computer at Ottawa International Airport on Sept. 15.

Officials from the Canada Border Services Agency found "images of concern" on his laptop. In a later forensic analysis, investigators found images they allege to be child pornography and issued a Canada-wide arrest warrant for the bishop, at which point he resigned.

In an email exchange on Wednesday, Mr. Howe said he does have a source for his assertion, but he can’t reveal it.

"For all I know, Lahey might have had legitimate church business on his travels, but where he went red-flagged him for a check and that was his undoing," he said.

Police, government officials and church spokespeople have declined to reveal where the bishop was coming from when his laptop was seized on Sept. 15.

"The bishop took care of his own travel arrangements so far as I knew," she said Wednesday.

She would not say how long he was out of the country, referring that question to Rev. Paul Abbass in Antigonish and Ms. Sweet in Halifax. Father Abbass did not respond to an email request.

“He was all these idealistic things you want in a father,” Mr. Earle said yesterday. “He would embrace the kids and he would embrace me. It felt good to be embraced.” But Mr. Earle said it became impossible to ignore the pornography and condoms he alleges he found in the rectory. He began to shun Bishop Lahey, he said, attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric ward.

Absolutely disgusting and repulsive!

And the Catholic Church wonders why I rarely attend a Mass.

No lecture needed from my Catholic family here. I know intellectually all the “arguments” regarding the Church. But my heart says . . . yuck, I don’t know which Priest has clean hands before or after the Mass. And the thought of taking the Eucharist from a Priest I don’t trust . . . which is all of them other than the Pope . . . and maybe a very few Cardinals . . . there’s something very wrong when the Authority in the Church doesn’t act swiftly in these situations.

I think many of us struggle with the "yuck factor". Not only as regards sexual activity but also with respect to the nonsense which is inflicted upon us in the sermon and all the other liturgical malarkey that often goes on at Mass.

I look upon it as simply one more cross that has to be borne for love of God. Hopefully one day it will get better but I don't know when. Until then we carry the cross.

Great article. I particularly liked this excerpt;

Archbishop Mancini's cry of anguish expresses how many of us feel. The scandal of Bishop Lahey's conduct is surely devastating. With God's grace perhaps it will be purifying too.

There are three principal reactions to news like this. One hears first from the anti-Catholics, more numerous than one might think and certainly vocal, who delight in the sins of Catholics. Those who would tell lies about the Church certainly will not blanch from telling damaging truths. It is embarrassing to have sins shouted from the rooftops, but the shouting and derision are only secondary to our own shame.

Second, one hears from the putative reformers, both within and without the Church, who consider every difficulty -- parish amalgamation, school closing, sexual scandal, financial crisis -- to be an opportune time for the Catholic Church to change her teachings. If only we had married priests or taught differently about sexual morality or modified our internal governance, then presumably everything would be better. In short, Catholics would have fewer problems if they were more like Protestants. There are serious doctrinal differences between say, Catholics and Anglicans or the United Church, but sinfulness is a shared part of the human condition. Catholic scandals get more attention than others, but the problems we have are not absent elsewhere, in the Church or society at large.

Third, one hears from those, again both Catholics and non-Catholics, who simply wonder about whether this is ever going to stop. The short answer is no -- there will always be priests and lay leaders who will betray the trust put in them. The longer answer is that those betrayals are growing fewer and being punished more readily. Catholics have learned, at the cost of the great pain and suffering of many innocents, how to better confront this evil behaviour.

I think the article and the Archbishop expressed what so many feel. The unvarnished anguish, anger, frustration.

“What I want to say is: Enough is enough! How much more can all of us take. Like you, my heart is broken, my mind is confused, my body hurts and I have moved in and out of a variety of feelings especially shame and frustration, fear and disappointment, along with a sense of vulnerability, and a tremendous poverty of spirit.”

Refreshingly honest.

We continue to pray for our neighbors and our priests.

Am reading Mark Mallett’s “The Final Confrontation.”

This is the first volume of his writings. More to be published. If you’ve read Micheal O’Brien’s works, you will like Mark Mallett’s.

There will always be confrontation in the Church and among the faithful. Evil has to be exposed at every turn, but evil is cunning and the devil is implacable.

There’s a good reason why our priests are attacked and sometimes fall, and that is the Eucharist, and we need to pray for them constantly.

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