Cardinal Law's Aide Told Victim: "Sex Acts by Priest Are Expressions of Affection"

Boston Globe ^ | 4/12/02 | Sacha Pfeiffer

[Dr. Scarpetta]

In 1988, several weeks after Pollard reported his alleged sexual abuse by the Rev. George Rosenkranz to the Archdiocese of Boston, the church official who handled abuse complaints said he found nothing to justify removing the priest from ministry.

The Rev. John B. McCormack, now bishop of Manchester, N.H., said Rosenkranz merely had ''sexual issues,'' adding that what Pollard viewed as abuse - acts that included Rosenkranz's request that he masturbate in front of him - may simply have been expressions of affection, according to Pollard.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

The Rev. John B. McCormack, now bishop of Manchester, N.H., said Rosenkranz merely had ''sexual issues,'' adding that what Pollard viewed as abuse - acts that included Rosenkranz's request that he masturbate in front of him - may simply have been expressions of affection, according to Pollard.

''Sensing the loneliness that comes with leaving a parish where you and the parishioners have meant so much to each other,'' McCormack wrote in one of more than a dozen letters to Shanley, who had been placed on sick leave and sent to California in 1990, ''the only thing I can think of are the words of Shakespeare - `Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.''

[another cricket]

I think I am going to be ill. I also think, that if it had been my kid the Catholic Church would be short a few more priests.

What is with parents that will not defend their children to the death?

a. cricket

[Mike Fieschko]

Apr 12 2002 stories: this page is here. Untitled Document

Three Boston priests break ranks with Church, support "gay marriage" (Boston Globe)

Police clear Cardinal Mahony following accusation by paranoid schizophrenic (AP)

• Associate vocation director of Archdiocese of St. Louis arrested, charged with sodomy (Reuters)
• Archbishop Levada to give files to DA (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Five members of US bishops' committee to devise new policies: two named in lawsuits, one suggested passing files to nuncio, who has diplomatic immunity (AP, scroll down)
• Kimball rape trial continues (AP, scroll down)
• Another man files complaint against Seattle priest (Seattle Times)
• Suffolk County, NY, to form grand jury to investigate alleged abuse and the actions of the Diocese of Rockville Centre (AP)
• Archdiocese of Detroit settled allegations with case (Detroit Free Press)
• Oversight by archdiocese cannot stop predator (Detroit Free Press)
• Prosecutors ask Cardinal Maida for information (Detroit Free Press)
• Cardinal Law described as undecided about resignation (Boston Globe)
• In Boston, scandal harms Catholic Charities (Boston Globe)
• Law aides often dismissed allegations (Boston Globe)
• Speculation surrounds scenarios leading to successor of Cardinal Law (Boston Herald)
• Calls for Cardinal Law's resignation intensify (USA Today)
• Archbishop Hughes mentioned in Shanley documents (WDSU)
• Scandal leads to new scrutiny of St. Luke Institute (Baltimore Sun)
• SNAP flooded with calls from alleged victims (San Jose Mercury News)

[Dakmar]

"Sex Acts by Priest Are Expressions of Affection"

I hope they find out soon if that also applies to prison inmates.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

McCormack, a 1960 seminary classmate of Shanley and Birmingham who was assigned to the same Salem parish as Birmingham in the 1960s, has acknowledged that in about 1970 he was warned that Birmingham was molesting children.

McCormack, Shanley, and Birmingham were seminary classmates. Did Father Shanley get favorable treatment when he was accused of sex abuse because of his homosexual seminary relationships ???

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

The Archdiocese of Boston needs an enema.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

Thanks

[steve50]

The RC's are spinning this as an attack on the church. A church that allows this should be attacked, by armed parents.

Take the church back from the sodomites or merge with NAMBLA, can't have it both ways.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

Both McCormack and Daily have been named as defendants in several civil lawsuits filed in connection with Geoghan's molestations. These suits accuse them of negligence for allegedly knowing of the abuse and doing nothing to stop it. Also named were Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., and Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans.

These priests tell parishioners to confess sins for the good of their soul. As supposed men of God, they should be confessing, but they have helped men of evil to do evil and they are lawyering up.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

The Archdiocese of Boston needs an enema.

Some of these guys probably already tried that...

[eastsider]

The RC's are spinning this as an attack on the church.

Sez who? It's the Catholics who are doing the majority of the posting on these threads. Take a hike.

[gumbo]

The RC's are spinning this as an attack on the church.

I'm not a Catholic, but I DO see the media's hyperventilating on this issue --and its comparative lack of hyperventilation over the much worse child abuse committed by Palestinian terrorists-- as an attack on the Catholic Church.

Don't get me wrong. I'd like as much as you to see guilty priests punished severely. AND to have all sodomite priests kicked out of the church.

But anti-Christian Marxists are using this as a stick to beat the Church only to advance their own agenda, which is, of course, to destroy not only the Church but all of Western culture.

[ArrogantBustard]

You been smoking too much of that Miegs County Gold?

[steve50]

A Church that allows this kind of behaviour is a bigger threat to our culture than the anti christian marxist bogeyman. Sounds like the spin klintoon used, it's just the vast anti religion marxist conspiracy to discredit our administration.

[Bahbah]

RC's, of which I am one, are not spinning this as an attack on the church, although that probably does motivate some. We want this to come to an immediate end and for the whole mess to be cleaned up. It is far more a problem of homosexual priests than of pedophiles, of which there are a few.

[steve50]

I thought they closed down that outfit years ago.

[Psalm 73]

When I mentioned to my "Liberal Long-Island Teacher's Union" relatives that it was more a Homosexual problem than a Religious problem, they almost went berserk!
(Thier reasoning was it was boys because the priests had more contact with boys than with girls, therefore NOT a gay thing)>
Well, then how come the Boy Scouts don't have that same problem?

[ArrogantBustard]

Dunno. But I used to know some people who smoked huge quantities of the stuff. Even at their most intensely messed up they made more sense than your post #13, which I see has been pulled (not by my request), so at this I'll let the matter drop.
BTW, this Catholic sees the Church under attack not by those who expose pederasts, but by the pederasts themselves. The pederasts (homosexuals) would like nothing so much as to see the Church follow in the footsteps of too many mainline Protestant denominations and start teaching that homosexual behaviour is acceptable.

AB

[drstevej]

This is a clarion call for massive spiritual reform in the RC church. A return to biblical sexual morality is essential to future credibility. The same is true for Protestant churches.

As biblical principles have been ignored in favor of "enlightened" modern perspectives the cancer of immorality has spread promising fulfillment yet yielding pain, disease and shame.

Moses' counsel to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous" is the counsel church leaders (Protestant or Catholic) need in returning to biblical foundations.