;o)
Posted on 05/23/2002 6:07:24 AM PDT by NYer
MILWAUKEE (AP) _ Roman Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland agreed in 1998 to pay $450,000 to a man who accused him of sexual assault, according to documents cited Thursday by ABC News. ABC said the agreement had required Paul J. Marcoux, 53, to keep silent.
``I was involved in a cover-up. I accepted money to be silent about it, not to speak out against what was going on,'' Marcoux said in an interview broadcast on ``Good Morning America.'' Marcoux (pronounced mar COO) said he was sexually assaulted 20 years ago, when he was a student at Marquette University and had gone to the archbishop seeking advice about entering the priesthood.
Marcoux told the network Weakland ``started to try and kiss me and continued to force himself on me, pull down my trousers and attempted to fondle me.'' ``Think of it in terms of date rape,'' Marcoux told ABC.
ABC said as part of the settlement, the archbishop and the archdiocese denied the claims. It said the church declined to comment until the report was aired. Matthew Flynn, an attorney for the archdiocese, reached after the interview aired on the East Coast but before it appeared in Milwaukee, declined comment to The Associated Press. Jerry Topczewski, the spokesman for the archdiocese, did not immediately return calls from the AP.
The network also quoted from an 11-page handwritten letter that it said was written by Weakland. The letter, dated Aug. 25, 1980, said Weakland could not pay Marcoux more than $14,000 to settle the case.
``I should not put down on paper what I would not want the whole world to read. But here goes anyway,'' the letter said. ``I felt like the world's worst hypocrite. So gradually I came back to the importance of celibacy in my life. ...''
The ABC report said Marcoux sought more money in 1997 and the archbishop paid $450,000 to settle the case on condition of secrecy.
AP-ES-05-23-02 0852EDT
The "urge to have sex," as I explained in my post, can either be controlled and expressed in beneficial ways, or in destructive ones. You seem to assume that homosexuals and pedophiles have no "sex drive." To the contrary, they have sustantial "sex drives," and people get hurt or killed because of their sex drives are NOI under control. Quite the opposite.
Read with better care, next time.
Billybob
Shanley, Geoghan, Porter, Weakland...all were "let in" to seminaries by hard-as-nails pre-Vatican II rectors, and ordained by bishops steeped in the Tridentine Liturgy. There was nary a feminist or non-Catholic psychologist in sight. The seminaries may be full of active gays now, but what explains how these guys were overlooked in the "good old days"?
Two points.
(1) As I never fail to lovingly point out, that actually rarely happens. Bishops of the Mahony and Weakland ilk simply don't "talk about the evils of masturbation". I mean, we know now why our bishops have been such ineffective prophets against the evils of modern American society: they're partaking of those same evils themselves.
(2) Long term, this will be very beneficial. It will get rid of the bad apples, and put a little fear into the cowardly fence-sitters.
Um. Excuse me if I dissent. There is a problem, but I don't agree that turning everything over to the laity will solve it. We'd have CFFC and DignityUSA teaching morality.
I sincerely hope so. With any luck at all, it will be one in which the spirit of consensus building, ignoring the fine points of doctrine, turning the Liturgy into a freak show, and flagrant dissent by priests, nuns bishops and theologians has been rejected for the disaster that it is. You would have us embrace that spirit? God forbid!
AB
;o)
Your hubby is Catholic?! Oh my. ;o)
LOL you didn't know that? We have been friends a long time ange i thought you knew..hubby and some of the kids..(we do not discuss doctrine in the car :>)) for the safety of those on the road:>)
There are those (some on this very site) who are arguing for squeezing the laity out of the sanctuaries, and off any advisory board that has anything to do with the clergy. They actually think there's been TOO MUCH lay involvement and that a return to clericalism is the answer.
I don't know anybody who's arguing for "turning everything over to the laity," but to somehow blame lay people sticking their noses into Church affairs for priestly pederasty and hierarchical cover-up is ludicrous.
Ok, I reread it and I guess your are right, I did miss the point. I didn't read the whole thing and thought your were offering apologies for this behavior.
I do humbly and sincerely apologize.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I literally cannot remember I heard a homily regarding the Church's teaching on sexual morality. I regularly speak to people raised and educated in the Church who learn the "Catholic position" on sexual morality from television and the newspapers. Their priests and teachers utterly failed to pass on this part of Catholicism to them. The actual Catholic teaching on sexual morality has come through this crisis unscathed, having been violated in each and every case of abuse.
Minister accused of sex crimes: Soliciting a minor over Internet among charges from state police sting
By Julie Bykowicz
Sun Staff
May 23, 2002
A Dundalk minister has been arrested and charged with soliciting sexual intercourse from a Maryland State Police trooper posing as a 13-year-old named Jennifer in an Internet chat room.
The Rev. Jonathan N. Gerstner, 44, is accused of sending instant messages to "Jennifer" from his Inverness Presbyterian Church computer beginning at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday and, within hours, arranging an afternoon sexual tryst with the girl at a park in Bowie, state police spokesman Lt. Bud Frank said.
"He truly believed he was talking to a 13-year-old the whole time," Frank said.
Using the screen name "baltimorecare," Gerstner wrote that he wanted to teach the girl about sex, according to a statement of probable cause filed in Howard County District Court.
His unsolicited messages to "Jennifer" asked her to engage in sexual intercourse and oral sex acts with him, the court document states.
The father of five, who lives in Perry Hall, became senior pastor at Inverness after serving as a professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, according to the church's Web site. He has been minister at Inverness for about two years.
The eight ruling elders of the 62-year-old church met yesterday morning and removed Gerstner from active ministry, assistant pastor Bill Broderick said yesterday. The allegations against Gerstner were forwarded to the church's ecclesiastical courts for further action, according to a statement released by the church yesterday.
The Inverness statement expressed support for the Gerstner family and thanked the Maryland State Police "for their outstanding work in this matter."
"We're just trying to get through this," said Broderick. "We've got to deal with this whole thing."
Gerstner has been charged with attempted second-degree rape, attempted second-degree sex offense, attempted third-degree sex offense and using a computer to solicit sex from a minor, police said. He was being held yesterday at the Howard County Detention Center on $50,000 bond.
A bail-review hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. today. Gerstner is being held in Howard because the computer crimes unit of the state police is based there.
Gerstner was arrested about 2:40 p.m. Tuesday, immediately after he arrived at Foxhill Park off Collington Road in Bowie - the prearranged meeting site, Frank said.
Police were not aware the man was a clergyman until after his arrest, Frank said.
The computer crimes unit, which carried out the sting against Gerstner, patrols the Internet looking for sexual predators, Frank said. The unit was created in 1991 and has grown to include 13 full-time personnel, he said.
"And there is more than enough work for them," Frank said. Since January 2000, the unit has arrested 35 people accused of attempting to solicit sex from a minor, he said.
Troopers seized a computer from the Wise Avenue church Tuesday night but did not search Gerstner's home in the 5000 block of New Forge Road in Perry Hall, Frank said.
When reached at home yesterday, Gerstner's wife, Kathy, declined to comment on the charges against her husband. She teaches a Bible study class at Inverness, according to the Web site. The couple's fifth child was born in February 2001.
Gerstner earned a doctorate in theology from the University of Chicago and has studied in South Africa and the Netherlands, according to the Inverness Web site.
The state Court of Appeals is considering a case that could put the computer crimes unit out of business.
In August 2000, a Frederick circuit judge dismissed charges against a Camden, N.J., man who was accused of traveling to Frederick to meet with a fictitious 15-year-old girl. The judge agreed with the defense's argument in that case that no crime was committed because the girl was an adult police officer and it is legal for two adults to meet this way.
Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., who argued part of the appeal of that decision before the high court in May of last year, said, "Our argument is, it was not a legal impossibility. ... He intended to have illegal sexual activity with a young girl."
Sun staff writer Tim Craig contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun
I doubt very much that those who screened candidates for the priesthood prior to 1970 gave much thought to sexual orientation at all. I can tell you, from my experience in a very traditional seminary in the early seventies, that we were treated as if we had been neutered. Sex wasn't mentioned, discussed, questioned, sermonized about, or hinted at. So it's no surprise that the Shanleys and Geoghans got through; seminaries have always been places where gays can hide.
You actually believe that dioceses didn't have "secret archives" full of complaints about abusive priests in the '30s, 40s, and 50s? And that, for every complaint, there was probably some multiple of occurrences for which the victims weren't believed, or were too ashamed to tell anybody.
There weren't even laws against such acts in some places, and there certainly was no requirement for the Church to turn over those discovered anywhere.
The fact is that this behavior just popped up on our radar screens, but clerical sex abuse was something even my grandmother used to murmur about.
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