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All of the Boston hyper-multiple offenders were ordained before Vatican II. Therefore, they were formed in the Church of the 1930s and 1940s, which many hold out as a golden age.

These sick freaks clearly have used the "spirit of Vatican II" to recruit a generation of gay religious, and to try (and they are still trying) to normalize homosexuality.

But it is an oversimplification to say that Shanley,Goeghan, and Birmingham were "caused" by Vatican II, when they clearly were not.

I suspect that there is still more to learn about the corruption of the Archdiocese of Boston, and I strongly suspect that that antedates Vatican II, as well.

Ironically, it isn't a gay thing so much as it is a power and secrecy thing which has brewed for centuries, if not over a thousand years.

Think about what conditions had to be like during the Reformation - probably many, many times worse than history ascribes for a church peopled by largely unsophisticated peasants who didn't have access to information to be so riven. The theology and the rules were largely created in the image of the disinherited sons of the nobility - boys sent to the Church while they were sexually immature. In time, the clerical ranks became the repository for those young men who didn't exactly mesh with women as well.

Here is the really interesting part - in the 40s and 50s, gays were known of and identifiable. Parents wouldn't have trusted their children to the outwardly effeminate, but they would have trusted the guy who seemed all man. Meanwhile, the masculine priest could operate quite handily with a lot of trust if he had an interest in teenagers.

Some of these deviates were indeed ordained prior to VII, but virtually none of their activity seems to have occurred until several years after it, in the 1970s.

I think what happened was that an enormous "sexualization" of society occurred at the same time that the Church had been fatally weakened in its liturgy, prayer and practice by VatII. The Church was not only unable to resist it, but in fact even went running after it to hop onto the bandwagon. At the same time, many of the older clergy, including bishops, had no idea of how to respond to this situation, which was something they would never have dreamed of in their wildest imaginings.

A Franciscan priest friend who had been ordained just after WWII and had lived a very happy life in an urban friary told us that suddenly, one day in the 1970s, a team of psychologists came from provincial headquarters to give the friars a "retreat," in which they were told that homosexuality was normal, priests were supposed to "express themselves," and that for those who didn't have any special friends with whom to "express themselves," masturbation was a good solution. He lived in great misery at that friary for a few more years, while the younger brothers padded up and down the hallways at night, visiting their "special friends," and then finally retired to a friary with other shocked and horrified elderly brothers.

Evil has always been around, and there have always been corrupt people in the Church, at all levels. But VII somehow gave these people permission to act, and in fact, almost encouraged them to act.

Perhaps the real problem with pre-Vatican II Catholicism is that we were too confident that all of the problems had been overcome, and all that remained was a bit of work to improve music in the churches, make old Fr. McGillicuddy stop trying to get through the entire Mass in 12 minutes, and encourage Catholics to cease feeling that they were somehow still in the status of immigrants in America. Vatican II knocked the pins out from under us, and we didn't know it until it was too late.

"But it is an oversimplification to say that Shanley,Goeghan, and Birmingham were "caused" by Vatican II, when they clearly were not."

I think it is fair to say that those perverts were probably unleashed by Vatican II. Are there indications that they sexually preyed on boys prior to 1965?

I happened to go to a church meeting last night for parents of kids being prepared to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. The Director of Religious Education told us that in the dark old days there was a "legalistic" effort to define sin and to build lists of sins. But happily since Vatican II the Church has realized that a sin can not be so "legalistically" determined. A sin is now based on the concept of relationships. A sin is an act distructive one's relationship with God or with the community.

It not hard to imagine how, with such a Clintoneque defintion, predatory perverts like Shanely can justify their actions by saying, Hey, I'm not hurting any relationship, this is an uplifting spiritual experience bring me closer to God...

People need black and white rules: it is a sin to touch another boys weiner, etc.