The Pink Elephant in the Church

The Remnant ^ | 3/8/2005 | Fr. Charles Dahlby

[vox_freedom]

As a Catholic priest, I have an investment in issues that affect the Church and the people of God. And, as a Christian, I have an obligation to speak out. So let me make the following points as clearly as I can:

1) Most of the scandals and evils we see in the Church today are brought about primarily by homosexuality. Homosexuality is an objective moral disorder and unacceptable in the priesthood! For nearly two thousand years the teachings of the scripture, the magisterium, and Tradition—the three sources of revelation which give us truth—have all agreed: homosexuality as an “abomination”! Only recently have Phil and Oprah and a few TV sitcoms disagreed. But God doesn’t change, and Phil and Oprah won’t be on the throne to judge us!

2) Even though Church documents forbid the acceptance of homosexuals into the seminary and, quite obviously, their ordination to the priesthood, those in authority have for years looked the other way, (don’t ask, don’t tell) and homosexuals have flocked into the Church. Now they have positions of authority! They use this authority to protect and promote one another, creating a distinct subculture that is rapidly becoming dominant. This sub-culture is the ideal homosexual environment. As a priest no one questions why you aren’t married. You get respect that you don’t necessarily earn. You have a target-rich environment, especially if you have a school, and, if you slip up and get caught, the civil authorities will not want to prosecute you because you’re a priest and, as we have seen, the Church will cover you, defend you, and may set you up in another parish or even another diocese so you can continue to prey on God’s people.

A homosexual predator could not hope to find a more friendly and supportive environment than priesthood in the American Catholic Church!

3) The fact that the leadership of the Church so obviously refuses to deal honestly with homosexuality in its midst is a proof of its very powerful presence and authority. The effort expended to avoid the obvious truth is evidence that gross ignorance cannot explain this blindness, only a conscious and premeditated effort to avoid what is so clear! Because it is done with awareness, it crosses the line from human weakness to genuine malignant evil!

4) To those who try to avoid the truth and hide behind some phony facade such as “addiction” or claim the answer will be found in a good workshop on chastity are either fools or liars. Get a few old diocesan directories and a magic marker and go through them: How many heterosexual priests died of AIDS? How many heterosexual priests have been pedophiles? How many heterosexual priests have been sources of sex scandals? (Only a small percentage of which ever reach the newspapers!) How much money have heterosexual priests cost the Church in lawsuits, pay-offs and cover-ups?

5) Many priests are aware of homosexuals in the priesthood but they do not have the spirituality or the courage to confront the issue, so they lapse into a false charity that is nothing more than an excuse for doing nothing. (This is a response that Jesus certainly did not allow!) Or they try to wash their hands of anything outside their parish boundaries. (Also not allowed!) Worst of all are those priests who know that evil is occurring, do nothing, and actually console themselves with the absurd idea that they are serving the Church. They have been formed by a seminary system that is designed to produce “churchmen,” not saints. These neo-Pharisees have confused the “means” with the “end” and have made the Church an idol! They have been perfectly willing to sacrifice truth, innocence and even the souls of Gods children as long as they keep up the facade. It is a sick and perverted illusion of love that would allow a priest to stand by silently while his brother destroys his own soul and the souls of others! These people must surely tremble at the thought of God’s judgment!

6) Yes, as we must love all sinners, we love homosexuals! If they can carry the cross they have been given they can become great saints. But they have no place in the priesthood! Weak and evil leaders have sat around patting themselves on the back at how “enlightened” and “charitable” they have been in that stirring “Cor ad cor” they had with “Father” regarding his little problem. While “Father” has a whole new target-rich environment in another parish or another diocese! (After a little counseling of course!) And while the warmth of false charity fills them, more children are destroyed!

The people are asking “When will it end?” It won’t! As long as we ignore the “elephant in the room”, as long as we prefer the comfort of false charity and absolutely refuse to deal with the truth, the scandal and the destruction of faith will continue. It will, in fact, get much worse! The “vocation crisis” is due in large part to the rise of the homosexual subculture in the Church. They have such power that Fr. Andrew Greeley has labeled them the “Lavender Mafia”! (A very appropriate term since the RICO laws are now being used against the Bishops of the Church!)

Many young men who have stood up against the homosexual agenda in the seminaries have been labeled “homophobes” and “rigid” and treated as though they are the sick ones. If they somehow manage to get ordained and then discover the truth, they experience terrible frustration. They realize that they have no place to go to get the problem “fixed”! It does no good to go to the bishop when the bishop is the problem! The chancery staff, the Monsignori, were appointed by him. For example, right now there is a young man in the seminary in St. Louis who will be ordained a priest soon. His picture and his story were front page news in the “Illinois Times.” He was the president of a gay and lesbian organization in Springfield, Illinois. Current Church teaching is that he should not have been admitted to the seminary and should not be ordained. His religious superior and the appropriate bishops are well aware of his orientation yet, in complete contradiction to Church directives from Rome, he continues and those who objected were labeled by his superior as “whiners”! The Rev. Charles Bouchard, president of the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis said: “I think straight priests and seminarians shouldn’t be whining. I just don’t think it’s a big deal.”

The few priests foolish enough to speak openly about the scandal of homosexuality in the priesthood have soon learned that they will receive no help or support from anyone. The people don’t want to believe it. The newspapers won’t print it. The district attorney won’t prosecute, after all, his is an elected position, and the only thing more pointless than writing to the bishop is writing to “Rome”! Only in the area of pedophilia have we been able to enlist the aid of lawyers and multi-million dollar lawsuits to help keep some children a little safer.

Only when they got hit in the purse did these bishops have a sudden attack of morality. The bishop of Dallas took in a pervert from New England in the “pervert trades” and, as a child was violated, the pervert-priest was moved from one parish to another. The day after a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed, the chancellor of the diocese began an investigation in all the parishes where this pervert had been assigned to “surface these poor damaged children”! Everyone, including a jury, was very aware that these men who supposedly stand “in persona Christi” didn’t give a damn about the “poor damaged children” until 180 million dollars got mentioned!

The truth is, a few money-grubbing lawyers have done more to keep our children safe than the entire NCCB and all its committees! People simply don’t want to believe!

I was once relating some information I had been given by two male prostitutes concerning their clergy clientele. The person I was speaking to said: “How could you believe them if their prostitutes?” I explained that people didn’t go to Douglas Park late at night to pick up saints! I have always found more honesty in sinners than in false shepherds!

Now the priesthood has come to be considered the primary “gay profession.” We are the butt of jokes and presented as a pathetic caricature in the media. If the new document from Rome on homosexuality soon to be released leaves it up to the bishops or leaves loopholes in dealing with such a “complex issue”, then the floodgates will swing wide. Heterosexual priests will not want to send fine young men from good families to the seminary. Priests will need to know with clarity their bishops policy on homosexuals in the seminary and the priesthood and be allowed to incardinate in a diocese where they can minister in obedience and good conscience. This could well be the issue that reveals the schism in the Church.

So the real issue is – HOMOSEXUALS IN THE PRIESTHOOD! The solution is – GET THEM OUT!

[SkyPilot]

Sir,

May I say I admire you, and your choice to serve God.

What you wrote is very inspiring, and I pray it is as so.

Be true to the Word of God. Do as Christ would do in all circumstances, and you will always be in the satisfaction of God in heaven.

I don't know the current status of leadership, nor their character. I do know something about their character of the last few years, and it is abysmal. But don't take my observations as an indictment against what you are charged to do, by God Himself. Spread the Good News that Christ died for us sinners, and without that gift, we all deserve Hell.

Be strong in the face of the homosexuals in the clergy, for there are many in the church. Some are good men despite their sin---they help others and try. We are all sinners after all. But some are evil, and their lusts control them and their every action to the point of mania, and you will never find a more addicted group of human beings on the planet. Don't hold church leadership as your final authority----hold up Christ, the Lord. If you do that, you will not fail.

[vox_freedom]

The worst sins in the Catholic homosexual abuse scandal were not the sins of priests against the innocents -- as absolutely horrible, indeed diabolically evil as those were -- but the enabling bishops and others who knew these abuses were going on, but instead they chose to tolerate, hide, cover up, and ignore the acts of perpetrators. Unfortunately the trail leads all the way to Rome, where many victims, and supportive family and friends, appealed to urge intervention, recognition, and remedies. For the most part these appeals were met with silence or referral directly back to those who were doing the enabling.
Thanks for the Michael Davies position statement on obedience. He stated this important clarification on many occasions so that people would realize that the saving of souls is our most important role and we have an overiding responsibility to protect and promulgate the faith, and the Truth of God's law, even if it diverts from those who direct us to stand for Communion or those who neglect fasting during Lent, or other transgressions great and small.

[sockmonkey]

Now the priesthood has come to be considered the primary “gay profession.” We are the butt of jokes and presented as a pathetic caricature in the media.

Last night Jay Leno did a joke:
What did the Priest say to Michael Jackson?
I saw him first.

[SausageDog]

"Some are quite unwilling to admit, even to themselves, that an occasion could ever arise when a Catholic should justifiably refuse obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff. However sincere such people may be, they display a lamentable ignorance of Church history and Catholic theology."

Translation: "We schismatics are in the right!"

[narses]

That says so much. If I didn't know your posting history, I'd be angry at the anti-Catholic slur. As I do, I am angry at the freaking queers who have so harmed our Holy Mother the Church as to make your post understandable.

[ultima ratio]

We traditionalists are in the right, but we are not schizmatics. Your problem is you can't tell the difference since you don't know what Catholicism is in the first place.

[TAdams8591]

"So the real issue is – HOMOSEXUALS IN THE PRIESTHOOD! The solution is – GET THEM OUT!"

Agreed.

[grame]

universities, news rooms, ballet classes, floral shops..... don't forget gov't.

[grame]

AMEN

[SkyPilot]

"So the real issue is – HOMOSEXUALS IN THE PRIESTHOOD! The solution is – GET THEM OUT!" Agreed.

This will never happen. During the scandal's media zenith in 2002-03, hundreds of homosexual priests held meetings in Chicago, Boston, and Dublin. They were terribly afraid they would be defrocked, and cut off from the church. The truth of homosexuality in the ranks had finally been exposed to the light of day. If Rome was going to take action, 2002-03 would have been the years it would have done so.

The main pretext against defrocking homosexuals in the priesthood is a circuitous argument of the innate problem:

-there are too many of them in the ranks

countered with....

- there are so many homosexuals in the ranks that the Catholic Church cannot survive if she ousts them

The church must decide if the scripture in Leviticus and Romans is the Word of God concerning homosexuality. Further, it must decide if the dictum in Timothy concerning leaders is valid (and it is valid). Only then will it solve this crisis.

[Piers-the-Ploughman]

excellent post, Michael Davies was not a loose cannon or baiter, his writings are great for the forum

[Piers-the-Ploughman]

Greek Orthodox are schismatics, recognizing not the pope.
There are traditionalists who recognize the Pope but can not cooperate with heretical blasphemous bishops he has appointed. It's at least a little bit different, if not significantly so, than the Greek Orthodox, who completely reject the pope in theory and practice. If non-traditional orthodox Catholics can say so many nice things about Lutheran religion, Buddhism, etc, so many of whose adherents are probably going to Heaven also, according to Walter Kasper, then how much more should they have some charity for traditional Catholics who are in about 99.8% agreement with them on doctrinal issues

[sockmonkey]

That says so much. If I didn't know your posting history, I'd be angry at the anti-Catholic slur. As I do, I am angry at the freaking queers who have so harmed our Holy Mother the Church as to make your post understandable.

When I heard Leno tell the joke, I was shocked, then I realized there is a reason that people make jokes like that- because sadly, there is some truth in there.

[Aliska]

and homosexuals have flocked into the Church.

Most of them seem to have been cradle catholics. Nobody has addressed this issue headon because they would rather dance around the matter. "Flocking" into the church implies converts. I don't know of one abusing priest who was exposed who was a convert but rather was born into the church. There are no doubt some converts who are homosexual who become priests, but as of now, they seem to be an insignificant number compared to cradle catholic homosexuals who are attracted/recruited into the priesthood.

Why do so many catholics, supposedly the One True Church, become homosexual in the first place (apart from the ones seduced into that lifestyle by errant priests, etc.)?

This author is SSPX? What is the percentage of SSPX homosexuals compared to NO homosexuals? Or do SSPX make sure theirs stay in the closet?

It does seem that homosexual predators in the prieshood have brought this down on all of us. I know I'm asking some hard questions that demand some hard answers. Maybe there aren't any answers.

Is it possible that it has been this way for centuries and is only now coming to light because the catholic hierarchy is no longer able to cover up because of the modern media and the way news gets around the globe now?

I do admire that Father Doyle, and it seems that he has been punished for taking the stand he did. I also do not hate homosexuals, but my preference is not to be ministered to by a sexually active homosexual priest, of which I have little way of knowing or choice in the matter. Other than that, I tend to feel some empathy for their condition and try to be tolerant of them in society. I don't care for the activist ones pushing their agenda down our throats and who are intolerant of anyone who gets in their way.

The other agonizing question is what if I found out that some of the priests who have been helpful and kind to me turn out to have been homosexuals? Some (I suspect) heterosexual priests can be pretty rough on you in ways totally uncalled for and can treat you in a very un-Christianlike manner.

I wouldn't bring any of this up, but I have privately agonized over this very thing for years and it isn't anything you can talk to ANYONE about in my real world.

[Tantumergo]

"The worst sins in the Catholic homosexual abuse scandal were not the sins of priests against the innocents -- as absolutely horrible, indeed diabolically evil as those were -- but the enabling bishops and others who knew these abuses were going on, but instead they chose to tolerate, hide, cover up, and ignore the acts of perpetrators."

I agree with you that very often the bishops have been more culpable than the sick individuals under their charge. However, the connivance in this sin hasn't just been in the hierarchy - the whole Church, including the laity, have been giving these perverts a pass for far too long.

How many parents have also attempted to cover up the sins of priests when they found out their sons had been abused? There has been a case in our diocese where the bishop wanted the parents to go to the police and press charges - to have the priest tried and sentenced - but they refused. They just wanted it hushed up, they didn't want to create a fuss or a scandal. They didn't want other people in their parish to think badly of them for accusing their priest of these crimes. They didn't give a damn whether the priest might be transferred elsewhere so that he could prey on other boys.

We have a culture of placing our priests on such pedestals that many people will stick by them and excuse their crimes simply because they are priests. This "Father can do no wrong" syndrome is what has given the homosexuals and their supportive bishops so much cover to hide in.

It is an idolatry of the clergy which many Catholics extend in more extreme forms to the Pope - hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. The only good thing I can see coming out of these scandals is if more Catholics learn that we must "Obey God and not men". Fidelity to God's law and the Faith must always come before obedience to corrupt shepherds.

Ideally there should be no distinction between the two, but increasingly we will have to make that choice for the sake of our own salvation and that of our children.

[Tantumergo]

"As a young man applying for acceptance in the local seminary, I have to say that the seminarians I have encountered have been nothing if not orthodox and devout."

May God bless you with wisdom and discernment. I hope you also do a lot of research into the seminary staff and the diocesan vocations people.

I pray to God that its a seminary which turns out priests and not psychologists!

[Grey Ghost II]

This author is SSPX? What is the percentage of SSPX homosexuals compared to NO homosexuals? Or do SSPX make sure theirs stay in the closet?

No, Fr. Charles Dahlby is not SSPX.

[Aliska]

Thanks. It looks like he is a priest at St. Rita Catholic Church and St. Mary Church in central Illinois, also published by rcf.org and catholiccitizens.org.

Here is another good article by him:

The Church and the Press: Shooting the Messenger