Posted on 03/03/2008 10:03:41 PM PST by GratianGasparri
When the Catholic Church's sexual-misconduct scandal became nationwide front-page news six years ago, the Rev. Philip Lee Erickson of the Archdiocese of Louisville was just 34.
The young priest had just obtained the canon-law license that would let him function as a lawyer within the church's internal legal system when the cover-up of priestly sexual abuse in Boston and elsewhere, mostly against boys and young men, became widely reported in early 2002.
"Newly ordained, as the saying goes, you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," Father Erickson told The Washington Times in a telephone interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
ping!
Of course they are referring to our Church’s homosexuality crisis. As someone who has been involved with the internal handling of some of these cases in my diocese, the vast majority are cases of homosexuality. Of course, during the enlightenment following Vatican Council II homosexuality was normalized in society and for many liberals in our Church, ever eager to jump into bed and be accepted by secular society, we adopted those same mores. When the Church truly speaks out in truth what we know to be truth we will have less of a problem.
You’ve probably already read Philip Lawler’s book about Boston, The Faithful Departed. If not, read it immediately!
It’s excellent, and one thing he points out is that the problem won’t be solved until they can be honest about what it is. The bishops even came to the conclusion that the problem was homosexuality - and then they decided not to publish the paper they were writing and in fact when they finally came out and said anything, they made no mention at all of homosexuality.
Lawler says that the root of the problems is essentially the desire of many in the Church to be accepted by secular society, which of course is done by their having to accept the values of secular society first. In the case of Boston, he points out that this was happening even before Vatican II, because by the 1950s, the Church in Boston saw itself as an ethnic and political organization (wing of the Democrat party) before anything else. Vatican II, with its destruction of authority, destruction of the strong connection with and obedience to Rome, and ridicule of doctrinal and moral certainties, simply allowed something to happen which had been gestating in the American Church in general and Boston in particular for some time.
This unfortunately coincided with a time when the values of secular society became abysmally bad, and the reason that the bishops won’t speak out against homosexuality (aside form the fact that some of the worst bishops in the scandals probably were active homosexuals themselves) is that secular society not only tolerates but approves of it and even enshrines it as some bizarre testimony to how open minded it is. The bishops don’t want to look uncool and - well, you know, judgmental or anything like that!
The problem really lies with the bishops, who are cowardly if they’re good, shameless if they’re bad, and almost entiredly disobedient to Rome.
It is excellent! I felt especially vindicated by his treatment of Medeiros/busing/Southie (I've lived in Southie almost all my life). I do wish he had gone into St. John's Seminary (Boston) and what must have been going on there during the relevant years (and now?). I guess it's just "life" that Medeiros' memory is untouched by the scandal, when the worst of it was on his watch, while Law is forever disgraced.
I think there was a lot more "collateral damage" in the priesthood due mostly to the rise in homosexual priests than this article discusses, a more general demoralization among many priests in the 70s. Granted, my knowledge is anecdotal and fragmentary, but things that didn't seem to fit into anything at the time make a lot of sense looking back and knowing now there was a veritable tsunami of unbridled (yes, that's what I mean) homosexuality among priests.
It was a really excellent book and helped me put many of the bizarre things that went on into a larger picture - and I bet this was especially true for people like you who lived through it in Boston.
I lived in Santa Rosa, CA, which had some truly gross and shocking gay “problems” involving its own bishop. Since his “problems” actually got to the point of being criminal acts, he was forced to leave the diocese. However, California in general was riddled with homosexual bishops, and this was one of the things that kept the seminaries bad and enabled the corrupt priests to run wild (including a certain SoCal bishop...). But nothing was ever done about them by Rome.
Here in Florida, where I live now, we have a bishop (Lynch of Tampa St Pete’s) who settled a sexual harrassment suit filed by a male employee...was out of the country at Easter because Terri Schiavo was being killed at that point and he didn’t want his clergy to force him to say something that might offend his pro-death Scientologist buddies (in any case, he forbade all priests in his diocese to visit her or give her Communion), and has made it a point of pride that he halted Adoration in his diocese...and he’s still there. What is Rome thinking?
Someone on Fr. Z's blog linked to this CWN piece on The Rite for Degradation of a Bishop (though too many of ours seem to have a talent for "degrading" themselves!).
No more than a pipe dream today, though. See the later discussion here.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
“You avoid looking at children now,” he said.
That is the saddest outcome of all.
We can count on one hand, OK maybe two, the bishops in this country who are actually good, meaning who are not unorthodox, homosexual, leftists, or just completely useless. Rome is not going to solve this problem, the Pope cannot, for reasons explained at length in so many threads over the years I won’t reiterate.
It is OUR Church. Too many Catholics are passive sheep. Do something.
First, pray (obviously).
Second, STOP all funding. Stop giving money to the bishop’s annual appeal, special collection, campaign for human development, catholic charities, peace & justice committees, and all the other umbrella-type diocesan-run organizations that very often fund money to yet other umbrella organizations that are NON-catholic, pro-gay, sometimes even pro-abortion, most often politically left at least, such as global warming education or letter campaigns against our military. Or to the seminaries, some of which, depending where you are, are still homosexual havens. Or Gaia-worshipping nuns. STOP THOSE DOLLARS and you will have the attention of the bishop, finally.
Choose individual Catholic charities that you know are in compliance with church teaching and write a letter to your bishop that you are contributing to those instead. There are many, but it takes real effort to find them. Eg: ALL, C-Fam, Priests for Life, EWTN, several missions, etc.
Third, don’t be intimidated by wrong priests, and inform the bishop in writing of liturgical abuses. Insist on the rubrics, put that crucifix back over the altar, get rid of the drumming circle mass or the liturgical dancing. If you want Adoration, Tridentine Mass, Divine Mercy groups, get a group together and ask the priest. It’s his duty to provide that, that is what a priest is for, not political rallies, etc.
Well, gosh, I better quit, I guess you can see I’ve been in the midst of some of the same disturbing situations as you have. I’m preaching to the choir, but I wish more Catholics would realize WE must insist on the proper Sacraments and not support with our presence or money anything less.
Whew...
O, Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Excellent post.
I would love to see Rome start to remove some of these bishops. I know Rome is basically waiting for them to “age out,” hoping that the problem will then go away on its own. But heterodox or immoral bishops give scandal and create enormous problems that will endure long after they’ve been allowed to ride off into the sunset, so leaving them there without even a clear censure from Rome is a foolish policy in the long term.
In addition, it seems that retired bishops no longer have to leave their dioceses. They hang around and still control their networks of loyalists in the diocesan offices and their cronies in the parishes. Our current bishop, while being essentially a weak man and no leader (except in his opposition to the Latin Mass!), probably wouldn’t be as bad as he is if it weren’t for the fact that the old bishop is still here, still circulates around, and still has a lot of influence. I think that there should be some agreement that when these guys retire, they have to move out of the diocese and leave it to the new bishop free and clear.
I agree that one way to handle it is through the wallet.
However, what do you do when the bishops don’t even listen to the fact that the collection plate is coming back empty? They recognize that there has been a drop in contributions, but they attribute it to everything other than its real cause (which is simply that people aren’t paying because they aren’t getting what they want from the Church, that is, the Faith). Then all they do in response is start closing churches, cutting back on diocesan publications and the little outreach the diocese might do, etc. It’s all the fault of those cheap laypeople who don’t understand what AmChurch is trying to do for them.
The bishops never take a good look at the church they have created here and ask themselves if maybe there wasn’t some mistake, and perhaps, just perhaps, they should be doing things differently.
I'd love to see a firmer hand, too. But -- maybe it's cowardly -- I keep envisioning the media circus that would result. Clearly, a defiant bishop would be lionized by the media. Like I said before, temporal power of the papacy had its points, but the pope can no longer put recalcitrant bishops in dungeons on bread and water!
One of the most appealing things I've read about C.S. Lewis is that, when he died, it was discovered that he was giving about 2/3s of his income to individuals in need -- "private charities," you might say. I think that's the ideal way myself -- and the older I get, the less I have any use for bureaucracy at any level!
I think you’re right on. I will never forget the day when a bishop who was referred to me for counseling for depression proceeded to tell me about his sexual relationship with one of his priests. This was years before this bishop reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 and so he continued to ‘lead’ his diocese under this cloud. I remember thinking: “Your being depressed is an appropriate response to what you have told me; you’re not clinically depressed, you are experiencing a normal reaction to sin.”
On another matter regarding homosexual priests, while I hold the bishops largely responsible, I also charge that Catholic fathers are also to blame. The succumbed to the post Vatican II feminization of the Church, were emasculated and when their sons were being sexually abused by the priests, where were they? I know that much of it could not have been prevented by them, but where was the outrage on the part of fathers collectively when it came to light that their sons were being abused. Let me say this, if my son was abused by a priest or any other man I would do what a real man would do. I'd beat the living shit out of the guy who did it to them. Suing the dioceses is a weak response by fathers. How lame. I'd bet if one of those priests were taken out and leveled when the first hint of this abuse began to come to light, some of the later homosexual priests might have thought twice about the advisability of touching the boys. My challenge to Catholic men is: “Where are you now in terms of leadership roles in your Church. I look around my Catholic Church and still the women are in charge and they are the only one's present for the most part.
**I would love to see Rome start to remove some of these bishops.**
Hasn’t this happened with a few. I think of the wreckovation bishop (somewhere in MN?) and Pilla.
I have faith in Pope Benedict. Things are starting to happen.
I think something that has gotten virtually no attention - but was very involved with this crisis in particular - is the "Freudianization" of the Church after Vatican II.
One of the open windows seems to have allowed Sigmund Freud to blow in on a passing zeitgeist. I'm not referring, to Freud's actual thought, strictly speaking, but to the sudden tendency to rely on a psychological approach to things that were actually moral issues. Granted, it was a pop-psychology approach, about 99% "Freud said don't stifle yourself, if it feels good, do it, if you're not happy, it's because you're not doing it enough..."
But one thing that is a constant in the sexual abuse crisis is that neither the bishops nor Rome treats it as a moral crisis; the concept of sin is rarely if ever mentioned. The offending priest was sent to a therapist of some sort; he was never told he was going to hell and given a choice between being sent to one of the prison monasteries certain orders used to run (no longer in existence) and being kicked out of the priesthood. It was no longer a grave moral crisis.
But I think you're right and that deep down inside, some of these men still knew it was a moral issue. In some ways, I think some of them were even scandalized by the failure of Church officials to treat it as such.
I think a lot of the boys didn’t have fathers, or not resident ones, at least. Another thing that happened after what I think of as the “collapse,” is that Catholics started divorcing like mad. I remember a man in my parish who had nine children and suddenly he burst into tears at a meeting one day and announced that his wife was leaving him (to find herself, I believe!). Somehow the message that Catholics got was that the secular world was to be the new model for their behavior, and that was one of the things the modern person did: get divorced and dump his/her family.
I recall reading somewhere that the majority of the boys who were preyed upon by these homosexual priests came from broken homes where there was no father present.
I agree with you on the thing about women dominating everything at church, incidentally. It gives a very bad message. The parish school comes to one of our weekday masses, and it’s only the girls who read or do the other little duties.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.