THERE are many, many, many signs — first and foremost the very obvious fact of clashing dogma — that the religion upheld by the supposed Catholic Church hierarchy and promoted in once Catholic buildings is not the true Catholic religion. One of those signs is the child sex abuse holocaust, the horror of which continues to unfold. This week, a judge in Philadelphia ordered Monsignor William Lynn to return to prison to continue serving a three- to six-year sentence for child endangerment after his conviction was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Led off to prison in handcuffs, Lynn, 64, was a former Secretary of Clergy in Philadelphia who transferred presbyters suspected of child sexual abuse to other parishes. Lynn was accused of covering up sex crimes for years. He is one of two dozen Vatican II bishops accused of child endangerment or other criminal behavior related to child sexual abuse.

In 2002, Patrick Buchanan wrote:

At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?

Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.

There have always been sinners in the Church and always will be. But this is different. This is the legacy of the Revolution.

— Comments —

Mary writes:

Laura wrote: “There have always been sinners in the Church and always will be. But this is different. This is the legacy of the Revolution.”

I agree. Because of the weakening effect of the revolution, Church leaders embraced the new ideas in psychology and modern thinking about sexuality and used these ideas on seminarians and priests. Therapy and relocation were the recommended treatments even as they flew in the face of common sense. Now we know these men cannot be controlled. But, although it’s hard to imagine today, some of the problem was due to very real innocence, the inability to grasp unimaginable evil. The whole thing is shameful beyond endurance.

Having said all that, problems of this kind are no greater in the Catholic priesthood than in any other realm. And of course the use of the word “pedophile” is mostly inaccurate, as the majority of the victims were male teenagers, making most of the offenders not pedophiles but basic homosexuals. Journalistic investigation has been abandoned in the face of this titillating and sordid gift to the nightly news that just keeps on giving, fallen Catholic priests being especially juicy fodder. A media with real integrity would have unearthed the elephant in the room of the abuse scandal long ago: the massive public school system, protected by powerful unions, which used the relocation/therapy model for decades with impunity. Many more children have suffered because this witch hunt has focused only on the Church.

And the same media that won’t admit that homosexuals caused the crisis in the Catholic priesthood have for years advocated for the advancement of openly gay men into the ranks of leadership in the Boy Scouts – and here it is, a future sordid abuse tale waiting to be revealed.

Laura writes:

The incidence of sexual abuse may be comparable in other fields, but it is far more serious and damaging when it involves a priest or someone considered an authority in the Church and thus charged to be a protector of souls.

As far as innocence goes, at least one priest experienced with those accused of sex abuse issued warnings years before the crisis reached its peak:

As early as the mid-1950s, decades before the clergy sexual-abuse crisis broke publicly across the U.S. Catholic landscape, the founder of a religious order that dealt regularly with priest sex abusers was so convinced of their inability to change that he searched for an island to purchase with the intent of using it as a place to isolate such offenders, according to documents recently obtained by NCR.

Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paracletes, an order established in 1947 to deal with problem priests, wrote regularly to bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials, including the pope, of his opinion that many sexual abusers in the priesthood should be laicized immediately.

Fitzgerald was a prolific correspondent who wrote regularly of his frustration with and disdain for priests “who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls.” His views are contained in letters and other correspondence that had previously been under court seal and were made available to NCR by a California law firm in February.

Read copies of letters Fitzgerald exchanged with U.S. bishops and one pope.

[…]

Whatever discussion occurred during the 1970s and 1980s over proper treatment, however, for nearly two decades Fitzgerald spoke a rather consistent conviction about the dim prospects for returning sex abusers to ministry. Fitzgerald seemed to know almost from the start the danger such priests posed. He was adamant in his conviction that priests who sexually abused children (often the language of that era was more circumspect in naming the problem) should not be returned to ministry.

In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization [sic].” The letter, addressed to “Most dear Cofounder,” was apparently to Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe, N.M., who was considered a cofounder of the Paraclete facility at Jemez Springs and a good friend of Fitzgerald.

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