Catholics Revel In Latest Church Scandal

The media will tell you that no story sells better than a fall from grace.  Exposing other people's sins is a lucrative business, especially when the one exposed had been up on a pedestal.

The murder trial of O.J. Simpson back in the 90's became an industry in itself.  Why?  Simpson had always been a good guy, someone we looked up to who had risen from a broken home and poverty and made it in society through talent and hard work.  Everybody loved O.J.  Then he had a spectacular fall from grace, accused of brutally killing two people, one being his wife and the mother of his children.

This was in the days before Internet, so people were glued to their TV's soaking in every aspect of the trial.  It was the main topic of conversation in America and around the world.  I remember when the verdict was announced.  It was in the middle of a work day, and we were actually allowed to stop working and watch it on TV, as if this was some momentous historical event.

We have seen this scenario played over and over again with celebrities.  Although the stories are important to the people involved, for most of us these incidents have no effect on our lives whatsoever.  Yet we still watch them and try to learn every sordid detail.

Why?  The answer is that it makes us feel good about ourselves.  We don't have the ability to reach the heights of celebrity of these people, but at the same time, we are much better people than they are because we would never commit such dastardly deeds.  It is so satisfying to be able to look down on other people.

The latest scandal in the Catholic Church - the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report detailing the sexual abuse allegedly committed by 301 priests and covered up by their superiors - is, unlike most celebrity scandals, a truly important story and one that cannot be ignored.  The Church needs to take this very seriously and deal with it,

However, there are far too many people who actually seem to be enjoying this scandal.  They are as happy as pigs in manure because this gives them a chance to condemn priests and bishops whom they have already despised.  And of course, it gives them yet another chance to condemn Vatican II and all who promote it, despite the fact that many of these abuses occurred either prior to Vatican II or by pre-Vatican II priests.  Those who condemn rarely act rationally and logically.

The Grand Jury report goes back 70 years, and many if not all of these stories are not new.  The report was put together from documents obtained from the Church.  Most of these priests are either very elderly or dead.  I don't believe any of them are still active priests.  In fact, if you Google the priests in this report, you will find stories from years back reporting these same events.  HERE is one story from March 2016 which talks about clerical abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese which is also covered in the Grand Jury report.  HERE is a news report about a lawsuit involving Father Francis J. Fromholzer, Francis Joseph McNelis, Edward R. Graff, among others whose stories are detailed in the Grand Jury report.  As you will note, this story is from 2004.  I haven't researched all of the names in the report, but of those I have looked up, all are "old news."

Most Grand Juries convene in order to indict people.  That is clearly not the purpose of this report since these cases have already been litigated.  So why did the Pennsylvania Grand Jury release this report?  This is their explanation:

We know that the bulk of the discussion in this report concerns events that occurred before the early 2000's. That is simply because the bulk of the material we received from the dioceses concerned those events. The information in these documents was previously kept hidden from those whom it most affected. It is exposed now only because of the existence of this grand jury. That historical record is highly important, for present and future purposes. The thousands of victims of clergy child sex abuse in Pennsylvania deserve an accounting, to use as best they can to try to move on with their lives. And the citizens of Pennsylvania deserve an accounting as well, to help determine how best to make appropriate improvements in the law.

. . .

And we know there might be many additional recent victims, who have not yet developed the resources to come forward either to police or to the church. As we have learned from the experiences of the victims who we saw, it takes time. We hope this report will encourage others to speak.  

This is a very unconventional Grand Jury.  It seems the purpose of this Grand Jury was to review past crimes and report on them because they feel all these stories need to be heard once again to maybe encourage others to come forward.  As they write in their report:

We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated. This report is our only recourse. We are going to name their names, and describe what they did - both the sex offenders and those who concealed them. We are going to shine a light on their conduct, because that is what the victims deserve. And we are going to make our recommendations for how the laws should change so that maybe no one will have to conduct another inquiry like this one. We hereby exercise our historical and statutory right as grand jurors to inform the public of our findings.   

This is like reviewing convicted rapists and murderers in a city over the past 70 years and then issuing a report in hopes of uncovering unreported crimes and also changing the laws to make them much harsher.

I really wonder if most people realize that this Grand Jury Report does not contain new information.  It isn't like they suddenly discovered a pedophile ring in the State of Pennsylvania.  Certainly that doesn't excuse any guilty party or lessen the pain and injury suffered by the victims and their families.  But the fact remains that this is historical data, almost all of which has been previously reported and can be found in any number of places.  Yet people are reacting like they are hearing this all for the first time.

What is new in this report is the graphic descriptions of the crimes.  I would strongly suggest that anyone who is tempted by pornography of any kind not read this report.  I have not read Fifty Shades of Gray (nor do I intend to), but I think this report is the legal equivalent of that book.

Ah, you say, the real scandal is not just the priests/perpetrators, but how the bishops dealt with these priests, just shuffling them around from church to church, allowing them to abuse more victims.  People are outraged that these priests were not immediately thrown out of the priesthood and turned over to the authorities for criminal prosecution.

The problem here is that it wasn't only the Church who failed to act.  There are numerous incidents in the Grand Jury Report of police and other civil authorities who gave a free pass to these priests.

I am not saying that I agree with shuffling priest offenders from church to church.  Obviously that doesn't work.  These priests needed help which the Church did not provide.  But a major reason why the Church did this is because she deals with sin in a very different manner from civil authorities.  First of all, we have the unbreakable seal of confession.  No priest, under pain of mortal sin, can reveal what he has learned in the confessional.  Now, in the early days of the Church, it was common to give public penances to those guilty of grievous mortal sin.  In addition, these people were not allowed to receive the Sacraments for an extended period of time.  Maybe those who are screaming for blood would like to go back to those days?  Remember, this would also apply to you as well as to the priests and bishops you are condemning.

Further, the "problem" with the Catholic Church is that it is not in the business of condemnation, at least not officially.  The divine Head and Founder of our Church, Jesus Christ, made a habit of forgiving the most egregious sinners.  The purpose of the Church is to bring people to salvation.  In years past many priests had no problem condemning the laity and throwing the "fear of hell" into them.  Getting yelled at in confession was a common occurrence.  I am still amazed at how kind priests are to me in confession, far different from my memories of 50 years ago.

However, it seems that the priests and bishops used a much more lenient standard of mercy with each other.  We now see that although it is always good to extend mercy to sinners, we should not trust them to go back to the environment which produced the sin in the first place.  If a priest cannot control himself around children, he should not be around children.  That seems painfully obvious to us, but for whatever reason, it was not obvious in past years.

The truth is that pedophilia is rampant all throughout our society.  The Catholic Church tends to get the spotlight because we are a big institution.  Again, I am not saying that this lessens the egregiousness of the crimes.  But we also have to realize that this is not a "Catholic" problem.  It is a societal problem.

Obviously the Church has made major mistakes in how they dealt with priests gone wrong.  Some bishops do need to be held accountable.  However, many of those who are demanding that bishops heads must literally roll, sang a very different tune a few years go.  They rushed to the defense of one bishop who resigned for not reporting child abuse in his diocese.  Bishop Robert Finn of Missouri was actually convicted by a court for not reporting child abuse. He then resigned.  Father John Zuhlsdorf howled with indignation, saying this was a miscarriage of justice.  Here is just one post he did in the midst of Bishop Finn's trial entitled,"CNA: Prosecutor cuts deal with Bp. Finn, diocese because the case is weak?"  Zuhlsdorf screamed loudly when the National Catholic Reporter called for Bishop Finn's resignation.  That post is entitled, "NCFishwrap, out to get Bp. Finn (D. Kansas City – St. Joseph)".

Yet now, Zuhlsdorf is demanding that Cardinal Wuerl and others named in the report as covering for these priests, be immediately thrown out.  Why such a different standard of justice?  Because Bishop Finn was considered a conservative, and Cardinal Wuerl is one of those hated and reviled "liberals" who want to destroy the Church.  As one blogger wrote at the time, "The great tragedy of Bishop Finn is that he is by many local accounts, a good man who showed one lapse of judgement. The new bishop will probably be a liberal and all the good that Bishop Finn did in cleaning up a bad diocese will go for naught."  HERE.

Even Michael Voris, who has made a career of attacking bishops and literally telling them to go to hell, rushed to the defense of Bishop Finn.  As churchmilitant.com wrote HERE in article dated April 29, 2015:

ChurchMilitant.com also spoke with a priest who wished to remain anonymous who knows Bishop Finn well. He says Finn is “a good, humble man” and a “man of prayer,” who never wanted to be bishop. The priest compares the celebrations to the Pharisees rejoicing over Christ's death on Good Friday, and says he hopes the bishop will have a resurrection one day.

Bishop Finn's tenure as the head of the diocese is over, but the battle to save his reputation has just begun.

As I have written previously, nobody beats trad/conservative Catholics when it comes to Cafeteria Catholicism.

Yes, we have some very bad priests and bishops.  But that is nothing new in the Church, as can be seen from the Grand Jury Report.  Has anyone ever considered that many of these priests may have been victims of sexual abuse when they were children?  Most pedophiles were victims of sexual abuse as children.  We only know about abuse going back roughly 70 years because any victims and perpetrators prior to that time would long be dead.

Much of the Catholic Internet are now following in the footsteps of Michael Voris, who has made a career of condemning bishops and priests and demanding that they all be thrown out of the Church.  Voris is not interested in their salvation.  He sees them all as evil agents of the devil, and not deserving of any mercy.  And now much of the rest of the Catholic Internet has jumped on board with him.

I am especially fascinated by the fact that blogs and websites written by homosexuals are especially condemning of this situation with not a hint of mercy or compassion.  Voris is also homosexual and he never lets a day go by when he is not condemning that behavior in others.  One would think that homosexuals who were actively engaged in the homosexual lifestyle at some point in their lives, would at least show some understanding of the powerful, seemingly uncontrollable urges in these priests and others, many of whom no doubt were also victims as children.

But that does not seem to be the case. Sadly, their own experiences seem to have just hardened many homosexuals against others who also struggle with this cross.  As I wrote above, we don't like to admit it, but it feels good to see others fall from grace.

We as a Church need to admit that not only did we fail the children who were preyed upon and victimized, we have failed those who have same sex attraction.  We can only wonder if we had not stigmatized this sin as being so much worse than all other sin, maybe these men would have felt freer to ask for help instead of trying to deal with it on their own.  That obviously doesn't work.

The Internet is a cesspool.  Even those professing to be Christians seem to have completely forgotten their Christian values.  I find cyber lynching every day on their blogs and websites.  They literally want to throw out all of the priests and bishops and take over the Church.  Satan must be throwing parties, unable to contain his joy at our own self destruction.  It is always much more effective to destroy from the inside.  When something starts to rot on the inside, it is hard to stop.

Thank God that Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will never allow this to happen.  The Church is His Bride, His Mystical Body.  He has never abandoned her in 2000 years, and He will not start now.  These scandals in the Church are, sadly, nothing new.  The Church has been on the brink more than once.  We have gone through cleansing periods before.  And just when it seems that she can't come back, she always does so stronger than ever.  It is times like these that produce the greatest of saints.

Those who sit and condemn without mercy are not on the side of the saints.  We are told that no one is expendable in the sight of God, not even those who commit such evils as pedophilia.  Jesus Christ shed His Precious Blood for them too, and it is not right to sit in condemnation of them.

It is not the way of the world and sounds politically incorrect to the extreme, but I do not fear as much for wayward priests and bishops as I do for those who judge and condemn and declare their intention to "take back" the Church.  The Catholic Church belongs to Jesus Christ.  We need to give it to Him with reparations.  Before we condemn others, we need to remember our own sinfulness.  As the Angel of Fatima said - penance, penance, penance!

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand:  pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’