Former Nova Scotia bishop charged with possession of child porn

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I don’t know whether he’s guilty or not, and am not saying either way.

But I think we just have to recognize that, for some period of time, some seminaries were very lax on homosexuality. If a priest I knew was telling the truth, and I have no reason to think otherwise, some virtually encouraged it. He explained to me that he and a handful of others were given a rough time precisely because they didn’t engage in it. A fair number of priests would have become bishops, and would have been supported in their candidacy by those of the “fraternity”.

One thinks, and hopes, that this is now being cleaned out. But probably it will take the passage of time before all from that era have died or retired.

I don’t know whether the “child porn” on his computer was homosexual in nature, but if the John Jay studies are correct, it probably was.

One last thing. It isn’t impossible to have gotten on the laptop without his intending it. I recall once, long ago, my son and I were trying to open a “computer game” on the internet. We “succeeded”, but as soon as it opened, the computer started downloading pornography at nearly-blinding speed. We could see the pictures flashing on the screen. We had to unplug the computer to make it stop. I laboriously looked through all the stored stuff to get rid of it. It took forever, but I don’t know for sure that I ever really got all of it gone.
 
I must admit to being very conflicted on this. On the one hand, I believe in the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”.

OTOH, there are the facts that his arrest was not announced until after he had the opportunity to resign, allowing the news to report that a “former” bishop was charged, although he was an active bishop when the files were discovered. One wonders how many Catholics in the media and police force were pressured to permit this highly unusual divergence from normal procedure.

There is also the fact that he committed the diocese to a multimillion dollar settlement to settle a number of outstanding abuse cases in the diocese, telling the members that this would end the scandal and telling them it was their duty to shoulder the financial burden for the good of the church.

Finally, in spite of being aware that he was being charged with the offence and that it would be made public, he still chose to cite “personal renewal” as his reason for resigning rather than own up to the full extent of what was going on.

This evasion was plain and simple mistreatment of the members of the diocese, regardless of his actual guilt or not-they should have been allowed to prepare for the upset and pain in which they now find themselves.
 
When are we going to be rid of this plague of pedophile priests?

It’s a delicate issue, but there does seem to be a connection between pedophilia and homosexuality. Not all homosexuals are pedophiles, but it seems like most pedophiles are homosexual. If anyone has accurate studies on this topic it would much appreciated.

Whatever the findings, better screening to our seminaries in absolutely required. Our modern day liberal agenda of moral relativism, no right or wrong, I’m ok you’re ok, allows for deviance and decay in many areas of society.
 
UPDATE: Apparently the bishop can’t be located, so police have been issued a warrant for his arrest.

cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2009/09/30/ns-bishop-charged.html

The bishops resignation letter can be read at antigonishdiocese.com/BishopLaheyLetter2009.html

There is supposed to be a news conference today with the archbishop who replaced him in an interim capacity. cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2009/10/01/ns-lahey-charged-sydney.html

I feel badly for the archbishop as it appears that neither Rome nor the bishop gave him any warning with regard to what was going to transpire.

The archbishop as quoted in the article:

“I think many will see this as something that will make the church less credible than we are. It certainly reminds us all that if ever we thought that we had a perfect church, we certainly don’t,” Mancini said.
 
I don’t think we’ll know for a long time how much damage has been done to the Church by the misconduct of the clergy. I know people whose only knowledge about the Church is that priests abuse children. Even Catholic family members have told me they will never leave their children alone with a priest. It’s more than heartbreaking to think how many souls will be lost because of these scandals. It’s more important than ever for us to pray for our priests and bishops.
 
In Arkansas, our bishop keeps having to remove priests left and right, it seems. Why are we so infected with filth? Not being rhetorical. How does this happen? Child pornography? I mean, what?
 
news.ca.msn.com/canada/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=22006556

Please pray for him and for all those causing harm to the Church. This is an example of everybody sins. It is seen in all religions. Protestant, Muslim and many more.
I am sick of people taking advantage of the situation to hate the Church and to point there finger. Now the regular trolls are going to come out and say “See its satan’s church!” It would be fitting for people to accuse the church of being satan because people accused Christ of being satan. Obviously Christ isn’t and obviously the Church isn’t.

God Bless.
 
As a Catholic and a Canadian I grieve over this news.I am ANGRY at the idiots who run our Church.This is simply the Smoke of Satan that Paul VI talked about.We NEED to have a world wide Inquisition.I could puke.
 
SonofMonica said:
In Arkansas, our bishop keeps having to remove priests left and right, it seems. Why are we so infected with filth? Not being rhetorical. How does this happen? Child pornography? I mean, what?
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It is a reflection of the state of our society. How can we expect to draw pure, innocent priests from out of the muck that is our world today? 😦
 
jmcrae said:
It is a reflection of the state of our society. How can we expect to draw pure, innocent priests from out of the muck that is our world today? 😦
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Really makes you think about how every time we do something impure, it contributes to the muck from which these folks are drawn. We should head over to the prayer requests forum and say prayers for any thread having to do with pornography or victimization, etc. and take the chance to re-examine our own lives and consciences.
 
Each of these incidents is like a dagger thrust into the heart of the faithful…as well as the Church. The sorrow is great and the soul begins to tire because of this draining, seemingly endless infestation of pedophilia within the Church. Satan is a master saboteur. He chooses as his weapon the one sin for which even our Lord’s merciful heart was loathe to forgive. My prayers are for the good priests, who again must be stained by this broad, ugly brush…which defiles the collar itself. Very, very sad.
 
One thing that’s a bit strange about this case is the length of time it took between the discovery of the images and a warrant being issued for Bishop Lahey’s arrest. According to CTV news, the police took a long time putting their case together because they wanted to be 100% sure the images on the laptop were those of minors. If it were an open and shut case of child porn, I wouldn’t expect the police to have to go to such lengths. I’m not trying to defend him, because the details are still coming out, but that little detail really piqued my interest. We’ll have to reserve judgement until we know what the pictures actually consisted of.
 
PadraigPearce said:
One thing that’s a bit strange about this case is the length of time it took between the discovery of the images and a warrant being issued for Bishop Lahey’s arrest. According to CTV news, the police took a long time putting their case together because they wanted to be 100% sure the images on the laptop were those of minors. If it were an open and shut case of child porn, I wouldn’t expect the police to have to go to such lengths. I’m not trying to defend him, because the details are still coming out, but that little detail really piqued my interest. We’ll have to reserve judgement until we know what the pictures actually consisted of.
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I’m not sure of your law enforcement background, but I was in law enforcement and the first thing I can tell you is, there is no such things as an “open and shut” case. They took their time because of the person involved. When you have a person like a bishop as a suspect of a crime, you know that the media attention is going to be intense, so you want to make sure that the proof is unquestionable.
 
This sickens me. He was a BISHOP, a leader of the church in his diocese. Possessing pictures such as this is supporting an industry that abuses children. There is NO excuse for it. How can he represent Christ to his parishioners if he is behaving in such a depraved manner? Why on earth would he even be searching out porn, let alone child porn? It can’t be that easy to find child porn on the Internet. Don’t the service providers monitor for such usage?

When I hear such horrible news about the leaders of our church, I really wonder if our religion is valid, if the Catholic Church is valid. I am sure I am not the only one who has doubts, after hearing about incidents such as this. It is so sick.
 
Ailina said:
It can’t be that easy to find child porn on the Internet. Don’t the service providers monitor for such usage?
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Sadly, it is all too easy to encounter every kind of porn on the Internet, simply by mistyping a search word in a search engine, or mistyping a URL address in the task bar. Porn distributors love to use URLs that are very similar to those used by the everyday public.

Also, if your computer has ever experienced any kind of a virus, then the chances are good that during the period of time that your computer had the virus, it was being used as a “drone” to store pornographic images and videos while they were being transferred somewhere else - and when you deleted the virus, it’s possible that the pornographic images themselves, etc. did not get deleted.

So it would be perfectly possible for anyone’s computer to be storing these images, inadvertently. The police would need to figure out whether the images were on there because of that sort of misadventure, or whether the owner of the computer had actually intended to download and use those images.
 
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