Let's Get the Story Straight [CWR]

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The AP recently reported what seemed to be neglect on the part of then Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) in the case of an Oakland priest and abuser in the early 1980s.The accusations against the pope are bogus when you learn the facts!

Fr. J. Fessio, S.J. posted a very informative article explaining the situation.
Link

The following are the key points:

The local bishop has the authority to remove a priest’s faculties, essentially removing him from active ministry or “defrocking” him as the secular media likes to describe it.

Action by the Vatican was not required to remove a priest’s faculties!

In the 1980s if a priest wanted to leave and get married he had to get permission, laicization, from Rome.

In the early 80’s I was in the seminary and recall well that the new Pope John Paul II wanted to greatly reduce the number of priests who were being given permission to leave the priesthood to get married.

The communication between Oakland and Cardinal Ratzinger would have been about the laicization request.

One very good source of accurate information on the scandal is the Catholic League. Of course Bill Donahue is not afraid to tell it like it is. He provides the statistics on the huge percentage of cases that are homosexual and the actual numbers of new cases today. For example, the number of minors in the US who made new allegations in 2009 was six.

This is not just about protecting young people, this is part of the culture war! We need to become informed so we can respond when the social liberals in the media misinform the public in order to advance their agenda.
 
Joegrane said:
The AP recently reported what seemed to be neglect on the part of then Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) in the case of an Oakland priest and abuser in the early 1980s.The accusations against the pope are bogus when you learn the facts!

Fr. J. Fessio, S.J. posted a very informative article explaining the situation.
Link

The following are the key points:

The local bishop has the authority to remove a priest’s faculties, essentially removing him from active ministry or “defrocking” him as the secular media likes to describe it.

Action by the Vatican was not required to remove a priest’s faculties!

In the 1980s if a priest wanted to leave and get married he had to get permission, laicization, from Rome.

In the early 80’s I was in the seminary and recall well that the new Pope John Paul II wanted to greatly reduce the number of priests who were being given permission to leave the priesthood to get married.

The communication between Oakland and Cardinal Ratzinger would have been about the laicization request.

One very good source of accurate information on the scandal is the Catholic League. Of course Bill Donahue is not afraid to tell it like it is. He provides the statistics on the huge percentage of cases that are homosexual and the actual numbers of new cases today. For example, the number of minors in the US who made new allegations in 2009 was six.

This is not just about protecting young people, this is part of the culture war! We need to become informed so we can respond when the social liberals in the media misinform the public in order to advance their agenda.
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The huge percentage of cases that are homosexual? That’s like saying the vast majority of football injuries are seen in young males! Must mean that young girls are better able to avoid football injuries, hmm…?
 
I agree with the admonition to “become informed.” I have got to the point that I want to see the original documents (true copies of course) rather than hear advocates of one side or another make various arguments. It is like listening to lawyers make a final argument in jury trial without the jury having heard any evidence. Recently the issue of Fr. Jeyapaul reared its head. I did a little research and read what purport to be true copies of the criminal complaint filed against him in Minnesota, and correspondence obtained. apparently in a deposition taken in Crookston, MN, from Bishop Bialke. The correspondence inc;udes matter from the diocese and Fr. Jeyapaul, Fr. Jeyapaul and the girl he is supposed to have sexually abused and other items. I also viewed the video interview done by a reporter who was in India with Fr. Jeyapaul who says the allegations against him are a lie. In correspondence he says the “mum” of the girl and the bishop are the cause of his problem. It is refreshing to see some real evidence rather than advocacy. It is very helpful to put media reports in some reasonable context. It is more work to do it this way, but much more satisfying.
 
Interesting article but technically wrong on a few points.
For starters, celibacy cannot be directly compared to marriage. Marriage is a sacrament that cannot be dissolved outside of death. Celibacy is a man-made rule that can be changed, relaxed, or dispensed from at the discretion of the competent authority. While priestly ordination is “indissoluble”, the promise of celibacy is not. We have plenty of married priests in the Eastern Catholic Churches and in the Latin Church we have married converts who are ordained priests.
Secondly, as I understand it, at that time if a priest appealed the suspension of his faculties he had to be allowed back into active ministry until the case was resolved.
Third, if someone is indicted it is not necessarily true that they are a “free man” until conviction. For starters, most jobs will suspend someone from work if their crime is work related. Courts can also hold defendants in jail for the duration of their trial.
 
The Vatican recently posted their current guidelines related to sex abuse cases. I am confident the rules were different in the early 1980’s during the case of the Oakland priest.

Reuters reports “Vatican Puts Abuse Rules Online to Quell Critics.”

No, it is more likely the Vatican realized it has to spoon feed the inept or maybe malicious reporters at the New York Times, AP, etc who seem to be making a habit of reporting inaccurate allegations against the Holy Father.

CNN lived up to their standards of ineptitude by reporting, “Vatican overhauls sex abuse case procedures.”

In reality there were NO CHANGES to the procedures!

I give the social liberals in the media credit for something–consistency!

More information on this is available at CatholicCulture.org
 
Bill Donohue, if it’s the same Bill Donohue that attacked and belittled the victims of the Irish sex scandal, is hardly an objective source, and based on his vicious YouTube videos, not to be trusted.

The bishop of Oakland was trying to get Kiesle laicized so that he would be out of the acting, active priesthood. * Of course*, this wouldn’t stop Kiesle from abusing others, but it would prevent him from abusing them* as a Roman Catholic priest. * Kiesle had already been removed from parish duties, although he may have still been on the payroll. No one has mentioned money yet. I doubt if the diocese could stop paying him, or giving him benefits, if he was still a priest in that diocese, even if he isn’t active.

In any company in the western hemisphere, a high-ranking employee caught in illicit, illegal sexual activities would be immediately fired. Failure to do so would cause a huge scandal.

The fact that Kiesle didn’t get caught abusing someone else until years later is completely irrelevant.

I am amazed at the casuistry evident on the various threads of this forum by posters trying to explain away the extraordinary foot-dragging by the CDF in these cases. If the CDF or other relevant congregations are no longer foot-dragging, so much the better, but their reform in recent years does not excuse their inactions in the past.
 
Since we’re creating an information topic, EWTN has posted an episode of the The World Over which puts the issue into perspective.

**The World Over April 9, 2010: George Weigel & Frank Cottrell Boyce **:

youtube.com/watch?v=1NUgaRrHj8k
 
I am amazed at the casuistry evident on the various threads of this forum by posters trying to explain away the extraordinary foot-dragging by the CDF in these cases.
Click to expand...
Please consider the source of the information that has led you to develop that opinion. As you’ve seen in the links posted above, the secular media has very often been grossly incorrect in their reporting, maybe maliciously.

In the 1980s actions by the CDF were not required in order to protect youth from abusive priests who used their position. The local bishop had the authority to remove the priest’s faculties.

What did the permission from Rome to marry have to do with protecting youth? As we see from the case of the priest from Oakland, he abused another child after he got married!
 
seekerz said:
The huge percentage of cases that are homosexual? That’s like saying the vast majority of football injuries are seen in young males! Must mean that young girls are better able to avoid football injuries, hmm…?
Click to expand...
No,what it means is that there is a HUGE ephebophiliac problem in the Church caused by priestly homosexual “chickenhawks”(google it)who are hiding out in the Church.This has NOTHING to do with pedophilia which is a heterosexual affliction but hebephilia which is the attraction to young men and pubescent boys by predatory homosexuals that responsible homosexuals abhor and revile.I feel sorry for those priests who struggle with same-sex attraction yet maintain their chastity let alone do not abuse pubescent boys or young men.Get it now?
 
anode said:
I am amazed at the casuistry evident on the various threads of this forum by posters trying to explain away the extraordinary foot-dragging by the CDF in these cases. If the CDF or other relevant congregations are no longer foot-dragging, so much the better, but their reform in recent years does not excuse their inactions in the past.
Click to expand...
There’s a few issues been mixed togather here. The CDF, until recently, was not the place where sex abuse cases went unless it involved the violation of the confessional. The CDF dealt with the laicization process. By that point the priest has already had faculties removed and while they may or may not be receiving any salary or benefits they cannot publicly act in any way shape or form as a priest.

Now, lets also go back to the 1980’s. The Vatican is essentially an Italian institution. That means that a lunch break lasts up to 3 hours and in August the offices are essentially shut down. These offices are also vastly overworked based on the number of staff that work in them.
So the fact that once a priest had his faculties removed it took 2 years to laicize him is not exaclty “foot dragging.”

Now does that excuse what happened? Absolutely not. These kinds of cases should have been handled much more expeditiously and a streamlined process should have existed. But Cardinal Ratzinger would not have been able to do that of his own authority. Only the Pope could have ordered that.
 
Joegrane said:
Please consider the source of the information that has led you to develop that opinion. As you’ve seen in the links posted above, the secular media has very often been grossly incorrect in their reporting, maybe maliciously.

In the 1980s actions by the CDF were not required in order to protect youth from abusive priests who used their position. The local bishop had the authority to remove the priest’s faculties.

What did the permission from Rome to marry have to do with protecting youth? As we see from the case of the priest from Oakland, he abused another child after he got married!
Click to expand...
Sorry, I haven’t seen any gross incorrectness. The New York Times reporting of the Milwaukee scandal was based not only on interviews with many of the victims, but on documents gathered by lawyers representing the victims. The NYT published those documents, which include photocopies of Fr. Ted Brundage’s *hand written notes * from a long meeting in which the delay of the CDF’s response was discussed; possible approaches to the papal nuncio to get around this; the statute of limitations, among other things. Absp Weakland knew about the requirement for the Sacrament of Penance to be broken for the case to go to the CDF–he also cites the fact that Fr. Murphy violated the terms of his ‘retirement’ as another indication for intervention by the CDF. The NYT documents includes copies of both of Weakland’s personal letters to Ratzinger begging his intervention, also a copy of Bishop Sklba’s (diocese of Superior where Murphy then lived) dismay –written in English–that the CDF’s response was leniency, saying that the deaf community would be very upset.

All of this has been referred to and discussed *with the links again and again *in these threads.

People who allege that the press ‘got it wrong’ --and worse–aren’t bothering to acquaint themselves with the facts.

By the way, today the New York Times received** three **Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting in 2009.
 
New York Times received three Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting in 2009
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I’m not saying they don’t have talented writers–of fiction! They are a tabloid when it comes to socio-political stories. They throw in just enough fact to make the story juicy and so delay their bankruptcy.
The New York Times reporting of the Milwaukee scandal…
People who allege that the press ‘got it wrong’ --and worse–aren’t bothering to acquaint themselves with the facts.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that back in the 80’s the local bishop had the authority to remove the abusive priest’s faculties. He did not even have to report it to Rome! Therefore accusations that Cardinal Ratzinger did not ‘defrock’ the priest won’t stick. It was the local bishop’s responsibility.

During those crazy years in the late 60’s through early 80’s there were few places that were crazier than Milwaukee. It would not be safe to assume Ab. Weakland was a model bishop.

Bill Donahue posted a number of articles on the Milwaukee case, including the following.
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1818
Today’s edition of the Times has a news story which says that Ratzinger “did not defrock a priest who molested scores of deaf boys in the United States, despite warnings by American bishops about the danger of failure to act, according to church files.” Wrong. Besides the fact that there is no evidence he even knew of the case, his office actually lifted the statute of limitations—the abuse took place in the 50s and 60s—and began an investigation. Murphy died while the inquiry was proceeding.
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Cardinal Levada directly takes on the New York Times for its coverage of the Fr. Murphy abuse case in Wisconsin. Commenting on the news story by Laurie Goodstein, Levada writes, “The point of Goodstein’s article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal [of Fr. Murphy] to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time.”
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Cardinal Levada has it just right. The wrongdoing in this case rests in Wisconsin. Why did the victims’ families wait as long as 15 years to report the abuse? Why were the civil authorities unconvinced by what they uncovered? Why did Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland wait almost two decades before he contacted the Vatican?
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…It’s a sure bet that if Weakland were a theological conservative–and not a champion of liberal causes–the media …would be all over him.
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NEW YORK TIMES GUNNING FOR THE POPE?
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1794
POPE’S CRITICS LACK EVIDENCE
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1817
MEDIA COVER-UP OF SEX ABUSE WIDENS
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1827
 
Soutane said:
No,what it means is that there is a HUGE ephebophiliac problem in the Church caused by priestly homosexual “chickenhawks”(google it)who are hiding out in the Church.This has NOTHING to do with pedophilia which is a heterosexual affliction but hebephilia which is the attraction to young men and pubescent boys by predatory homosexuals that responsible homosexuals abhor and revile.I feel sorry for those priests who struggle with same-sex attraction yet maintain their chastity let alone do not abuse pubescent boys or young men.Get it now?
Click to expand...
I get it and I still think that without a comprehensive analysis of the data, including

-definitions (by age) of the various -philias being thrown around,
-settings in which the abuse took place and
-breakdown by sex of the age at which the incidents of repeated abuse started (I’m assuming not all were single instances),
these theories will remain simply that: theories (poorly substantiated in my mind and possibly to anyone with a basic knowledge of statistical analysis).
 
seekerz said:
I get it and I still think that without a comprehensive analysis of the data, including

-definitions (by age) of the various -philias being thrown around,
-settings in which the abuse took place and
-breakdown by sex of the age at which the incidents of repeated abuse started (I’m assuming not all were single instances),
these theories will remain simply that: theories (poorly substantiated in my mind and possibly to anyone with a basic knowledge of statistical analysis).
Click to expand...
I happened to have studied statistical analysis in the disciplines that I have studied at Universities and I can assure you that these are not theory but substantiated fact.

GAY COVER-UP MUST END

April 5, 2010

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on two news stories released today by the Associated Press:

One of the AP stories on priestly sexual abuse admits that “The overwhelming majority of the victims were adolescents. That means very few guilty priests were pedophiles, a term mental health professionals reserve for those who target pre-pubescent children.” Fine. But then it says something which is positively remarkable: “Even though about 80 percent of victims were boys, the John Jay researchers and other experts on sex offenders say it does not mean the perpetrators were gay.” So what would they be? Heterosexual?

The AP article relied on the extraordinary remark by Margaret Smith, a professor who worked on the John Jay study. She said that while Donohue “quoted the study’s data correctly,” I nonetheless “drew an unwarranted conclusion.” What? That most of the molesters have been gay? Here is what she said: “The majority of the abusive acts were homosexual in nature. That participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man.” So if two men sodomize each other, no one really knows if this qualifies as gay sex. Now I must admit that when I was studying for my doctorate in sociology at NYU, they never taught me such logic.

Both AP stories say the reason why there were so many male victims is because the priests did not have access to girls as altar servers. Nonsense. There have been girl altar servers in some U.S. dioceses since 1983, and almost everywhere since 1994. The statistics actually show that the more priests have access to girls, the less likely it is for girls to be abused.

Here’s the tally. As reported in 2004, between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male; in 2005, it stayed the same; in 2006, it dropped to 80 percent; in 2007, it climbed to 82 percent; in 2008, it jumped to 84 percent; and in 2009, it stayed at 84 percent.

In other words, even though priests have less access to males, homosexual priests are molesting them at a higher rate. It’s time to end the gay cover-up once and for all.

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Soutane said:
I happened to have studied statistical analysis in the disciplines that I have studied at Universities and I can assure you that these are not theory but substantiated fact.

GAY COVER-UP MUST END

April 5, 2010

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on two news stories released today by the Associated Press:

One of the AP stories on priestly sexual abuse admits that “The overwhelming majority of the victims were adolescents. That means very few guilty priests were pedophiles, a term mental health professionals reserve for those who target pre-pubescent children.” Fine. But then it says something which is positively remarkable: “Even though about 80 percent of victims were boys, the John Jay researchers and other experts on sex offenders say it does not mean the perpetrators were gay.” So what would they be? Heterosexual?

The AP article relied on the extraordinary remark by Margaret Smith, a professor who worked on the John Jay study. She said that while Donohue “quoted the study’s data correctly,” I nonetheless “drew an unwarranted conclusion.” What? That most of the molesters have been gay? Here is what she said: “The majority of the abusive acts were homosexual in nature. That participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man.” So if two men sodomize each other, no one really knows if this qualifies as gay sex. Now I must admit that when I was studying for my doctorate in sociology at NYU, they never taught me such logic.

Both AP stories say the reason why there were so many male victims is because the priests did not have access to girls as altar servers. Nonsense. There have been girl altar servers in some U.S. dioceses since 1983, and almost everywhere since 1994. The statistics actually show that the more priests have access to girls, the less likely it is for girls to be abused.

Here’s the tally. As reported in 2004, between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent of the victims were male; in 2005, it stayed the same; in 2006, it dropped to 80 percent; in 2007, it climbed to 82 percent; in 2008, it jumped to 84 percent; and in 2009, it stayed at 84 percent.

In other words, even though priests have less access to males, homosexual priests are molesting them at a higher rate. It’s time to end the gay cover-up once and for all.

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I’m afraid most of what you have given me (other than the percentages I’ve already seen) is simply your opinion/interpretation of the data.

Let’s go with:
  1. What was the most common age at which abuse began? (It seems natural to me that if a victim remains silent and available an abuser is likely to stick with him rather than chance new prey - but that is simply my assumption)
  2. What was the most common setting for abuse?
  3. What age cut-offs are used in analyzing data for pedophilia versus homosexual acts? (This has been the most difficult thing to get proponents of this theory to divulge)
Give me something to sink my teeth into, pleaaase.
 
seekerz said:
The huge percentage of cases that are homosexual? That’s like saying the vast majority of football injuries are seen in young males! Must mean that young girls are better able to avoid football injuries, hmm…?
Click to expand...
Try as some will to deny the truth, facts are still facts.

More than 80% of the cases of abuse were between a grown male Priest, and a male aged 12-17. That means those abuse cases were illegal homosexual acts against minors. Straight men do get turned on by other males. Simple math really.

Of course, despite the clear homosexual nature of the majority of abuses, they were still horrific sins against young men.

Pedophilia happens when a person has sex with a prepubescent child. Most males 12-17 are not prebubescent.
 
Joegrane said:
I’m not saying they don’t have talented writers–of fiction! They are a tabloid when it comes to socio-political stories. They throw in just enough fact to make the story juicy and so delay their bankruptcy.

Keep in mind that back in the 80’s the local bishop had the authority to remove the abusive priest’s faculties. He did not even have to report it to Rome! Therefore accusations that Cardinal Ratzinger did not ‘defrock’ the priest won’t stick. It was the local bishop’s responsibility.

During those crazy years in the late 60’s through early 80’s there were few places that were crazier than Milwaukee. It would not be safe to assume Ab. Weakland was a model bishop.

Bill Donahue posted a number of articles on the Milwaukee case, including the following.
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1818

NEW YORK TIMES GUNNING FOR THE POPE?
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1794
POPE’S CRITICS LACK EVIDENCE
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1817
MEDIA COVER-UP OF SEX ABUSE WIDENS
catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1827
Click to expand...
Once again, I think that Bill Donohue is personally contemptible. As such, I am not likely to listen to his “reasoning”.
 
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