Priest tells of Foley relationship

[Tom317]

A Catholic priest told the Herald-Tribune on Wednesday about an intimate two-year relationship he had with former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley when the congressman was a teenage altar boy living in Lake Worth.

From his home on the island of Gozo, near Italy, Anthony Mercieca described a series of encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate.

Among them: massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being naked in the same room on overnight trips.

heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061019/NEWS/610190725

 

[DShreffler]

The pope needs to take a cue from Our Lord and start overturning some tables. This priest has seriously affected this man’s life. He diverted the natural desires of a adolescent boy into unnatural ones. Forever altering his view on sexuality and masculinity. I think the Pope should declare a State Of Emergency in the American Catholic Church and take extreme action.

 

[Saint_Michael]

"Mercieca said although Foley plans to “expose him to the world,” he still has “great memories of our trips,” the newspaper reported.

“I wish him well,” Mercieca said. “Let bygones be bygones.”

How good of father Mercieca for wishing Foley well after “exposing him to the world”. What a great guy…

cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/19/foley.priest.ap/index.html

 

[Adonis33]

Wow - looks like I was wrong.

 

[Lillith]

sigh…

will it ever ever end?

 

[Tom317]

I have believed for some time that we have entered the Tribulation period, along with the period of great apostacy…many people think I am nuts…and I probably am. Yet, the Church is being literally attacked from every possible direction and none of those attacks are more horrible then from within. Couple that with the state of the faith and the world…

 

[DWPC]

The pope needs to take a cue from Our Lord and start overturning some tables… I think the Pope should declare a State Of Emergency in the American Catholic Church and take extreme action.

A wonderful analogy, and I fully agree. But I believe papal authority for such matters was effectively destroyed by 30+ years of apathy toward papal responsibility for the Church as *a worldly institution *by his predecessor. The American bishops will simply thumb their noses at any attempts by Rome to dictate policy or discipline. They’ve had 40 years since VCII to cultivate 60’s Liberalism and Modernism in the American Church while JPII was preoccupied with Cold War politics. And its now deeply rooted. BXVI has few options available, and is he’s also peddling as fast as he can to keep the Euro Church from vanishing.

Almost all of these scandals have as a component a twisted view of Christian forgiveness that not only forgives the sin, but absolves the perverts and those in authority over them of all personal, social and civil responsibility. Most of these known (to their bishops) pervs, when located, are found enjoying very comfy retirements with pensions and express their profound sorrow for their sins while lining up a 3-Iron shot.

It seems that in “popular” Catholicism, true contrition and restitution have been forgotten (or rejected outright) as necessary elements of forgiveness. This is so prevalent, I can only surmise that its being promoted in American seminaries, and I think that’s where Rome *can * order changes. Perhaps the Holy Father can make some headway against the modernists in the US on theological grounds, where his authority will, hopefully, not be challenged. The downside is that the American Church may not survive long enough for such corrections to matter.

 

[ltravis]

If this is implying Vatican II is at fault, I have to draw the line there. I can’t connect the decisions of Vatican II with a loss of priestly penitential accountabilty (assuming such exists), and then extend that to the rise in sex scandal. I will hold priests and local bishops accountable where appropriate but I will NOT blame an ecumenical council or a pope. I will die before I do that.

LT

 

[Tom317]

If this is implying Vatican II is at fault, I have do draw the line there. I can’t connect the decisions of Vatican II with a loss of priestly penitential accountabilty (assuming such exists), and then extend that to the rise in sex scandal. I will hold priests and local bishops accountable where appropriate but I will NOT blame an ecumenical council or a pope. I will die before I do that.

LT

It is not the fault of the council, yet it is the fault of the entire Catholic Church that we allowed that council to be perverted and used as nearly a satanic tool to rip down the faith.

 

[corvidae]

You say the council is being used as a tool to tear down the Church. However, I would say it is being misused. If you read the documents, there are many things that are in common usage that are completely misused.

A lone Raven

 

[Tom317]

You say the council is being used as a tool to tear down the Church. However, I would say it is being misused. If you read the documents, there are many things that are in common usage that are completely misused.

A lone Raven

Exactly, the council was pastoral in nature and did not change any formal teachings. It was used to create all sorts of new inventions that helped to make the Church appear more Protestant in nature. Moving tabernacles, removing altar rails, etc…all of those things are NOT mandated in the documents of the council, yet two generations of Catholics now think the council changed those things.

 

[ltravis]

It is not the fault of the council, yet it is the fault of the entire Catholic Church that we allowed that council to be perverted and used as nearly a satanic tool to rip down the faith.

I certainly can’t prove your assertion false, but I would rather believe the primary cause lay not in church disciplines or exercise thereof. Rather, it lay in a liberalism that was so prevalent in society that a terribly confused generation of young men entered the seminary and both they and their seminaries were ill prepared for something they had never seen or dealt with before. That said, I don’t excuse the Church of all blame in handling the scandals afterword, but I don’t think the crisis saw its genesis in the church. VII or no VII, cultural liberalism was bound to cause every bit of the crisis we deal with now.

LT

 

[ltravis]

Exactly, the council was pastoral in nature and did not change any formal teachings. It was used to create all sorts of new inventions that helped to make the Church appear more Protestant in nature. Moving tabernacles, removing altar rails, etc…all of those things are NOT mandated in the documents of the council, yet two generations of Catholics now think the council changed those things.

Forgive me, but this is where the line that connects this issue to sex scandal becomes a problem for me. I will leave the discussion of the prudence or licitness of such changes as above to another thread. There are plenty of them.

LT

 

[Tom317]

I certainly can’t prove your assertion false, but I would rather believe the primary cause lay not in church disciplines or exercise thereof. Rather, it lay in a liberalism that was so prevalent in society that a terribly confused generation of young men entered the seminary and both they and their seminaries were ill prepared for something they had never seen or dealt with before. That said, I don’t excuse the Church of all blame in handling the scandals afterword, but I don’t think the crisis saw its genesis in the church. VII or no VII, cultural liberalism was bound to cause every bit of the crisis we deal with now.

LT

Yes, except for the fact that the Church should have been strongly fighting the direction the culture was taking, instead it gave into the culture, which is not new, but the size and scope of the apostasy from the one true faith is new–it covers hundreds of millions of Catholics. The United States, Canada and nearly of Europe has become almost unrecognizable in terms of the faith over the last 30-40 years. Other parts of the world are still strong, but even some of those areas have sprouted some lousy practices. This all happened over the last 30-40 years.

 

[Tom317]

Forgive me, but this is where the line that connects this issue to sex scandal becomes a problem for me. I will leave the discussion of the prudence or licitness of such changes as above to another thread. There are plenty of them.

LT

When the Church allows itself to become a slave to cultural winds, then it is not a surprise to see the Church be hit very deeply by that attitude. Seminaries becmae social experiments and parishes became Protestant-like enclaves where true vocations were not even encouraged. We have reaped what we sowed over 30 years.

 

[TotalTop]

Wow, it sounds like these men had a LOVING RELATIONSHIP as GOD intended. It’s SOCIETY and THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY that interfered with their NATURAL LOVE for one another. It excites me just to think of those loving massages and physical embraces. The priest was LOVING to expose young Foley to the beauty of the Homosexual Embrace

 

[Saint_Michael]

We need to get the homosexuals out of the priesthood.

Sorry to say it so bluntly, but that’s the problem. You had one middle aged repressed homosexual, and one homosexual just going through puberty and confused.

Take the middle aged homo out of the equation and there’s no problem there.

This ISN’T pedophilia, it’s Ephebophilia (sex with post-pubescent adolescents), and YES homsexual men are a much higher risk (percentage wise) to be Ephebophiles.

Get homosexuals out of the priesthood and the problems drop significantly. Almost all the cases are Ephebophilia cases, and men on boys, that’s a homosexual problem.

 

[ltravis]

When the Church allows itself to become a slave to cultural winds, then it is not a surprise to see the Church be hit very deeply by that attitude. Seminaries becmae social experiments and parishes became Protestant-like enclaves where true vocations were not even encouraged. We have reaped what we sowed over 30 years.

I guess qualitatively we have a base agreement. Cultural liberalism got the ball rolling, and the Church did itself some harm to some extent by how it responded. I think we strongly disagree on just how much of its response was wrong and how much effect it had, but I am happy to let it rest there. Thanks for engaging me on it. It is promising to have folks so concerned for the Church’s welfare.

LT

 

[a_cermak]

I don’t know that I would blame VII for this.

How about the Viet Nam war? Being a seminarian was a pretty good way to avoid the draft. Were some young men choosing the priesthood for reasons other than a vocation?

How about the lack of vocations in the late 60’s and early 70’s as the myriad of cultural changes hit? Is it possible that seminaries were panicking about not having enough priests and so relaxed their rules a bit for new candidates?

 

[DWPC]

If this is implying Vatican II is at fault, I have do draw the line there. I can’t connect the decisions of Vatican II with a loss of priestly penitential accountabilty (assuming such exists), and then extend that to the rise in sex scandal. I will hold priests and local bishops accountable where appropriate but I will NOT blame an ecumenical council or a pope. I will die before I do that.

LT

I don’t believe VCII is to blame, but its *one unintended cause *of the problems because it was a conduit for introducing radical change too quickly and heavily to be responsibly controlled. I firmly believe that many of today’s crises in the Church are because VCII’s overly ambitious flood of change allowed “rushing the gate” by Modernists with unintended and undesired changes that overwhelming Church’s normal processes of review and discussion. By the time the effects these were apparent, they were too deeply rooted to rescind or change without serious upheaval.

Had VCII occurred in the mid-50s, I believe its changes could have been assimilated by the Church in much more stable cultural and social environments, and many of the internal tensions of today would not exist. Its the *coincidence *of VCII and the explosion of 60s Liberalism that provided an atmosphere in which modernists could assert their ideas under the camoflage of a torrent of VCII changes. VCII was like lighting a torch to provide more light into the Church…but I don’t think either Pope John or Pope Paul had any idea that this torch was surrounded by an explosive atmosphere, or what the result would be a generation later.

As for “blaming” a pope, its only to the extent that papal inaction may have permitted the problem to grow. Accountability has been largely limited writing checks from funds largely provided by guess who. The appalling extent of priestly perversion in the American Church is grave matter for the Church in general, yet the papal silence has been deafening. If popes are not responsible for the administration of the Church and the discipline of her organs, then that idea should be formalized by a papal decree that once and for all removes the Pope from authority over any issues but those of faith and scriptural interpretation, and leaves running of the institutions to some body of bishops. Until that happens, each pope *is *inevitably responsible for governance of the Church, and has invisible sign on his desk repeating Harry Truman’s edict. Comes with the job and each pope knows it.