Benedict XVI sued for Catholic sexual abuse

A Law Unto Itself: The Vatican Rules

by Charles Carreon

Hey, What Wise Guy Sued The Pope?It had to happen, sooner or later, that someone would try to sue the Pope, to try to ensnare the man at the top of the world’s wealthiest religious organization in the rogue-priest pedophilia scandal. The Church has harbored abusers of the flock since its earliest days. It is however a recent development to discuss priestly sex abuse, and proportionately few victims have actually filed suits for compensation. This is the first Pope who has ever had to think about how to dodge as much financial liability as possible from this long-delayed inferno of payback. For this is a passionate issue, one that has caused state after state to extend its statute of limitations to allow claims of clergy abuse to go forward despite the lapse of decades. Legislatures have been made to understand that priestly abuse does not surface quickly, and the special position a priest holds among parishioners makes an assault upon his dignity unthinkable.

There Were No Good Old Days

One might wonder, if one were skeptically inclined, what need anyone has for membership in a monstrously wealthy institution ruled by Italians, based in Rome, that claims, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, that its “Pope” is the current representative on planet earth of a very unworldly man. In the middle ages, the Church served as an alternate occupation for the wealthy who didn’t relish life as a soldier. There was good food, wine and reading material in the Church. Nunneries served as whorehouses, clerics did the accounting for the feudal system, platoons of hymn-chanting acolytes kept the sacred batteries charged with virtue, while peasants starved or fed, as was God’s will. When the Popes were based in southern France, they charged large sums to license drinking establishments, prostitution, and all manner of moral fault that could be profitably practiced by the merchant class. Today, the Church is a humorless corporate institution that protects its assets with legal stratagems, such as the one that the Pope used when he finally did get served with a summons and complaint alleging priestly abuse by one of his robed band of spiritual warriors.

A New Kind of Nation

The Pope got dismissed out of the lawsuit tout suite, because he is the Head of A Sovereign Nation – The Vatican. Okay, now I bet you thought it was cute the way the Romans let the Pope pretend to have his own government right in the middle of Rome. I always thought it was, even when I was a kid. It was like Disneyland, I thought, because a real country had like, an economy, and citizens, and principal exports, traditional cuisine, childrearing traditions, romantic cinema, and other things that the Vatican, a unisex institution, just will never have. As far as I could tell, the only thing the Church exports is incense smoke and papal encyclicals that tell woman not to impede their reproductive cycle, and that no, they still can’t perform the exalted ritual known as “the Mass.”

The Vatican is indeed a very different type of nation. It doesn’t have, or need, preschools, grade schools, or high schools, but it’s very big on college degrees. It doesn’t have, or need, democracy, voting by its citizens, or a research and development budget to make sure the next generation will be economically competitive with the rest of the world’s population. Apparently, however, in the eyes of the American courts, when an American sues the Vatican, all that matters is the paper certificate. The Vatican has what it needs — stocks, bonds, real estate, enormous buildings full of hard assets, and millions of believers all across the United States. Four of those believers sit on the United States Supreme Court, and when Judge Alito is elevated, there will be five.

The Jesuits are great lawyers, having had to survive and drive the Inquisition by their wits alone. Any good Jesuit would agree that where there are valid distinctions between groups, there must be differences in the rules that apply to them. A “nation” that doesn’t contribute to production by keeping the world in goods, or contributing to the job of keeping the species alive, doesn’t qualify as a nation. And if no one considers a place to be their “homeland,” as in “I was born there,” then wherefore is it anyone’s nation? The last Pope’s homeland was Poland, and the current Pope’s homeland is Germany. Neither of them spoke Italian as their native language, and the current Pope no doubt prefers bratwurst and beer to pasta and wine. The Church teaches that reproduction of the species is God’s will, but the Vatican produces no children, so as a nation, is it not violating God’s will? Others might say that when a nation's leaders help citizens to injure people of other nations under the guise of preaching religion, that is a fraudulent and degenerate nation. That would seem to be the case with the Catholic Church.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Findings

As we have learned through the sex abuse scandal, Church leaders across our nation aided and abetted serial sex criminals by maintaining their community status as venerated individuals and moving them to new parishes where their past conduct was unknown, where they could silently destroy the lives of another community of parishioners, then often enough, escape again with some money and a new place to go, when things once again got too hot. The Church was not just careless of letting abuse happen – it cloaked pedophile priests in secrecy, silenced accusations with a wall of denial, and fought legal claims tooth and nail. On September 15, 2005, a Philadelphia Grand Jury empaneled by District Attorney Lynne Abraham issued its report after three years spent studying a pattern of criminal conduct within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The report concluded that at least 63 priests – and likely a large number more — sexually abused hundreds of minors over decades, aided by a coverup kept in place by the last two archbishops, Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua. Not mincing words, the report makes clear, “When we say abuse, we don’t just mean ‘inappropriate touching,’ we mean rape. Boys who were raped orally, boys who were raped anally, girls who were raped vaginally.” The report notes bitterly in its first pages that none of the abusers it had identified could be prosecuted, because “by choosing children as targets … abuser priests … were able to prevent or delay reports [and] statutes of limitations expired … As a result, these priests and officials will necessarily escape criminal prosecution.” Not only did the delay and secrecy erect successful legal defenses to criminal prosecution, it increased the number of victims and the severity of the abuse they suffered. The report stated, “Prompt action and a climate of compassion for the child victims could have significantly limited the damage done. But the Archdiocese chose a different path. Those choices went all the way to the top – to Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol personally.” “Even those victims whose physical abuse did not include actual rape – those who were subjected to foncling, to masturbation, to pornography – suffered psychological abuse that scarred their lives and sapped the faith in which they had been raised.” The Grand Jury concluded that although “the behavior of Archdiocese officials was perhaps not so lurid as that of the individual priest sex abusers … in its callous, calculating manner, the Archdiocese's 'handling' of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself.”

Organized Crime or Random Perverts?

One thing is clear from observing the movements of the Catholic Bishops – they listen to Rome. There are occasionally some disagreements, but Catholics are expected to march in line or get out of the Church. So since it is in fact the case that the truth was hidden in Philadelphia, and in Boston, and in Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Phoenix, and every other big city with a Catholic pedophile lawsuit in progress, perhaps those orders came from the top. Perhaps Cardinals Krol and Bevilacqua in Philadelphia “were just following orders.” Perhaps Cardinal Law, who was virtually run out of Boston by a lynch mob outraged that he had hidden pedophiles in the archdiocese for decades, was also just following orders. Right after he lit out of Boston, he landed in Rome, where the previous Pope gave him a cushy position as a Church diplomat.So did the prior Pope tell his Archbishops to stall this thing? Our current Pope could answer this question. Formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope knows at least as much as he could learn from reading every report of priestly sexual impropriety for the last several years. That was his job under the former Pope, and the word is, he didn’t advise anyone to start writing settlement checks. At this time, not many Catholic lawyers are proposing settlement. The Vatican has been around two-thousand years, and it’s not about to lay down its arms over a little hanky-panky in the sacristy. Consider how the faithful, with sheeplike docility, are still dropping money in the pot, wondering if it will be used to pay lawyers to silence the claims of people who got a nasty dose of bad religion, and deserve compensation. More than anything, the scandal needs a thorough airing, and the chips need to start falling.

Grooming Victims In Sunday School

The usual belief is that, since religions do more good on balance than harm, we can tolerate a little pedophilia in the ranks of the virtuous. That seems to be the rule that explains why we tolerate hypocritical exploiters who wear robes. They talk about the meek inheriting the earth, as if that seems likely to happen; they promise peace in the afterlife, which is like selling insurance no one can ever collect; they preach patience during life, and acquiescence to authority. But all of these nice characteristics won’t keep your average pedophile out of jail. Experience shows that pedophiles do develop a pleasant exterior that is attractive to children. They listen to children, and respond to what they say. They groom their victims for victimhood by building a relationship of trust. Priests have much of this work done for them by parents and Sunday school.

From Hitler Youth To St. Peter’s – The Journey of A Lifetime

Ordinary perverts don’t enjoy priestly immunity for a simple reason – they haven’t earned it. To get people to overlook your faults, you must give them something in return. It’s not easy to go to seminary, study all that theology, and pay all that tuition. The current Pope, for example, actually had to pretend to be a member of the Hitler Youth to keep his scholarship for theological seminary. He explained that last year when he was being made into the first German Pope in centuries, and some people worried about the Germans getting too excited about it. Because Cardinal Ratzinger had been in Hitler Youth, he wanted people to understand that he got out of the organization officially as soon as he could, and thereafter just pretended to be a Nazi. This evoked some dubious looks among people who remember how upset the Nazis would get when they found out that one of their number wasn’t really a good German at heart. Pretending to be a Nazi could be very dangerous. So perhaps the new Pope was a specially brave man, pretending to be a Nazi so he could become a priest and someday, Pope.

That Crazy Thing Called Faith

Socially, the Church is in a very strong position because it controls minds through tradition and something its adherents call faith. It is strange that they call it faith, because that is what Islamics say informs their belief in a different Deity, and the same is true for the Jews, and the Hindus, etcetera. They all cite faith as the ground of their belief, but it results in belief in different things. But when people work jointly to generate a concrete result, they do not speak of faith. Prayers for rain are abandoned in favor of drilling a well or digging a ditch. Hoping for manna to fall is replaced by hunting for squirrels and pulling up roots. But if a concrete result does not have to be produced, people are comfortable relying on faith to produce it. So most expectations based on faith are scheduled for fulfillment in the afterlife. Donations to the Church, however, have to be made now. It was ever thus.

Serving God by Serving Mammon

Financially, the Church is in good shape. Too good a shape up in Portland, it turns out, to stay in bankruptcy. When the Archdiocese of Portland sprung a stinky leak in its scandal-soaked legal Attends, its lawyers dragged it into bankruptcy court, claiming it needed protection from its creditors. Nobody had ever noticed priests bouncing checks at the liquor store, or short a dollar in a local strip bar, so it took many people by surprise. Well, it turns out they’re still flush, and all the dancing around like one of Disney’s hippos in Fantasia, trying to hide its full-hipped bottom line, was just a ruse.

The Archdiocese is stuffed with real estate and other eminently saleable assets, but Archbishop John Vlazny will be damned before he lets a penny of it go to sex abuse plaintiffs until he has exhausted every possible legal maneuver and paid his Catholic lawyer friends every dollar in fees he can squeeze out of the collection basket. So in an effort to wedge its ungracious bulk into the the framework of “insolvency,” the Archdiocese left all of its juicy real estate off the schedule of assets in bankruptcy. How did the Church lawyers explain this brazen stratagem? Because “under Church law,” that property was owned by various official and unofficial Church sub-entities, and couldn’t be touched to satisfy the debts of the Archdiocese. Fortunately, the bankruptcy judge checked to see that there was an American eagle on the wall and not a man bleeding on a cross, and instead of genuflecting, told the Church lawyers to file a schedule with all the property on it.

Time To Reconsider Whether The Vatican Is Really Our Friend

As always, the Church lawyers will quickly deploy another roadbloack to slow the advance of claims. Like the Philadelphia Grand Jury said, describing the delaying tactics of the archdiocese – “the biggest crime of all is this: it worked.” Yes, it works. Justice delayed is justice denied, and no one yet has exceeded the Vatican’s skill in outlasting its foes. But these days, the smell of false piety is insufficient to mask the stench of corruption, and the reek should motivate us to get to the bottom of the rot. We should begin by dismantling the mistaken description of the Vatican as a sovereign nation and the Pope as a Head of State. The Pope should no more be considered a head of state than Sun Myung Moon, who crowned himself in the Sam Rayburn building, or Bubba Free John, who owns an island in Fiji. (Bold emphases added)

The Church’s reputation for sanctity is remade in every generation out of the pure new cloth spun from the hearts of fresh believers. The Church will never cease cultivating this illusion in the minds of those predisposed by birth or sentiment to believe that Jesus founded One True Church. But for those of us who live in secular, political reality, and have been reading history, not catechism, a new viewpoint is overdue. The Church is not a country, and if a clutch of Archbishops hide criminal acts committed by priests in our country, because the Pope directed them to do so, then the Pope can and should be sued. The current Pope may have had actual knowledge of the scope and severity of the clergy abuse scandal in this country, and ordered the continued strategy of concealment. The bankruptcy judge in Portland had the right idea – the law of our nation, not “Church law” should apply in our courts. The Texas judge who dismissed the lawsuit against the Pope erred by subordinating our laws to the pretensions of a religious sect that claims national autonomy despite its lack of a truly national character. With literally billions of dollars in claims from abused victims gathering on the horizon, and the assets of the Vatican itself at stake, the issue of Papal immunity from civil liability will eventually come before a Supreme Court with five Catholic justices. When that case comes before the Court, a lot will depend on Alito.

Content copyright © 2006. All rights reserved.

Pope Benedict XVI excommunication style rubs off

EXCOMMUNICATION THREAT

WITNESS GAG ORDER IN CHURCH SEX TRIAL

By JEANE MacINTOSH in Erie, Pa., and DAN MANGAN in N.Y.



FOR SHAME: Barbara Blaine ripped a church threat to excommunicate witnesses if they talk about the trial of Monsignor Charles Kavanagh, who was relieved by Edward Cardinal Egan


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November 17, 2006 -- Catholic officials are threatening to excommunicate witnesses at a top New York priests sexual misconduct trial if they dare discuss their testimony outside the church court, The Post has learned.

That extremely unusual threat is being wielded even as the priest's accuser, former Catholic high school student Daniel Donohue, and victim advocates have requested Msgr. Charles Kavanagh’s church trial in Erie, Pa., be made open to the public.

As the Catholic Church's stiffest sanction, excommunication normally is reserved for the most serious offenses such as heresy and getting an abortion and bars its targets from receiving Communion and other sacraments.

"Obviously, it shows that the value of these church leaders is secrecy, its not protecting children," said Barbara Blaine, president of The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "What an irony, isn’t it, if the punishment is more severe for telling about being abused than for actually committing the actual abuse?"

The excommunication threat is laid out in a confidentiality agreement that witnesses at Kavanagh’s trial have been asked to sign before they testify to the three priests who are acting as judges.

The Post has reviewed a copy of the document. But an official with the Diocese of Erie, Pa., where the trial is being held to minimize publicity, denied there is any excommunication threat.

"I am quite sure that no one was threatened with any penalty during the process here," said Msgr. Tom McSweeney, a spokesman for the diocese. "At most, they would have been advised of the seriousness of maintaining confidentiality. But in no way was anyone threatened, and certainly not with excommunication."

McSweeney labeled absolutely false any claims the excommunication threat is spelled out in any document.

"An excommunication threat in such a case would be highly unusual," said the Rev. Thomas Green, a Catholic University professor and expert in canon law, which is the basis for the ongoing trial.

"That’s pretty heavy duty, and significant and serious," said Green adding that he has never heard of an excommunication threat being made against a lay witness at a church trial.

Kavanagh, 69, is accused of having an inappropriate, sexually tinged relationship with Donohue 30 years ago, when the Peekskill teen studied at a Manhattan school the priest ran.

In one instance, Kavanagh allegedly climbed into bed with him during a trip. After Donohue, now 42, came forward with his claims in 2002, New York Archbishop Edward Cardinal Egan suspended Kavanagh, who was the archdioceses top fund-raiser and pastor of St. Raymonds parish in The Bronx.
Kavanagh, who denies wrongdoing, then lobbied to clear his name and have his priestly powers restored by getting a Vatican-authorized trial, which is being held in Erie to minimize publicity.

If convicted, Kavanagh faces possible defrocking. Both Kavanagh and Donovan are expected to testify today in Erie.

jeane.macintosh@nypost.com
jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

Pope Benedict XVI : Sexier in a pinny or a pin up?

This article examines Benedict XVI's and the Vatican's stance on the celibacy of priests that could help us understand the worst crimes against children in modern history committed by none other than the pedophiliac priests of the Catholic Church.

Sexier in a pinny or a pin up?
http://www.independent.com
by Marisa Micallef

It’s very odd isn’t it, this value the Vatican puts on men, priests to be more precise, being celibate? Sadly, the only time we ever really discuss the sexuality of priests is when one of them is accused or found guilty of fondling little children. Are we expected to believe that priests are either all celibate or men who prey on little boys and sometimes girls? It’s just a terrible image of those who are meant to spread the words of Christ and keep his values alive among us, isn’t it? Do these two totally contrasting images that both the Church and the media bombard us with reflect reality at all?

If it does it certainly isn’t a very good advertisement for recruiting healthy in mind and body men to the priesthood. In fact, the Church is finding it next to impossible to recruit men in the developed world, though trade is still booming in this world, where presumably a priest is relatively well off compared to the terrible poverty around him, so it is still an attractive proposition.

Mind you these Third World priests just get on with it and ignore these silly stuffy rules on celibacy that celibate men insist on. Instead of preying on young boys and girls, or whores, or easily impressionable simple minded parishioners, or whatever hidden sexual gratification they can manage, which is the only sexual activity of priests we hear about in the West, these Third World priests have relationships with real, normal women, and often marry them!

Of course that is why the Church is discussing this issue at all. Simply because there are a staggering 100,000 married priests worldwide, and 25,000 in the US alone, where people like me find it entirely normal that someone who is able to look after his (or why not her) parish is a normal flesh and blood human being, who also wants to love and be loved by a woman, have children and do all the other things that make us normal rounded human beings.

I suppose the priesthood is a good career move if you have an abnormally low sex drive. Many people do apparently, in which case a profession, a calling, a vocation, call it what you will depending on your point of view, where sex is banned is probably ideal for you. But otherwise?

What is likely to happen if you, as an institution, have some ridiculous conditions for priesthood? The first is you must be a man. The second is you must remain celibate The third is you get to work with lots of young kids whose minds you have to nurture to be tomorrows Catholics. It’s a really lethal mix isn’t it; no wonder there are so many stories of priests who abuse sexually, when all these strange conditions would drive anyone nuts or attract too many nutters.

You don’t allow women to be priests so you are already attracting only half the population. You say they must be celibate, which means that heterosexual men with normal sexual urges need not apply, and then you get them to work with little children. Couldn’t it just be that this suppressed sexuality either attracts many gays in the first place (not that gays are abusers necessarily I hasten to add, but being gay in a priesthood that forces celibacy on you and then puts you to work with young boys is not a healthy mix now is it?), or just drives otherwise normal men to look for love or sex where they definitely should not, that is young children in their charge. The link is too strong to be utterly coincidental and the Church should be in favour of priests who marry if it wants to have a healthy future.

In the same week we heard the Vatican’s take on married priests, we also read that Maltese women are the real Michelin star chefs of Malta. Men don’t help much with the cooking, or so screamed the headlines, but when you looked closer it was quite different. Fifty-four per cent of non working mums cook alone at home, but hey that means 46 per cent don’t, which means hubbies, boyfriends, partners are there in the kitchen too.

Among mums who work, only 35 per cent do all the cooking, so again it means 75 per cent have a partner who also cooks. Not at all bad actually. Really positive I thought. Perhaps the people who run these gender bender units could lighten up a wee bit and realise that the vast majority of us do not want or need a nanny State telling us how to live our lives. (We have had enough of that already from the Church and pontificating politicians.) We really just want to earn enough to make our own choices, pay those dreadful electricity bills and thankfully soon to be reduced airport taxes, without being labelled one way or the other.

With such a low percentage of women working outside the home, it is hardly surprising, or even wrong, that women do more of the household chores now is it? It is interesting though that while stay at home mums do more housework than working mums, working mums seem to be more protective or try harder to spend extra time with their kids, like spending time ferrying them to extra lessons.

Between a week of the Vatican promoting celibacy again, and the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality’ s dire pronouncements on Maltese men, at least we had George Clooney news to enjoy. He was voted the sexist man alive, again, by People Magazine. No candidate for the priesthood obviously; I wonder what the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality makes of him? Do they think he would be sexier in a pinny, or is he a mere pin up? Now there’s a survey to squander more of our taxes on?