Christa keeps the faith against predatory Baptist clergy

Bear witness and do not give up hope she writes:

But here’s what I know for sure. Whatever else may or may not happen, I cannot and will not join in the nothing-but-platitudes pretend game that this denomination plays.

Christa Brown draws the line

Commenting on charges alleging a Southern Baptist maga-church pastor molested a 14-year-old girl, Slick wrote:

It’s unfortunate that the person charged and his love interest couldn’t wait a couple of years.

Christa Brown responded

What was done to the 14-year-old in that Florida mega-church — and what was also done to me in a Baptist church — is something that doesn’t deserve the respect of even being considered “sexual,” much less “love.”

It’s not love. It’s hate.

And it doesn’t deserve to be called anything other than what it actually was.

Exactly. There was nothing worthy of being called romance. Even adult relationships between parishioners and their clergy aren’t romance, as earlier documented:

Dr. Gary Schoener, Executive Director of the Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis which serves both offenders and victims of clergy sexual abuse, told the St. Petersberg Times that “17 states see even adult relationships with priests as a type of statutory rape. The victim can’t possibly consent because the power relationship so clouds the issue.”

.

Ted Haggard’s relationship with Grant Haas, who was barely of legal age, is a notorious recent example.

With teenagers and children, the force of the power relationship is multiplied.

No, rape isn’t romance.

Sex and the transfer tax

We who have served ample time as urban affairs reporters know major property tax decisions, even those involving mind-numbing transfer taxes, can be explosive. This one is catalyzed with a sprinkling of clerical sexual abuse scandal. It’s no surprise that the $14.4-million tax board decision against Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco is exploding in the comment space at SFGate and elsewhere.

The argument is over whether, during a self-protective corporate reorganization in 2007, the church made property transfers from one corporation to another, as you can see from reading ARTICLE 12-C: REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX of the city of San Francisco, rather than undertook a lesser corporate reorganization.

Allegations of capricious action and conspiracy are as inevitable in a case like this as appeal to the courts after long administrative struggle. The underlying argument by most of the outraged is that the church is an abused innocent. That raises general issues which have nothing to do with whether the $14.4-million San Francisco transfer tax levy is legally sound.

Because the corporate restructuring which triggered the property transfer tax was precipitated by Catholic sexual abuse claims in other archdioses.

Clerical Whispers explained:

To protect parish and parochial school assets from being used to pay court settlements [for sexual molestation claims], San Francisco’s Archbishop George Niederauer has approved modifications to the archdiocese’s corporate structure.

The status of parochial property has been a contested issue since Archbishop Sean O’ Malley of Boston sold off parish assets and closed 60 parishes to pay off molestation claims against the Boston archdiocese several years ago. In Aug. 2005 the Holy See ruled that the archdiocese of Boston was wrong in thus seizing parish assets.

This ruling did not affect the U.S. courts. Also in Aug. 2005, Spokane U.S. bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams ruled that churches, parochial schools, and such assets as cemeteries belong to the diocese, not to parishes. In declaring bankruptcy over molestation claims in Dec., 2004, the Spokane diocese had argued that its assets amounted to only $10 million in real estate. Lawyers for alleged victims, on the other hand, said that, since parishes, parochial schools, and other property, belonged to the diocese as well, its assets exceeded $80 million.

Spokane Bishop William Skylstad said Judge Williams’ decision had “national consequences.” In Dec. 2005, a Portland, Oregon federal bankruptcy judge denied the archdiocese of Portland’s claim that creditors could not force the sale of parishes, schools, and other such assets, since the diocese held these in trust for the parishes as beneficiaries. Judge Elizabeth Perris denied the archdiocese’s argument that the status of these properties should be determined by canon law. “Who owns the property is, quite simply, not a theological or doctrinal matter,” she said. Perris said, “under civil law, the parishes and high schools are not separate civil legal entities.”

Archbishop Niederauer explained in a Dec. 4 letter to archdiocesan school principals that, “if a diocese maintains that under Church law parish and school properties cannot be used at the discretion of the bishop, then this concept must be unequivocally enshrined in the civil law structures of the Church.”

So the properties were transferred to a separate corporation, insulating them from the bishop’s discretion [including Boston/Portland-like sale to pay of legal claims] and triggering the transfer tax.

Having undertaken standard corporate maneuvering to protect assets against possible legal attack, perhaps by victims of clerical sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of San Francisco had every right to expect to be treated like a corporation. As is occurring.

The Catholic Church robbed Irish adults of the ability to tell right from wrong

For The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole writes about the massive, decades long cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Irish Catholic priests:

But in the case of the institutional Catholic Church we have an organisation with an unusually powerful mechanism of self-protection: the capacity to convince the society it is abusing to take part in the cover-up. The damage the church has done to Irish society lies in the ways it has involved that society in the maintenance of an abusive instrument of control and power.

It is easy to miss a central aspect of this whole scandal. The report is concerned with the actions of the church authorities and describes in damning detail their sense of being above the law of the land. (Cardinal Desmond Connell, for example, told the commission that “the greatest crisis in my position as Archbishop” was not, as might be imagined, his discovery of appalling criminality among his clergy, or even his own disingenuous public claims that “I have compensated nobody”, but the decision to allow gardaí access to diocesan files.) But it is striking that parents, teachers and wider communities seldom went to the police either.

This was not a matter of ignorance. It is clear that some of the paedophiles were not secretive and cunning, but reckless and flagrant. In the early 1970s, for example, Fr James McNamee, who had built a swimming pool in his house into which only young boys were allowed, was so notorious among the children in his Crumlin parish that “whenever the older boys in the area saw Fr McNamee, they either ran away or started throwing things and shouting insults at Fr McNamee. Apparently he was known as ‘Father smack my gee’.” If children were shouting abuse at a priest in 1970s Ireland, adults undoubtedly noticed. They must have known why.

. . .

Yet in most cases, parents who knew their children had been abused went to the bishop, not to the Garda. There may have been a mistrust of the Garda (sometimes well founded), or a fear of exposure in the courts. But, in Archbishop Ryan’s internal notes on the Father X case there is a more extraordinary explanation: “The parents involved have, for the most part, reacted with what can only be described as incredible charity. In several cases, they were quite apologetic about having to discuss the matter and were as much concerned for the priest’s welfare as for their child and other children.”

This was the church’s great achievement in Ireland. It had so successfully disabled a society’s capacity to think for itself about right and wrong that it was the parents of an abused child, not the bishop who enabled that abuse, who were “quite apologetic”.

Investigate every Roman Catholic diocese in Ireland

Harold’s Cross in Dublin

Victims of priestly pedophilia have responded to revelations of a decades-long cover-up in the Dublin Archdiocese with a call for expansion of the investigation to every diocese in Ireland.

Tragically predictable, the Irish Catholic Church pooh pooed the victims. Auxiliary Bishop Eamon Walsh of Dublin huffed to Ireland On-Line that further investigation would be a bootless distraction from “consolidating our services.”

It sounds like a habitual reaction — even one that is intended to mislead. Over a span of three decades, four successive archbishops of Dublin responded to clerical child sexual abuse in their diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up.” Similarly, the Vatican refused to cooperate with the Murphy Commission investigation of a sample of 46 Dublin Archdiocese priests out of 102 against whom complaints has been made between 1975 and 2004.

Against that background, it is reasonable to ask if Walsh’s argument is fraught with the “mental reservation” the report revealed was abused by the Dublin Archdiocese clergy to frustrate inquiry and to mislead. For example, the report said:

Both Marie Collins and Andrew Madden independently furnished the Commission with examples of how [mental reservation] was deployed by the Archdiocese in dealing with their complaints. In 2003, Mr Madden was invited to meet Cardinal Connell. In the course of an informal chat Cardinal Connell did apologise for the whole handling of the Fr Ivan Payne case. He was however at pains to point out to Mr Madden that he did not lie about the use of diocesan funds in meeting Fr Payne‟s settlement with Mr Madden. He explained that when he was asked by journalists about the use of diocesan funds for the compensation of complainants of child sexual abuse, he had responded that diocesan funds are not used for such a purpose; that he had not said that diocesan funds were not used for such a purpose. By using the present tense, he had not excluded the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such purpose in the past. According to Mr Madden, Cardinal Connell considered that there was an enormous difference between the two.

Thus by cunning use of verb tense and omission, Connell used the most literal meaning of the words to create the false impression that diocesan funds had never been used. Yet with his interior knowledge of the meaning of the words he spoke, he was telling a truth his audience did not hear.

According to BBC, Bishop Walsh “told Bloomberg he was disappointed and surprised by the Vatican’s attitude” in failing to cooperate with the investigation of the Dublin Archdiocese. Whatever he actually meant by that.

We are not surprised, but we are nonetheless disappointed, by Walsh’s attitude. Without further investigation, Irish officials cannot hope to understand what they must do to fully awaken from a national nightmare awash in Catholic Church and state corruption. It is clear from the decades of history of similar scandals around the world that to delay full investigation is to further conceal. Walsh’s appeal to getting on with other business is an attempt rationalize an end to investigation, inevitably to serve some unstated church interest in suppressing scandal. Thus Walsh, like his predecessors, seeks concealment.

---

Irish Times Timeline

How The Story Of Abuse In Catholic Church Institutions Emerged

BBC developed a Timeline: U.S. Catholic Church sex scandal

Yes, there are other denominations which engage in brazen cover-ups.

Bishop Tobin’s ‘other’ responsibilities

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin was reminded Tuesday by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) that child victims of clerical sexual abuse are owed attention he has diverted to his quarrel with Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy.

At a small demonstration by abuse victims outside Tobin’s office, author Ruth Moore of Hull, Mass., said:

He claims that it’s important that we protect the unborn. But it’s equally as important to protect those who have been born, and those young children who have been raped and sodomized by clerics and priests. But yet he seems to protect those clerics.

More specifically, SNAP said:

… Bishop Thomas Tobin should aggressively reach out to anyone who has knowledge of either predator’s crimes, especially because they are known offenders who walk free. For the sake of public safety, Tobin should also post on his website the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. (More than 15 bishops, a small minority, have taken this simple, inexpensive, proven method of alerting parents about and protecting kids from dangerous predators. Tobin, however, has repeatedly refused to do so, even though his diocese has one of the highest rates of accused pedophile priests in the US.)

Protecting children from clerical abuse by those under his authority is undeniably among Tobin’s responsibilities. SNAP argues (citing examples, which church spokesmen attempt to rebut) that “admitted, proven and credibly accused pedophile priests like Lepire out there, getting little or no help or supervision or monitoring from or by the bishops who essentially helped them rape and sodomized kids by ignoring or hiding their crimes.”

It is Roman Catholic laity the Bishops fear

Susan Jacoby gets at something fundamental:

The real concern of the church hierarchy is dissent from lay Catholics, and that is why archbishops feathers’ are more ruffled when the last name of a critic is Dowd or O’Malley rather than Goldstein or Horowitz. (My mother’s maiden name is Broderick, by the way.) The groundbreaking reporting on the pedophile priest scandal was done by journalists for The National Catholic Reporter, as well as by The Boston Globe, which also employs a great many reporters with good old Irish names and Catholic backgrounds. The press is not criticizing “Catholics.” As the hierarchy knows perfectly well, the majority of Catholics do not agree with their bishops’ and pope’s position on opposition to married priests, to women priests, to contraception, to divorce, and to legal abortion. The bishops can’t persuade a majority of those raised in their own faith to support their positions, so they lash out at critics and try to intimidate the press with charges of anti-Catholicism.

Southern Baptist Cult (SBC)?

Southern Baptist Convention disdain for women and lack of concern for children thundered through Georgia this week. Outspoken Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson wrote:

During the November 11, 2009 business session of the Georgia Baptist Convention, messengers to the Southern Baptist state convention dismissed FBC Decatur, Georgia from fellowship for the church’s calling of Julie Russell-Pennington as Senior Pastor in 2007. The SBC will not establish a data base to track ministerial child abusers out of fear of “violating local church autonomy,” but when it comes to a church calling a woman to preach the gospel, church autonomy is slain at the feet of conventional conformity.

Read Burleson’s entire piece here, and read Christa Brown’s reaction at Stop Baptist Predators.

Vatican may have first Legionaries/Regnum visitation report in hand

Investigators of the Legion of Christ (LC) and their lay organization, Regnum Christi (RC), were summoned to Rome in late October to give Benedict XVI a report on their investigation, according to the Spanish news agency eFe.

The investigation, called an “apostolic visitation,” is being conducted by Basque Bishop Ricardo Blazquez in Spain and by Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput in the United States. It was provoked by the sexual and financial wrongdoings of RC founder Marcial Maciel and related events.

Translated, the eFe report says:

According to information provided to Efe by Legionary priests who are still within the religious congregation, but who disagree with the attitude of “secrecy” of their superiors, the apostolic visit is almost complete.

However, the visitors continue to work as some schools are lacking a visit, as in the case of Spain, and because there are still many people, especially the RC laity and consecrated persons, who have requested to be received by the visitors and give their testimony.

Apparently the Vatican was very interested in issues associated with taking control of the order’s assets, and with the willingness of LC members to obey Rome’s orders when action is taken:

[In addition to Maciel's wrondoings] being investigated with emphasis are: “if the Legion’s constitutions correspond to those adopted at the time by the Holy See, on the financial issue and ownership of properties and facilities and, by express mandate of the Pope, in possible ‘coercion and control’ you bring back to consciousness of them in the consecrated members of the Legión,” sources told EFE.

The story portrays an organization whipsawed by distrust and dismay, awaiting action:

A Legionary priest, who occupies an important position in the LC and is still inside pending the decision of the Holy See at the end apostolic visit, summarized the situation to Efe:

“In the LC and RC at the moment there are three types of attitudes: those who still think that everything is false and that this is further proof that Christ calls us; those who have left and have gone out; and us who live with a tremendous frustration because of the secrecy of our superiors and are waiting on what the Pope decides and whether we convene a General Chapter.

“Everything that has been said is true,” says this priest, “and has been known to some LC superiors and to the Holy See for at least twenty years as acknowledged by the Vicar General, Luis Garza,pronounced at internal conferences this summer. ”

Apparently, eFe sources cast no light on exactly how the question of whether to dissolve, or refound LC/RC will be answered.

[H/T: How to get a loved one out of the Legion of Christ & Regnum Christi]

USCCB Study: Homosexuality play no role in priestly sexual predation

John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops they found “no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children.”

USA Today reported:

“What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,” said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”
…
[And] many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse. Karen Terry, a John Jay researcher, said it was important to distinguish between sexual identity and behavior, and to look at who the offender had access to when seeking victims.

According to Tuesday’s interim report on the $2 million study, Catholic clerical sexual abuse peaked in the late 1960s and 1970s before declining in the 1980s, and researchers believe there has been no resurgence. That pattern, they argued, parallels to some degree changes in the society at large during those periods.

Dubbed The Causes and Context Study, it was funded by the USCCB, the National Institute of Justice and several foundations. A complete reported is scheduled for December of 2010.