Response to a friend who mention William Donohue and his defense of the Church against the allegations in Pennsylvania.

Response to a friend who mention William Donohue of the Catholic League and his defense of the Church against the allegations in Pennsylvania.

Thanks for responding to my email and for sending ol' Donohue's rebuttal to the Pennsylvania sex abuse charges. The guy is a one-man Third Army, Donohue is (why doesn't he use the O'?), when it comes to defending the Church. And definitely, balance is necessary. Yet things have gone too far. As one author, Matthew Schmitz, writes (link below)

Yes, McCarrick’s reported offences occurred years ago. But they were known in 2000, when a delegation travelled to Rome to warn John Paul II of McCarrick’s crimes. They were known in 2002, when the American bishops put him forward as their spokesman on sex abuse. They were known when he retired to the grounds of a seminary, where he was attended by a string of young men. Whatever one’s view of the underlying moral matter, we must do away with the compromise that established this culture of lies.

All that indicates a profound institutional problem. Even the Vat2 super-pope JP2, wouldn't (or couldn't) do anything about McCarrick – and nothing speaks more poorly of the Polish pope – well, that and kissing the Koran – an act of out-and-out blasphemy.

And sure, Donohue is always on the defensive, but he's had to be really jumping to the barricades in recent years because the Church seems in danger of becoming an open sewer. I actually wrote Donohue a few weeks ago about an article he wrote defending the indefensible McCarrick. Never heard back from him. McCarrick is the camel's straw, perhaps, rather than the PA report. McCarrick is indefensible. He's out-and-out obscene. He's become the Church's poster boy for corruption. And that's because the Church kept him, promoted him, and he gloried in his Vat2 Churchiness, in spades, basking in the radiance of the Vat2 Church and promotion by none other than JP2.

And it was all a lie. One of the problems with homosexuality in the Church is – it hides. Like demons do when the exorcist comes calling. Exorcisms can take months because one has to find out just where the devils are hiding in the person. It can be a long process. But if you read that article on St. Peter Damian, he goes into detail about the effects of homosexuality on the priesthood, and wow, it is uncanny –just like reading the modern news reports on it! I encourage all to read it.

The other aspect to this that is revealing is that the bishops have had a long time now to get their act together and they just don't. Didn't then. Don't now. And probably won't in the future. That is an institutional problem, and if "the institutional system" keeps promoting mountebanks, Yes-men, and duplicitous non-religious money managers, then the system has to be changed.

Look how they treated Frank Keating. Keating saw what was going on, talked openly about it, and got run out of the oversight group. That's reprehensible. I saw an article the other day where Bishop Robert Barron, the "face of Vat2", who asked the laity, "Well, what should we do?" Good question. They should all resign, the lot of 'em, as they seem clueless. Remember how Dougherty said they were chosen?

For a number of reasons, the Catholic priesthood has selected for sexual deviancy. Bishops have been selected for their ability to manage legal and social risk, rather than their ability to govern and lead a religious organization. As one smart canon lawyer put it, men don’t rise through the ranks of the Catholic Church, they are pulled upward by those above them. High-ranking churchmen select for men who make peace with this sexualized culture in the priesthood. They prize collegiality rather than exacting holiness, or even competence. Cardinal Wuerl was selected by the pope to sit on the powerful Congregation of Bishops, which helps recommend to the pope new candidates for the office of bishop. It’s time we ask why he was deemed suitable for this task.

That's the Vat2 Church in spades: A "congregation" of bishops recommending bishops! Bureaucracy! Old-Boy network. "The fix is in." FWIW, I would insist that the pope should only chose Archbishops – write this into Canon Law – because there are too many bishops in the world for the Vatican to try to "vet". (There's about 5,100 bishops in the Catholic Church, both Latin and orthodox rites – the latter known as eparchs; I couldn't readily find how many archbishops exist) and the bishops below them, their "suffragan" bishops, should subject to the archbishops' oversight, rather than trekking off to Rome for the occasional group photo opportunity.

Archbishops are closer to the scene and more easily held responsible for foul ups by local Catholics than distant Rome (as Rome itself can more easily hold the archbishops responsible); and the local bishops under the archbishops should be elected by the Cathedral canons of each diocese (most Cathedrals probably don't even have these any more), who in turn would be priests chosen in part by archbishops and a diocesan senate of priests and laity. (Currently, archbishops now have no such authority, and many "archbishops" merely hold the position as an empty, honorary title.) This would be much more like it was done in Medieval times. It's also a version of the Catholic principle of Subsidiarity. "Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority." Indeed. Otherwise, all we get is a distant, unaccountable bureaucracy which means no one is responsible for anything – which is exactly what we're seeing.)

As you rightly point out, my friend, there are exceptions and perhaps a strong majority of priests are "orthodox" both theologically and sexually. Friends recently sent me the letter to his parish of such a priest in Columbus, and I link to it here:

An excellent essay and one can readily see that this priest's parish is, indeed, very Catholic. He raises very important points about public penance, too, and corporate prayer, fasting, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And that's important: Devotion to Mary is a hallmark of all the Orthodoxies, West (Roman Church) East (the various Orthodoxies, the bigger ones not being in Communion with Rome), and the true Eastern Churches, called the Oriental Churches (such as the Copts: Mary has been appearing in Egypt for some time now.) But the Western Church's powers-that-be are neither very orthodox nor have the devotion to Our Lady (Pope Francis calls such Catholics "bead counters", and the Vatican II Council specifically squashed a plan to write a special Conciliar document on the B.V.M because, ostensibly, they didn't want to "offend" Protestants).

Indeed, consider Jorge Bergoglio: he's an out-and-out Lutheran (to the extent he's anything; certain his doctrine of grace is very Lutheran). All in all, and trying to consider the exceptions we all know about (good, solid, if long-suffering priests) I think both Michael Brendan Dougherty and Michael Walsh are pretty much on target with their accusations about the system.

Anyone growing up in the Church always has tales to tell. I remember a number of priests in the last decade or two before I left the area (I used to go to Mass at odd times, at parishes here and there around Columbus, when I worked at McGraw-Hill) and quite of few of them were obviously gay -- and I say this as someone without much of a "Gaydar" radar. I've been surprised a few times over the years by finding out this or that person was queer, and I had never had a clue. But some are caricatures of course of the old-fashioned caricature of male homosexuals. These priests I refer to now certainly were.

Then there was my Uncle John, who in his retirement had tried to enter a branch of the Franciscans he had sort of been in and out of over the years. This must have been in the 1980s. After some months, he left, and wouldn't talk about why he did (it was extraordinary for him to get in to begin with, of course, at his age) and he died soon after. My mother was amazed and concerned – at his anguished silence as much as anything else – and when the sex abuse scandal finally broke, she said, "Ah, that had to be it, now. That's why he left, and died so soon after." Yep. Things had changed from when he was last in the order back in the 1960s, apparently. 

That had to be a severe shock to him, a man who would have crawled over broken glass, if ordered to, or into a volcano, if a bishop asked him. He was the classic Vatican I Catholic, betrayed by the Vat2 Church. Vatican I Catholics had been trained to pray. pay, and obey, and the Vatican II Reformers crassly counted on that to implement their disastrous changes. I remember Uncle John giving me a lecture in the middle of a Mass once because I wouldn't shake hands at that absurd gesture – something held in the middle of the Eucharistic part of the Mass, no less. (Word is that B16 was going to move it to the front of the Mass, but he was tossed out before he could effect that.)

And then there was 'Sister Roberta'. One of my aunts was a Dominican nun, and in her retirement, she lived at St Mary's of the Springs, which the Vat2 nun reformers devastated. Trashed out. Tore down the beautiful old buildings and put up that gawd awful "tower" that a few years ago they tore down! (Total waste of money.) Such wanton, stupid iconoclasm strongly indicated those people had no sense of the sacred, and how the human mind associated the old, hallowed, ancient buildings connected them with their ancestors and the Faith as it was in the past. Everything had to be New! Improved! The latest! Like dish soap or selling cars.

Anyway, the old St. Mary of the Springs was buried and forgotten. Yet I actually had a "recovered memory" at the first Trad Mass I went to at Holy Family when Fr Lutz was there. (He's an example of a fire-brand believer who would be a natural for a great Reforming Bishop, and who has no chance in Hell of becoming one, as Dougherty explained bishops are chosen with quite different criteria than strong belief.) Anyway, as I came out of the church after Mass, I suddenly remembered being at St. Mary's of the Spring as a kid, a little kid, with my mother as she visited her sister, and I remembered – like it was yesterday – the old Convent building, and the visiting room, and the wide lawns and nuns floating about in their full habits. Like a vision, it was nothing else I've experienced "waking dream"-wise, or even sleeping dream-wise. The old Mass brought it back to me. One "old Catholic" thing triggered buried memories of other "old Catholic" things.

I had totally forgotten it. I mean, I was out to St. Mary's quite often from the later 1970s on, taking my mother to visit my aunt. But I had totally forgotten what it was once like. It had been Númenor in its glory, long lost in the depths of my memory sea. Atlantis, forgotten. It had been so Catholic. Now it is just a rest home. And an empty one at that.

Anyway. in my aunt's later years, a certain 'Sr Roberta' used to bring her down to the farm, and from what I know now, Roberta was all dyke. I could go into details, but working years in textbook publishing gave me some insight into recognizing them. And I remember she used to put my mother down sarcastically when my mother brought up the Vat2 changes. Eventually, Sr Roberta returned no more with my aunt. My aunt said she and a couple of other nuns moved across the road into a house – to establish some sort of aesthetic community. Maybe. Or maybe they wanted a place where they could do what they wanted to do without supervision. Then one day my aunt explained the house had been broken into and Roberta's girls were robbed blind. (As you know, that's not such a good neighborhood anymore.) I've no clue to whatever became of Sr Roberta after that. Maybe she got a job in text-book publishing?

In any event, as you know, I never went to Catholic school, and I luxuriated as the lone (or one of the very few) Catholics in a Protestant (later Pagan) school, but I still attend Mass today (albeit the Trad Latin one) whereas most of my city cousins don't attend Mass of any sort. I've 30 or so cousins, and most of them are no longer Catholic (maybe vaguely "Cultural Catholics" possibly, sorta), and then again, from what I hear, their kids even less than that.

As I grew up in that "AmChurch", I can say I never experienced the mysteries, the beauties, the profundity of Catholic worship. It was Protestantism with a few statues. I can appreciate that because of my strong, encompassing Protestant background – I know Protestantism inside and out, as it were. And were it not for simple Irish-American pride, and the fact I stumbled across G. K. Chesterton (and later Jack Lewis) in high school, and had I not been an avid reader of Tolkien (one of the very few, if not the only one, at Bloom-Carroll H.S.) I would be no more Catholic today than my cousins seem to be. I would have probably drifted into Orthodoxy, or a Catholic-connected Eastern group, like the Melkites; (in Hungary here there's a whole Hungarian Catholic Eastern Rite Church, existing in its own canon law right. Amazing.) That, or stand some standing stone up to Lugh Lámhfhada and retell the Deeds of Fionn.

So, as for Mr Donohue. What's got the people's goat is McCarrick "hiding in plain sight" for decades. And now the Establishment Church has lawyered him up, and does what it always does in these cases -- deny. obfuscate, misdirect, lie like a rug, and so on. And that pretty much says it all.

For what it is worth, here's a long article from PJ Media by a person who is from that region in Pennsylvania.

J. Christian Adams is the author, and it is a good article, pretty balanced. It should be read in conjunction with my rantings.

Here's the Schmitz article:  An excellent article. So good I'll excerpt from it: (highlights my own):

No one cares for the endless Catholic culture wars, but we should be wary of attempts to shut down frank discussion of how we got here. Bishop Barron’s list of taboo topics suggests that he – like most bishops – is keen to preserve the settlement of 1968.
In that year, Pope Paul VI famously reaffirmed Catholic teaching on birth control in Humanae Vitae, but then declined to discipline the many bishops and priests who rejected that teaching. The result was an uneasy truce: the teaching was formally upheld, but obedience to it was not demanded.
The same dynamic played out in 2005, when the Vatican decided that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should be barred from the priesthood.
Countless bishops ignore this guidance; some even tolerate discreet romances. They only require that the priests not openly challenge Church teaching.
Both traditional and liberal Catholics are unhappy with this settlement. Under it, holiness and truth are sacrificed for a superficial peace. This arrangement is fair neither to the people who want to live by Church teaching, nor to those who would rather do without it.
Maintaining this truce makes sense if one is convinced that the post-Vatican II settlement is worth preserving. The McCarrick affair suggests that it is not.

...

But for people in the pews, things don’t look so great. In 1955, nearly 75 per cent of American Catholics went weekly to Mass. Today, only 39 percent do. Outside of a few Latin Mass and “reform of the reform” enclaves, Mass-going Catholics suffer wrecked sanctuaries, botched liturgies and moral confusion. The springtime is hard to find.
In recent months, I have attended a Mass at which Christ was assigned gender-neutral pronouns, and one at which the homilist proposed that he may have had biological brothers and sisters. (So much for Mary’s perpetual virginity.) At another, I was invited to join a ministry that openly rejects Christian teaching on sex.
Such is the new era of evangelisation, the wondrous paradigm of pastoral accompaniment preserved by the fragile truce of 1968. Speaking as a member of what is called the JPII generation, I no longer think it is worth preserving. Upholding Catholic teaching on paper but not in reality has led to widespread corruption and contempt for authority. Preserving the peace has required a culture of lies. This is the culture that allowed men like McCarrick to flourish. One way or another, we must sweep it away.

An Préachán again, definitely a good article and a brilliant idea about "The Compromise of '68". Very insightful.

But definitely read St. Peter Damian.

An Préachán