Separation of Church and Penn State: A Media Double Standard
. . . Ted made the very same point that I made above about the news media letting pass an opportunity to truly expose and effect sexual abuse: "I hope the pendulum swings back to some degree. I never agreed with zero tolerance. There has to be some respect for priests as basic citizens presumed to be innocent . . . The lack of balance in regards to the Globe and NY Times coverage indicates that they have clearly missed a chance to address societal child abuse. This belies a more sinister agenda by people who want to destroy the Church. Since the level of sexual sin in our society is so great, it makes people somehow feel good to persecute the Catholic Church for its abuse problem as a way to feel absolved of their own sin in some way." . . .
SNAP Judgements Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal
. . . So I was not at all surprised when prisoners came one after another to my cell door during "Court TV's" coverage of the Father Geoghan trial. After some incredible testimony from the accuser, they showed up during commercials to ask, “Are you watching this?" I was watching it, and I heard what they heard. The twenty-something-year-old accuser testified that a dozen years earlier, when he was eleven, he was in a public swimming pool. He said that he recognized Father John Geoghan as someone who had visited his housing project. While trying to climb out of the pool, the young man testified, Father Geoghan came up behind him and, under the guise of helping him to climb out, squeezed his buttocks. Based upon this testimony, the 68-year old priest was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to nine years in prison. It was a death sentence. . . . Am I defending Father John Geoghan? Not at all. Do I doubt that this accuser told the truth? Not at all. The behavior ascribed to Father Geoghan was consistent with what scores of others said of him, and an egregious example of how much his own reasoning and judgement skills had deteriorated. The Church had a responsibility to protect young people from John Geoghan and a responsibility to protect Father Geoghan from himself. Church officials failed on both counts. I don't question the truth of any of it. . . .
At the Twilight's Last Gleaming: The Fate of Religion in America
. . . It's time for a revolution, and it should be a revolution of real faith in a modern world that values it not. It isn't going to be easy. But before we all sign up for remedial CCD classes, the bad news was offset just a bit by the reality that the United States as a whole flunked the test, and Catholics came out just three percentage points behind the national score of 50% - a solid "F." Other Christian denominations fared just slightly better than Catholics - but still flunked. Jews and Mormons both passed, though just barely, with scores slightly under the atheists. Weighing everything, my own conclusion is that the problem with religion in America isn't religion - it's America. Catholics should remember the value of being counter-cultural. . . .
Mirror of Justice, Mother of God, Mystical Rose: Our Lady of Sorrows
. . . I have never written of any of this before now. Those months awaiting trial became so stressful and depressing that I began to give up. I stopped accepting treatment for epilepsy, and ended up hospitalized at Albuquerque Presbyterian Hospital for a week. After a traumatic night, my good friend and co-worker Father Clyde Landry, came to see me. He brought from my room at the center a portable short wave radio to listen to. Later that night, I plugged in my earpiece and turned on the radio. It was close to midnight, and I was not even aware it was the Feast of the Visitation, May 31. I also didn't know my radio was on the short-wave band. Father Clyde must have moved the band by accident. I raised the antennae and played with the tuner, then stopped. I had stumbled upon EWTN's short wave broadcast from Birmingham, Alabama. As I lay there in the dark in that hospital room, I heard the Salve Regina intoned and chanted in my ear. . . .
Catholic Scandal and the News Media: William McGurn Told the Truth!
. . . William McGurn filled in an essential part of the story that Laurie Goodstein conveniently left out of the New York Times. Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer quoted at length by Ms. Goodstein isn’t just a lawyer "for five men who have brought four lawsuits" against the Church. He is a lawyer who has become ravenously wealthy suing Catholic institutions for decades. He is a lawyer who once boasted to a newspaper that he is "suing the sh-- out of them everywhere." . . . The information that Jeffrey Anderson has made a long career of suing the Catholic Church was well known to Goodstein and The New York Times. As far back as 1988, Mr. Anderson spoke of receiving referrals from other lawyers with clients interested in suing Catholic dioceses and religious orders. He appeared on the "Geraldo [Rivera] Show" on November 14, 1988 to speak of his representation of a man who had been in prison and was then suing a priest for sexual abuse. I wrote of this in . . .
Breaking News: I Got Stoned with the Pope!
. . . Perhaps NBC sensed the line of decency was breached a few weeks ago when it apologized to The Catholic League and the world for a scandalous and libelous smear against Pope Benedict XVI on its affiliate news channel, MSNBC. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Donohue and The Catholic League for not letting this one pass. It is also no coincidence that the lurid stories of priestly sex abuse and papal complicity rose to a frenzy in the U.S. in the same weeks that tax-payer funded abortion was being argued in the Obama health care bill. Writer and art historian Elizabeth Lev made this same point in a brilliant essay on PoliticsDaily.com entitled "In Defense of Catholic Clergy (Or Do We Want Another Reign of Terror?)" Ms. Lev cited English statesman, Edmund Burke's 1790 commentary on Catholic witch hunts during the French Revolution: "What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks …? In 1790, Burke answered ... 'It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those they are going to plunder.' What would he think of the insistent attempt to tie [a] sexual abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links … as the present sales of Church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators …?" . . .