Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood

Pope Francis issued 2019 guidelines for preserving a right of defense for accused priests and limits on publishing their names. Many U.S. bishops just ignored them.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is an important sequel to his previous post, In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.

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In the above-captioned article at These Stone Walls, I wrote about a decision of The Most Rev. Peter Libasci, Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, to publish a list of the names of priests “credibly” accused in that state over the past fifty years. At the time the list was published in August 2019, the Bishop and Diocese issued a press release citing ‘transparency” as the reason for publishing it.

The list contained the names of 73 accused priests. More than half are deceased. Only five of the 73 ever had a case for prosecution before any New Hampshire court. None of the claims were current. Most alleged misconduct from three to five decades ago. Virtually all were brought with a financial demand that resulted in a monetary settlement from the diocese.

Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list was generated, not by any semblance of due process, but rather by a one-sided grand jury investigation of the diocese launched in 2002. That investigation treated all claims in civil lawsuits and other demands for settlement as demonstrably true with no standard of evidence whatsoever.

Bishop Libasci’s press release revealed that the claims against all 73 priests were determined to be “credible.” This is a standard that the United States bishops adopted at their Dallas meeting in 2002. “Credible,” as the bishops are applying it, means only “possible.” If it could have happened, it’s credible.

A 2003 grand jury investigation of the Diocese was the source for the recently published list. In that investigation, none of the accused — the few who were still living, anyway — were permitted to appear to offer any defense. That is the nature of a grand jury investigation. It is a strictly prosecutorial affair that is supposed to determine whether indictments and trials should follow. None of the subjects on Bishop Libasci’s list were indicted after the 2003 grand jury report became public.

My article cited above was followed by a related and stunning article by Fr. Gordon MacRae, one of the priests whose name appears on the bishop’s list. His category was unique on the list. It was simply, “convicted.” It was published without nuance by a diocese whose previous bishop told others in secret that he knows Father MacRae to be innocent and unjustly imprisoned. “Transparency,” however, has its limits.

Father MacRae’s article is “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.” Amazingly, from reports I have seen generated by These Stone Walls, the article was heavily read around the world, most notably in Washington D.C., at the Holy See, and throughout Rome. In New Hampshire, it was the most-read article of the year at These Stone Walls.

My article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List,” focused on injustices behind the scenes in a decision of the Bishop and Diocese to publish that list anew. Father MacRae’s remarkable sequel contrasts the 2003 grand jury investigation of his Diocese with a similar 2018 investigation of a nationally known Concord, New Hampshire academy, St. Paul’s School, with historic ties to the Episcopal church. Fr. MacRae brought to light a judicial ruling that publishing these grand jury reports — and by extension the Bishop’s list of names — is actually forbidden under New Hampshire law.

Grave Injustice in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

Father MacRae’s article revealed a grave injustice in the Diocese of Manchester and multiple other U.S. dioceses. Fifteen years after the Diocese and Attorney General signed a deal in secret to publish a grand jury report in 2003, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara ruled that the report, and one involving a 2018 St Paul’s School grand jury investigation, cannot legally be published.

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald pressed to allow publication of the St. Paul’s School report. He cited the 2003 Diocese of Manchester precedent in which a report and files were published — the source for the names on Bishop Libasci’s list.

Father MacRae revealed that in 2003, the current N.H. Attorney General was part of a legal team representing the Diocese when release of the report was agreed upon in secret. It was the Attorney General’s citing the precedent that triggered Judge McNamara’s 23-page Order dated August 12, 2019, ten days after Bishop Libasci published his list.

Given the various one-sided grand jury investigations of Catholic dioceses across the U.S., Judge McNamara’s Court Order should give Catholics pause. The judicial findings summarized below cast doubt on the U.S. bishops’ collective decisions to publish lists of names arising from grand jury investigations:

• The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] argues that a common law precedent for such a report does in fact exist because the Hillsborough County [NH] Superior Court [in 2003] authorized an agreement between the OAG and the Diocese of Manchester to waive the secrecy of a grand jury investigation …

• The Hillsborough County Superior Court endorsed the Diocese-OAG Agreement without explanation and without any written Order. This Court respectfully disagrees with the decision to approve the Diocese-OAG Agreement [in 2003].

• The Diocese-OAG Agreement fulfilled none of the traditional purposes of the common law grand jury.

• The Court cannot find that the use of grand jury materials and the breach of grand jury secrecy in order to prepare a report is a practice authorized by New Hampshire common law.

• Rather than investigation of crime, the report is a post hoc summary of information the grand jury considered, but did not indict on. It did not protect the privacy interests of those witnesses and subjects that were never charged with a crime by the grand jury.

• The deficiency of the Diocese-OAG Agreement is cast in bold relief by [a] December 2018 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Pennsylvania has a statute that specifically authorizes investigative grand juries and investigative reports. However, as in most states, the statute contains statutory procedures to provide individuals with due process protections for their reputational rights … the petitioners were entitled to have a report published with redactions of their names in order to protect their right to reputation. [emphasis added]

• A grand jury is not an adversary hearing in which guilt or innocence is established. Rather, it is an ex parte investigation to determine whether a crime has been committed and whether criminal proceedings should be instituted against any person.

• Grand jury testimony can involve all sorts of false, damaging, and one-sided information and New Hampshire has no historical or legal basis for releasing such information.

• An allegation of wrongdoing or impropriety, based on half-truths, illegally seized evidence, or rumor, innuendo or hearsay may blight a person’s life indefinitely.

• Mark Twain famously said that a lie is half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become more efficient.

• Accordingly, the Court DENIES the OAG Motion to Produce and Disclose. The OAG may not produce any report that contains any material characterized as a “Grand Jury Report.”

[Source Order of Judge Richard B. McNamara In Re: Grand Jury No. 217-2018-CV-00382, August 12, 2019.]

Now Comes the Pope

The Court Order should have applied to the Bishop of Manchester as well. He took it upon himself to do what the law forbids the State to do: to prosecute and convict in the public square those who were not indicted, were not tried or convicted, but were merely accused. I find it a disturbing coincidence that Bishop Peter Libasci’s decision to publish a list of the names of 73 accused priests — the vast majority of whom are merely accused — took place just days before the Order by Judge McNamara was issued.

This is ironic, at best, and at worst highly suspect. Had the Order preceded the release of names, the priests involved — those still living, anyway — may have had legal standing to challenge it. But this all pales next to published guidelines of another authority the bishops should be heeding.

On November 12, 2019, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, addressed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. His address emphasized that “The pastoral thrust of this pontificate must reach the American people.” The bishops can fulfill this, he said, with “tangible signs of their communion with the Holy Father.”

Among the “pastoral thrusts” of the pontificate of Pope Francis that might require communion with his bishops was a February 21, 2019 issuance of a set of guidelines that bishops should follow on how allegations of sexual abuse by priests are to be handled. The list included 21 points that Pope Francis asked the bishops to observe. Point Number 14 is as follows:

“The right to defense: the principle of natural and canon law of a presumption of innocence must also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the lists of the accused being published, even by dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and a definitive condemnation.”

— Guidelines of Pope Francis, February 19, 2019

Rev. Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino, Professor of Systematic Theology and a prolific author, has published what I consider to be a landmark article entitled “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter (First Things, October 2, 2019). Father Guarino characterized the 2002 Dallas Charter — the operable document under which accused priests are removed from all ministry:

“The harried bishops, with their Dallas Charter of 2002… passed Draconian norms that come close to venturing beyond Catholic teaching. The American bishops decreed ‘zero tolerance’ for priests accused of sexual abuse, a norm that, as Cardinal Avery Dulles acknowledged in 2002, violates equitable treatment for priests. Dulles added, ‘Having been so severely criticized for exercising poor judgment in the past, the bishops apparently wanted to avoid making any judgments in these cases’”

Father Guarino’s article points out that Pope Francis has been reluctant to invoke the term “zero-tolerance.”  The Wall Street Journal  reported that of the twenty countries in the world with the largest Catholic populations, only the Bishops of the United States have invoked a policy of “zero tolerance.”

In 2000, the U.S. bishops issued a pastoral document critical of the American criminal justice system. The bishops rejected terms such as “zero tolerance” and “three-strikes” in the application of punishments in the criminal justice system. They urged lawmakers to focus on rehabilitation and restorative justice while imposing sentences.

But two years later, at Dallas in 2002, under the harsh glare of the news media and victim advocates such as S.N.A.P. (who were directly invited by the bishops) the U.S. bishops inflicted the same panic-driven one-size-fits-all policy on their priests that they asked the justice system NOT to inflict on all other U.S. citizens. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in rebuttal in 2004:

“The Church must protect the community from harm, but it must also protect the human rights of each individual who may face an accusation… Some of the measures adopted [at Dallas] went far beyond the protection of children… [Bishops] undermined the morale of their priests and inflicted a serious blow to the credibility of the Church as a mirror of justice.”

— Avery Cardinal Dulles, “The Rights of Accused Priests,” America 2004

The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter

As Father Gordon MacRae exposed in “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester,” the late Father Richard John Neuhaus interviewed an American prelate who was one of the unnamed principal architects of the U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter. Father Neuhaus quoted him in a First Things  article: “It may be necessary for some innocent priests to suffer for the good of the Church.” That prelate, according to Father MacRae, was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

As Father Guarino points out in “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter,” a significant problem with the Bishops’ policy is that most accused priests have not actually been found guilty of abuse. Of the 73 priests, both living and deceased, on Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list, only five ever had due process in any court of law. Three of those were by plea deals, and one, as Bishop Libasci’s predecessor has acknowledged in secret, is wrongfully convicted.

For all the other names on the Diocese of Manchester list — and for the vast majority of the hundreds of American priests who have been removed from ministry, the allegations against them were only considered “credible,” meaning only that it is possible that they happened. If any other American citizens from any walk of life were subjected to such a standard before being shamed in the public square, libel and slander lawsuits would flood the courts.

Perhaps the greatest insult to Catholics in the pews is the statement of Bishop Libasci — and other bishops who have published lists of names of the accused — that this is done for the purpose of “transparency.” I have personally attempted to review the required canonical investigations of Father MacRae that a previous official of the Diocese of Manchester insisted were carried out. I was told that these investigations are confidential.

I have requested to see the list of settlements meted out to the accusers in his case which have been called into question by The Wall Street Journal  and other interested parties. I was told that these settlements are confidential.

Father MacRae himself requested of a previous bishop, the Most Rev. John McCormack, that he be permitted to see the canonical investigation that the bishop claimed was forwarded to the Holy See. Father MacRae was reportedly told that this, too, is confidential. He was later told by another official of the Diocese that no required canonical investigation ever took place. This was before MacRae learned from a New Hampshire attorney and a PBS producer that Bishop McCormack revealed, after requesting secrecy, that “I firmly believe Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison.”

“Zero Tolerance” is an insult to Catholic theology and to our priests who are disenfranchised from their priesthood, and from their civil rights as citizens, on the whim of a bishop after being accused.

“Transparency,” however, is an insult to all the rest of us who have waited under shrouds of duplicity for our bishops to reflect the mirror of justice that this world needs the Church to be.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post with the priests and Catholic laity you know. You are also invited to Subscribe to These Stone Walls  and to Follow on Facebook some inspiring related graphic presentations of these posts.

You may learn more on the story of Catholic priests falsely accused from these relevant articles:

• In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List by Ryan A. MacDonald

• The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence by Ryan A. MacDonald

• Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction by Father Stuart A. MacDonald, JCL

• The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal

The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests

Sixteen years after the Dallas Charter set a ‘credible’ standard to suspend hundreds of accused priests, bishops are only now trying to define what ‘credible’ means.

“Credibly accused’ is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I chose the image atop this post because it presents such a startling contrast. The untitled and uncredited image was sent to me and I was so moved by it I asked to have it posted on Christmas Eve on LinkedIn, an entirely secular social network. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one speaks volumes. Within days, it garnered 3,000 views and a multitude of comments. Readers found it to be remarkably inspiring.

I wanted to include it here because it reflects the reality in which I live. It also reflects the true mission of priesthood, “a heroic vocation” as described by Matthew Hennessey, an editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote in 2017 that, despite all the bad press...

“One thing hasn’t changed. Young men still want lives of heroic virtue and the priesthood offers that in abundance.”

The Priesthood is a Heroic Vocation,” August 17, 2017

Both the photo above and Matthew Hennessey’s WSJ op-ed stand in stark contrast to how most in the news media — often predators in their own right — are portraying Catholic priests. A typical example was analyzed in these pages in a post about the one-sided hysteria masked as journalism that has dogged Catholic leaders in the sexual abuse moral panic of the last two decades. That post is “USA Today’s Tim Roemer on How to Save the Catholic Church.”

I owe some thanks to USA Today and former Democratic Congressman Tim Roemer for at least being transparent in their real agenda for Catholics in America. Their moral outrage has goals: abandon civil rights for priests, allow priests to marry, ordain women, and appoint lay leaders to replace bishops in supervising clergy and screening seminarians. In other words, make bishops obsolete.

But nothing Tim Roemer has said or written alarms me as much as the quote atop this post from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Gospel could be the measure of how the bishops respond to the crisis. Church law could provide a framework for formulating policy. Bypassing all of that for the U.S. bishops, “Credibly accused is being worked out in terms of our lawyers even now as we speak.”

“Even now as we speak.” Sixteen years after adopting “credible” as the standard by which accused priests — “from however long ago” — are measured and discarded, the bishops are only now discerning what “credible” should mean, and only because there is a movement afoot to apply the same standard to bishops. A little history is in order.

In 2002, the bishops meeting in Dallas under the harsh glare of the news media adopted a policy in a time of crisis. Having invited David Clohessy, Barbara Blane and others from SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) to address the conference, the bishops adopted the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

Known simply as the “Dallas Charter,” its main promoter was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Cardinal Avery Dulles lobbied against it, and published a stinging rebuke in “The Rights of Accused Priests.” The bishops, however, sided with Cardinal McCarrick.

Zero Tolerance Is Not a Gift of the Holy Spirit

In 2000, the U. S. bishops published a pastoral document entitled “Responsibility and Rehabilitation.” It criticized the American criminal justice system for adopting one-size-fits-all concepts of justice and mantra-based policies such as “zero tolerance” and “three strikes and you’re out” that enhanced penalties while discounting paths to rehabilitation. The bishops urged that justice should be restorative, and not only punitive.

Just two years later, those same bishops signed the Dallas Charter inflicting upon their own priests what they condemned in the criminal justice system. The bishops’ draconian new policy for priests negated restorative justice.

“One strike and you’re out — forever!” Among those paying attention, even hardcore law and order types scratched their heads at the abolition of due process by which this would be implemented.

An accusation — whether from this year or fifty years ago — need not be proven or even true. It need only be ‘‘credible.” The accepted interpretation of “credible” was that it could have happened. In other words, the priest and the accuser were both present in the same general locale 30, 40, or 50 years ago. This new zero-tolerance policy held that any priest so accused, from however long ago, is to be removed and barred from any ministry unless and until proven to be innocent.The cases, many of which skipped the preliminary investigations required by canon law, were then submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican for finality. The CDF had every reason to conclude that canon law was being followed and legitimate investigations were carried out. Writing in First Things (Aug.-Sept. 2002) Father Richard John Neuhaus described the scene in which the “Dallas Charter” was created:

“Almost 300 bishops sat in mandatory docility as they were sternly reproached by knowing psychologists, angry spokespersons for millions of presumably angrier laypeople, and above all, by those whom the bishops learned to call, with almost cringing deference, the ‘victim/survivors’... Tears earned a gold star and welling eyes an honorable mention from the media... Like schoolboys, the bishops anxiously awaited the evening news to find out their grades.”

“Scandal Time III”

The resultant process was described in these pages in a courageous post by priest and canon lawyer, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.” It was a timely and soul-searching post for the whole Church about the rights of accused priests and the real-world failure of the hierarchy to secure and respect those rights.

Since the Dallas Charter was enacted by the bishops in 2002, that “real-world failure” has resulted in scenes far more reminiscent of the American McCarthy era than the American Catholic church. In the months to follow that Dallas meeting, thousands of files were scoured and hundreds of priests were rounded up. Priests merely accused, many of whom had ministered without incident for years or decades, were summarily expelled from Church ministry and property. Again, Father Neuhaus:

“The bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, unCatholic approach to sin and grace... They ended up adopting a policy that was sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost everything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, “Scandal Time III,” 2002

Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault and Bishop John McCormack released to the news media the names of “credibly accused” priests of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H.

When the Church Defames Her Priests

Back in July of 2011 I wrote with exasperation about the result of all this by profiling the case of Boston priest, Father F. Dominic Menna. “Father Dom” ministered as a senior priest well into his late seventies in a parish where he was beloved and respected. Then the 2002 moral panic came. An easy target, Father Menna found himself among dozens to face a vague claim from the distant past, an incident alleged to have occurred over forty years earlier.

It was unsubstantiated and could never be substantiated. By what magic could a 40-year-old claim of fondling be substantiated? But it “could” have happened, and that rendered it “credible.” Father Dom was dragged before the Archdiocesan Sanhedrin, stripped of his faculties as a priest, and put out into the street. The next day, The Boston Globe ran his name and photo and identified the vague details of his “offense” forgetting to mention that it was both unproven and up to a half-century old.

Of course the purpose of all that is to invite new accusers to cash in. This claim came through the usual contingency lawyers who became quick millionaires by holding press conferences to shame bishops into quick settlements. I wrote about the sad Father Dom story in 2011 in, “If Night Befalls Your Father, You Don’t Discard Him. You Just Don’t!”

Ah, but we do discard them! Or at least most of us keep silent while someone else does. This is the “zero tolerance” that our bishops have embraced and that even Pope Francis now touts as a centerpiece of the Church’s response. So why am I protesting all this anew? In a December 19 issue of CRUX, Correspondent Christopher White published “Two Decades into Crisis, No Consensus on What ‘Credibly Accused’ Means.”

After sixteen years of compiling scarlet letter lists of the accused — some living, but most dead, some guilty but many not — the question has arisen anew about whether names of accused priests — merely accused, mind you — should be published by their bishops. The demand to do so comes from lawyers, the news media, and SNAP, but as Father Richard John Neuhaus warned in 2002, the “victim advocates are not satisfied and, sadly, may never be satisfied.”

It is not enough that the bishops release these lists of names. The newest wave of SNAP leaders (the previous wave disappeared after being implicated in an alleged lawyer kickback scheme) want the bishops to also include in these lists descriptions of the alleged abuse so that others who want to contact the same contingency lawyers can concoct consistent stories. If you balk at the plausibility of such a concern, it is only because you have not yet read the evidence for it in “A Weapon of Mass Destruction: Catholic Priests Falsely Accused.”

But there are other concerns, the most important of which is fundamental civil liberty and due process. After fallout from the now infamous Pennsylvania grand jury report on accused priests, bishops in multiple states have conceded on the issue of publishing the names of the “credibly” accused, living or dead, guilty or not. This has been going on for years, but now, the sound of screeching voices has risen to a scarlet letter crescendo.

Taking Rights from Some Descends a Slippery Slope

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo told CRUX that among the next steps in the bishops’ collective response to the crisis would be “studying national guidelines for the publication of lists of names of those clerics facing substantiated claims of abuse.”

It did not go without notice among the lawyers, the news media, and SNAP that the parameter has suddenly been altered. After two decades with “credible” as the standard for dismissing priests and releasing their names, “substantiated” is now the operative word and it is a far different standard. Why it took the bishops nearly two decades to ask themselves what “credible” means — not to mention whether it ever reflected justice or the Gospel — is unclear. A lot is unclear.

But some clarity on this came forth from another source “When the Church Defames Her Priests” was published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review in 2017 by Opus Bono founder and president, Joe Maher, and David A. Shaneyfelt, an attorney in private practice in California and an Opus Bono adviser. The article addresses the destructive and ill-advised practice adopted to date by some two dozen dioceses in the United States to create and publish lists of priests who have been merely accused. The Opus Bono authors wrote:

“We take special issue with those dioceses who think that publishing a list of names of clerics who have been ‘credibly’ accused of sexual misconduct is warranted. We disagree for many reasons — canonical, theological, pastoral, and legal. It is this latter reason we wish to address here.”

The article goes on to present a transparent but chilling explanation of what “credible” means in this context, and a compelling case for protecting the due process rights of priests who are merely accused. After reading, I could not help but agree with its urgency. The article captured the flagrant injustice in this practice:

“How ironic that a bishop, who aims to demonstrate his concern for one victim of abuse, will thereby create another victim of abuse — and end up paying large amounts of damages to each in the process. How doubly ironic that a bishop who initiates such a policy may someday find himself on the list.”

Lest any bishop thought that suggestion implausible, it has now come to pass. In “Giving Due Process Its Due,” an excellent article at The Catholic Thing, Stephen P. White (no relation to CRUX writer, Christopher White) wrote that at the November meeting of bishops, Bishop Donald Trautman (Emeritus of Erie, PA), spoke against plans to have a similar reporting system for allegations against bishops.

In response to the idea that allegations against bishops be reported to the Nuncio, and thus to Rome, Bishop Trautman objected: “I think this proposal is very dangerous and unjust. It calls for the reporting to the Apostolic Nunciature accusations not investigated, not substantiated, not proven. That’s unjust.” I agree with Bishop Trautman, however, as Stephen White reported, it raised a few eyebrows among bishops for it is precisely what US bishops have been doing to hundreds of priests since the Dallas Charter was enacted in 2002.

The growing demand — to which the bishops of some seventy U.S. dioceses have already capitulated — is to bypass the legal system standard of a criminal conviction as the impetus for requiring registration of sexual offenders. Some bishops have created their own private version of “Megan’s Law,” but without the law’s built-in respect for basic civil rights. In American courts, only those convicted in a court of law can end up on such a published list.

Dozens of U.S. bishops and dioceses have already published these lists with no legal entity requiring them, and with little recourse on the part of the priests, many of whom are innocent. These lists replace justice with capitulation to a lynch mob.

The November-December issue of Annals Australasia: Journal of Catholic Culture reprinted the following excerpt, an eye-opener from Peter Hitchens in the (UK) Daily Mail, 17 December 2017, entitled “We have forgotten what justice means”:

“Accusations of long-ago sexual crime have become a sort of industry in this country. People are so horrified by them that they almost always believe them. Because the crime is so foul, we stop thinking.... Police and prosecutors use our horror to get easy convictions when they must know that their cases are weak. The less actual evidence that they have, the more they stress the disgusting nature of the alleged crime. And they forget to remind us that it is alleged, not proved.

“Equally shamefully, judges do not stop these trials, and juries leave their brains at the door. They convict not because they are sure the case has been proved beyond reasonable doubt, but because they are angry and revolted. I am miserably sure there are disturbing numbers of people in prisons now, prosecuted on such charges, who are innocent of the accusations against them. It is our fault, because we have forgotten what justice is supposed to be like, and that, if we do not guard it in our hearts, it will perish in our country.”

If Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro’s one-sided, untested grand jury report is to be the standard by which we execute justice and formulate policy — without evidence, without trials, without a defense — then justice has already perished in our country. If our bishops publish lists of names of priests merely accused, but without substantiation, their credibility will perish with it.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this important post and visit these related posts from These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests

Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked