Tag Archives: #CatholicChurch

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Cardinal Wilton Gregory gains a very nice church and grounds to sell

St Mary Mother of God Church, Washington DC. Photo by Farragut, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

We noted, just yesterday, how the parish of St Mary Mother of God in Washington DC had lost the right to have the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin Mass. The website Crux, which claims to be an independent and objective news site covering the Catholic Church, has more:

DC parish rues Latin Mass ban, warns of financial and membership losses

By John Lavenburg | Monday, July 25, 2022

NEW YORK – The community at St. Mary Mother of God appealed to Cardinal Wilton Gregory during an archdiocesan synod listening session not to ban the Traditional Latin Mass at the parish, mainly because it would mean potentially losing about half of the parishioners.

That appeal failed. The listening sessions concluded in May, and Gregory announced July 22 that the Traditional Latin Mass would be restricted in the archdiocese to three non-parochial churches. The plan goes into effect on September 21.

For St. Mary’s, the change will be more than simply replacing a Mass in the Old Rite with a Mass in the New Rite. Parish vitality – in both the pews and community – is now a question mark, and closure isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Skipping down, here’s the money line:

The present St. Mary’s church was built in 1890 and has served downtown Washington, D.C. ever since. Currently, it serves three distinct communities. It has about 200 Traditional Latin Mass parishioners, 120 parishioners who attend Mass in the ordinary form in English, and about 100 Chinese parishioners who are ministered to autonomously.

Assuming that those numbers are reasonably accurate, that means that St Mary’s could lose roughly 48%, almost half, of its parishioners, parishioners who contribute roughly 60% of St Mary’s collections.

In the 25-minute homily, De Rosa also called it “unjust” that none of the people involved in this decision ever visited the St. Mary’s Traditional Latin Mass parishioners. De Rosa requested that Gregory visit the parish in the spring, and was told by Father Anthony Lickteig, the episcopal vicar for clergy, that “the Cardinal will not be able to visit St. Mary’s at this time due to his schedule,” according to a copy of the email obtained by Crux.

In other words, His Eminence, Wilton Cardinal Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, just plain didn’t care about the 200 parishioners who attend the Tridentine Mass at St Mary’s. You can try to explain it any other way you wish, but that’s what it all comes down to, he just didn’t care.

According to Fr De Rosa’s letter to his parishioners, the Tridentine Mass will now be celebrated at the Franciscan Monastery in Brookland, which is 3.8 miles from St Mary’s, about a 16 minute drive along US Route 1 North, not too far to drive, which means that many of the Old Rite parishioners might not be too put out, and able to make the trip.

It also means that for most of the Tridentine Mass parishioners, it won’t be too difficult to abandon their home parish.  And it means that Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Archbishop of Washington, will have a very nice church building and grounds to sell, when parish membership dwindles to 220 people.

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Have Pope Francis and Cardinal Wilton Gregory forgotten the duty of pastoral care?

I have said it many times before: no priest, no bishop, and no pope, should ever want fewer Masses said, and fewer parishioners in the pews.

But, alas! what seems to me to be so very obvious is not that obvious to His Holiness Pope Francis, and to some of the bishops.

Catholics in D.C. mourn loss of Latin Mass after decree bans practice

by William Wan | Sunday, July 24, 2022 | 4:23 PM EDT

Standing before his parishioners holding the sacred bread of Communion in his hands, Father Vincent De Rosa, the pastor of St. Mary Mother of God Parish, solemnly intoned in Latin, “Ecce Agnus Dei.”

The English translation of those words: Behold the lamb of God.

Those kneeling in the church responded with ancient words of their own, “Domine, non sum dignus.” Lord, I am not worthy.

An air of earnest contemplation hung over Sunday Mass, tinged by sadness.

This would be one of the last weeks the church’s parishioners would be able to celebrate using a traditional Latin form that traces its roots back more than a millennium.

Last year, prompted by ideological wars between conservative and liberal wings, Pope Francis said he wanted to limit use of the old Latin form of Mass.

This week, the consequences of that papal letter — issued halfway across the world — landed here in Washington with heavy consequences for this small parish in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

By Sept. 21, the parish was told, they were to cease use of the Latin rituals that had been part of St. Mary’s history almost since its founding in 1845.

There’s a good deal more, and for those who would be stopped by The Washington Post’s paywall, the article can be found here for free. But now, I’ll jump to the final three paragraphs:

De Rosa urged this flock to cling to truth, unity and their faith throughout the seismic changes to come for their parish.

Roughly 60 percent of the church’s collection money comes from parishioners who attend its 9 a.m. Latin mass on Sundays, said Sylvester Giustino, who serves on the parish finance council.

“I do worry about our parish and what happens in September,” he said. “I’m planning to stay. St. Mary has become a home to me. But for others who leave, I can understand that too. We’re not just losing the Latin Mass. We are going to be losing a lot of families and people who have been part of this community for years.”

A photo accompanying the article showed the church about half full for the 9:00 AM Tridentine Mass, and the parishioners neatly dressed, perhaps more neatly than in many other Novus ordo[1]New order Masses, those held in the vernacular, or local languages. masses. More than half of St Mary’s offerings come from that Mass, and while the article does not tell us that the vernacular Masses at St Mary’s are either better or worse attended, it seems that many of the Latin Mass parishioners are serious Catholics.

Why, then, would Wilton Cardinal Gregory, the Archbishop of Washington, want to alienate those Catholics? Some will, undoubtedly, attend the Novus ordo Masses offered, but it is also true that some will not. The Cardinal’s order does not affect three non-diocesan parishes, where the Tridentine Mass can continue in use, and perhaps some of the Latin Mass adherents will travel to one of those.

This is the Bible I have at home. Bought in 1977 or 1978, the binding is broken and the cover and pages show wear.

But some will not.

At home, my copy of the Bible is a New American Catholic Bible, a thorough retranslation from the most original manuscripts that could be found. The use of modern English makes it easier for someone who speaks modern English to understand.

But many Christians today, Catholic and Protestant alike, appreciate the Douay-Rheims and the King James Bibles, because there’s something about the Elizabethan era early modern English used which conveys a greater sense of nobility, of the grandeur of God. I certainly cannot testify to it, but I have to wonder: do the Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass do so because of a greater sense of grandeur?

There has been no suggestion, anywhere, not even by Pope Francis, that the Tridentine Mass is somehow doctrinally or spiritually invalid, and Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that in Summorum Pontificum, Article 1. Pope Francis, opposed as he is to the use of the Tridentine Mass, has allowed it to continue, though under far greater restrictions; that, alone, confirms that he has not attempted to invalidate the Traditional Latin Mass.

So, why restrict it at all?

The answer is not religious, but political. More conservative factions within the Church just don’t like Pope Francis’ liberalization moves, and far, far, far too many bishops, including The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, have been ignoring the biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior in favor of allowing various parishes, such as St Paul’s in Lexington, and His Holiness the Pope has used the restrictions on the Tridentine Mass as a weapon against the conservatives. Fewer Latin Masses means fewer conservative Catholics in the pews.

But that logic is silly. I attend a Novus ordo Mass, and always have. It has been less of a choice than it might have been, in that I haven’t lived anywhere near a parish which offered a Latin Mass, but even though I attend a Novus ordo Mass and parish, I’m as conservative a Catholic as there is. The real issue, to me, is that His Holiness the Pope is, in effect, kicking some Catholics out of the Church. Those who attend the Tridentine Mass are making more of a sacrifice to attend Mass: they are having to learn ritual responses not in their native language, and are frequently having to travel further[2]For me, that would be a journey of 70 miles. to attend Mass.

Some will move over and attend a vernacular Mass, and some will travel further to find a Tridentine Mass. But it is inevitable that some will attend Mass less frequently, and some may wind up staying away from church completely. Driving away parishioners is not good pastoral care.

References

References
↑1 New order Masses, those held in the vernacular, or local languages.
↑2 For me, that would be a journey of 70 miles.
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The Editorial Board of the San Francisco Examiner are appalled that the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco is actually Catholic!

It can get amusing when the Editorial Board of the San Francisco Examiner decides to appeal to His Holiness Pope Francis to get rid of a Catholic Archbishop who is actually, you know, Catholic!

Editorial: Attack on Nancy Pelosi should be San Francisco archbishop’s final act here

Cordileone denies Catholic Pelosi communion due to abortion right support

By The Examiner Editorial Board • May 21, 2022 • 6:00 AM PDT

In open defiance of Pope Francis, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Friday banned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from taking Holy Communion here in her home diocese. The reason? Her strong support of women’s abortion rights.

Cordileone’s decree was guaranteed to provoke deep chagrin among San Francisco Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Last year, Cordileone joined other bishops in the United States as they pushed to ban President Joe Biden from taking Communion. Pope Francis headed off that divisive idea, stating that Communion “is not the reward of saints, but is the bread of sinners.” He also told pro-choice President Biden that he is a “good Catholic.” Continue reading →

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Is Our Bishop Catholic?

Whenever I read that His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, is in the news, I cringe, because I know it’s not for something good. From the Catholic News Agency:

Bishop Stowe ‘not in favor’ of Eucharistic document, but predicts it will pass

By Joe Bukuras | November 12, 2021 | 19:05 EST

Boston: An outspoken critic of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ draft document on the Eucharist predicts it will be adopted at their fall assembly next week, though he intends to vote against it.

“I’m afraid it is,” Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., of Lexington, Ky., said during a media briefing Nov. 11 when asked if he thought the document, “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” is going to be adopted.

“I think it will [pass] because it’s blander than what was proposed at first, and it’s got something that I think was trying to appease everybody,” Stowe predicted, “and I think a lot of bishops would have a hard time voting against it because there’s not something so objectionable contained in it.”

Stowe’s comments came Nov. 11 during a livestreamed forum about the fall assembly sponsored by Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture in partnership with the National Catholic Reporter. The assembly begins Monday with a closed-door meeting at which the bishops are expected to have a private preliminary discussion about the Eucharistic document, prior to discussing and voting on it in public later in the week.

There’s a lot more at the original, but it basically informs the reader that the document does not contain any explicit language which states that abortion supporting politicians like Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion, but addresses worthily receiving the eucharist.

In response to Stowe’s comments, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver told CNA that the document on the Eucharist is in accordance with Pope Francis’ teaching.

“Bishop Stowe presents the discussion surrounding Eucharistic coherence as being motivated by a desire to return to a pre-Vatican II Church and to ignore Pope Francis’ teachings,” Aquila said.

“On the contrary, I believe that directly addressing the issue of worthily receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is completely in line with what the Holy Father has called for and is directly linked with encouraging a deeper belief in and reverence for our Lord in the Eucharist,” he said.

“Some bishops seem insistent on portraying this effort to teach clearly on worthy reception of Jesus in the Eucharist as divisive. By framing the discussion this way, they are in fact increasing division by failing to address the scandal given to the faithful by those public figures who insist on saying they are devout Catholics in communion with the Body of Christ, when they are blatantly advancing laws that allow the taking of innocent life and the serious distortion of human sexuality,” Aquila said.

From St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s that second part that bothers His Excellency the Bishop. The Diocese of Lexington does not have a lot of Catholic politicians advocating abortion, but it hosts, with the Bishop’s full support, a parish which openly supports homosexuality. He has openly supported homosexuality and transgenderism among parishioners, and if abortion is not a big topic in the Bluegrass State, a parish which welcomes open homosexuals in the same city as the Cathedral parish is pretty hard to ignore.

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

Let’s be plain here: in stating that one should only attempt to receive the Host validly, all active and non-repentant homosexuals are necessarily excluded. Of course His Excellence the Bishop is going to be opposed to it!

Our Bishop just does not want to seem to be Catholic!

Then, on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page on Wednesday, was this bit of joy:

Philly priest sexually abused a teen at Cardinal Dougherty High and on a Shore trip decades ago, lawsuit says

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been sued by a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest in 1981.

by Mensah H Dean | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

A Philadelphia priest who was on the faculty at Cardinal Dougherty High School in the 1980s sexually abused a teen there and also took the boy on a trip to Margate, where he served him alcohol and assaulted him, according to a lawsuit filed in Atlantic County Superior Court.

The Rev. Peter Foley sexually assaulted the boy, then 16, on a trip to the Shore in 1981 and also at the school, where they worked together on student council, the suit says.

Foley, 83, reached by phone Wednesday at the church-run retirement facility in Upper Darby where he lives, said he had never abused the teen — or anyone else — although he acknowledged he had given him alcohol.

“The allegations are false,” he said. “I did give the kid alcohol, but that’s as far as it went. He was 17 or 18.”

There’s more at the original.

I will admit to having a low tolerance for such stories, because a claim forty years old can hardly be defended against. Mt impression is that the petitioner is just seeking a f(ornicating) payday. But the story is at least credible, because, as always seems to be the case, the alleged victim is male. Three other related stories appeared:

And, what do you know, the only other story which specified an individual accuser also specified a male ‘victim.’

Bishop Stowe is going to bat to defend homosexuality, when homosexual activity is explicitly forbidden in the Bible he purports to believe. More, homosexuality has been a huge problem within the Catholic priesthood, and that problem has spilled out in the form of predator priests. while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. The John Jay Report noted that, of the abuse cases it studied, between 1950 and 2002, stated:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

The biggest problem with the Catholic priesthood has been homosexuality, and the Bishop of Lexington, by opposing this move by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is supporting allowing that problem to continue.

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The Catholic Church and the Right to Privacy

We have twice reported on Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned as General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after a conservative Catholic site used cell phone data to show him using Grindr, a homosexual dating app, and frequenting homosexual bars, and noted the New York Times story “Catholic Officials on Edge After Reports of Priests Using Grindr“. Naturally, the Church can’t say that it’s acceptable for priests to be using homosexual pick up apps, but the Church is very concerned about the privacy rights of priests, at least when it comes to their COVID vaccination status.

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

Which brings me to the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., the Bishop of Lexington. We have reported, many times, on the Bishop’s policies, with a rather jaundiced eye.

While I have heard no statements from Bishop Stowe concerning Pillar’s exposure of Msgr Burrill’s activities, it would seem that the Bishop is pretty much unconcerned with the privacy of priests in his diocese.

    Bishop Stowe: Catholics deserve to know if their priest is unvaccinated

    Michael J. O’Loughlin | September 16, 2021

    Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., last month asked that diocesan employees working at the Catholic Center in the Diocese of Lexington, Ky., vaccinate themselves against Covid-19, extending a mandate that had already been announced for faculty and staff at Catholic schools. The bishop said the diocese let go of “a handful” of employees who refused. When it came to priests in the diocese, the bishop said he turned to “moral persuasion,” urging them to vaccinate themselves as a way to protect parishioners. That seemed to work. About 92 percent of the diocese’s 50 priests have been vaccinated, a rate that puts them as a group well ahead of the 61 percent of adults in Kentucky who are fully vaccinated.

The math is pretty simple: 92% of 50 priests is 46 priests, meaning four diocesan priests are unvaccinated. The Bishop publicly exposed two of them, Father John Moriarty, the Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King parish, and Father David Wheeler, a parochial vicar at the Cathedral parish, as not having been vaccinated. The Cathedral parish is where the diocesan Bishop has his seat, so His Excellency the Bishop was unable to persuade two other priests that he sees, almost every day, at his resident parish, to get vaccinated.

The other two unvaccinated priests of his diocese have not been named.

I note that the report states that the Bishop “let go”, a euphemism for fired, “a handful” of employees who refused to be vaccinated, meaning that he took “a handful,” whatever that number happens to be, and threw them into poverty. While The Lord hears the cry of the poor, he might not expect one of his Bishops to add to the number of the poor.

    But for the few priests who chose not to be vaccinated, the bishop believes they owe it to their parishioners to be upfront about their status.

    “When I found out that four of them still were not vaccinated, I said they had to disclose that to their people because people were expecting they would be vaccinated,” Bishop Stowe told America. He said he also told the unvaccinated priests that “they couldn’t go into the homes of the sick or the homebound or be in close proximity” to worshippers.

Odd thing, though, that the Bishop would fire let go the “handful” of diocesan employees who declined to be vaccinated, but did not fire let go the four diocesan priests who refused. Could that be because lay employees are far easier to find in this economy, but priests are in short supply? With more parishes, 59, than priests, several priests, including my own parish pastor, who will turn 88 years old in a couple of weeks, have to serve more than one parish.

We have previously noted that Bishop Stowe has been very supportive of homosexual rights and recognition of ‘transgender’ individuals as the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they are, but I cannot accurately report his position on Pillar’s exposure of the homosexual activity of Msgr Burrill and the privacy rights of Catholic priests when it comes to their vows of celibacy. But we certainly know his views on the privacy rights of both his parish priests and lay employees when it comes to their vaccination status.

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A bad move by Bishop John Stowe

Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) visits dying gangster Whitey Brennan (Mark Margolis) in “Dedication.”

At the end of episode 15, Dedication, in the first season of Blue Bloods, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan visits Whitey Brennan, an Irish mobster whose son tried to assassinate the Commissioner. The elder Mr Brennan is in a nursing home, essentially waiting for death. Mr Reagan asks Mr Brennan if there’s anything he’d like to confess at the end, at which point the dying mobster laughs at him. The Commissioner then tells him, ‘Not to me,’ then opens the room door to admit a priest, so that Mr Brennan has an opportunity to make his last Confession. That’s a very powerful scene, at least for Catholics, but, with Bishop John Stowe’s new order, oops! so sorry, if you live in one of the widely spaced parishes in eastern Kentucky and your parish priest isn’t vaccinated, he can’t come to you to hear your last Confession.

It isn’t often that the Diocese of Lexington is mentioned by the Catholic News Agency, this being a very Protestant area, but it happened Tuesday morning:

    Unvaccinated clergy in Lexington, Kentucky barred from ministering to the sick and homebound elderly

    By Shannon Mullen, Joe Bukuras | Tuesday, September 14, 2021 |8:10 AM EDT

    The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

    Priests of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 may not minister to the sick, elderly, and homebound, Bishop John Stowe has directed.

    The policy was announced during a Saturday vigil Mass Sept. 11 that Bishop Stowe celebrated at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington.

    At the end of the liturgy, Deacon Tim Weinmann read a statement from the cathedral’s rector, Father John Moriarty, that both Fr. Moriarty and Father David Wheeler, the parochial vicar, have not been vaccinated.

    “The bishop has asked that Fr. David and I, Fr. John – I’m speaking for Fr. John – make an announcement that we are not vaccinated, so people can decide if they wanted to attend Mass where they were celebrating,” the deacon read, according to a video of the Mass posted by the Cathedral of Christ the King.

    “And if also the priests – and this has been done throughout the diocese – those priests that are not vaccinated are to follow the COVID protocol in the liturgy, and they are not allowed to visit the sick or elderly that are homebound,” the announcement continued. “Fr. John and Fr. David, again, have not been vaccinated.” Bishop Stowe stood beside Deacon Weinmann while the announcement was read but did not comment afterward.

You can see the announcement at the end of this video of the Mass, beginning at the 1:07:10 mark.

We have previously reported on the Bishop’s mandate that all employees at the Catholic Center must be vaccinated as a condition of employment, which has to mean that any who refuse will be fired. We have previously noted Bishop Stowe’s support for homosexuals, and that the diocese hosts St Paul’s Catholic Church, which is very openly “LGBTQ+” accepting, only a couple of miles from the cathedral parish, Cathedral of Christ the King, where the Bishop resides and has his seat. Bishop Stowe is fully aware of St Paul’s ‘mission.’ One wonders if our Bishop is more concerned with COVID-19 than he is the spiritual health of his parishioners.

Then again, I have often wondered if Bishop Stowe is more of a Democrat than he is a Catholic, the way Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and so many of our (purportedly) Catholic politicians are. Our Bishop is very much a supporter of liberal, Democratic political policies, and has been far more vocal about such than he has when it comes to abortion. While he noted, in yet another OpEd, that neither major party supports all of Catholic social teaching, he gave very short attention to Joe Biden’s support for abortion, two whole sentences, with neither mentioning that Me Biden also wants to have the taxpayers, which would include Catholics, pay for abortions, he devoted several long paragraphs condemning conservative policies on welfare and illegal immigration. The Bishop called President Trump “so much anti-life,” something that, sadly, our local parish priest reiterated in his homily. As noted above, he supports the diocese’s homosexual activist parish, and he has broken with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Equality Act. The USCCB opposes the legislation due to the fact that it does not contain sufficient protection for matters of religion and conscience, and might require Catholic diocese and other organizations to hire or retain open homosexuals or transsexuals living in a state of open scandal.

I have heard His Excellency the Bishop at Mass, twice, in our very small parish, and I can tell you that he is an excellent preacher who really tries to connect with his parishioners. If you are capable of being inspired by a priest’s homily, Bishop Stowe will inspire you. I have no reason at all to doubt his faith.

But, sadly enough, I do see reason to doubt whether his Catholic faith is stronger than his Democratic allegiance. He basically gave Catholic parishioners a choice of opting out of Mass if either Fr. John Moriarty or Fr. David Wheeler is the celebrant . . . and those are the only two priests other than the Bishop noted in the Cathedral staff directory. I guess that the Bishop will, personally, visit all of the shut-ins in his parish.

Of course, the Cathedral parish is a large one, with three priests, but, the diocese being a very much Protestant one, we have, overall, small parishes covering large geographic areas. My own pastor, who is in his eighties, has to cover two parishes, and it isn’t physically easy on him. I’m certain that he is vaccinated, since he adds, every Sunday, a plea for everyone to get vaccinated. Still, if two priests, in the Cathedral parish, with the Bishop hanging over their heads every day, have chosen not to get vaccinated, the obvious question is: how many other priests, in smaller, rural parishes scattered throughout eastern Kentucky, have also chosen against vaccination? The Bishop has just said that such priests cannot visit the sick and the homebound, which, in effect, denies the sacraments to some ill or elderly parishioners who might want and need them.

I understand the Bishop’s concerns about the virus, and, like him, I believe that everybody should get vaccinated, though I oppose vaccine mandates. But the Bishop’s latest actions hurt his parishioners.

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Theodore McCarrick illustrates the problem, but he is not the only problem

I have said it before: the Catholic priesthood must be changed, and restricted to married, heterosexual men.

Mandatory celibacy for priests was not established until the Second Lateran Council in 1139, and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in 1563. That means that, for 1,100 years, the majority of Church history, priests could be, and were mostly expected to be, married men.

With humans being naturally inclined to mate, the Church is expecting the priest to live an unnatural lifestyle. Human beings need to mate, they need to be married, and the celibacy discipline denies to Catholic priests that most basic normalcy in human life. Even St Paul, who stated that he was celibate, noted that marriage was the natural condition of life,[1]I Corinthians 7:1-11. And St Paul also set down the conditions that a man must meet to be a deacon, priest or bishop:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?[2]1 Timothy 3:1-5

St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, at least had been married at one point: Matthew 8:14-15 refers to his mother-in-law, though there is no reference to St Peter’s wife in the Bible.[3]1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to … Continue reading

The conditions for priests and deacon are similar. But clearly, St Paul expected those in Holy Orders to mostly be married.

Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick pleads not guilty to child sex assault; some in crowd outside yell, ‘Shame on you!’

By Kurt Shillinger  and Michelle Boorstein | September 3, 2021 | 9:55 a.m. EDT

DEDHAM, Mass. — Disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 91, in street clothes, stooped and using a walker, was arraigned Friday in a suburban Boston courtroom on three counts of criminal child sex abuse.

It was the first time the former Catholic archbishop of Washington had appeared in public since 2018, when his fall began amid a wave of sex abuse allegations. Some in the crowd outside, including survivors of other assaults, screamed at the former global power-broker: “Shame on you! Prince of the church!”

Inside, McCarrick was charged with sexually assaulting a teen in the 1970s, the first time a U.S. cardinal has faced a criminal charge of abuse. He pleaded not guilty during the hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. Judge Michael J. Pomarole ordered McCarrick to give up his passport and to stay away from people under the age of 18, as well as the victim.

There’s much more at the original, but the story of the former Cardinal is well-known: after scads of evidence, Pope Francis took away his title as Cardinal, and eventually he was laicized. Let’s be honest about it: Mr McCarrick was a predatory homosexual, using his power and position to abuse not just teenagers, but seminarians and subordinate priests.

We need to tell the truth here: while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. Several different Google searches have failed to turn up any notation concerning the number of victims in the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report divided by sex, something of obvious interest, because such would reinforce the rather obvious fact that most victims of an all-male clergy have been boys. The John Jay report noted that sexual abuse cases studied between 1950 and 2002 indicated that, rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.[4]The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.

A celibate priesthood is a sexually immature priesthood. Sorry to tell the truth here, but if you have never, or only rarely, had sexual relations, you have simply not had time to mature in those relations.

There is no way that the Catholic Church could find a way to accommodate the sexual desires of its homosexual priests, when the Church holds that homosexuals cannot be married, that sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful,[5]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353 that homosexual activity is “gravely depraved”,[6]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357 and that homosexuality itself is “objectively disordered.”[7]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358 This can mean only one thing: that Catholic priests must be heterosexual, and that they must be married.

This is a celibacy problem, in that priests are forced to live unnatural lives, but while it might be politically incorrect, it is also intellectually dishonest to deny that this is a homosexuality problem as well. We have a priesthood of sexually immature men who are far more heavily than the population homosexual in orientation. The statistics we do have indicate that they were preying on boys just entering puberty, not prepubescent children, and that is an indication that sexual orientation as opposed to pedophilia is the primary motivation.

We need a priesthood who understand and participate in normal, adult sexual relationships, and, given that the Church does not, and cannot, recognize homosexual marriages as legitimate, that can mean only one thing: a priesthood in normal, heterosexual marriages.

That will not eliminate all sexual abuse; Jerry Sandusky, were he available for comment — and cared to tell the truth — could tell us all about men in stable, heterosexual marriages who still had a preference for underaged boys. Nor will it prevent the inevitable, some priests being divorced by their wives, and some children or married priests turning out badly.

But it has to be better than what we have now, a priesthood with an out-of-proportion homosexual cohort, and all being denied the most natural of human impulses, that of mating.

This is what we must have, this is what the Catholic Church needs in order to survive to serve the faithful into the future. Denying it, because it is politically incorrect, is denying the truth.

Back to The Washington Post:

While shocking, due to the popularity and power of the sprightly, charismatic McCarrick, his case came two decades after the Catholic sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston and spread everywhere from high-level sports to the Boy Scouts. Forty-six U.S. bishops have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct with minors, according to BishopAccountability. Many thousands of complaints have been filed and multiple dioceses have filed for bankruptcy to cover costs of attorneys and settlements.

But McCarrick is one of only two U.S. bishops who have been criminally charged. The charges against former Springfield bishop Thomas Dupre were dropped the same day, in 2004, with prosecutors citing the statute of limitations.

Forty-six bishops, forty-six bishops! They might not all be guilty, and must be proven innocent until proven otherwise, at least legally.

Pope Francis has recognized the problem:

Pope Francis warned Italian bishops this week to vet carefully applicants to the priesthood and reject anyone they suspected might be homosexual, local media reported on Thursday.

‘Keep an eye on the admissions to seminaries, keep your eyes open,’ the pope was quoted as saying by newspaper La Stampa’s Vatican Insider service. ‘If in doubt, better not let them enter.’

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the remarks, which Vatican Insider and Il Messaggero said were made at a closed-door gathering on Monday.”

Had the Pope’s admonition been put in place by Pope Pius XII, who was the Bishop of Rome when Mr McCarrick entered the seminary, perhaps he would never have become a priest, perhaps all of the disastrous behavior he exhibited while under Holy Orders would have been avoided. Had we a married priesthood, perhaps we would not have the shortage of priests we have now, and perhaps, just perhaps, we would not have had the scandals which have rocked the Church.

Mr McCarrick is an infirm, old man, who might not spend a minute in jail, who might not even survive until the end of his trial. Quite frankly, I don’t really care what happens to him at this point; his punishment is the disgrace he has suffered, and that will probably have to be enough.

But Mr McCarrick is the symbol of what has gone wrong in the Catholic Church, and tells us, if we are willing to look honestly at the problem, what the solution is: while not all homosexuals are predators going after minors, while some truly can remain celibate, their continued presence in the Church has been a persistent problem, and one which will not go away by simply ignoring it. Those who have done nothing wrong should not be somehow kicked out of the priesthood, but we must open the seminaries to married men, as we already have with permanent deacons, and restrict them to mature, married men.

References

References
↑1 I Corinthians 7:1-11.
↑2 1 Timothy 3:1-5
↑3 1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to Peter.
↑4 The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.
↑5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353
↑6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357
↑7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358
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I point at the moon; they stare at my finger When the left don't like the information, they attack the gathering of the facts

We noted, a month ago, the story of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned as General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after a conservative Catholic site used cell phone data to show him using Grindr, a homosexual dating app, and frequenting homosexual bars. But, as is so often the case with the left, the liberals got all upset about the wrong thing, and The New York Times spent 1,599 works to completely miss the point!

Catholic Officials on Edge After Reports of Priests Using Grindr

A conservative Catholic media organization, The Pillar, has published several reports claiming the use of dating apps at several churches and the Vatican.

by Liam Stack | August 20, 2021

The reports hit the Roman Catholic Church in rapid succession: Analyses of cellphone data obtained by a conservative Catholic blog seemed to show priests at multiple levels of the Catholic hierarchy in both the United States and the Vatican using the gay hookup app Grindr.

The first report, published late last month, led to the resignation of Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill, the former general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference. The second, posted online days later, made claims about the use of Grindr by unnamed people in unspecified rectories in the Archdiocese of Newark. The third, published days after that, claimed that in 2018 at least 32 mobile devices emitted dating app data signals from within areas of Vatican City that are off-limits to tourists.

The reports by the blog, The Pillar, have unnerved the leadership of the American Catholic Church and have introduced a potentially powerful new weapon into the culture war between supporters of Pope Francis and his conservative critics: cellphone data, which many users assume to be unavailable to the general public.

“When there is reporting out there that claims to expose activity like this in parishes around the country and also on Vatican grounds, that is a five-alarm fire for church officials, there is no doubt about it,” said John Gehring, the Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a progressive advocacy group.

Note that Faith in Public Life is very much a homosexual rights activist group.

The reports have put church officials in an awkward position: Priests take a vow of celibacy that is in no way flexible, and the downloading or use of dating apps by clergy members is inconsistent with that vow. But officials are also deeply uncomfortable with the use of cellphone data to publicly police priests’ behavior. Vatican officials said they met with representatives from the blog in June but would not publicly respond to its reports.

“If someone who has made promise of celibacy or a vow of chastity has a dating app on his or her phone, that is asking for trouble,” said Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark at a Zoom panel organized by Georgetown University. (He declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Of course, His Eminence the Cardinal is far, far, far more concerned with the fact that some priests have been ‘outed’ as active homosexuals than he is about them being active homosexuals!

“I would also say that I think there are very questionable ethics around the collection of this data of people who allegedly may have broken their promises,” he said.

In American jurisprudence, information about a criminal suspect has to be gathered legally, and Americans tend to look at evidence gathered about people concerning things other than criminal law in the same manner.  But the investigation exposed by The Pillar, however it was gathered, has exposed, yet again, the problem of priests not keeping their vows. The Cardinal somehow doesn’t see that as that big a deal. “(T)hat is asking for trouble”? “(P)eople who allegedly may have broken their promises”? I’m sorry, but that is mealy-mouthing the issue.

The only app explicitly named in the reports has been Grindr, which is used almost exclusively by gay and bisexual men, although The Pillar has made vague references to other apps it says are used by heterosexuals. Only one of the reports directly links an app to a specific person, Monsignor Burrill.

The reports have been criticized by Catholic liberals for tying the general use of Grindr to studies that show minors sometimes use the app as well. That conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia is part of a longstanding effort by Catholic conservatives to blame the church sex abuse crisis on the presence of gay men in the priesthood.

Of course, there it is. I wrote, three years ago, about the problems in the Catholic priesthood, including the fact that a significantly large percentage of priests are homosexual,

the actual number unknown, but most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population.[1]The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1.1% either … Continue reading

The Church does not want to admit that homosexuality is related to the sexual abuse of minors by priests, but the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. Several different Google searches have failed to turn up any notation concerning the number of victims in the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report divided by sex, something of obvious interest, because such would reinforce the rather obvious fact that most victims of an all-male clergy have been boys. The John Jay report noted that sexual abuse cases studied between 1950 and 2002 indicated that, rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

Only willful, deliberate ignorance could contend that such numbers don’t indicate a problem with homosexuality among priests.

The editors of The Pillar, J.D. Flynn and Ed Condon, said their work was motivated by a desire to expose a secretive culture of wrongdoing within the church.

“Immoral and illicit sexual behavior on the part of clerics who are bound to celibacy, but also on the part of other church leaders, could lead to a broad sense of tolerance for any number or kinds of sexual sins,” Mr. Flynn said on the podcast.

They said Newark was the only American diocese they wrote about because it was once led by the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked in 2019 and charged last month with sexually assaulting a child in Massachusetts in 1974.

But their decision to investigate the use of a gay dating app in suburban New Jersey, instead of a city with a large gay population, has raised suspicion that their real goal may have been to undermine Cardinal Tobin, an ally of Pope Francis.

So, now The Pillar is being accused of targeting Cardinal Tobin and his archdiocese, as that somehow exculpates the entire behavioral issue.

A great deal of the Times article concerns how The Pillar obtained their information, and it includes a lot of speculation that is hardly consistent with good journalism.

Father Bob Bonnot, the executive director of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, said the use of cellphone data to track the movement of Monsignor Burrill had deepened a sense of vulnerability many priests feel.

“It can be terribly threatening,” he said. “It can make all priests uncomfortable and worried.”

It makes them worried about what, that such cell phone tracking might expose their own homosexual hook ups?

I don’t know why so many homosexuals are attracted to the priesthood. My guess is that they know that homosexual relationships are immoral and sinful, and they hope that, by the grace of God and the promise to be celibate, they can live life celibately.

But this really is a celibacy problem, in that priests are forced to live unnatural lives, and while it might be politically incorrect, it is also intellectually dishonest to deny that this is a homosexuality problem as well. We have a priesthood of sexually immature men — what else could they be, having been denied mature sexual relationships by the nature of their careers? — who are far more heavily than the population homosexual in orientation. The statistics we do have indicate that they were preying on boys just entering puberty, not prepubescent children, and that is an indication that sexual orientation as opposed to pedophilia is the primary motivation.

We need a priesthood who understand and participate in normal, adult sexual relationships, and, given that the Church does not, and cannot, recognize homosexual marriages as legitimate, that can mean only one thing: a priesthood in normal, heterosexual marriages.

That will not eliminate all sexual abuse; Jerry Sandusky, were he available for comment — and cared to tell the truth — could tell us all about men in stable, heterosexual marriages who still had a preference for underaged boys. Nor will it prevent the inevitable, some priests being divorced by their wives, and some children or married priests turning out badly.

But it has to be better than what we have now, a priesthood with an out-of-proportion homosexual cohort, and all being denied the most natural of human impulses, that of mating.

This is what we must have, this is what the Catholic Church needs in order to survive to serve the faithful into the future. Denying it, because it is politically incorrect, is denying the truth.

References

References
↑1 The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1.1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond. This does not support the article’s contention that 3.8% of the population are homosexual.
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Nothing is private anymore.

I will admit to some surprise that The Washington Post referred to homosexuals as “queer,” so much so that I made a screen capture of it before it got changed! You can click on the image to enlarge it.

The story is two-fold. It details how Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned as General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops “impending media reports alleging possible improper behavior.” But it also details how nothing remains private anymore.

    Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to gay bars

    By Michelle Boorstein, Marisa Iati and Annys Shin | July 20, 2021 | 5:11 PM EDT

    The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after a Catholic media site told the conference it had access to cellphone data that appeared to show he was a regular user of Grindr, the queer dating app, and frequented gay bars.

    Some privacy experts said that they couldn’t recall other instances of phone data being de-anonymized and reported publicly, but that it’s not illegal and will likely happen more as people come to understand what data is available about others.

    Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill has since last fall been the general secretary of the USCCB, a position that coordinates all administrative work and planning for the conference, which is the country’s network for Catholic bishops. As a priest, he takes a vow of celibacy. Catholic teaching opposes sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage.

I am not in the least upset that an actively homosexual priest has lost his job. However, this story makes two very important points:

  1. What was done to ‘out’ Monsignor Burrill was not illegal; and
  2. If you are dumb enough to engage in activity you would not want revealed, don’t be stupid enough to use your Smart Phone to do it.

Duhhh!

    The National Catholic Reporter was the first to report Tuesday morning that Burrill had resigned, citing a memo from Archbishop José Gomez, the USCCB president, to other bishops. The Tuesday memo said it was “with sadness” that Gomez announced Burrill’s resignation, saying the day before, the USCCB staff learned of “impending media reports alleging possible improper behavior.”

    Burrill is a priest from the La Crosse, Wis., diocese and was a parish priest and a professor before joining the administrative staff of the USCCB in 2016. Some USCCB staff and former staff said they were reeling and shocked.

Reeling and shocked? Yeah, I’m guessing: not so much. We have previously noted that a whole lot of priests are homosexual:

    Of course, many factors influence a person’s decision to join the clergy; it’s not like sexuality alone determines vocations. But it’s dishonest to dismiss sexuality’s influence given that we know there is a disproportionate number of gay priests, despite the church’s hostility toward LGBTQ identity. As a gay priest told Frontline in a February 2014 episode, “I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gays when a lot of priests are gay.”

    So how many gay priests actually exist? While there’s a glut of homoerotic writings from priests going back to the Middle Ages, obtaining an accurate count is tough. But most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population.[1]The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% … Continue reading

    In the last half century there’s also been an increased “gaying of the priesthood” in the West. Throughout the 1970s, several hundred men left the priesthood each year, many of them for marriage. As straight priests left the church for domestic bliss, the proportion of remaining priests who were gay grew. In a survey of several thousand priests in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times found that 28 percent of priests between the ages of 46 and 55 reported that they were gay. This statistic was higher than the percentages found in other age brackets and reflected the outflow of straight priests throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

    The high number of gay priests also became evident in the 1980s, when the priesthood was hit hard by the AIDS crisis that was afflicting the gay community. The Kansas City Star estimated that at least 300 U.S. priests suffered AIDS-related deaths between the mid-1980s and 1999. The Star concluded that priests were about twice as likely as other adult men to die from AIDS.

So, no, when I am told that the Catholic bishops and their staff are “reeling and shocked” that one of their own is homosexual, and actively seeking sex, I look at that statement with a jaundiced eye.

Father Burrill was a Monsignor, a now honorary title granted by the Pope to a diocesan priest, normally upon the recommendation of his local bishop. Pope Francis suspended the practice of granting the title, except to members of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, because he thought it led to clerical careerism. Father Burrill would have to have been a well-known priest of some standing for his local ordinary to submit his name to Rome for the honorific. But a priest frequenting homosexual bars would be found out.

    It wasn’t clear who had collected the information about Burrill. USCCB spokespeople declined to answer questions Tuesday about what it knew about the information-gathering and what its leadership feels about it, except to say the USCCB wasn’t involved. They also declined to comment on whether they knew if Burrill’s alleged actions were tracked on a private or church-owned phone.

No, the last thing the bishops want is someone looking into the sexual activity of a purportedly celibate priesthood!

    The resignation stemmed from reporting in the Pillar, an online newsletter that reports on the Catholic Church. Tuesday afternoon, after Burrill’s resignation became public, the Pillar reported that it had obtained information based on the data Grindr collects from its users, and hired an independent firm to authenticate it.

    “A mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 — at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities,” the Pillar reported.

There’s a lot more at the original, primarily concerning how Msgr Burrill’s activities were discovered and documented. One thing is obvious: someone was targeting the USCCB, at least in general, if not Msgr Burrill specifically.

The Post concluded:

    The report comes the same week as The Post and other organizations reported that military-grade spyware normally leased to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and others, revealing new concerns and issues around technology and privacy and democracy.

This time, the data mining caught a misbehaving Catholic priest, but it’s as obvious as can be: if you are using technology to do something you shouldn’t be doing, you are vulnerable to getting caught; all that it takes is for someone who knows what he’s doing to look.

References

References
↑1 The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond. This does not support the article’s contention that 3.8% of the population are homosexual.