Tag Archives: #CatholicChurch

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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.
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Will other bishops and priests have this kind of courage?

Among all of the talk about denying the Eucharist to (purportedly) Catholic politicians who support abortion, I have very, very rarely heard of it actually being done. From the Catholic News Agency:

    Diocese responds after state senator says he was denied Communion

    By Kate Scanlon | July 19, 2021 | 2:30 PM EDT

    Washington, DC: After a New Mexico state senator said he was denied Communion this weekend because of a political matter, his diocese responded that it had privately warned him he should not approach for Communion, due to his obstinate support for a pro-abortion bill.

    In a tweet on Saturday, July 17, New Mexico state Sen. Joe Cervantes (D) wrote he “was denied communion last night by the Catholic bishop here in Las Cruces and based on my political office.”

    “My new parish priest has indicated he will do the same after the last was run off,” Cervantes added. “Please pray for church authorities as Catholicism transitions under Pope Francis.” The senator represents New Mexico’s 31st district, around Las Cruces.

    In response, Christopher Velasquez, director of communications for the Diocese of Las Cruces, told CNA on Monday that it is “unfortunate that a pastoral issue with a member of the local church be publicized.”

Mr Velasquez stated that Senator Cervantes was notified, several times, by both the Most Reverend Peter Baldacchino, Bishop of Las Cruces, and his local diocesan pastor, that if he voted for Senate Bill 10, which Mr Cervantes cosponsored, repealed a 1969 state law criminalizing abortions, he should not present himself to receive the ERucharist. That law has not been enforced since the odious Roe v Wade decision, but if the Supreme Court ever overruled Roe v Wade, the New Mexico law could come back into effect. The Bishop, Mr Valasquez said, had not received any reply from Senator Cervantes. The article did not specify whether Mr Cervantes had responded to his diocesan pastor.

It’s good to see a Bishop with the courage of his convictions and his faith. If only more bishops and priests would show the same mettle.

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It only took one line to reveal the reporter’s ignorance and bias

We noted yesterday the hypocrisy of the oh so #woke New York Times. And now we can see how one almost throwaway line exposes the bias and ignorance of Times reporter Jason Horowitz:

Vatican Warns U.S. Bishops: Don’t Deny Biden Communion Over Abortion

Conservative American Catholic bishops are pressing for a debate over whether Catholics who support the right to an abortion should be allowed to take Communion.

by Jason Horowitz | June 14, 2021 | 5:41 PM EDT

ROME — The Vatican has warned conservative American bishops to hit the brakes on their push to deny communion to politicians supportive of abortion rights — including President Biden, a faithful churchgoer and the first Roman Catholic to occupy the Oval Office in 60 years.

But despite the remarkably public stop sign from Rome, the American bishops are pressing ahead anyway and are expected to force a debate on the communion issue at a remote meeting that starts on Wednesday.

But the money line is in the next paragraph:

Some leading bishops, whose priorities clearly aligned with former President Donald J. Trump, now want to reassert the centrality of opposition to abortion in the Catholic faith and lay down a hard line — especially with a liberal Catholic in the Oval Office.

What kind of ignorance is this? The Catholic Church was a vocal opponent of abortion and euthanasia long before Donald Trump burst onto the political scene. The Church has been opposed to same-sex ‘marriage’ and ‘transgenderism’ long before the 2016 election.

But it is also true that the Church has been primarily on the political left on other issues. The Church is very much in favor of greatly eased immigration restrictions, the Church would like to see greatly increased social welfare programs, the Church favors economic changes far more in line with European ‘democratic socialism,’ and the Church is very concerned with environmental issues, especially global warming climate change. None of those policies are exactly Trumpian.

Did Mr Horowitz not know these things, or was he trying to use propaganda to undermine the more conservative bishops?

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Is Our Bishop Catholic? The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, supports things which are clearly not Catholic

When I saw this article referenced in my email, I had a sinking feeling that the Bishop of Lexington would be one of the two:

Two US bishops back pro-LGBT campaign calling for acceptance of men who claim to be female

Bishops Wester and Stowe joined the Human Rights Campaign in calling for ‘transgender individuals’ to be ‘treated with dignity and respect’

By Pete Baklinski | Friday, April 9, 2021 | 5:17 PM ET

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

April 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A U.S. Catholic archbishop along with a bishop and several priests joined up with the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign in releasing an April 1 letter affirming “transgender individuals” — men who claim they are women and women who claim they are men — while calling for an end to the “epidemic of violence” that they say such individuals face.

“We, Bishops, religious and lay leaders of the Roman Catholic Church join with the Human Rights Campaign in calling for an end to the epidemic of violence against transgender individuals,” states the letter signed by Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester and Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington.

Yup, I guessed right: His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington was one of the two.

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that the male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities willed and created by God. The view is backed by science which conclusively shows that the sexual difference between men and women exists in genetics, endocrinology, and neurology. Even from the very first moment of conception male cells containing XY chromosomes differ from female cells containing XX chromosomes.

The 2019 Declaration of Truths put out by several prominent Catholic bishops along with a cardinal states that it is a “rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate.”

Is the Bishop of Lexington even Catholic? The Catechism of the Catholic Church is something with which our priests and bishops purportedly agree, yet here the Bishop of my diocese is telling the parishioners of his diocese that the Catechism is wrong, that the Bible is wrong, and that the Church throughout all of its millennia are wrong.

His Excellency the Bishop is a great priest in one regard. He has twice celebrated Mass in our small parish, for the Sacrament of Confirmation, and I can tell you, he is excellent at it. He is dynamic, he is active, and no one would ever be in doubt that he truly believes what he says. If you are Catholic, and you participate in a Mass he celebrates, you will come away inspired.

But while it’s clear that he truly believes what he says, is what he believes actually Catholic, actually Christian?

Wester and Stowe have a history of pushing the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church. Earlier this year, they joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark and a few other bishops in signing a statement in partnership with the pro-homosexual Tyler Clementi Foundation in support of young people who identify as LGBT, telling them that “God is on your side.”

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

This is what it’s website calls “Historic St. Paul Roman Catholic Church,” at 425 West Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s mission clearly includes supporting homosexuality among Catholics, and it is very clear that His Excellency the Bishop supports St Paul’s and its self-perceived mission. Trouble is, the Catholic Church, and the Bible, do not.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, concerning homosexuality:

§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

§2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

§2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What part of “under no circumstances can they be approved” do some priests and bishops find unclear?

Another photo 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 simple: the Church recognizes that some people simply are homosexual, but that while it is a sore trial for them, they are called to remain celibate. That is not what St Paul’s Catholic Church, a church in Bishop Stowe’s diocese, seems to do.[1]I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not … Continue reading

As we noted here, His Holiness the Pope explicitly ruled out ‘blessings’ for homosexual unions.

Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and priest, wrote:

Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church.

Dire consequences will follow the exposure of this sexual system embedded in a secret celibate culture. Authorities who are or have been sexually active, although not with minors, are hard put to publicly correct clerics who are abusing minors. The need for secrecy, the cover-up, extends beyond defending criminal activity of a sex abuser. The power and control that holds the Roman Catholic church together depends on preservation of the celibate myth. The Vatican and Pope John Paul II declared its inviolability.

The truth about secret sex in the celibate system portends grave danger. The reality of celibate violations extends beyond priests who abuse minors and the bishops who hide them.

And this points up another problem: if “sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles,” that means that it is largely homosexual activity, something else expressly forbidden. How many 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. [2]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.

The John Jay Report on the sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons within the Church, 1950-2002, noted that 81% of the known victims, of an all-male clergy, were boys, and that they tended not to be smaller children, but boys entering and through puberty. This was not pedophilia, but homosexual attraction.

Sadly, the Bishop of Lexington has supported the misbegotten New Ways Ministry, and now transgenderism as well. I have no idea what Bishop Stowe’s sexual orientation is. He has taken a vow of celibacy, and I presume here that he has kept it. But homosexual orientation has been rampant in the Church, even if we aren’t certain what the exact numbers are, and the Bishop of Lexington has lost his way on sexual issues.

I get it: the left believe that it’s just wrong to deny homosexuals their desires, but a Catholic priest, a Catholic bishop, must follow the teachings of the Bible in which they all profess to believe, and the Bible is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual activity, in both the Old and New Testaments. While some have claimed that Jesus never personally addressed homosexual activity, specifically, they are incorrect.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19 Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The law included the prohibition on homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22, and proscribes the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. There is no ambiguity whatsoever in this.

Our Bishop has lost his way. He is responsible for the instruction of the parishioners in his diocese in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but his most publicly visible teachings, the ones which have gotten the most attention outside of the Church, are teachings which contravene the doctrine of the Church. His piety appears to be beyond question, his internal faith in his beliefs strong, but his beliefs when it comes to sexual matters are just plain wrong. I understand his sympathies, but allowing his sympathies to teach that what is immoral is acceptable, that what is sinful is not sinful, leads the faithful not up the stairway to Heaven but down the highway to Hell.

References

References
↑1 I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not do that.
↑2 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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I wonder if King Henry VIII is smiling about this somewhere

As we noted yesterday, Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic doctrine, and said that priests may not ‘bless’ homosexual unions of any sort.

Group of priests vows to defy Vatican and continue blessing same-sex couples

By Caitlyn O’Kane | March 17, 2021 | 9:43 AM EDT | CBS News

A group of priests who have distanced themselves from the Catholic Church are criticizing the Vatican’s recent decree that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages. The Austrian Priests’ Initiative, a group of priests leading a campaign of disobedience against the Vatican, said this week they will continue to bless same-sex couples.

The initiative (also as Pfarrer-Initiative) said in a statement that its members “are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that wants to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples.”

Appalled? Then these turbulent priests must be appalled that God, the God they claim to worship and serve, did more than just “prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples,” but specified a rather harsh punishment for them. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, whose name they invoke in every Mass, in whom they say they believe when they recite the Nicene Creed, which is part of the Mass that those priests supposedly celebrate every day, in which they purportedly believe, said that “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law,” and that “whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” The Law included the prohibitions on homosexual activity, and the Son of God said that the Law would not pass away, but apparently these priests believe themselves to be wiser, nobler, and just plain better than the Messiah they claim to worship.

King Henry VIII had his problems with the Church as well, and he went and split his kingdom away from the Catholic Church, though I would guess that even His Majesty the King would have problems with what the revolting priests are saying, given that he had An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie (25 Hen. 8 c. 6) passed by Parliament, which specified the penalty as death.

“This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to be overcome with Pope Francis,” the group’s statement continues. “In solidarity with so many, we will not reject any loving couple in the future who wants to celebrate God’s blessing, which they experience every day, in a church-service.”

“Reality has long since shown that same-sex couples connected in love can very well celebrate God’s blessing in church. A state-of-the-art theology establishes this responsible practice,” the statement reads.

Clearly, God, when he gave the Law to Moses, something every Catholic priest affirms that he believes truly happened, did not think that homosexual “love” was permissible, but, now we know that Father Helmut Schüller and his adherents believe that they are wiser than God. Obviously, when Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, something that every Catholic priest supposedly believes happened, that the Law was and always would remain unchanged, he included the total prohibition on homosexual activity, but the roughly 350 members of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative must believe that they are somehow wiser than the only begotten Son of God, in whom they have professed belief.

We do have a word for it; it is called Protestantism. They should embrace that word, because that is what they have become.

“The Austrian Priest’s Initiative is an Austria-wide movement of Roman Catholic priests and deacons who follow their conscience and campaign for new paths in the church,” the group said in its statement. “Its goals are: lively congregations, contemporary synodal church structures and, above all, a credible and open-minded world church that focuses on sincere service to people.”

How odd. Here I thought that the Church focused primarily on bringing people closer to God, for the salvation of their souls.

The group also said it “vehemently” protests against the assumption that same-sex couples are not part of God’s divine plan. “We deeply regret that this decree, which seeks to revive the spirit of bygone times, widens the gap between Roman bureaucracy and the local Church,” the group said. “This decree offends many Christians and obscures and discredits the liberating message of Jesus.”

“The liberating message of Jesus”? The last I knew, Jesus did not liberate people from the Law, but tightened the law. He said that the Law concerning adultery stood, but also pointed out that the thought behind adultery was a violation, even if the physical act didn’t occur.

Is there an underlying reason that these priests are so dedicated to schism on this issue? As I asked 2½ years ago, How many 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.

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.

I do not know why so many homosexual men are attracted to the priesthood, though I do have a pet theory. But that there are so many of them leads to the obvious question: are they doing this because they wish to enter into homosexual marriages themselves? After all: one of the goals of the Austrian Priest’s Initiative is that a man or woman, married or unmarried, can serve as a priest. They could, were their group to get its way, enter into homosexual marriages and still keep their jobs as priests.

Is that cynical thinking on my part? Yes, I suppose that it is. But it is also thinking that makes perfect sense.

The Bible holds many laws and restrictions for living a life that is upright and moral, things which Catholic priests claim to believe. Do the members of the Austrian Priest’s Initiative believe that, say, the commandment that we shall not commit adultery is somehow not really valid anymore, because, hey, an adulterous couple really could love each other? Maybe the Austrian priests would say, “Hey, they can get divorced and then marry each other, but, oops!, Jesus had something to say about that as well, something stricter than Mosaic Law.

What about the teaching on abortion? After all, some women feel that they really, really need to have an abortion! Do the Austrian priests simply nod sagely and tell them that it’s sad, but acceptable?

Perhaps my conclusion is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that the Austrian priests either do not believe in that part of the Nicene Creed, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come,” or at least they think that less important than our limited, mortal lives here on earth.

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His Holiness the Pope tries to actually be Catholic

Yes, Pope Francis did the right thing, eventually, but this should never have taken as long as it did. From The Wall Street Journal:

Vatican Rules Out Blessings for Same-Sex Relationships, Despite Calls for Liberalization

Pope Francis pushes back at some liberal bishops’ call for church to embrace gay unions

By Francis X. Rocca | Updated March 15, 2021 | 9:55 AM EDT

ROME—The Vatican on Monday forbade blessings of same-sex relationships, contradicting calls for the practice by progressive bishops in Germany and elsewhere, and setting a limit to the conciliatory approach to gay people that has marked Pope Francis’ pontificate.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, in a document personally approved by Pope Francis, said it wasn’t permissible for clergy to pronounce blessings on any sexual relationship outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

His Holiness the Pope helped to start the movement which many hoped would lead to allowing homosexual unions to be blessed by the Church, perhaps including approving homosexual marriages, with his silly response to a question early in his pontificate:

On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’

By Rachel Donadio | July 29, 2013

ROME — For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope.

In that context, brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, made aboard the papal airplane on the way back from his first foreign trip, to Brazil, resonated through the church. Never veering from church doctrine opposing homosexuality, Francis did strike a more compassionate tone than that of his predecessors, some of whom had largely avoided even saying the more colloquial “gay.”

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”

Francis’s words could not have been more different from those of Benedict XVI, who in 2005 wrote that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” and an “objective disorder.” The church document said men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests.

Who is he to judge? He’s the Pope, that’s who he is, and yes, that does include judgement.

The document reaffirms Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality when several liberal bishops, including the head of the German Catholic bishops’ conference, have called for blessing same-sex couples in committed relationships. Priests in Germany have widely blessed such couples for years, as have clergy in some other parts of Northern Europe.

Such blessings are wrong, the Vatican said on Monday, because they would seem “to approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God,” adding that God “does not and cannot bless sin.”

All of that is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which every priest and every deacon and every bishop, archbishop and cardinal should have, and with which he should be familiar.

§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

§2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

§2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What part of “under no circumstances can they be approved” do some priests and bishops find unclear?

I get it: the left believe that it’s just wrong to deny homosexuals their desires, but a Catholic priest, a Catholic bishop, must follow the teachings of the Bible in which they all profess to believe, and the Bible is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual activity, in both the Old and New Testaments. While some have claimed that Jesus never personally addressed homosexual activity, specifically, they are incorrect.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19 Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The law included the prohibition on homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22, and proscribes the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. There is no ambiguity whatsoever in this.

Back to the Journal:

German bishops have tangled with the Vatican on other matters, including the question of giving Communion to Lutherans, and are unlikely to back down in their stance on blessing gay unions. German bishops and lay Catholics are currently involved in a national synod that is considering changes to aspects of church life, including the possibility of women clergy and teaching on sexuality.

A move by German bishops to approve blessings of same-sex unions would exacerbate tensions with more conservative parts of the church, including in Africa and the U.S. Conservative bishops in the U.S. have been critical of what they see as an excessively progressive drift away from traditional teachings, with the archbishop of Denver warning in 2019 that the German bishops are moving toward a schism.

It has been said that if it is a choice between heresy and schism, choose heresy, because it is an action that is solely your own, while schism injures the Body of Christ that is the Church.

Pope Francis has taken a more liberal approach than his predecessors to some questions of marriage and sexuality, including divorce and homosexuality. In one of the most famous statements of his pontificate, he responded to a question about gay clergy in 2013: “Who am I to judge?” During his 2015 visit to the U.S., he met privately with a gay couple in Washington, D.C.

In comments published last year, the pope expressed support for same-sex civil unions, saying that gay couples “have the right to be legally covered,” a stance he had held as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

But the pope has also written that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

This is where the Pope has failed: in attempting to soft-peddle the issue, in attempting to be nice and conciliatory toward homosexuals, as a good liberal should do, he opened the door to the hope of many that he would, he could, change the teachings in the Bible.

But, in the end, you can be a 21th century liberal, or you can be a Catholic; you really cannot be both. Some current liberal views, such as those on immigration, can easily fall within biblical teachings and the traditions of the Church. We can easily reconcile opposition to capital punishment with the Bible, because we now have modern methods of permanent incarceration that the Israelites lacked in their journeys through the wilderness.

But modern liberal beliefs on homosexuality and transgenderism and marriage are simply and unequivocally opposed to the Bible, and there’s no ambiguity, no wiggle room there. Priests and bishops who ‘bless’ homosexual unions are, in plain effect, giving their blessings to sin; it is clearly blasphemy, a sin in itslef.

“It is not surprising but still disappointing,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBT Catholics. “This decision though is an impotent one because it will not stop the Catholic people in the pews, nor many Catholic leaders, who are eager for such blessings to happen.”

Sadly, His Excellency The Most Reverend John Eric Stowe, O.F.M. Conv, Bishop of Lexington, has supported the misbegotten New Ways Ministry. As a parish priest, Bishop Stowe is excellent; I’ve attended two Masses in which he was the celebrant, and there is no question in my mind at all that he truly believes in Jesus.

But when it comes to homosexuality, he has truly lost his way. When I see Joseph Cardinal Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, on the list, I am seeing a prince of the Church, and one of the voters who will select the next Pope, when Francis retires or dies.

The question of homosexuality has roiled other Christian denominations, fomenting division within the world-wide Anglican Communion between liberal churches in Europe and North America and more conservative churches in Africa. Last year, the United Methodist Church agreed in principle to split because of disagreements over same-sex marriage and gay clergy, though a meeting to approve the move has been delayed because of the pandemic.

Protestants have already suffered through denominational schisms over this issue. I would like to think that the Holy Father has put this issue to rest for a while, but I can too easily see the next Pope deciding to be ‘trendy,’ and sin, it seems, is very trendy.

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Perhaps there would be more Catholics in the pews if we had more Catholics in the priesthood

There’s a significant debate among the Catholic faithful concerning whether former Vice President Joe Biden, who claims to be a life-long Catholic, but supports an unlimited abortion license, should be given the eucharist if he approaches for communion.

Well the Reverend Mark R. Hession, now 62, delivered the homily at the late Senator Edward M Kennedy’s (D-MA) funeral Mass, and said that he was the Kennedy family’s pastor on Cape Cod. I’m surprised that they didn’t make him a monsignor for that!

Priest who gave homily at pro-abort Ted Kennedy’s funeral charged with rape, indecent assault of a child

In 2009, the Boston Globe dubbed Hession the Kennedys’ ‘family priest on Cape Cod.’ During his homily at Senator Kennedy’s funeral, Hession emphasized that he had been the deceased’s pastor.

By Dorothy Cummings McLean | Friday, December 18, 2020 | 9:47 AM EST

BARNSTABLE, Massachusetts, December 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The Catholic priest who gave the homily at pro-abortion Senator Ted Kennedy’s funeral has been indicted for rape and indecent assault on a child.

Father Mark R. Hession, 62, a priest of the Fall River Diocese and the former pastor of Our Lady of Victory in Centerville, MA, where Kennedy’s Cape Cod funeral was held, was the subject of a “secret” grand jury indictment in Barnstable last Friday, Hyannis News reported. The full charges were two counts of rape, one count of indecent assault and battery on a person under 14, and one count of witness intimidation.

A statement from the Fall River Diocese underscored that Hession has been “suspended from actively priestly ministry since 2019” and thus has not been able “to present himself as a priest in public settings.”

According to NBC Boston Channel 10, Hession was put on leave after complaints by some adult parishioners of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Seekonk that he had sent them “inappropriate communications.” Hession left the parish in 2018 after it was revealed that he had used funds from its budget to fund personal expenses.

There’s more at the original. But this good priest, who said of Senator Kennedy, “My vision, like yours, can’t encompass the totality of his life. My memories seen through the lens of a Catholic parish priest are about how one person, one man, a husband, a father, a public figure, a Catholic, and a citizen, tried to meet the tests of the kingdom of Matthew’s gospel,” was (allegedly) raping children under 14, and (allegedly) a thief as well.

None of the articles I found on this story noted whether Fr Hession was molesting boys or girls, but the John Jay Report studying sexual abuse by Catholic clergy between 1950 and 2002 found that 81% of the victims were boys.

So, what does it say that Senator Kennedy’s pastor, who stated that he was “confident” that the late Senator had entered heaven, who was at least willing to look the other way concerning the Senators open and flagrant support of abortion, appears to himself have been less than a paragon of virtue himself?

One wouldn’t have expected Fr Hession to speak ill of the dead at a funeral Mass, so that is, in one way, a bit less than strong evidence. But if Fr Hession ever attempted to counsel his parishioner on his views of, and Senatorial votes for, abortion, we do not know of it. If the Distinguished Gentleman from Massachusetts had ever been denied communion by his parish priest, we’d certainly have heard that; it would have been huge news.[1]Thomas Tobin, the Bishop of Providence, requested then-Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Edward Kenney’s son, to stop presenting himself for communion due to his support for abortion.

I recently learned that my previous parish, St Joseph’s in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, has been consolidated with Immaculate Conception parish, in the tourist trap section of town. St Joseph’s, with a church which would seat over 500 parishioners, usually had around 100 on Sundays, but the Diocese of Allentown apparently saw the two parishes as not serving enough parishioners each, and consolidated the parishes. St Joseph’s Regional Academy, the parochial school, was closed down in 2018.

How much, I have to ask, is due to declining numbers of active Catholics, and how much is that decline due to a Church which has tolerated homosexual activist priests, and priests who happily present the Host to vigorously pro-abortion politicians?

Is it possible, just possible, that the Catholic Church in the United States would see more actual Catholics in the pews if they had more actual Catholics serving as priests?

References

References
↑1 Thomas Tobin, the Bishop of Providence, requested then-Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Edward Kenney’s son, to stop presenting himself for communion due to his support for abortion.
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You cannot tell the truth in The Philadelphia Inquirer

Around 10:00 AM yesterday morning, I read the story Archdiocese of Philadelphia spins off Downingtown psychiatric center where pedophile priests were sent in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and I made two comments. Several hours later, my initial comment was still there:

This article ignores one important point: the accused priests sent to Vianney couldn’t be reported to law enforcement, due to patient privacy laws. Accusations made to the archdiocese could be reported, but it was the archdiocese, not the Vianney Center, which took the decisions as to what to do with accused priests after receiving reports from the Vianney Center.

The Inquirer’s website does not provide separate links to individual comments.

However, I made a second comment, which the system accepted, and was posted, noting that the majority of victims of the predatory priests were teenaged boys, yet that couldn’t be mentioned, because it might be seen as condemnatory of homosexuality. By 5:12 PM EST, that comment has disappeared, but there were, at that time, nine red tabs noting “comment disabled.”

Now there’s a new article up, Former adviser to Monaco’s royal family and DeSales University priest charged in Philly child porn case. In it the readers are told that the Rev. William McCandless, from the Wilmington-based religious order Oblates de St. Francis De Sales, has been arrested on possession of child pornography charges.

But the charges unsealed Wednesday were not the first time McCandless had been accused of misconduct. In fact, his overseas assignment in 2010 was announced the same summer the clergy sex abuse watchdog group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests called for his suspension, saying his name had surfaced in an ongoing clergy abuse lawsuit.

According to the organization, a sex abuse victim said in a sworn deposition filed in Delaware courts that McCandless had once admitted to him that he abused a 14-year-old French boy attending a church camp.

Details of that deposition could not be immediately confirmed on Wednesday.

At the time, McCandless had been assigned to the Salesianum School, a Catholic private high school in Wilmington. He had also previously served for seven years as a chaplain at North Catholic High School in Philadelphia.

I am surprised that the article author, Jeremy Roebuck, mentioned that there was an allegation that Father McCandless molested a “14-year-old French boy” rather than just a “14-year-old.” The story said to check back later; I wonder if that part will be changed.

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.

The Inquirer doesn’t have a nifty masthead tagline like The New York Times’ All the News That’s Fit to Print or The Washington Post’s Johnny-come-lately Democracy Dies in Darkness, added after the horrible Donald Trump was elected, but if it did, it should read something like All the News That’s Politically Correct . . . and noting that the sexual abuse problem among the Catholic priesthood is primarily one of homosexual attraction to teenaged boys is anything but politically correct.

The credentialed media like to believe that they are the guardians of truth and the defenders of a democratic society, but what so many of them have become is the guardians of truthiness. When the facts are inconvenient, when the truth does not fit the editors’ notions of what can be said, when the facts upset the #woke, well, the Inquirer has its problems with the idiots, and Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski was fired resigned because he published the article “Buildings Matter, Too,” which expressed concern that some historic buildings in Philadelphia had been and more could be damaged in the #BlackLivesMatter protests.

If we cannot expect the Inquirer to print the truth when the truth is not what they want their readers to see, how can we have any confidence that what they do print is the truth, rather than just some shaded version of it?
_____________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.