The story of the downfall of Cardinal O’Brien has proceeded at a dizzying pace.
He was accused by three current and one former priests of inappropriate actions. He resigned and will not attend the conclave. The Pope has accepted his resignation.
It sounds like a confession of guilt to me.
The four accusers must have strong evidence, because they can be sued for libel, and in Britain they must prove the truth of their allegation.
He has also been vociferous on his criticism of gay marriage.
Cardinal Groër of Vienna had made strong homeoerotic gestures to almost every student and seminarian he had come in contact with – 1,000+. A former student read Groer’s denunciation of homosexual acts. Groër said that those who committed them would not enter the kingdom of heaven. The student thought that was not what Groër had told him while they had a relationship, and decided to go public – the first public accusation against a cleric in German-speaking lands since the Nazi era.
Pope John Paul let Groër retire as scheduled and received him socially in the Vatican at the very conclave at which the new archbishop of Vienna, Schönborn, was made a cardinal, Schönborn was not happy and told the reporters who informed him of Groer’s presence of in Rome of his unhappiness.
The contrast between Benedict and John Paul in this matter is striking.
O’Brien is not necessarily hypocrite. A person can commit sins and still think they are sins, and advise other people not to commit them. It’s not very convincing, but it is not hypocrisy.
There is another cardinal who has not yet been outed. He has been far more active than O’Brien, but none of his numerous victims will go public, because it would ruin their clerical careers. Rod Dreher is also familiar with that cardinal and writes about him today.
The only Cardinal I personally knew to be a homosexual was Cardinal Francis Spellman. I served his Mass once as a boy on Okinawa in 1955 and I heard a Paraclete Brother talk about how the Cardinal used to pick up young boys on Broadway in the New York Theater District. As for Cardinal Francis George of Chicago who attended the same minor seminary as myself, I know that he hates gays and is very outspoken about his views concerning homosexuals.. I know that a few priests who ran our minor seminary in Illinois were very strange. One of my priest/counselors, who9 taught psychology, made me and all of his young male clients strip and masturbate in front of him. My classmates also confirmed this behavior. The priest was later accused of pedophilia, and transfered to a rest home.
Is McCarrick the other cardinal? There have been rumors about him for years regarding a seaside house in NJ. Richad Sipe has material on McCarrick on his website.
Thanks for the link to Dreher’s column Leon.
I will take my cue from his statement at the end of it. Recently, an Opus Dei Cooperating member owned pruduction has been circulating the internet along with a statement written by a Polish priest concerning the “hx mafia” within the Church.
In the video, the host states that,”… homosexual priests hate the Tridentine Mass.” That is a a LIE!
Fr Urrutigoity who was banished from Scranton after being charged with abuse at the FSSP’s Academy of St Gregory was a known homosexual and he, along with his friends, founded the Society of St John a Latin Mass community and Order which bilked traditionally minded laity out of monies they put down on properties in order to build within the planned Shahola community.Urrutigroity or “Urootagroiney” as several fomer SSPX seminarians told me they referred to him as, is now under the safe harbor of an Opus Dei Bishop in Paraguay and has been assigned to run an orphange in the latest published reports I have read.Dreher also speaks about him here.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/father-groeschel-goes/
In the Diocese I live I am well aware ,as are others ,of a popular pastor who claims his Church will be the, “…go to place on the Eastern seaboard ” for the Tridentine Mass.” He regularly hosts a group of hx priests for lavish dinners at his rectory. Known to refer to the large donors as the “whales ” I know many who are now swimming out to sea ,Traditional Mass or not because they realize the farce he perpetrates!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d4eANuMXd8
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/02/fr-dariusz-okos-major-article-with-pope.html
So the question reamains that if the Pope is aware of the blackmail ,abuse and hx lobby ,why hasn’t he or his predecessor done the right thing and cleaned house a very long time ago because none of this is NEWS to us or to the Vatican ,Mr Voris!We also know what the Polish priest writes about because we have lived it! But what we do not understand is why we are supposed to believe this is news to the exiting Pope or the next Pope?
Alton ,Look up just who Fr Hoatson named. Sipe got his information from Hoatson’s legal filings. There is NOT just one other problematic Cardinal here according to these complaints..
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/07_08/2007_08_17_Abbott_PriestContinues.htm
http://www.awuerlofhurt.com/
In Europe they are extremely upset with Daneels going to the conclave.Here we had a news blackout of the Dutroux case .But there thousands took to the streets with white balloons in support of the victims. Look it up on youtube.Very troubling when high powered global elites named by the victims can block international news coverage.
http://danneels.weebly.com/
What was allegedly found in ArchDiocesan files linked to the Dutroux Affair.
freerepublic.com/^http://cathcon.blogspot.com/2010/07/horrific-serial-infanticide-files-found.html
I also know far too many priests who are good and have been crushed and silenced or they have had to leave. That part of the Polish priest’s document I agree with. I do not agree with his praise of Benedict or Pope John Paul Two in the matter.Not by a long shot.
When Vorris said “Homosexual priests hate the traditional Mass” I wanted to laugh. Where does he get his information?! It might be that a certain type of homosexual priest hates the TM but there’s another sort that loves it. One of the better known traditionalist in Europe came out recently and addressed this silly idea that the TM crowds are somehow free of homosexual clergy. As for the Polish Priest’s rant, it didn’t reveal anything new and kept refering to John Paul II as “the Great”. I tore it up in disgust.
Where are the REAL MEN in the Church and in our society? Are they all distracted by Bread and Circus” (beer, wings and football) looking for employment?
Andrew Solomon a gay activist, member of the CFR and son of a Big Pharma CEO ,is making the television talk show circuit advising parents to consider putting their children on hormone blockers at eleven or twelve and making a transgendering operation available to them at eighteen .When asked why transgendered males to females find themselves still attracted to women he explains them away as lesbians.
Why isn’t the RC Catholic Church speaking out loudly about this atrocity? Where are the men and fathers in our culture? Why is it that women are left to rule the world and the Church ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Solomon
http://www.katiecouric.com/on-the-show/2013/01/08/far-from-the-tree-parenting-a-child-that-is-different-than-you/
Fr Michael,
Ditto.Remember to keep your eyes on that narrowing path in front of you because some big rocks might fall to block it that you might have to scale. Stay the course!
The conclave must happen very quickly in case other victims become encouraged to step forward and name their cardinal abusers. Likely not, not because they are priests but because they are not. The smart abusers rent their boys on the black market where they are brought in regularly to the Vatican for servicing these prancing princes of the Church. These boys have no voice, and Italians have no desire to protect them. The age of sexual consent with an adult in Italy is down to 13, so the cardinals know just what they can get away with. Any everybody else gives a wink and a nod…Why was the Scottish cardinal outed at this moment? It is not about pederasty but about the fact he was a liberal. The conservative pederast cardinals want to rule this conclave. It is much easier to hide behind pomp and circumstance and they want to keep the smells and bells going so one can’t hear the screams of the children and smell the sulfur.
Voris does a better job this time but Sec of State Cardinal Bertone and Bishop Scicluna seem to be saying something else.
http://www.churchmilitant.tv/daily/?today=2013-02-26
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/portogallo-portugal-chiesa-church-iglesia-22529/
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/world-news/detail/articolo/pedofilia-paedophilia-scicluna-22642/
cm , You may have a point because while you may not like the century old traditional thought concerning the See of Peter ,at least consider this in the context of the problems the Church now faces coming closer to being made even more public. i.e. and the recent firing of Gotti Tedeschi and his replacemsnt by a SMOM German as head of the IOR ( Vatican Bank)
Since everything Voris is stating has already been made public in Randy Engel’s RoS publication for those who read at length and that this “Church Militant tv”is an Opus Dei connected Production, one is left to wonder if these “sudden” revelations by the “Church Militant tv” really concerns a battle of the New Dicastery’s “cults” (Movements for the New Evangelization) for the Papal seat?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/world/europe/shadows-accompany-gathering-to-pick-pope.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/10/vatican-banker-running-scared-gotti-tedeschi-could-turn-whistleblower.html
.
cm ……Sorry this was the Traditional article I was referring to initially about the Pope’s resignation , something to think about eh?
http://www.traditioninaction.org/bev/153bev02_25_2013.htm
cm., In the interest of truth regarding your age of consent remarks concerning Italian law……..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe#Italy
Italy
The age of consent in Italy is 14 years, with a close-in-age exception that allows those aged 13 to engage in sexual activity with partners who are less than 3 years older. The age of consent rises to 16 if one of the participants has some kind of influence on the other (e.g. teacher, tutor, adoptive parent, priest).[28] Not knowing the fact that the victim is underage is not a legal defence.[29] If the minor involved is under the age of 10, the crime can be punished even without a plaintiff and the punishment is aggravated.[30] It is also illegal to perform sexual acts in the presence of a minor aged less than 14 with the intent of allowing the minor to witness the acts, even if they do not take an active part.[31]
See also related Wikisource articles from the Italian Criminal Code (in Italian). See also more related articles from Interpol website (in French).
We are all members of the Body of Christ. Peter, Paul and Jesus were all laymen, not priests. Jesus ordained nobody and excluded no one. The followers of Jesus voted as a group on Matthias to replace Judas to complete the 12, and on the “deacons” to serve the community. The imperialistic hierarchy we call the Vatican took absolute power as a monarchy in the Middle Ages. The idea that the celibate male “priest” is the sole conduit of grace is a failed tradition according to Garry Wills in his new book “Why Priests?” The ordination of gay men, who later became Cardinals who mostly were the product of other homosexual “factories” called minor seminaries, is the current state of affairs in Roman Catholicism. Having survived this minor seminary experience, I would expect the priesthood to be at least 50% gay.
CM, the cardinal outed was a doctrinal and moral “conservative”, not a liberal. There is speculation that other gays outed him precisely because of that.
I REALLY need to know what Happy Pills they are taking here.
http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=7089
Mary Ann,
Truthfully unless you know what is said and done in the private lives of clerics in rectories and Chanceries, have had first hand contact with the victims , read the court cases or have spoken with lawyers etc ,you really cannot make such a blanket statement.
There are many clerica who write and speak as conservatives but lead quite different lives in private.That is what has caused so much confusion amongst Catholics. Like the over riding statement that Voris made in his video that HX clerics hate the Latin Mass. Absolutely not true !
Many clerics gauge their public words and actions for the audience whose donations they intend to attract and know that conservatism and Traditionalism is the best cover defense using the laity for rumors defense about their less than attractive “catholic” lifestyles that other Catholics may have wittnessed first hand.
Image Mary Ann it is about image . Think Legion. Their image WAS conservative with a Papal seal of approval wasit not ?
My what fights insued during the early days when someone raised questions about the RC’s strange cultic practices !
He was calling for a married priesthood. That is enough to have the doctrinal police come after you.
By doctrinal and moral conservative, I meant orthodox in his understanding of doctrine and of morality. No speculation as to private life. Misbehavior knows no doctrinal boundaries, of course. As for married priesthood, technically that is not a doctrine but a discipline. Wanting a married priesthood might irritate gays, and annoy the powers that be, but it is a position that could be held by any Catholic, I think.
a position that could be held by any orthodox Catholic, is my meaning.
To be clear, according to Jesus, O’Brien is a hypocrite because he taught one thing and did another.
In terms of doctrine, O’Brien is not a heretic.
If he did do those things of which he is accused and has not repented, but has continued in committing those deviant sinful acts, he is also an apostate.
Perhaps a retreat to neo-orthodoxy under JPII and BXVI has given the progressivists time to reorganize for another outwardly progressive papacy.
anyone who thinks that priests who are into the Tridentine Mass are guaranteed not to be homosexual is ignorant. Look at High Anglicanism. Nothing weirder than going to your Anglican version of a Tridentine Mass that’s celebrated by an Anglican priest partnered with another man.
‘Garry Wills in his new book ‘
PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEE……. a white, anging, bitter, resetfull men and worst of all lover of secularism and the DICTATORSHIP of RELATIVISM.
Finally today, Sivlia Pogoli on NPR has detailed that every one of the papabile are being vetted as to their cover-ups. It would be yet another disaster if the man elected has a record of hiding abusive priests. Who doesn’t, is my question. Sean O’Malley is a very holy and humble man, and had to clean up Boston but SNAP is upset he is withholding names…
Alton,
You make an excellent point!
Yet still they claim this is the same Catholic Church that is based on Scripture and Tradition?
Pandering to global politics , living a priviledged elitist life and covering for the crimes of your colleagues or your own, by hiring lawyers and public relations personnal .Establishing cults of living ‘saints’ for the purpose of drawing more people and funding into the church corporation while paying for or accepting bribes is not Tradition except in the case of a Judas who, by the way, was ashamed of what he had done!
A little history of the married priesthood in the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic and Orthodox Diocese on the east coast of the US as related by the elderly still living.
A wonderful Byzantine priest was allowed to say Mass on Saturday evening in our local RC parish here. We were thrilled because the Divine Liturgy of St John Crysostom had replaced what had devolved into debased religious entertainment they once called the novus ordo mass.
Decades later in the Byzantine Diocese church , after six or seven pastors who were all of the same sex attraction (one even found dead on the floor due to AIDS complications when the police came to arrest him for countless pedophile crimes. Five of his victims committed suicide as young men. )
We left and attended an Orthodox parish .I found out later that this Orthodox parish also stemmed from the original Carpatho Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics who immigrated to this country. However at some point ,I believe it was in the thirties, the Vatican decided their priests could no longer marry in this country. Some parishoners were were angry and feared a homosexually oriented priesthood or at the least a priesthood devoid of thier own children were more easily corrupted into becoming agents of the communist’s in the countries they came from. So the original group split .Some remained Catholic while the others returned to the Orthodox. This is what the old people told me.
I might also add that one of our parishoners had in his possession the letters of St John Neuman (pronounced Noymen) who was his mother’s cousin. Rest in Peace old Tony!
I miss my old parish full of Believers but the late Byzantine Catholic Bishop Pitaki made sure to close our little church after we complained that our current cross dressing pastor who stated clearly he did not believe in the Real Presence.Perhaps he did us a favor though, since the track record of priests we had, left only one or two who were not actively otherwise engaged homosexually.
Many clerics gauge their public words and actions for the audience whose donations they intend to attract…
Mary, a substantial part of that audience is the curial clerics in Rome. Imitating the ideological and theological viewpoint of a sitting Pope is one sure way to get positive attention and advance one’s career ambitions.
Philadelphia’s Absp. Chaput is a prime example, and I have no idea what his private life is like. In an article in “First Things,” Chaput had the temerity to equate Justice Antonin Scalia’s opposition to the Church’s abolitionist stance against capital punishment to Frances Kessling’s support for legalized abortion! Chaput also led the delegation that investigated Australian Bishop William Morris, whom Rome forced to resign because of alleged doctrinal disobedience.
Since reading Chaput’s “First Things” piece, I thought he was angling for a red hat and a bigger see (he was archbishop of Denver, at the time). Well, he got the bigger see. I’ll bet the new Pope gives him a red hat. Then let’s see how he behaves.
The well heeled conservative Image……..
“Following Resignation, Top British Cardinal Acknowledges Sexual Misconduct”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/world/europe/cardinal-keith-obrien-acknowledges-sexual-misconduct.html?_r=0
Joseph,
I bet Bevilaqua’s shoes will still pinch whether you wear a red hat with the ensemble or not! There are big not so secret secrets in that See that only time and prayers will eventually reveal.
Both First Things and Scalia attract the same Opus Dei “conservative” reader.Is Archbishop Chaput adequately cleaning house in his new Archdiocese or just putting out old fires?
Those who apparently deserve the hat seem to be the best stompers of the smoldering ruins who manage not to get burned themselves .Then the ‘Faithful” praise them in the media and both gratitutde reputation and recognition are garnered ! Take the late Bishop McHugh for example.
Over the Bridge from Philadelphia the late Bishop McHugh was known in the Vatican as the ‘Pro life” Bishop, a title which served him well and he surrounded himself with Opus Deo “pro life” and SMOM laity.
Meanwhile, the laity who were on the ground knew none of it meant a thing and an audio tape was made by CUF that featured Dr William Marra, Randy Engel and Richard Lloyd Esq was circulated warning McHugh’s new flock of his real agenda which included his friendships and close ties with Planned Parenthood and the March of Dimes.
I recall calling one of the people who signed onto that recording, the late Mary Kay Smith a true Believer , who was present when McHugh was asked if he knew that the March of Dimes used aborted fetal cells in their business. She told me that he sarcastically smirked at those present and asked,” What are you against progress?”
Yes dear people it has all been a game using those catch phrase political terms in their purple nets which impress but mean nothing to those in the same hued clerical cliques!
http://uscl.info/edoc/doc.php?doc_id=42&action=inline