There is some justice in the world. The NCAA fiend Penn State $60 million – one year’s gross revenue from football, but more importantly cut the number of athletic scholarships. Football had become a religion at Penn State, and a particularly corrupt one.
And Msgr. Lynn is going to jail for at least three years. The evil and corrupt Bevilacqua is beyond earthly judgment, but at least this is a warning to mid-level bureaucrats that they will be punished if they carry out the orders of their masters.
There is some balm in Gilead.
Leon, when God has His final say, the innocent and the vulnerable will receive so much balm that they will not know what to do with it. Part of that balm will be the exposure and condemnation of the perpetrators of such evil.
Leon, Whenever you return from your trip, I have some important new information if you want to do a story about Father Gerald Fitzgerald and the Paracletes. Mary has some things to share too, about the 50th anniversary of Father Gerald’s letter to the Vatican about pedophile priests!
Leon, When you get back, I’m looking forward to any comments you may have about the expected “norms for sexual abuse by clergy” that are supposed to be published by the Episcopal Conferences of each country in the world. I’m actually holding my breath.
One of the former Paraclete Fathers is now dying of cancer. He had been de-frocked for alleged sexual contact and was serving as a minister to the GLBT community in New Mexico. He is widely regarded as a hero and forgiven by all his “victims” who visit him daily in his hospital bedroom. I served with him in the Paracletes in 1965 and he later became a diocesan priest. He was a “father” to many girls who were abandoned or orphaned by their natural parents. He submitted to de-frocking rather than expose the community and bring shame to his so-called female “victims” and their families. I know he is NOT a pedophile and we are all sinners because no one is perfectly pure or perfectly chaste unless he is a eunuch or an asexual being. I will visit him and ask his permission to publish on-line some of the poems he wrote. He was known as the Paraclete Poet and the “Sponsor” (Paraclete magazine) regularly had one or two of his poems in every issue.
Sounds like these girls have the Stockholm Syndrome.
This whole issue with sexual problems of priests is really a cultural problem. We Hispanics know that priests are men and we do not treat them as castrated goats. We know they have sexual needs and unlike our “puritanical” brothers and sisters, we don’t get too hysterical and all “righteous” if one of them has an affair sometime in their priestly life! Jesus didn’t get too hung up or excited about sexual misconduct unless it was adultery. Hypocrisy, greed and arrogance were greater sins! Mary Magdalene did not wear a “scarlet letter” and she was there with Jesus all the way to His death on the cross and at His resurrection! Requiring priests to be chaste and take a vow of perpetual celibacy and denying them the companionship and love of women is what is causing the sexual crisis! Taking young boys before puberty in minor seminaries and asking them to give up any sexual thoughts toward girls and women is what largely really caused the sexual problems. Pretending that priests were not really men but angels in male bodies without any sexual needs is what caused the crisis. Covering up this issue and allowing homosexual relationships among the clergy further aggrivated the problem! We Hispanics have always seen priests as men first and we have no illusions. Growing up in rural communities, we are familiar with male and female animals, especially goats and roosters, and we know what happens when you try to keep them forever separate!
To Jacobo: Are you saying that chastity for the Kingdom of God, as St. Paul understood it in I Corinthians, is impossible? I’ve lived in Latin America for 35 years as a missionary priest. The problem is not if I would be better off married, but rather whether I have the gift of chastity. This has to be discerned in the seminary. If young men are no longer mature enough by 24 years of age to be ordained, let them wait to have time to discern whether or not they have this gift.
“Taking young boys before puberty in minor seminaries and asking them to give up any sexual thoughts toward girls and women is what largely really caused the sexual problems.”
FALSE!
The great MAYORITY of sexual abuse NEVER were taking to a seminary when they were ‘ young boys before puberty .’
Dear Tony as a survivor of minor seminary sexual abuse, I know first-hand that the minor seminaries were full of pedophiles. Places like Mount Angel in Oregon were so saturated with pedophiles that the faculty and alumni there are still being charged with crimes. See BishopAccountability .com website.