The Roger Mahony Chain Of Paternity

Roger Mahony retired as Archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011. According to Wikipedia,

On January 31, 2013, in the wake of a court order requiring the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release its unredacted files on clergy sexual abuse, Archbishop Gómez relieved Mahony of all of his remaining public and administrative duties. Critics called Gómez's action "purely symbolic punishment" and "hand-slapping...a nearly meaningless gesture", and noted that Mahony remains "a powerful man" in the church. According to the archdiocese, Mahony remains "a priest in good standing" and may still celebrate Mass, but he may no longer speak publicly or exercise any responsibilities ordinarily reserved for a bishop. . . . Under canon law, as Mahony is a cardinal, he enjoys the "privilege of forum", meaning that the only the pope is competent to judge and punish Mahony in matters subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Gómez only has the authority to control Mahony's administrative assignments within the archdiocese.

Thus we had the situation mentioned in yesterday's post, in which Francis made Mahony his delegate to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Scranton, from which Mahony withdrew after protests. Similar protests took place in Utah when Mahony was scheduled to keynote a fundraising event; he withdrew from that as well.

It seems as if Pope Francis had been trying to rehabilitate Mahony as he had McCarrick. This suggests Francis has been reversing a course he had apparently set in 2014, in which he publicly acted against a Paraguayan bishop accused of tolerating flagrant abuse -- I'll cover this tomorrow.

Throughout his time in California, Mahony has enjoyed remarkably good press. He rose in the Church via the same path that Bernard Law and Joseph Bernardin followed, allying himself closely with civil rights and anti-poverty causes, in his case Cesar Chavez and the first California governorship of Jerry Brown. This led to consistently favorable treatment from the Los Angeles Times and other California media. Although his indulgent treatment of sex offenders was comparable to Law's, he never attracted the same scrutiny in Los Angeles as Law did in Boston -- Law's association with the Bush family was probably his undoing, even though Law's practical positions on theology and liturgy were equivalent to Mahony's.

In fact, Mahony's impact on AmChurch probably exceeds that of both Bernardin and Law. Engel's The Rite Of Sodomy certainly has more to say about Mahony than Law, though I'm finding that its coverage of Mahony is poorly organized, and it often tells the story through Mahony's numerous protégés. But an example is the case of a 2003 civil suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of 17 victims of clerical abuse:

The December 2003 lawsuit exposes a portion of the clerical homosexual underworld operating out of Southern California with tentacles that reach into the American heartland. The lawsuit supports one of the major claims of this book—that clerical pederasts and homosexuals tend to gravitate toward and colonize certain administrative areas in a diocese, specifically the Chancery, diocesan major and minor seminaries, and departments connected to liturgy, religious education, canon law and finances.

According to attorneys Boucher and Drivon, unlike Cardinal Law of Boston, who was forced to resign in disgrace for his role in covering-up multiple clerical abuse cases, Cardinal Mahony has managed to survive the legal earthquakes that continue to shake the Archdiocese of Los Angeles because he enjoys the favor and protection of the ruling media and political elite.

. . . The lawsuit alleges:

In terms of shaping the make-up and philosophy ... of the archdiocese toward child molestation in the 1950s and into the 1960s, perhaps the most significant child molester faculty member of Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary was Fr. John Farris. Fr. Farris was among the most popular teachers and spiritual advisors at Our Lady Queen of Angels ...while rendering spiritual advisement, Farris sexually molested the young students at the junior seminary. During this time period, not uncoincidentally, the attrition rate of students dropping out from the junior seminary was extremely high. During this time many of the present archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in California were students at Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary, including Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop William Levada, Bishop John Steinbock, as well as former Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno. (p 807)

Engel describes a Mahony "Gang O'Four" that emerged from the Our Lady Queen of Angels seminary and the St John's major seminary in Camarillo, CA. These were Justin Rigali, Tod Brown, William Levada, and Mahony himself. These in turn sponsored or protected other gay or gay-friendly bishops, including Patrick Ziemann, the disastrous Bishop of Santa Rosa, CA; Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno; and John Steinbock, Ziemann's predecessor in the gay-friendly Santa Rosa diocese and later Bishop of Fresno, CA, where his record of handling abuse was at best mixed.

As far as I can see, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in large part because California media hasn't covered abuse cases as fully as media in other regions, and because the political establishment is aligned with liberal and gay-friendly prelates.

US Legal Updates

My own view continues to be that proceedings under secular law, especially in the US, will be the most effective short-term factor to curb an ingrained worldwide culture of Catholic sex abuse. Christine Niles mentioned the case of William Jeffrey Paulish of the Diocese of Scranton, PA in yesterday's Church Militant Headlines YouTube broadcast, but there was no equivalent print story on the site. However, it seems to have been well covered in local Pennsylvania news:

Paulish, 61, was transferred from one unsuspecting parish to another 11 times and granted two leaves of absences before he landed at St. Mary’s Church, now known as the Prince of Peace Parish, in Old Forge in October 2006, Williams said. He immediately began abusing Williams’ client.

“While Paulish, we have alleged, is the direct abuser of our client ... the diocese was responsible for having Paulish where he was in direct proximity to children,” Williams said. “It was clearly known by the diocese he was an abuser.”

The lawsuit, filed in Lackawanna County Court, names as defendants the diocese, Paulish, current bishop the Most. Rev. Joseph C. Bambera and retired bishops James C. Timlin and Joseph F. Martino.

This is yet another example of how we need a much better and more searchable index to chains of paternity. Engel in The Rite of Sodomy discusses an earlier problem in the Diocese of Scranton in which Bp Timlin protected a flagrant predator, Fr Carlos Urrutigoity, an SSPX priest who had been transferred repeatedly among seminaries for known abusive conduct with teen boys.

In February 11, 1999, Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X sent a formal communication to Bishop Timlin informing him that Father Carlos Urrutigoity had been accused of molesting a seminarian under his spiritual care at the SSPX’s St.Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn.

Bishop Fellay also indicated that in 1987, prior to Urrutigoity’s acceptance by the Winona seminary, Fr. Andres Morello, Rector of Our Lady Co- Redemptrix Seminary in La Reja, Argentina had accused the priest of homosexual practices.

According to Fr. Morello, he had intended to expel Urrutigoity from the La Reja seminary because of his significant pride, his habit of forming “particular friendships,” his formation of a faction of seminarians acting under his influence and grave denunciations regarding moral matters. (p 963)

Despite these warnings, Urrutigoity was able to leave Winona and find a place at St Gregory’s Academy in the Diocese of Scranton. Timlin discounted the allegations against Urrutigoity, but he resumed his abusive activity at the new academy, where abuse was in fact widespread.

By early 2002, Bishop Timlin was aware that Fathers Urrutigoity and Ensey were accused of sexual molestation. The District Attorney’s office of Lackawanna County had launched a criminal investigation into the accusations of sexual misconduct by the two SSJ priests, but was forced to abandon the case because of the statue of limitations. (pp 968-69)

Bishop James Timlin retired from the Scranton Diocese on July 25, 2003, with civil litigation in the case still pending. In September of this year, one of his successors,

Bishop Joseph Bambera of the diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania announced he is forbidding Bp. Emeritus James Timlin "from representing the Diocese of Scranton at all public events, liturgical or otherwise."

Bambera maintains he is acting in response to a recommendation by the diocesan independent review board, the membership of which is confidential and "put in place to advise a bishop on the assessment of allegations of abuse."

However, Bambera was at the center of a controversy earlier in 2018, in which Cardinal Roger Mahony, under equivalent restriction in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for the same offenses, nevertheless was appointed by Pope Francis to be his special envoy to the Catholic Diocese of Scranton’s 150th anniversary Mass.

“We are most grateful to our Holy Father for appointing Cardinal Mahony to be his personal envoy for this special celebration, and we are honored that the Cardinal has so graciously accepted this invitation,” Scranton Bishop Joseph C. Bambera said in this press release. “This expression of the Pope’s pastoral support is another blessing as we mark the founding of our Diocese, and we look forward to welcoming His Eminence Cardinal Mahony to celebrate this historic milestone with us.”

Local Catholics then promised to protest the event and expressed to media outlet Church Militant their frustration that the Holy See was sending the disgraced cardinal as its representative.

“Bishop Bambera was informed late last week that his Eminence, Roger Cardinal Mahony, is unable to attend the Mass commemorating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Diocese of Scranton Mass on March 4, 2018,” Bill Genello, the diocese’s executive director of communications, told LifeSiteNews on Monday.

Mahony himself is an interesting case which, barring more important news, I'll take up tomorrow.

Meanwhile,

Police have raided the chancery of the Galveston-Houston archdiocese for evidence about a priest charged with sexually abusing minors.

Several law enforcement agencies showed up at the archdiocese's offices in downtown Houston around 10 a.m. Wednesday morning to comb through the "secret archives" — the confidential documents that every diocese keeps about its personnel.

Authorities are looking for documents related to Fr. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, a priest of the archdiocese who was arrested in September on charges of sexually abusing minors. Father La Rosa-Lopez was accused of sexually abusing two teenagers — one boy and one girl — between 1998 and 2001.

New Book On Benedict's Resignation

The visitor who follows the Italian press sent me a link to this review of Il Segreto Di Benedetto XVI, by Antonio Socci, on Marco Tosatti's blog. Even via Google translate, the Italian is somewhat murky, but it gives an interesting interpretation of the context for Benedict's papacy (I've tried to clean up the Google as best I can):

The resignation of Benedict remains for many a great question mark, a question with multiple concomitant answers. Socci offers here the thesis of the analyst Germano Dottori: "Although I have no proof, I have always thought that Benedict XVI was induced to abdication by a complex machination, ordered by those who had an interest in blocking reconciliation with Russian Orthodoxy, a religious pillar of a project of progressive convergence between continental Europe and Moscow. For similar reasons, I believe the succession of Cardinal Scola, who had been conducting negotiations with Moscow, was also stopped by the Patriarch of Venice ".

[Benedict said], "Nobody tried to blackmail me. I would not even allow it. If they tried to do it I would not have left because we do not have to leave when we are under pressure ". But the analysis by Germano Dottori is interesting. However, we are faced with a project of a unipolar world with American hegemony - which therefore has to bend a Russia that is independent and independent again - it is the last ideological folly born of totalitarianism since the twentieth century. . . It is an imperialistic project suicidal for the United States and very dangerous for the world, but so deeply impregnates the American establishment (both in the neocon and liberal factions) that even Donald Trump - who won against them and against this ideology - must now come to terms and is heavily influenced by this block of power,

It is important to remember, and it is good for Socci to do so, the maneuvers of the Obama-Clinton administration to organize a "revolution" in the Church. A revolution, in fact, there was, as we have seen, and as we see. And it is not few who link it to the strong financial and ideological powers that the Church of Benedict gave annoyance, and which bothered the American bishops, deployed in a cultural battle, which makes them define "cultural warriors" in a derogatory tone by the press priced - and this is not a way of saying - of the current regime.

I would say that more than a few American analysts would refer not to a Clinton-Obama administration, but to a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama foreign policy, but even that has been fairly consistent across all administrations in the post-World War II period. And from what we can tell, the corrupt Vatican financial dealings have thrived in that consensus environment.

I would also submit that if we put any tentative plans for reconciliation with Orthodoxy in the context of Anglicanorum coetibus, we must assume they would have been as feckless as the overtures to Anglicans. Beyond that, the Anglican program was undertaken at the instigation of what I think can be correctly called the Law-Bernardin wing of AmChurch. The view of Law that's emerged here with the help of a visitor who knew him is not of a cardinal opposed in any serious way to the Bernardin agenda.

Indeed, Law, as the principal figure behind Anglican outreach -- his protégé Jeffrey Steenson was groomed for his role from the late 1980s onward; he advocated for Anglicanorum coetibus with Ratzinger in a 1993 meeting set up by Law; and before Anglicanorum coetibus was promulgated, Law brought him to Rome, ordained him, and set him up for the eventual role of ordinary. With disastrous results. I'm not aware of any equivalent history of concrete steps toward Orthodox reconciliation, and certainly not at the initiative of AmChurch.

In fact, if anything, Anglicanorum coetibus amounts to a parallel effort to Eastern Rite jurisdictions, and in many contexts, an Orthodox outreach like it would be redundant. I think to take Socci's thesis here more seriously, we'd have to see concrete evidence of plans for new steps toward Orthodox reconciliation undertaken during the runup to Benedict's papacy equivalent to the Ratzinger meeting with Steenson and the subsequent draft of Anglicanorum coetibus.

I'll go one step farther. Earlier this year, I had a chance to conduct my experiment of mentioning Anglicanorum coetibus with a diocesan priest, a then-associate at our parish. It confirmed the result I'd predicted, he gave me a quizzical expression. Several weeks ago, I had a chance to repeat the same experiment with our pastor. I think I said, "I mentioned Anglicanorum coetibus to Fr _____, but he hadn't heard of it. You may know of Benedict's . . . "

Fr Jim, a Type A, immediately answered, "Oh, yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with it," but I'm not so sure -- he was hitting us up for the building fund, after all. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he must be one of very few busy and successful diocesan pastors who is.

But consider that of Benedict's two main initiatives, Anglicanorum coetibus and Summorum Pontificum, the first is unknown, and from someone who saw its implementation at close range, a failure. The second has had only mild success and is certainly subject to the whims of any bishop at any time.

Without a stronger argument, I can't sign on to any thesis that Benedict was on the verge of great things but was forced out by the Bushes, the Clintons, and Obama in concert with AmChurch. One of his two initiatives was at the behest of AmChurch -- and beyond that, it was Benedict who demoted Viganò to Washington, not Francis. On the whole, I'm coming to think Benedict is part of the problem, not a potential solution.

Another Italian Take

The visitor who follows the Italian press has sent another link to a good summary of the current crisis from the Italian point of view. (The translation is from Google translate with a few tweaks):

Pope Francis has insisted several times on the fact that at the root of the phenomenon of abuse is clericalism, a sort of abuse of power, leaving out the factor of homosexuality in the clergy. Even the journalists of the papal court are doing their best to convince everyone that homosexuality has nothing to do with it, even if the data say exactly the opposite.

Among the four components of the organizing committee stands out the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, much discussed both for his close friendship with the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and for statements that seem to diminish the emergency created by the crisis for sexual abuse. At the meeting of American bishops last week in Baltimore, Cupich was the one who led the faction that managed to prevent the launch of a truth commission on what happened; in particular, Cupich - like the Pope - is opposed to the presence of lay people in the Commission of Inquiry, as advocated by the presidency of the US Episcopal Conference and by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children, blatantly excluded from the list of the organizers of the February meeting.

Even the appointment of Cupich is a serious matter, given the contiguity with McCarrick, but moreover to strengthen the position of Cardinal Cupich is also another appointment, that of the Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, of Mumbay, who firmly supports the right to gay marriages and the need to change the language of the Church regarding homosexuality.

With a similar team in charge of operations, it is clear that we want to avoid the issue of homosexuality in the clergy as a phenomenon to be monitored in terms of preventing abuse. There is also the risk in the position of those who maintain that the acceptance of homosexuality in the clergy would be useful to avoid sexual abuse.

One issue that I haven't been able to reason through is how the synod, if it addresses it at all, will deal with the question of "consensual" same-sex activity, at what age, and under what circumstances, and how this relates to traditional Church teaching on the sixth commandment as it relates to heterosexual marriage.

The basic problem is that same-sex activity bypasses the potential for procreation. This in turn bypasses Humanae Vitae and much else. So if you are allowing in some way for "consensual" same-sex activity, you're creating a whole separate category for sexual activity unrelated to procreation.

In that case, why forbid artificial contraception? But if the implication in Cupich's Baltimore remarks on "consensual" is that any same-sex activity by priests over the age of consent is outside the question under review, why continue to forbid fornication between men and women? Is it worse for a priest to have a woman concubine than to have a gay boyfriend?

For instance, how does this relate to former Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Gabino Zavala, who resigned under those circumstances in 2012:

Zavala informed the archbishop last month that he had fathered two children who live with their mother in another state, Gomez said in a letter to the archdiocese's approximately 5 million Catholics. The archbishop said Zavala told him that he had submitted his resignation to the pope.

"Since that time, he has not been in ministry and will be living privately," the archbishop said in the letter, which was posted on a Catholic blog.

So, must every bishop or auxiliary with a gay boyfriend living either in the rectory or in another state resign? Apparently not, but a bishop or auxiliary with a concubine apparently must, and the Holy Father won't dither over whether to accept the resignation, either.

Why the difference, or will we reform Church teaching in this matter?

George Neumayr On The New Chains Of Paternity

One concern I've had in trying to stay informed on the current crisis is that the more useful books on the First Crisis, like Engel's The Rite of Sodomy, Lawler's The Faithful Departed, and various writings from A W Richard Sipe, are close to a generation out of date. Engel does list chains of paternity, but most of the names are now retired, dead, or out of the active priesthood.

I've seen George Neumayr primarily as a Washington-based anti-Wuerl gadfly, but more recently he seems to have picked up his game and is widening his field. The most recent example is a piece in The American Spectator, The Stench From CupichChurch. Earlier, he'd focused on Joseph Tobin and his sometime Italian roommate -- and in the course of his reportorial efforts, he seems to have succeeded in getting him banished from the rectory.

Now he's taken on Cardinal Cupich.

It was McCarrick who whispered in the pope’s ear about appointing the relatively obscure Cupich to the immensely important archdiocese of Chicago. Overnight this appointment turned the nebbishy Cupich into the most powerful cardinal in America.

I love the nebbishy part. As someone who spent a career in corporate politics, he reminds me of the temporary favorite of mahogany row, the kind of guy who has a certain kind of trademark good hair and always stands up flashing it at meetings. (That's led me to wonder if Cupich has a toupee -- I don't think so, after study, but it's such a contrived image that it may as well be one.) But as I've said before, I don't think he has staying power, and if Neumayr is on his case, I don't see a bright future for the guy.

But more important, he goes on to list new chains of paternity.

Not a single McCarrick crony has been demoted under Pope Francis. Some of them, such as Paterson (New Jersey) Bishop Arthur Serratelli, preside over openly corrupt dioceses. A wispy protégé of McCarrick’s, Serratelli is known for, among other acts of astonishing corruption, making Fr. Hernan Arias, a credibly accused gay predator, his vocations director. Arias no longer holds that post, but he remains pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland despite the fact that he is under Vatican investigation for an allegation of sexual assault against a college student who was thinking about becoming a priest. Serratelli knew about this charge before he made Arias vocations director, according to a source close to the Paterson chancery.

Arias is so close to Serratelli that people in the know in the diocese refer to him as “Mrs. Serratelli” or the “First Lady,” said this source. “Serratelli, Arias, and Edgar Rivera (the current vocations director) go on vacation every year together to the Dominican Republic,” added this source.

The whereabouts of Arias are not known, even though on paper he remains St. Margaret’s pastor. Another corrupt Paterson priest on the run is Fr. Patrick Ryan, who (I’m told by well-placed Paterson sources) is under state investigation for embezzling money from St. James of the Marches parish to finance his gay lifestyle. “He has been ripping off the second collection for years, and with some of that money bought a house for his gay lover,” according to a chancery-connected source.

This goes to one of the problems in just writing off adult same-sex conduct as "consensual". Financial scandals stemming from a wish to put a boyfriend in a house aren't unheard of. In addition,

Why did Ryan leave Albany for Paterson? Speculation abounds. “He used to cruise parks up there,” says one priest. Another source suspects that Ryan got to Paterson on a “prisoner exchange” — a trade of deviant priests undertaken by former bishops of Paterson and Albany designed to keep inquiring cops at bay.

This is another exposure that results from gay priests, the potential for lewd conduct arrests in parks and restrooms. This resonates, to be sure, with the case of the two Chicago priests arrested for just this in Miami last September,

In a statement, the Archdiocese of Chicago said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, who serves as the ninth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, immediately removed Berrio from ministry and withdrew his ability to minister.

The Archdiocese of Chicago also said it has told Giraldo-Cortez's home diocese in Soacha that Giraldo-Cortez will "not be granted additional faculties to minister."

"It is our responsibility to ensure those who serve our people are fit for ministry. We take this matter very seriously and will provide updates as they become available," the Archdiocese of Chicago wrote.

Do you mean to say the Archdiocese of Chicago had no inkling that these two guys were unfit for ministry before their arrest for public lewdness?

A Few Thoughts On The Cupich Denial

As I get ready to take a few days off blogging for the US holiday, something nevertheless occurred to me about Cardinal Cupich's denial that he and "Wuerl collaborated on a plan that would exclude the laity from oversight of episcopal conduct and instead allow U.S. bishops to police themselves on sex abuse."

The problem I have with this denial is what I noted in Saturday's post: in his remarks at the Baltimore conference, he stood up to gain the floor to announce an alternate agenda even before Cardinal DiNardo had finished speaking.

This strongly suggests that, even if a full policy draft of some sort hadn't been formally approved, there was clearly an alternate plan for the discussion that he was going to enforce, effectively speaking on behalf of Francis.

His not entirely coherent remarks about "anonymous", "consensual", and "pornography" suggest these words had been put in his mind in the course of some kind of discussion, although he pretty clearly didn't understand them very well himself. That means someone else gave them to him -- possibly not Wuerl; I'm not sure if Wuerl is much smarter than Cupich.

Thus it could well be true that, strictly speaking, neither Wuerl nor Cupich collaborated on a olan -- but I would guess they signed onto a plan (insofar as they were capable of understanding it, a serious question) that someone else gave them.

What this does say is that the powers that be don't have many capable people supporting them, which is a reason to take heart.

Cupich And Wuerl Deny Complicity In Baltimore Delay

Thanks to a visitor for sending me the link to a Crux story from yesterday:

Cardinal Blase Cupich is firing back against claims that he sought to advance an alternative proposal for bishop accountability ahead of last week’s meeting in Baltimore, in place of the plan put forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

“The allegation is false,” the archbishop of Chicago told Crux on Sunday, in response to a Catholic News Agency (CNA) report Friday that he and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated on a separate proposal.

“At no time prior to the Baltimore meeting did the two of us collaborate in developing, nor even talk about, an alternative plan,” he said.

Further,

Cupich said that he, along with the other cardinals, were summoned to DiNardo’s hotel suite by USCCB General Secretary Monsignor Brian Bransfield on Monday morning ahead of the start of the general meeting, and they were informed of the delay. While all cardinals were invited to attend the meeting, only he and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, were present, he recalled.

Contrary to the CNA report, which alleges Wuerl and Cupich collaborated “for weeks and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore,” both Cupich and a spokesman for Wuerl insist that’s false.

Cupich told Crux that upon arrival in Baltimore, and hearing the news of the delay in voting, he consulted with numerous bishops on the plan that he eventually submitted.

I strongly suspect weasel-wording in these denials -- I tend to agree with the occasional analysis I've seen that it's in Francis's interest to delay any independent plan in the US until the February 2019 synod can address it, when, as with other Franciscan synods, he can directly control the outcome. There's little argument that in the Baltimore discussion, Cupich came out supporting Francis's delay and an agenda other than the one that was on the USCCB's table.

There's another issue here: all of a sudden, Msgr Brian Bransfield turns up as a key actor as USCCB General Secretary. We will recall that this position is an immediate stepping stone to more powerful rank in the US hierarchy, as it was Joseph Bernardin's post before he became a bishop. However, as we discovered yesterday, his cousin, Michael Bransfield, recently resigned as Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, WV.

Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

Yet Bransfield's cousin is General Secretary of the USCCB! The rot is pervasive -- and, pace Cupich and Wuerl, regardless of who ran a draft of whichever by whom on what date, there's pretty clearly an effort to promote a single agenda by Francis, Wuerl, Cupich, and Bransfield.

More News On Financial Accountability And The Papal Foundation

In the context of the last post, in which Matthew O'Brien questioned the legal sustainability of the Papal Foundation's forwarding grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State without confirming that the money was going for its intended purpose, it appears that another prestigious US Catholic charity has raised the same question and is acting on it. According to Church Militant, Legatus Chairman Thomas Monaghan issued a letter to members making clear it was not yet "prudent" to send money to the Vatican:

"Events over the past few weeks have prompted many members to contact the national office and members of the Board of Governors regarding the current crisis in the Church," the Sept. 6 letter from Monaghan states.

"We have also had discussions regarding our (Legatus') annual tithe to the Holy See, specifically pertaining to how it is being used, and what financial accountability exists within the Vatican for such charitable contributions," the letter continues. "The Board has begun a dialogue along these lines, and in the meantime has decided to place the Holy See annual tithe in escrow, pending further determination (by the Board).

"We certainly pledge our continued devotion to Holy Mother Church, and recognize the tithe has been an important commitment of Legatus since our founding," Monaghan wrote. "However, in light of recent revelations and questions, we believe it appropriate to respectfully request clarification regarding the specific use of these funds."

A second Church Militant story brings the O'Brien First Things piece up to date:

After Cdl. Donald Wuerl spearheaded a $25 million grant to the Vatican earlier this year through the Papal Foundation, sources confirm the money remains unaccounted for, the Rome hospital designated as beneficiary apparently never having received the grant.

This reinforces the issue raised in the O'Brien story, that there is no guarantee that money solicited by the Vatican for one charitable purpose will even be used at all for that purpose. The Church Militant story continues,

Media reported in March that, after the internal uprising within the foundation, Pope Francis cancelled an annual meeting with the organization. Although the move was reported as originating with the pontiff, inside sources confirm with Church Militant that Wuerl was behind the cancellation. The cardinal had contacted the pontiff and suggested the move in order to send a clear message and muscle the trustees. His tactic worked, and the board agreed to give the pope the remaining $12 million. To date, however, the remaining amount is pending distribution.

. . . The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is mulling the possibility of investigating the Papal Foundation, a 501(c)3 corporation registered in Pennsylvania and bound by state law, after it was revealed the vote to send $25 million to Rome could be voided for potential fraud; McCarrick, under investigation by the Vatican since May 2017 over a sex abuse allegation, voted to send the enormous sum of money to the very entity investigating him — a material conflict of interest that would amount to little more than a bribe.

"The Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section (CT&O) of the Office of Attorney General is in receipt of your email complaint regarding The Papal Foundation," wrote Daniel Sanchez, financial investigator for the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, in a letter obtained by Church Militant. "Please be advised, this matter is currently under review and the office will take any action deemed appropriate."

The Church Militant article clarifies other earlier reports on the revolt within the Papal Foundation. The earlier version of the story was that Jim Longon, former chair of the Audit Committee, was the only lay resignation from the board. According to Church Militant, a total of three stewards resigned from the Audit Committee. In adition,

According to inside sources, Wuerl at the time considered Longon a lone maverick, confident the vote to send the $25 million would be approved almost unanimously. He was shocked to find that nine of the 24 board members rejected the proposal after a secret vote.

It seems to me that the issue here is not so much a withholding of charitable donations simply due to disagreement on doctrine, but more seriously, on whether it is prudent to keep sending money to the Vatican when it isn't clear that the money will be used for charitable purposes. This could affect the non-profit status of the charitable foundations, and conceivably the non-profit status of the Church in the US.

Back To The Papal Foundation

Via a French site a visitor pointed me to, I found an article by Matthew O'Brien in First Things from last September, The Papal Foundation & McCarrick's Conflict of Interest. We're seeing increased speculation on how Francis might somehow be encouraged to abdicate, but in light of the political background in which Bergoglio formed his sense of obligation, I would say that caudillos mostly don't leave office unless they're put on the plane by a successor group of colonels. Or put in the ground, for that matter. So I don't give the idea of abdication much chance, but then, what do I know?

I'm inclined to agree with commentators like Marco Tosatti in yesterday's post that pressure from the US legal system will probably be a better route to limiting any mischief Francis can create. Per O'Brien:

As an ex officio member of the board of cardinals which controls the Foundation, McCarrick advocated and voted four times to approve an extraordinary, expedited grant of $25 million to the Vatican, in order to help it bail out a scandal-plagued dermatology hospital that it controls, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI) in Rome: first in executive session in June 2017, then at the Foundation’s annual meeting in December 2017, again in January 2018, and finally in April 2018.

During at least the latter three votes, then-Cardinal McCarrick knew that he was under a Vatican-authorized investigation, carried out by the Archdiocese of New York, for sexually molesting a boy. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter, McCarrick knew by October 2017 at the latest that he was under investigation. Because the recipient of the $25 million grant was the Vatican, which was the very entity that would determine McCarrick’s fate as a result of the investigation it authorized into his conduct, McCarrick appears to have had a manifest and gross conflict of interest in considering the grant request in the best interest of the Papal Foundation. McCarrick stood to benefit personally if, by helping to secure $25 million for the Vatican, he could win leniency in how it handled his sex abuse case.

Under Pennsylvania law, the directors of non-profits such as the Papal Foundation are under an obligation to disclose material conflicts of interest to their organization’s directors and officers, and to recuse themselves from board decisions in which their conflict of interest is implicated. McCarrick failed to make any disclosures to the Papal Foundation’s board or to recuse himself from board decisions, according to people present at the board meetings in 2017 and 2018.

O'Brien then lists at length circumstances under which the foundation board has not operated under legal definitions of "good faith" in disbursing grants, in particular by not confirming with the ultimate grantees whether they actually received the amounts designated in the foundation's grants. The basic problem is that the foundation sends the grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State, which passes it on to the grantee. The clear issue is whether, as a possible example, the foundation granted the Secretariat of State $200,000 for a school project, but the school received only $20,000, with the remainder going elsewhere.

In late 2017 Cardinal Wuerl tasked the Foundation’s legal counsel to review its operations and bylaws for legal compliance. In a letter dated December 29, 2017, a copy of which was provided to me by a person involved with the Papal Foundation, its own attorneys identify five problem areas in the Foundation’s operations and procedures. Two of these were particularly important: first, an apparent general failure to confirm that the ultimate recipients of its grants were operated in a fashion analogous to US public charities; second, an apparent general failure to obtain meaningful audits or accountings of how grant beneficiaries spent the money they received. The Foundation’s attorneys concluded this assessment with an injunction, “There must be some accountability for the Board to satisfy itself that funds are indeed expended for charity.”

The cardinals’ board of the Papal Foundation apparently distributed its charitable grants in a manner that made them remarkably vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement, and in so doing, the board appears to have contravened its own bylaws, and thus violated Pennsylvania civil law as well. The Foundation’s chosen partner in distributing grants, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has a longstanding reputation of financial mismanagement. In recent years the Secretary of State himself, Cardinal Parolin’s predecessor Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was personally involved in misappropriating $500,000 in charitable assets to double pay a contractor friend to renovate his Vatican apartment, and also in directing millions of dollars from the Holy See into now-failed Italian television venture owned by his friends.

O'Brien raises questions about whether approving or directing Papal Foundation grants was a factor in McCarrick's rise, as well as that of other McCarrick protégés.

No prelate has been more consistently and intimately involved in the Papal Foundation than McCarrick, who helped to found the non-profit in 1988 alongside the late Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and Cardinal O’Connor of New York. The current chairman of the controlling board of cardinals is Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington. Before he was elevated to the cardinalate and moved to Rome, then-Bishop Kevin Farrell, McCarrick’s protégé and former housemate in Washington, was a member of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees. The current president of the board of trustees is another McCarrick protégé, Bishop Michael Bransfield.

. . . Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

The first executive director of the Papal Foundation, who served from 1988 until 2001, was a priest named Monsignor Thomas Benestad. Benestad, who retired early from his home Diocese of Allentown and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, is accused in the Pennsylvania Grant Jury Report of sexually abusing boy over a period of years in the early 1980s, beginning when he was nine years old.

. . . Benestad, Bransfield, and McCarrick have been three of the most important clerical leaders of the Papal Foundation, and all face serious allegations of sex abuse. Some of these allegations were widely known for decades, but did not prevent the men from rising from one ecclesiastical preferment to the next. Did these men use the grant-making power of the Papal Foundation to curry favor and buy protection from Vatican officials? Did they enable the misappropriation of the Foundation’s charitable grants? The only way to answer these questions is with an independent investigation of the Papal Foundation, along with a forensic accounting of its past grants.

Such an investigation would not face canonical impediments or infringe upon the proper authority of bishops over their dioceses. The Papal Foundation is not an ecclesiastical entity, but an ordinary 501(c)(3) religious non-profit. No permission from Rome is necessary. The Foundation’s board could commission an investigation with a simple vote. If the Foundation does not authorize its own independent investigation, it may nonetheless find itself facing one from state or federal authorities.

The US legal path strikes me as a potentially much more effective route to imposing reform on the Vatican, if the Vatican can't reform itself. In fact, the O'Brien article provides the outline for a "lay-led" investigation of how McCarrick rose in the hierarchy despite his well-known record of abuse -- and it could be done, for instance by an entity connected with Timothy Busch's charities, without approval of the Vatican or the USCCB.

An Italian Take On The Baltimore Fiasco

The visitor who follows the Italian press has sent me a link to this post by the Italian blogger-journalist Marco Tosatti. The translation is mostly Google with some suggested changes from the visitor.

the French and Italian bishops' conferences in recent days have debated and voted for measures to prevent abuse by the clergy without the Holy See batting an eyelid. The American bishops' conference, meeting in Baltimore, to discuss and approve guidelines on the same subject, and the creation of an independent commission of inquiry, received at the last minute the extraordinary and unanimous request-injunction from the Congregation of Bishops (with the obvious endorsement of the reigning Pontiff) not to vote for anything, and to wait for the summit on the abuses of all the Episcopal Conferences of the world scheduled for February. An absolutely unusual move that surprised everyone.

We would like you to read the exceptionally precise report of the Catholic News Agency, in our translation. In the end we will follow it by some comment. We anticipate a note here: Cardinal Daniel Wuerl, accused by the Grand Jury Report of serious omissions in handling cases of abuse in Pittsburgh, and accused by Archbishop Viganò of having very badly monitored the sanctions imposed by Benedict XVI to McCarrick, his friend and predecessor in Washington, he was forced to resign because of the reaction of the faithful. Card. Cupich (pictured with McCarrick while delivering the "Spirit of Pope Francis" award) is another prelate of the "McCarrick supply chain", openly pro-LGBT. Enjoy the reading.

[I'm substituting the original CNA text for Tosatti's translation to Italian-back-to-English here for clarity.] Washington D.C., Nov 16, 2018 / 06:56 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated extensively on a recently proposed policy for handling abuse allegations against bishops, CNA has learned.

Cupich submitted the plan Tuesday to leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference, proffering it as an alternative to a proposal that had been devised by conference officials and staffers.

The conference’s proposed plan would have established an independent lay-led commission to investigate allegations against bishops. The Cupich-Wuerl plan would instead send allegations against bishops to be investigated by their metropolitan archbishops, along with archdiocesan review boards. Metropolitans themselves would be investigated by their senior suffragan bishops.

Sources in Rome and Washington, DC told CNA that Wuerl and Cupich worked together on their alternative plan for weeks, and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore. Cupich and Wuerl are both members of the Congregation for Bishops.

The Cupich-Wuerl plan was submitted to the U.S. bishops even after a Vatican directive was issued Monday barring U.S. bishops from voting on any abuse-related measures. The Vatican suspended USCCB policy-making on sexual abuse until after a February meeting involving the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world.

An official at the Congregation for Bishops told CNA on Thursday that the substance of the plan presented by Cupich at the Baltimore meeting is known in the congregation as “Wuerl’s plan.” The official would not confirm whether the congregation had received an advance copy of the document.

Senior chancery officials in Washington described the plan presented Tuesday as a collaborative effort by the cardinals, telling CNA that Wuerl and Cupich first informed the Congregation for Bishops several weeks ago about their idea for the “metropolitan model” to handle complaints against a bishop, and suggested they had continued to discuss the plan with Congregation officials since that time.

"It was a mutual effort," one Archdiocese of Washington official told CNA.

The idea of amending USCCB policy so that allegations against a bishop would be handled by his metropolitan archbishop was first suggested by Wuerl publicly in August.

While Cupich played an active role in conference sessions this week, and proposed the detailed plan for an alternative to the conference’s special commission, Wuerl did not make any public comment on the plan, which at least some in Rome consider to be “his,” and which he first suggested in public 3 months ago.

Sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions in Baltimore told CNA that Wuerl chose to step back from the plan’s presentation, providing advice and counsel but not seeking to take public credit. A spokesman for Wuerl declined to comment on that decision.

Several bishops in Baltimore told CNA that Cupich appeared to be positioning himself as an unofficial but influential policy-maker in the conference. His status would be strengthened if the plan he introduced in Baltimore gained support in Rome, they said, especially if it were favored over the plan proposed by conference officials.

It is not clear to what extent Cupich considered how the manner in which he presented his plan could be interpreted. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago told CNA that Cardinal Cupich was away, and could not be reached for comment.

A source familiar with the drafting of the alternative proposal told CNA that Wuerl was not involved in the way the plan was presented in Baltimore, saying that Wuerl’s only concern was developing the best possible plan for tackling the sexual abuse crisis, and not “playing games” at the conference.

Many American bishops arrived in Baltimore this week expecting to approve the proposed the independent commission, along with proposed standards for episcopal conduct. Bishops were stunned to discover Monday that they could not vote on the measures, following the last-minute instruction from the Congregation for Bishops, received Sunday night by conference president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.

An Archdiocese of Washington official suggested to CNA that the Congregation for Bishops’ last minute suspension of voting at the Baltimore meeting might have been because the conference’s independent commission proposal was not sent to Rome until Oct. 30.

DiNardo, however, told a press conference Monday that while the draft document for the independent commission had been sent to Rome at the end of October, the USCCB had been in consistent contact with Vatican officials as the texts were developed.

DiNardo said that “When we were in Rome [in October] we consulted with all of [the Vatican dicasteries]. I mean, [that’s what] we do.”

“When I met with the Holy Father in October, the Holy Father was very positive in a general way - he had not seen everything yet - of the kind of action items we were looking to do.”

Cupich spoke from the floor immediately after DiNardo’s announcement of the change Monday morning. The cardinal suggested that the bishops continue to discuss the proposed measures and take non-binding votes on them. He offered no indication at that time that he would introduce a completely different plan.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Chicago cardinal rose to question the premise of the USCCB’s proposed independent commission, asking if it was a reflection of sound ecclesiology. Cupich suggested that the commission could be seen as a way of “outsourcing” difficult situations.

Shortly thereafter, Cupich submitted to conference leaders a seemingly well-prepared and comprehensive “Supplement to the [USCCB] Essential Norms,” which outlined in detail the plan he had developed with Wuerl.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said from the floor that the “metropolitan model” appeared to align closer with the Church’s hierarchical structure.

“I really do favor the use of the metropolitan and the metropolitan review board for these cases… but that would require that the Holy See give metropolitan archbishops more authority than we have,” Chaput told the conference.

Chaput told the bishop that the reason the USCCB executive committee opted to pursue the idea of an independent commission instead of developing a plan based around the metropolitan archbishop was because they did not think the “metropolitan model’ would have support in Rome.

“When we discussed this at the executive committee level we, some people, thought it would be easier for us to develop this independent commission than to get the Church to change canon law,” he said.

Sources close to the USCCB told CNA that if the executive committee had known the Vatican might support the “metropolitan model,” it might have been pursued earlier, with a proposal being circulated to members by the conference leadership. A spokesperson for the USCCB declined to comment on that possibility.

Cupich had suggested during the meeting that either or both plans could be voted on in non-binding resolutions in order to give the Vatican a sense of the American episcopate’s desires. Ultimately, no vote was taken.

Instead, as the Baltimore meeting ended, DiNardo agreed that Cupich’s plan would be developed alongside the independent commission plan, by a special task force consisting of former USCCB presidents Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, and Archbishop Wilton Gregory. DiNardo will have the option of presenting either or both possibilities when he and conference vice president Archbishop Jose Gomez attend the Vatican’s February meeting.

USCCB spokespersons declined several times to comment on any role Cupich or Wuerl, members of the Congregation for Bishops, might have played in developing the congregation’s reaction to the special commission plan.

Some considerations. From the above, we understand that Cupich and Wuerl and the Congregation for Bishops have worked for months behind the US Episcopal Conference, to sabotage the two proposals that the Americans were working on. And of which, however, Rome was continuously informed. The painful justification thus comes down - also served by the major international press agencies, prone to official versions - according to which Rome had been taken by surprise by the proposals of the bishops. No, he was simply preparing a plan provided by members of the power group near McCarrick. And he has chosen to make a nice authoritarian trip to the USCCB, with many greetings to synodicity, independence, autonomy, etc. etc. Pure Brezhnevian centralism.

Second consideration: what obviously annoys the proposal is that the "club boys" ie the bishops can be investigated - investigated, mind you, not judged; investigated - by an external commission made up of lay people. But clericalism? No, that's not to use the word homosexuality. Another lure mirror. The bishops must investigate the bishops, and the laity do not put their noses on it. They pray and pay. So they want Wuerl, Cupich and - until proven otherwise - even the Pope. Business as usual. With the results that, until today we have seen. Fortunately, at least for the United States, lay justice will take care of it. Maybe Federal. Which, however, perhaps will not stop there.

Then they'll have something to laugh about.

This reinforces the idea I began to have yesterday that Cupich, Wuerl, and McCarrick are living in a never-never land where, as long as they can throw the small percentage of gay priests and bishops who can be accused of "pedophilia" under the bus, the rest can carry on with the authorities looking the other way. US corporations have found it's not like that for the last 40 years. I agree with Tosatti -- McCarrick, Wuerl, and presumably Francis will have something to laugh about when they realize they can't get around US law so easily.

Cardinal Cupich And The Meaning Of "Consensual"

Cardinal Cupich recently has found a knack for making controversial statements. At the recent Baltimore bishops' conference,

During the question period following the presentation from National Review Board (NRB) Chair Dr. Francesco Cesareo, Cupich told the body of bishops that examinations of offenses against minors versus adults should be separate.

“Because in some of the cases with adults ... involving clerics, it could be consensual sex,” the cardinal said, “anonymous, but also involve adult pornography.”

“There’s a whole different set of circumstances that need to come into play here,” Cupich added.

This is close to word salad, and I double checked the video at the link to make sure this is what he said. On one hand, he seems to be equating "consensual" sex with gay cruising in public parks or rest rooms, if he's using the term "anonymous". But in that case, it's extremely high-risk behavior, not just due to the possibility of blackmail or violence, but the likelihood of contracting disease -- and that leaves aside the scandal that would result from a public lewdness arrest. (That happens still, because people want to use their parks and public restrooms without surprises.)

Er, if a priest is doing this, shouldn't it be taken very seriously/ What if he's picking up disease in the public john and coming back and passing it on to 19-year-olds in the rectory? Is it OK because the Life Teen coordinator isn't underage?

I'm not at all sure that Cupich understands the range of same-sex conduct. The term "consensual" more frequently comes into play in the context of sexual harassment in the workplace, but this opens another huge can of worms. The standard definition of "sexual harassment" involves an overt requirement of sex at work in return for a promotion or simply keeping one's job.

But it's actually more complicated: if a vice president asks a low-level administrator out to dinner, isn't the employee at the bottom effectively under pressure to perform, whether or not a specific offer is made? And just because both the administrator and the vice president insist their relationship is "consensual", doesn't this open other legal issues? Let's say the atmosphere in the office is such that "everyone understands" that administrators have to put out to get promoted. A low-level lady who's Catholic and clearly not interested in fun and games can claim she's discriminated against on that basis alone. It's legal sexual harassment even if the VP never spelled the deal out specifically.

So let's talk about bishops and seminarians. If everyone, over 18 or not, understood the route to ordination led through going to the beach with Uncle Ted -- which seems to have been the case -- how is any of this "consensual"? Certainly if some of the seminarians are underage, we're adding statutory rape to the list of charges, but just because a seminarian is over 18 and is under pressure to call things "consensual" doesn't exonerate Uncle Ted.

This is part of the general dishonesty in continuing to pretend the problem is "pedophilia". Even assuming the US bishops are short-sightedly acting like risk managers only to limit their legal exposure and not encouraging holiness, there are huge legal exposures for in-house hanky-panky that fall well short of pedophilia. Even among Episcopalians, Bp Paul Moore Jr was forced into retirement due to a sexual harassment lawsuit from a gay male adult priest. We must assume this will happen soon in the Church, if it hasn't already and been thoroughly covered up.

Now we get to adult pornography, which Cupich just tosses into the mix. Let's take the case of Fr Montalbano, Fr Kalchik's predecessor at the Resurrection parish in Chicago.

[I]t’s a Sunday morning. The pastor doesn’t come down for the first mass of that day, which is a Spanish mass. There are three deacons there. The priest doesn’t come down. What do you do? Well, let’s find out what’s going on,” Fr. Kalchik told Voris.

“They break the door down from the Church to the parish house. They go upstairs to Montalbano’s bedroom on the second floor. They break into the bedroom and they find this man stark naked, hooked up to a sex machine. And this is in his room with the wall of mirrors on the one side, wall of mirrors on the one side,” continued Kalchik.

. . . “But in the immediate cleanup process of Montalbano, one of the deacons removed two full closets of gay pornography. Not just, you know, a couple of items, but between videos, and books, and everything imaginable, it was all put into black hefty bags – a sizeable, two full closet fulls, and this is all carted out to some suburban Chicago forest preserve, and burned in one of those super-size cauldrons they have there,” concluded Fr. Kalchik.

Cupich, as far as I can see, is suggesting that if it's just a sex machine, and there's no kiddie porn involved, these aren't the droids we're looking for. But what happens if, say, a plumber goes into the rectory and in the course of fixing a leak comes across the mirror, the sex machine, and the porn, even if Fr Montalbano isn't there? What if he goes to Church Militant? Or, failing that, it just becomes general knowledge in the parish? Does Cupich just write a stern pastoral letter telling the faithful to grow up, join the 21st century?

There's something seriously missing with this guy. Michael Voris wonders if he's ad libbing or if he consults with Rome before he makes any remarks. My sense of things is that he's basically a ding-a-ling, and he's been given basic talking points to supplement the letter to the conference, but it has words like "anonymous", "consensual", "pornography", and so forth that he doesn't quite know what to do with, so he just throws them in where they seem to fit. But the powers that be in Rome are also ignorant of the problem, the issues, and how this will play out.

Cupich is a poor choice of stooge, though Rome's case is so weak it's hard to imagine who can argue it better. But that's not Francis's intent, clearly -- a stooge will serve, because he's imposing things from above anyhow.

The Current Crisis And The Legal Status Of The Vatican

A visitor very kindly sent me a PDF of an article whose abstract is available here, "The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex", by John R Morss, which appeared in the European Journal of International Law in 2016. The site says it isn't available for download, so I'm not sure how visitors may be able to find a copy, although interested parties can certainly e-mail me, and I'll forward my copy.

The abstract says,

This article offers a re-examination of the international legal status of what is here termed the Vatican/Holy See complex (VHS), focusing on claims to statehood. The problematic ‘effect’ of Vatican City, of the Holy See, of the papacy and of associated entities is interrogated at the level of international law, entering as little as possible into administrative or theological distinctions. The various grounds cited as supporting status amounting to statehood are argued to be inadequate.

As I've mentioned here already, the current crisis has offered so far a small number of instances in which the Vatican has used its diplomatic status to avoid legal accountability for high-level officials. Cardinal Law's departure from Boston for Rome in 2003, although it was not to avoid direct legal jeopardy, would have made him effectively unavailable for civil depositions, and observers have suggested this as a reason he never returned to the US afterward. Others have suggested Cardinal Wuerl might find it in his interest to leave for Rome and stay there for similar reasons.

More recently, "The Vatican has told French authorities that Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), cannot testify at a clerical sexual abuse trial in Lyon because he enjoys immunity due to the Holy See's sovereign status." A more pressing question, although it's largely outside the scope of the subject here, is how the Vatican has or hasn't lived up to its legal responsibilities as a player in the international banking system.

Morss argues,

[A]n agreement was reached between the incumbent Pope and Benito Mussolini in 1929, according to which a small area of Rome (the Vatican City) would be treated by the Kingdom of Italy as having special status. The international status of this ‘sui generis’ entity is both conceptually problematic and of practical concern – whether this status amounts to statehood or to something less than statehood.

. . . To the extent that the Vatican City or the Holy See has either internationally recognized statehood, or a status that in any way approaches statehood so as to sustain any of the privileges that go with statehood, then any ‘normal’ criminal investigation is impeded. (p 928)

Morss discusses the arbitrary and ambiguous relationship between the "Holy See" and the international entity of the Vatican State.

[T]he Holy See is defined expansively in the Code of Canon Law as comprising the pontiff, the Roman Curia and ‘that which appears from natural law or the context’. At the same time, ‘a country does not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but with the Holy See’. In its preparatory work for the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Law Commission noted that treaties are ‘entered into not by reason of territorial sovereignty over the Vatican State, but on behalf of the Holy See, which exists separately from that State’. (p 930)

It seems to me that in normal circumstances, this is a purely theoretical, not a practical, question. But the quote attributed to Stalin, "The pope -- how many divisions has he got?" bears some resonance if we try to consider the Vatican as a nation-state. Since 1870, popes have usually relied on moral suasion in the international field; if a pontiff addresses the United Nations, it's on the same basis as the Dalai Lama, but if the President of the United States speaks, it's to articulate policy that can be backed up with legal, financial, and military muscle.

Even Pius XII and John Paul II acted on the global political scene by indirection, mostly just giving prestige to movements like resistance to Hitler or support for Polish Solidarity, even if such movements were informally or secretly coordinated with the Vatican. But if the Vatican tries to use diplomatic legal standing to protect ecclesiastical bad actors, this could alter the situation.

Morss looks primarily at the legal and diplomatic foundation of the Vatican as the successor to the Papal States (where the pope did in fact have divisions). But, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, popes were players in European power politics beyond the Italian peninsula, with decidedly mixed results. The European religious wars during this period were good for no one, fought the Protestants only to a stalemate, and quite possibly distracted the Church from the more important agenda of defeating Mahometanism, which was resurgent.

I'm still thinking this over, but I wonder if the current crisis signals the start of a new realignment. Morss concludes,

Either the responsibilities that go with statehood must be fully embraced or the immunities that go with statehood must be fully relinquished. The analysis presented above supports the second of these options. What is needed now, in other words, is an appropriately Franciscan gesture of humility. (p 946)

Francesca Chaouqui, Emiliano Fittipaldi, And Gianluigi Nuzzi: Vatileaks II

So let's look at "Vatileaks II", which is a scandal that's based in large part on the unique diplomatic status of the Vatican and also explains in part why commissions, lay-led investigations, special prosecutors, or whatever other remedies some people may propose to remedy the Second Crisis aren't going to work.

The most intriguing case is of Francesca Chaouqui,

In the first big scandal to hit the papacy of Pope Francis, Ms Chaouqui was put on trial for leaking documents to two Italian journalists who subsequently wrote best-selling books about corruption, infighting and skullduggery inside the tiny city state.

She was convicted by a Vatican court last year and sentenced to 10 months in jail in what was dubbed the Vatileaks II trial, but was given a suspended sentence because she was pregnant.

I question how this is the "first big scandal", but I'll let that go. Ms Chaouqui, a thirtysomething public relations consultant, was put on a "financial reform commission" by Francis soon after his accession in 2013. I haven't been able to find the actual name of this commission -- it may be related to a commission or commissions set up in response to "Vatileaks I" discusssed in yesterday's post -- but I think it's interesting that a PR person would be put on a financial commission and then be accused of leaking information.

UPDATE: A visitor referred me to this site (in Italian), which calls it "Cosea , the reference commission for study and orientation on the organization of the economic and administrative structures of the Holy See, led by the Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda. Both were arrested in the Vatican for the leak of information and disclosure of confidential documents."

Er, why have a PR flack of any sort on such a commission? Normally, in a real country with real banking, securities, and tax laws, such a commission would have members from major audit firms and outside counsel. PR duties, if any, would go to someone's staff and be limited to tight-lipped announcements. A full report would be confidential, and CEOs and such would quietly resign to "spend more time with their families". Instead, in the Vatican, we have a sexpot on the commission itself freelancing like an Italian Nancy Drew to get her own secret messages from the conspirators:

In her book, In The Name of Peter, the 35-year-old public relations executive reveals for the first time that she had a mole in the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State.

He kept her abreast of what was going on there by leaving secret notes in a confessional in the 16th century San Luigi dei Francesi church, which is famous for Caravaggio paintings that hang on its walls.

Well, this commission's sure gonna get to the bottom of the whole thing, huh? Maybe they need to hire Inspector Clouseau as well.

Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi are two Italian journalists indicted by the Vatican for publishing classified information from Ms Chaouqui in books. However,

Nuzzi and fellow journalist Emmanuele Fittipaldi were put on trial in a Vatican court in 2015 after both published books based on leaked documents that exposed the greed, mismanagement and corruption at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. In July 2016, after an eight-month trial, the Vatican’s criminal court declared it had no jurisdiction to prosecute them.

The court did, however, convict Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was sentenced to 18 months, and public relations consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who was sentenced to 10 months.

The first, and by far the most basic, question I have is why the US bishops -- and Cardinals DiNardo and O'Malley, with Abp Gómez, strike me as accomplished institutional actors -- would make requests for some new sort of Vatican commission, a lay-led investigation, and "transparency", when it could not be clearer what the result would be even if Pope Francis agreed this was a good idea. In fact, if I were Francis, I'd be saying, "Signora Chaouqui! It's all been a huge mistake! I now need your expertise to chair this extremely important new commission!"

On the other hand, that Ms Chaouqui and a couple of other minor players should be convicted, while the two Italian journalists get off on a jurisdictional issue, raises another interesting question, the legal and diplomatic status of the Vatican, which I'll try to get to, or at least start with, tomorrow.

More Context On Msgr Ricca

As I do more research on Battista Ricca, I'm finding he's at the fulcrum of the other major Vatican scandals -- or at least, those that have reached the European press in the last several years. Let's start with Vatileaks, or as some commentators call it now, Vatileaks I. According to Wikipedia,

The scandal first came to light in late January 2012 in a television program aired in Italy under the name of The Untouchables (Gli intoccabili), and escalated in May 2012 when Gianluigi Nuzzi published a book entitled His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI consisting of confidential letters and memos.

Among the documents were letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by then apostolic nuncio to the United States, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him.

The scandal appears to have been less about the financial corruption than that the information was leaked.

Paolo Gabriele, who had been the pope's personal butler since 2007, leaked the stolen information to Gianluigi Nuzzi. He was arrested on 23 May 2012 after confidential letters and documents addressed to the pope and other Vatican officials were found in his Vatican apartment.

A separate investigation took place concerning the financial and administrative problems.

The Vatican probe into the leaks worked along several tracks, with Vatican magistrates pursuing the criminal investigation and the Vatican secretariat of state an administrative probe. In March 2012 Pope Benedict appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks. The three cardinals appointed by Benedict acted in a supervisory role, looking beyond the narrow criminal scope of the leaks to interview broadly across the Vatican bureaucracy; they purportedly uncovered a sexual and blackmail scandal.

One outcome of the investigation appears to have been that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had been president of the Vatican Bank (IOR) since 2009, was forced from his position in May 2012, although this seems to have been connected with other controversies not necessarily related to the cardinals' investigation. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore that once he became pope, Bergoglio put his corrupt ally Battista Ricca into the position of IOR president.

Although Francis's "Who am I to judge?" remarks on July 29, 2013 were very well publicized, it's less well known that they were made in the context of a question about Battista Ricca and his flagrant homosexual background.

Ricca was also a subject of earlier complaints by Abp Viganò at the time of the 2012 Vatileaks scandal. The visitor with insights into the Italian press sent me a link to a much more recent story in il Giornale from September 3, 2018. The translation is via Google translate with a few emendations of clear errors:

Another burning case is likely to shake the Vatican. The polemics raised by the publication of the so-called "Viganò dossier" are not allayed. The document of the apostolic nuncio was announced a week ago, but the alleged revelations brought to the forefront continue to hold the bank.

The last to express themselves on the content of those pages, in order of time, was the journalist Sandro Magister.

. . . Magister, in the interview with La Verità , reported the existence of another affair, the one related to Monsignor Ricca : "There is a twin case, perhaps even more embarrassing: that of Monsignor Battista Ricca. Seventh heaven" [see below]. The clergyman in question would have been responsible for behaviors not in line with the provisions of Catholic doctrine and tradition: "In Montevideo - Magister said - between 1999 and 2001, he lived under the eyes of everyone with his lover , the former captain of the Swiss army Patrick Haari ". And again: "He attended places of appointment with young homosexuals, once he was involved in a fight and another was discovered in an elevator blocked inside the nunciature with an eighteen-year-old known to the Uruguayan police. He was recalled to Rome, his career did not suffer damage, indeed began again as if nothing had happened ".

Monsignor Ricca would have been appointed to the IOR prelature despite these events. Pope Francis was aware of these facts? A similar question was answered by Magister: "In 2013 the Pope was aware and consenting: the nuncios warned him and the documentation sent by the Uruguayan bishops was complete." A question on Ricca and the gay lobby replied: 'I did what the canon law sends to do, the Investigatio previa, and there is nothing that they are accused of". "The offices - specified the journalist - had omitted the most troubled passages, but he had submitted the true documentation and did not speak". Then the clarification: "Ricca never repented. He went out on the Espresso and did not react, with his friends he talked about chatter. Francesco also dismissed them as talk. By pronouncing the famous phrase 'Who am I to judge?' - Magister pointed out -, Francesco referred to the archetypal case of Ricca. With these words, Bergoglio overturned in his favor a public affair that could have undermined his credibility. When he refers to gay issues in the media world, the Pope does something clever. "The clash in the Vatican, meanwhile, seems to have just begun.

The visitor comments,

Reference to "seventh heaven"...it the translation of name of Sandro Magister's blog septimo cielo carried by larepubblica.it went behind a subscription paywall about a year ago.The Vatican had no more attentive theologically astute observer tracking it. And they hate him. I think they tried to have him suppressed, so now he's more remote for me.

The separate Vatican investigation into the financial irregularities in the IOR referred to above appears to have collapsed with a second Vatileaks scandal -- sometimes referred to as Vatileaks II -- in 2017, which I will discuss tomorrow. However, it appears from the information we have that Ricca was placed in his position by Francis specifically to forestall any serious review of the IOR.

But beyond that, the Wikipedia entry cited above refers to a dossier on the scandals as of 2012:

On 17 December 2012 the Pope received a report on "Vatican lobbies" prepared by cardinals Julián Herranz, Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo, and Jozef Tomko. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, speaking on Vatican Radio on 23 February 2013, strongly criticized media coverage of the report as a financial scandal which purportedly became, upon the cardinals' internal investigation, a gay sex and blackmail scandal as well.

Although the dossier was available only to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the investigators themselves, the latter were free to discuss the results of their investigation with the Cardinal electors of the March 2013 papal conclave, and the dossier itself was to have been given to Benedict's successor as Pope, Francis.

It's been speculated that this dossier was the proximate cause of Benedict's abdication in February 2013. While the contents remain confidential, it's hard not to speculate that Ricca is a key figure in making sure the issues that are apparently discussed in it are not addressed.

Msgr Battista Ricca

A visitor who follows the Italian press has sent me pointers to stories that are covered there but are underreported elsewhere and, as far as I can see, are not covered at all in the US Catholic press -- not even by Church Militant. (Come to think of it, I'd follow the German press if anything interesting happened there.) It's a bit puzzling that nobody's followed these stories in the US, since, as Raymond Arroyo has noted, the corruption in the Church has fathers, and those fathers must be in Rome.

Msgr Battista Ricca is the Prelate of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), commonly called the Vatican Bank. He has a remarkably colorful background. The best English-language coverage I've found is in the UK Guardian from 2013:

Papal nunciate who lived openly with his male lover in Uruguay appointed by pope to senior job in the Vatican

On 15 June, the pope appointed Monsignor Battista Ricca, an Italian cleric and former Vatican diplomat, to be "prelate" of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). As such, Ricca is entitled to attend meetings of both the bodies that oversee the scandal-ridden IOR's operations – its board and a five-strong commission of cardinals. The prelate can also demand to see any document he cares to inspect.

According to the latest edition of the weekly news magazine L'Espresso, Ricca has a past punctuated with scandal. Its report, which the pope's spokesman branded as "not trustworthy", claimed Ricca lived more or less openly with a Swiss army officer while at the Holy See's nunciature (embassy) in Uruguay. It said he arrived with his lover and, while running the post between nuncios, provided him with both accommodation and a job.

The weekly magazine said Ricca was once beaten up in a gay bar in Montevideo and that, when the lift at the nunciature broke down in the night, firefighters called to deal with the emergency found him inside with a local rent boy known to police. It said that, after he was transferred to Trinidad and Tobago, that his alleged lover left trunks behind in Uruguay containing his effects. When they were opened later, they were found to contain a pistol, large numbers of prophylactics and sizeable quantities of pornography, the magazine said. Ricca has not made any comment on the allegations.

The Guardian echoes the Italian press in cutting to the chase:

That points to the key questions in the affair: whether Pope Francis knew of the claims against Ricca before he handed him one of the most sensitive jobs in the Vatican. And if not, why not? After he was recalled to Rome, Ricca served in the Vatican's secretariat of state before being given charge of first one, and eventually three, of the guest houses that the Holy See uses to accommodate church dignitaries on visits to Rome.

It was at one of these that the future pope met the Italian cleric. Their friendship was cemented after the pope's election when Francis decided not to occupy the lavish papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, but to remain at the guest house, run by Ricca, in which he stayed during the election.

It would have been standard procedure for him to call in Ricca's personal file before making the appointment and – whatever the truth or otherwise of the claims against him – it is inconceivable that he would have gone ahead had he known about them. It is hard to imagine a more dangerous official for the pope than one charged with shaking up the IOR, yet acutely vulnerable to blackmail.

The conclusion in all this coverage is remarkably polite: it's inconceivable that the Holy Father would hire this guy in light of his history -- someone must have scrubbed his file, huh? An alternate explanation is that this ain't a bug, it's a feature. In light of the Viganò testimony, this would be another circumstance in which Francis, as he was with McCarrick, was fully aware of an individual's sketchy background but made him a key deputy or important adviser.

Ricca continues as the head of the IOR. I would say the question is not whether he's a danger to the pope, but precisely because he's vulnerable to blackmail, he owes Francis everything. Without his patronage, he'd be banished to some remote monastery living out his days in prayer and penance.

There's a second question attached to this one, too: how did a character who was about as well suited to a diplomatic post as Guy Burgess then wind up as the hotel manager for the Vatican guest houses? It seems as though this could also put him in a position where he could learn some secrets of his own -- wouldn't bigwigs from out of town be disposed to seek out companionship? Wouldn't the guy who ran the guest house be in a position to help out?

I asked my visitor if Francis is still at the Casa Santa Marta guest house, and he replied he still is. I asked why it might be to his advantage to stay there, and he said it's a good question.

What About McElroy, Tobin And Cupich?

Bishop Robert McElroy, 64, and Cardinals Joseph Tobin, 66, and Blase Cupich, 69, make up the next cohort of homosexualist prelates who look as though they will replace the Wuerl generation -- Wuerl is 78. Barring equivalent scandal, we may expect McElroy, Tobin and Cupich to stay influential into their 80s.

One thing that intrigues me is that none has attracted the critical press attention that Wuerl or McCarrick had attracted before their ultimate downfall. Wuerl's opulent lifestyle was covered in Pittsburgh and Washington, while McCarrick's conduct with seminarians had reached the press in 2006, whether or not US bishops could insist they'd heard nothing about it but rumors. But the most we know about McElroy, Tobin and Cupich comes only from an implication in the first Viganò testimony:

Viganò claimed that the appointments of Cardinal Cupich to Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Tobin to Newark “were orchestrated by McCarrick,” among others. He said neither of the names was presented by the nunciature, whose job is traditionally to present a list of names, or terna, to the Congregation for Bishops. He also added that Bishop Robert McElroy’s appointment to San Diego was orchestrated “from above” rather than through the nuncio.

So the "father" of this corruption turns out to be McCarrick, but we don't have a more complete record of sponsors and patrons that we earlier had of figures like Bernard Law or Donald Wuerl. In the wake of the Wuerl-McCarrick scandal, we have only hints. On McElroy,

The Bishop of San Diego has explained why he did not respond to a 2016 letter alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and other Catholic clerics.

The letter was sent to Bishop Robert McElroy by psychotherapist Richard Sipe.

. . . Sipe wrote to Bishop McElroy in 2016, listing allegations against half a dozen bishops – including then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – and warning of a broader problem of chastity violations among clergy.

On Cupich, the most consistent cirticism comes from Church Militant, for instance:

According to a man who thinks he's a so-called transgender woman, the archbishop of Chicago is listening to him instead of his faithful priest, Fr. Paul Kalchik, the pastor of Resurrection Parish.

The biological man, who goes by the name Alexandra Whitney, started a Twitter storm over the weekend claiming to have the cardinal's ear in having Fr. Kalchik ousted:

"I called and spoke to Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of the Diocese of Chicago. I shared my concerns with Cardinal Cupich about Fr. Kalchik's attacks on LGBTQ Catholics and how this priest is harming the Body of Christ."

The most we know about Tobin's rise is that the Archdiocese of Newark is characterized in Engle's The Rite of Sodomy as "gay friendly" and a predictable step in the career of an upwardly mobile gay bishop, as it was for McCarrick. Before he became Archbishop of Indianapolis, he spent about 15 years in the Vatican, where, speaking apparently good Spanish, he seems to have developed ties with Cardinal Bergoglio. Of other patrons and protectors, we seem so far to know little.

UPDATE: Regarding Tobin, we have the episode of the "Nighty-night" tweet, which may or may not have been intended for his sister, as well as the Italian actor who was in residence at the rectory:

In late September, I started getting calls from concerned Catholics in Newark, New Jersey that Cardinal Joseph Tobin “had an Italian actor living at his cathedral basilica rectory.” The callers identified the actor as Francesco Castiglione. They said that Castiglione has been taking English and voice classes at Seton Hall University, and suggested that he is the real recipient of Tobin’s infamous accidental tweet from earlier this year. (“Nighty, Night baby, I love you,” Tobin wrote to someone whom he claimed later was one of his sisters; the sister has never published proof of receiving the tweet.)

. . . I got a call from a well-placed source in Newark. “Francesco is gone. He left the rectory,” my source informed me.

It's probably not an accident that none of these men has an extensive paper trail. If anyone can refer me to additional links, I'll be very happy to follow up.

Raymond Arroyo: "This Corruption Has a Father"

At about 10:40 in the YouTube video below, as he interviews Msgr Charles Pope, Raymond Arroyo says of the scandals in the Second Crisis, "You can track the lineage, they're connected, some of them to Cardinal McCarrick, some of them to others -- but this corruption has a father, and then it is passed along."

This insight gets within shouting distance of the problem, and it's clear that Msgr Pope isn't quite comfortable even with shouting distance -- if Cardinal Tobin succeeds Wuerl in Washington, things could go south for him in a hurry. Arroyo presses on with what seems to be the consensus response to the Second Crisis, a lay-led investigation into how Cardinal McCarrick was able to advance in the hierarchy despite his clear record of sexual predation.

This is a lot like the calculated indirection that "explained" the First Crisis, that it was a series of bad apples, marginal priests who had a pedophilia problem at a time when the condition was poorly understood blah blah blah, and the Virtus program has been put in place to deal with it, blah blah blah. That the nice middle-aged ladies who serve as lectors must be trained in where not to touch toddlers is not, of course, the real issue, but everyone goes on pretending it's the solution.

By the same token, what is a "lay-led investigation" into McCarrick going to turn up that we don't already know? Engle's The Rite of Sodomy covers McCarrick quite fully. For instance,

Cardinal Spellman ordained Father McCarrick on May 31, 1951. He served as secretary to Cardinal Cooke from 1971 to 1977, when Cooke made him an Auxiliary Bishop of New York.

New York insiders glibly refer to McCarrick by his feminine name “Blanche” and Vatican officials have long been aware of his penchant for young handsome seminarians. [74] McCarrick has ordained at least three homosexual bishops.

Yet, here is a man who the Holy See permitted to play the fool before an international audience of reporters on the question of the ordination of homosexual candidates to the priesthood and the existence of a homosexual network within the Church.

How far has the rot gone? All the way to the top. (p 758)

And in the footnote:

74 The charge that Cardinal McCarrick is a homosexual prelate who preys on seminarians was made public by whistleblower Father James Haley in December 2005, shortly after The Rite of Sodomy went to press. See Matt C. Abbott, “Priest accuses U.S. cardinal of abuse of power,” 2 December 2005 at http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_10585.shtml. Several years later, author Richard Sipe confirmed McCarrick’s homosexual proclivities on his web site at http://www.richardsipe.com. “The Archdiocese of Newark September 2009—Questions About the Status of Clergy Abuse Schulte/Gillen; Sita; & McCarrick,” and “The Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome” are two articles by Sipe which further substantiate the charge of homosexual exploitation of clergy and seminarians by the cardinal. According to Sipe, McCarrick’s homosexuality was known at the time of his installation as the first bishop of Metuchen. This was on January 31, 1982. The New Jersey diocese was erected especially for him by Pope John Paul II on November 19, 1981. Readers will recall that McCarrick was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of New York by homosexual Francis Cardinal Spellman, and later served as secretary to Spellman’s successor Terence James Cardinal Cooke, also a homosexual. The McCarrick case is a classic example of intergenerational homosexuality in the Roman Catholic hierarchy today. (p 762)

I don't see the point of a new lay-led investigation that will take months or years to restate what's been documented in a decades-old public record. But Arroyo is correct, and echoes Engle, in saying that one part of the problem is intergenerational homosexuality. The chain of "paternity" referred to by Arroyo is fully known. It's just as well known with his successor Wuerl.

What we don't know yet, at least in the full public record, is what's up with Tobin, Cupich, and others. I would say this is where lay-led investigation would be much more profitable.

Rome Symposium On Anglicanorum Coetibus Canceled?

In July of this year, it was announced that on November 4-8, 2019 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will hold a symposium in Rome to mark the 10th Anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus. The chief dilettante and bottlewasher at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, Mrs Gyapong, had clearly been anticipating this as a validating event for herself and her organization; at the time, she posted

I will be traveling to Rome this October to meet with the organizer of the symposium to see what the Anglicanorum coetibus Society might be able to sponsor in conjunction with this event. We could sponsor a social event, a lecture, special music.

Who among my readers is likely to come to Rome in Nov. 2019? What would you like the Society to sponsor?

I've got to say I can think of many, many better uses for trip-to-Europe money. However, it appears that the CDF has canceled this event, so nobody will have this tough choice to make. In recent days, the Society's blog carried an announcement of the cancellation, but then my regular correponent reported,

Mrs Gyapong has pulled both the announcement of the cancellation of the symposium and the original AC blog post (October 30) regarding her meeting in Rome last month with the CDF priest organising the symposium. I note that an AC Society conference in Houston scheduled for September 2017 was also cancelled. Surely not for lack of interest or substance?

This suggests the post I linked here from July may be a short-timer now as well.

As I've said, I don't think Anglicanorum coetibus is a thing any longer, and whether or not Francis is in favor isn't really a factor.

The Diocese Of Palm Beach

Intrigued by the reference in yesterday's post to the removal of Bp Anthony O'Connell from the Diocese of Palm Beach for abusing seminarians, I did some more searching in The Rite of Sodomy. It seems to me that we urgently need a more easily searchable guide to who promoted whom and who went where. Just for starters, although most recent attention has centered on McCarrick, his style of abuse and harassment, as was the case with Anthony O'Connell, was common throughout the US and probably much of the world, and it had been going on for decades.

The Diocese of Palm Beach itself was a center for this sort of activity, as Engle points out:

In 1990, when Bishop Thomas Daily, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla. went to the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Vatican chose Joseph Keith Symons as his successor.

Born on October 14, 1932 in Champion, Mich., Symons was a graduate of St.Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. He was ordained a priest of St. Augustine, Fla. on May 18, 1958. Later records would show that he began preying on young boys shortly after his ordination. (p 777)

Since the turn of the 20th century, Palm Beach has been a focus of an "anything goes" lifestyle among the wealthy, which gradually filtered down as prosperity and tourism increased. Symons, in the meantime, rose in the hierarchy of the Diocese of St Petersburg, FL, which became a dumping ground for pederast priests transferred from other dioceses. Symons became known as a team player who would cooperate in these transfers, even though the chancery was often notified in writing of the priests' problems.

His final ecclesiastical promotion came in July 31, 1990, when he was made Bishop of Palm Beach at the age of 58.

During Symons’ eight years as Ordinary of Palm Beach, the diocese gained a reputation as being both “gay friendly” and a dumping ground for criminal pederast priests from other dioceses on the East coast.

According to John Holland, staff writer for the Sun Sentinel, bishops from the Dioceses of New York, Brooklyn, Camden, Orlando, Charlotte and Rockville Centre, N.Y. transferred errant priests guilty of sexual misconduct to the Diocese of Palm Beach.

Bishop John R. McGann of Rockville Centre sent four accused clerical sex molesters to Palm Beach including Father Peter Duvelsdorf who arrived in 1991 after being accused of molesting two brothers on Long Island. Duvelsdorf continued to serve as a priest in Palm Beach until he was arrested for public masturbation in a St.Lucie County park.49 Duvelsdorf has since retired. (p 778)

Symons followed a now-familiar pattern of promoting pro-homosexual groups and public events in his diocese, in addition to covertly allowing the transfer of priests in who had known records of abuse. But this came to an end soon enough:

On June 2, 1998, Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St.Petersburg took the podium at a press conference staged at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola in Palm Beach to announce the resignation of his colleague, Bishop Joseph Symons. The resignation followed the revelation that Symons had molested at least five teenage boys during the early years of his priesthood. Pope John Paul II accepted Symons’ resignation and assigned Lynch the role of Apostolic Administrator of Palm Beach until a successor to Symons was selected. (pp 780-81)

But the press, local and national, minimized the problem and was complicit in a coverup.

Bishop Lynch got the credit for the quick defusing of the Symons scandal. The local media praised his candor and honesty. The Tampa Tribune called his handling of the case “impressive” and the Miami Herald hailed the Church’s new openness as “refreshing.” According to Silk, Lynch told reporters that it had taken five weeks from his receiving the complaint to securing Pope John Paul II’s acceptance of Symons’ resignation.

. . . Twila Decker of the St.Petersburg Times reported on July 30, 1998 that Symons’ initial accuser had actually brought the molestation to the attention of Church authorities three years earlier than previously supposed. . . . The initial victim was paid off as were the later victims that came forward and the court records were sealed.

. . . When the Decker story broke, Bishop Lynch immediately announced that he was appointing a retired judge to look into how the 1995 complaint was handled in order to “restore some credibility to the diocese” (and presumably himself). (p 782)

Lynch himself was the subject of a gay sexual harassment scandal, as well as allegation of financial impropriety with another man, in 2002, but held on to his seat due to the bigger scandal across the state in Palm Beach.

in November 1998, Bishop Anthony O’Connell was informed by Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio in Washington, D.C., that he was to relieve Bishop Robert Lynch, the Apostolic Administrator of Palm Beach who had taken over the diocese when Bishop Symons resigned in June.

O’Connell’s installation as Bishop of Palm Beach took place on January 14, 1999. Catholics of Palm Beach breathed a little easier having been assured by the new bishop that he would bring a higher moral order to the scandal ridden diocese. The illusion lasted three years, two months, and seven days. (p 786)

But a familiar pattern reasserted itself:

On March 8, 2002, the popular bishop with the Irish lilting voice appeared at a news conference flanked by two dozen priests and staff. He announced his resignation and confessed that he had molested a teenager (Dixon) at St.Thomas Aquinas Seminary 25 years ago, but he only “touched” him. . . . When asked if there might be similar accusations from other persons, O’Connell said one might surface “of a somewhat similar situation in a somewhat similar time frame.” (p 787)

What then followed was the usual death watch, with the pontiff dithering over whether to accept a resignation while new allegations of sexual misconduct and stories of secret payoffs continued to emerge. The odd thing is how we're beginning to see that none of these stories is unique, and they involve misconduct by bishops, not marginal pedophile priests, but so far, there's been no serious effort by either bishops or responsible authorities in Rome to address the actual problem.