But Then There's Bishop Daly Of Spokane!

This isn't the first time Bp Thomas Daly of Spokane, WA has come up on this blog. Late last year, we looked at how his chancery handled the question of about 20 Jesuits who'd been credibly accused of abuse and were living under theoretical "safety plans" in a residence on the Gonzaga University campus, but were actually free to come and go.

As best we can tell from the record, then-Bp Cupich had been aware of at least seven of the Jesuits while he was ordinary there from 2010 to 2014, but did nothing about them. Daly, in contrast, acted decisively but quietly:

In 2016, they all suddenly left Gonzaga for California, a complete coincidence, I'm sure. (However, they were relocated to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, California, in the diocese where Daly had previously been auxiliary.) By 2017, the Spokane diocese was updating its policies to be sure that no more hinky Jesuits (or hinkies of any other stripe) could come in without the bishop's knowledge and approval.

When the news of the Jesuits at Gonzaga eventually broke, the diocese responded with what I thought was a textbook example of good crisis management. Yes, it had happened. Yes, the problem was fixed when the bishop learned about it. Yes, changes have been made to keep it from happening again. It was handled up front, everything out at once, no steady drip of new revelations. This had to say something about Bp Daly, in my view.

This week, we heard from Bp Daly again:

Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly’s call for local Catholic politicians who support legislation enabling abortions to get right with the church drew a skeptical response Monday from two Spokane City Council members.

Daly signed a letter Friday calling on local politicians “who obstinately persevere in their public support for abortion” to abstain from the sacrament of Communion until they’ve “reconciled to Christ and the Church.”

Daly cites legislation approved in New York state and proposed in Virginia in his letter and invokes language from Catholic canonical law indicating that actions promoting such laws are grave offenses to the church that would require public atonement.

“The Church’s commitment to the life of every human person from conception until death is firm,” Daly wrote. “God alone is the author of life and for the civil government to sanction the willful murder of children is unacceptable. For a Catholic political leader to do so is scandalous.”

On one hand, Daly appears to be one of very few US bishops to take such a clear position. He isn't threatening them with excommunication, but he's certainly urging them to an examination of conscience. Last Sunday we had a homily from an important guy in our archdiocesan chancery who was pretty darn ticked off (he used a stronger word) that more bishops weren't simply excommunicating the likes of Andrew Cuomo.

On the other, Daly clearly pays a price for his witness. The story linked above continues,

Spokane City council members Ben Stuckart and Karen Stratton, who were both raised Catholic and have taken Communion in the church, said the bishop’s words sent the wrong message.

“It hurt my feelings to read that,” said Stuckart, who said he doesn’t “regularly” attend church but that he’d been baptized and confirmed in the faith. “It’s the exact opposite of what Spokane should be.”

Stratton agreed, saying she supported “a woman’s right to choose” and that she was raised in the church by nuns who encouraged her to be a strong-willed person.

“Those kinds of comments, they split people,” Stratton said of the letter. “He should be setting an example.”

The stories we're seeing about bishops like Bp Foys in Covington show how easily they can be terrified by the press, something Foys himself acknowledged in his apology. This makes Daly that much more an example of courage, all too rare in the US Church. Michael Voris has a similar point about Cardinal Dolan:

His reaction and media comments following Governor Cuomo signing the new state abortion law reveals some serious issues upstairs with His Eminence.

He says Cuomo shouldn't be excommunicated because it would be giving ammo to the enemy — that the Left would seize on the excommunication and portray Cuomo in a sympathetic light. Yeah, they probably would — so what? Is that worse than allowing the world to think — or actually realize — that U.S. bishops are lily-livered cowards when it comes to the hard truths.

Dolan claims it would be counter-productive. What a stupid analysis; counter-productive to what, exactly? What's counter-productive is letting the world think leaders in the Church don't think this is a big deal, and what's worse, other Catholics think it's not a big deal.

. . . For example, when he was on FOX & Friends answering questions from the hosts about all this, FOX actually took down and edited out part of the live interview where Dolan simply got it wrong about Church teaching.

He said, in sum, that those involved in an abortion are not excommunicated, in direct defiance of existing canon law.

The laity needs to demand better bishops. We in fact have a number of them.

About Those Hinky Jesuits

I've got to admire the public-relations job Bp Daly's people in Spokane have done in responding to press reports about the Jesuit sex offenders who lived at Cardinal Bea House at Gonzaga University, without university administrators or Spokane law enforcement being notified. As far as I can see, the bottom line is that nobody in Daly's scope of authority is guilty of any sort of misconduct, and they in fact seem to have worked behind the scenes since 2015 to get the problem out of Spokane, which they did.

Yet once the issue came to light, they were able to make it clear that on one hand, it hadn't happened on Daly's watch, Daly had in fact worked to fix it -- but maybe more important, the response didn't directly stir up more bad publicity for the Jesuits or Cardinal Cupich, both of whom were culpable for the situation. Again, I hope this will help Bp Daly prosper in his career.

But let's look at this story, which came out in the left-wing press. A note at the bottom says that one of the editors was Narda Zacchino, a hard leftist from the 1960s married to Robert Scheer, another aging hard leftist and Castro sympathizer. This should give observers pause over the grist Catholic scandals provide for totalitarian propaganda -- even in the 1930s, a Nazi anti-Catholic talking point was sex abuse by priests.

It's also worth noting that the problem the Jesuits had with the former Oregon Province has gone unmentioned, as far as I can tell, in the books covering the First Crisis -- it doesn't appear in Engel's The Rite of Sodomy, for instance. In 2008-2009, though, both the Oregon Province and the Diocese of Fairbanks declared bankruptcy as a result of hundreds of lawsuits for Alaska abuse.

The abusive Jesuits at Cardinal Bea House were part of the Oregon Province’s outsized problem with sexual misconduct. The province had 92 Jesuits accused of sexual abuse, by far the most of any province in the country, according to data we compiled from church records, a database maintained by advocates for sex abuse victims, and information released earlier this month by the Jesuits. In addition, about 80 percent of accused abusers worked in Native communities in the Oregon Province.

The story focuses on the most egregious case, Fr James Poole, who had been sleeping with Alaska Native girls and women since his arrival in the state.

In a 1960 letter to a Jesuit official, local Jesuit leader Segundo Llorente fretted over Poole’s conduct. Poole regularly had long, one-on-one conversations with young girls about sex, Llorente wrote. Llorente’s letter speculated that Poole, “has a fixation on sex; an obsession; some sort of mental aberration that makes him see sex everywhere. Some think that may be (sic) he is projecting outwardly what is eating him inwardly … he is deliberately placing himself at all times in dangerous situations.”

There might have been some personal insight in those words. The names of both Llorente and the Alaska church official with whom he was corresponding, Father Paul O’Connor, appeared on a list released by the Fairbanks Diocese in 2009 of priests accused of sexual misconduct.

The pattern here is familiar because it's so often repeated: priests and religious whose conduct is extreme and clearly recognized by superiors, but tolerated and in fact enabled, at least in part because the superiors are guilty themselves. At minimum, a superior who takes serious action is subject to blackmail under such circumstances. But it seems to me that one way to avoid a problem with octogenarian offenders living in comfortable retirement at Jesuit facilities would be to laicize them when the crimes come to light and turn them over to civil authorities.

A National Public Radio report on other Alaska abuse cases raises a case that Bp Lopes may find relevant to the "Gilbertines" in Calgary. Fr George Endal, SJ, met an Army veteran and drifter in 1959 who had briefly been a Trappist, Joseph Lundowski. Endal quickly designated Lundowski a "brother" and put him in charge of the boys' dormitory at a mission school. Several witnesses observed Lundowski's misconduct with boys, but Lundowski routinely followed Endal to new assighments. Correspondence took place among Church officials for more than a decade over what to do with Lundowski, who continued to call himself "Brother" but had no official status. No action was taken.

Endal, meanwhile, asked that Lundowski be made a deacon; Church officials dithered. Endal unofficially made Lundowski a "deacon" anyhow. A bishop later officially endorsed the move. Finally in 1975, Endal had Lundowski flown out of his territory in response to yet another complaint, but Endal himself continued to abuse children. By 2004, at least 28 men filed lawsuits against the Jesuit province and the Diocese of Fairbanks due to abuse by Lundowski and Endal.

Bp Lopes, shut the "Gilbertines" down.

Two Bishops, Two Approaches

Barring any new revelations from state investigations, I think we've learned all we're going to know about the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. But the data points we have lead to compelling conclusions.

Then-Bp Cupich was the ordinary in Spokane from 2010 to 2014. In 2011, we know that the Jesuit provincial told him about at least seven of the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. Cupich had already been Bishop of Rapid City, SD from 1998 to 2010, so he presumably had more than a decade learning the job, and he'd been a bishop throughout the First Crisis. But as far as we know, he did nothing about the Jesuits who were theoretically living under "safety plans" but were free to come and go.

We know that Bp Thomas Daly took over from Cupich in 2015, and the press release a week ago from the diocese said he "was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House." Whether he was told anything by Cupich is unclear, although the issue seems not to have concerned him much between 2011 and his departure for Chicago.

On the other hand, the hinky Jesuits don't seem to have been a complete surprise to Daly, either, however he learned of them. In 2016, they all suddenly left Gonzaga for California, a complete coincidence, I'm sure. (However, they were relocated to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, California, in the diocese where Daly had previously been auxiliary.) By 2017, the Spokane diocese was updating its policies to be sure that no more hinky Jesuits (or hinkies of any other stripe) could come in without the bishop's knowledge and approval.

The result was, at least from a bishop-as-corporate-manager point of view, Daly had been acting prudently to deflect potential blame from the diocese, should the story become public, which in fact it did. He was also acting as a good shepherd, both protecting potential future victims and protecting the faithful from fallout over any new scandal.

The question is why Cupich, a decade older and with that much more experience as a bishop under his belt, didn't take equivalent action while he was in Spokane.

Let's look at the pattern we began to see in the First Crisis: certain bishops, like Law, Levada, and Mahony, simply had a record of protecting criminally abusive priests. But this didn't happen in a vacuum; they tolerated a great deal more open same-sex conduct and advocacy among all their clergy. There's probably a law enforcement analogy here: when police enforce quality-of-life laws, subway fare evasion or low-level vandalism, the overall crime rate decreases. The same, I strongly suspect, applies to dioceses.

Thus in the Second Crisis, we see similar records with Tobin, McCarrick, and Wuerl. And it's probably no coincidence that there are financial issues with these bishops as well. On the other hand, we're beginning to see bishops like Thomas Daly who are moving proactively, recognizing that it's simply part of a bishop's job to keep the lawn mowed, the windows clean, and the trash picked up. Even if Cupich tries to claim the Jesuit provincial didn't spell things out in words of two syllables or less, why did Daly see and act on a problem, knowing even less than Cupich, when Cupich apparently ignored it?

Although Cupich, if you get right down to it, doesn't strike me as very smart. This may be why he's where he is, and why he's still Pope Francis's point man for dealing with the Second Crisis.

Let's hope Bp Daly continues to advance in his career.

Cardinal Cupich And The Gonzaga Twenty

There's been a puzzling story over the past week about a number of Jesuit priests, apparently about 20 to 24, who had been credibly accused of sexual impropriety and had theoretically been confined to Cardinal Bea House, a Jesuit-owned residence on the Gonzaga University campus in Spokane, WA. According to the Register,

The sexual-abuse accusations against the priests living on Gonzaga’s campus were not made known publicly by the university, the Jesuit province or the diocese. Most of the accused priests were reported to be living at the Gonzaga residence in retirement or due to declining health.

The house is a residence owned by the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus and not overseen by the university. The credibly accused priests living there were reportedly subject to “safety plans” that forbade them from engaging with students.

According to the media reports, at least some credibly accused priests had regular unsupervised access to the university campus and unsupervised visits with students and were permitted to lead prayer services in other settings, including on Native-American reservations.

The Diocese of Spokane went into more detail in a December 21 press release:

According to files given to the Diocese of Spokane by the Oregon Province of Jesuits, these credibly accused priests were living on campus with safety plans requiring such things as chaperones for any trips out of Cardinal Bea House and restricting their public ministry. The reporting by Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting indicates that these credibly accused Jesuits were free to come and go on campus. This was an unacceptable situation.

In June of 2011 the Jesuit Provincial, Father Patrick Lee, informed then-Bishop Blase Cupich that seven priests with safety plans in place were living at Bea House.

Bishop Thomas Daly—who was installed in 2015—was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House.

It's likely that some of the Jesuits in question were aged and infirm, unlikely to go far or do mischief. But others were in a different position. According to Complicit Clergy,

Rev. James Poole had at least 20 victims during his career with the Catholic Church. Court documents show one victim was only six years old. Another, who was impregnated by him at the age of 16, was forced to get an abortion before Poole blamed her father (who later went to prison).

. . . . Rev. Frank Case, the chaplain for the school’s famous basketball team, apparently “recommended a pedophile priest for a job at a Tacoma hospital three decades ago.”

That priest? James Poole. Case said he was unaware of Poole’s litany of abuses, but after working at that hospital for over a decade, he “retired” on Gonzaga’s campus in 2003. (Poole died this past March.)

Case resigned in the wake of the revelations, along with another Gonzaga administrator, Rev. Pat Lee. Lee informed then-Bp Cupich of the accused priests' presence at Cardinal Bea House in 2011. According to the Diocese of Spokane,

Bishop Thomas Daly—who was installed in 2015—was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House. After May 2015 any Jesuits assigned to the Diocese of Spokane or problems with Jesuits living in the Diocese of Spokane were discussed in the regular communications between the current Jesuit provincial, Father Scott Santarosa, and Bishop Daly. None of the Jesuits on safety plans were ever a topic of discussion."

Other sources report that the Jesuits were "migrated" away from Bea House to a facility in California in 2016, while the diocese itself had been updating its policies "for religious order priests and extern priests. The changes to the policy were approved by Bishop Daly in November 2018." Among other things, they must present letters of suitability from their superiors and ordinaries, request faculties from the diocese, and get the approval of Bp Daly.

This suggests that Daly had been well aware of the issues before they became public, and at least he was on top of them when the news broke. In fact, I would estimate that this was an excellent set of crisis management responses by the diocese -- once the issue became public, it had been fully addressed, and the resignations of complicit parties were coordinated with the release.

I would guess, though, that the public information is just the tip of an iceberg, and more could come out, likely to Cupich's discredit, at any time. The tone of the diocese's release suggests Cupich didn't leave warm and fuzzy feelings behind.

Crisis Management

Corporate crisis management is a field that interests me a lot. I sometimes worked in the related field of disaster recovery -- I had a lot of fun helping an employer recover from the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. But the earthquake was a physical problem for the company that caused a perceptual crisis, from which it had a much harder time recovering. My wife and I met while we both worked for another company that had a perceptual crisis from which it never recovered -- and it was a very good company; we've kept up with good people we worked with there.

As a blogger, I'm interested in new media, and I have a certain obligation to maintain situational awareness in the field. Over the past few weeks, I've been watching the self-immolation of a new-media company that seems not to be fully aware that it's in a crisis that needs to be managed. This can lead to some insight for another organization that's in a major crisis, the Roman Catholic Church.

Patreon emerged five years ago as a way to manage and regularize voluntary donations to YouTubers. According to Wikipedia,

Patreon was founded in May 2013 by artist Jack Conte, who was looking for a way to make a living from his popular YouTube videos. Together with Sam Yam he developed a platform that allows patrons to pay a set amount of money every time an artist creates a work of art. . . . Unlike other online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook which use trained algorithms to identify potentially inappropriate content, Patreon's trust and safety team monitors users and investigates complaints of Terms of Service violations. In December 2018, Patreon banned the controversial right-wing personality Milo Yiannopoulos a day after he created an account, and also banned anti-feminist Carl Benjamin because he had made a homophobic statement and said "nigger" in a YouTube interview in February 2018. The move was criticized by atheist Sam Harris and American libertarians who have accused it of being politically motivated. Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson announced a plan to launch an alternative service that will be safe from political interference.

Wikipedia's take doesn't fully explain the issue, I think because Jack Conte doesn't fully understand YouTube and new media. New media and blogging emerged primarily as a result of the 9-11 attacks, when articulate people with time on their hands became dissatisfied with traditional media's reporting on Mahometanism and terrorism. Blogs like Instapundit became very popular, because they presented an alternate view of Western civilization that was more credible than the squishiness of mainstream media, centrist politicians, and the academic establishment.

YouTube was a development that followed on blogging as bandwidth and computer capacity increased to allow wide distribution of special-interest video. Like blogs that followed the Instapundit model, an important faction of YouTube commentators, like Carl Benjamin and Jordan Peterson, tends toward libertarianism and atheism or agnosticism, although they also emphasize an Aristotelian understanding of natural law even if they don't specifically characterize it that way.

But to call Carl Benjamin or Jordan Peterson "anti-feminist" is about like calling Aristotle "anti-feminist", which of course is what now passes for education at Princeton and Ann Arbor. But this is the crux of the issue. Western elites have moved to embrace a corporate state religion that discounts traditional virtue while privileging favored interest groups as well as Mahometans, apparently because if they're given the leeway to do so, Mahometans will kill Jews and Christians, something the corporate-state elites will generally temporize over, as believing Christians and Jews have never been fully amenable to globalist regimes.

The current difficulty is that the Silicon Valley corporations that make money from YouTube and other new media are manifestations of a global corporate state that operates outside US constitutional protections. Thus they enforce European restrictions on speech within the US whenever they find it convenient, and they regulate speech within the US that the privileged groups favored by the corporate state also find unpleasant.

The heavy-handed cancellation of Carl Benjamin's highly visible account was a blunder. And for whatever reason, Patreon, a relatively minor player, was unable to get YouTube on board with deleting Benjamin's videos, so they remain available, and Benjamin himself continues to use YouTube to advocate on his own behalf. Worse, an even more popular figure, Jordan Peterson, canceled his own Patreon account and announced an effort to start a competing service.

Not only did other highly visible (and lucrative to Patreon) users cancel their accounts as well, but the evidence we have is that thousands of small donors canceled their accounts, so that rank-and-file YouTubers with no direct involvement in the Benjamin controversy found their incomes from donors cut by half or more. In a newly disclosed case, another YouTuber had his account "frozen" for unspecified reasons, whereby donors continued to send money to Patreon, but Patreon did not forward payments to the YouTuber.

The bottom line for Patreon is that donors, whose payments to YouTubers were entirely voluntary, saw plenty of reason not to continue them, with no penalty to them for stopping. The YouTubers took major financial hits for circumstances beyond their control, with their confidence in Patreon destroyed. Mr Conte so far seems not fully aware that Patreon is facing a crisis that could end its existence in a matter of weeks -- instead, he's taken his version of the story to the New York Times. A Rumanian commentator noted that the office shown in the lead photo could hardly seem more like the dreary interior of Orwell's Ministry of Truth.

As a person who's worked in badly-run companies, my instinct is that Mr Conte was never cut out to run a real corporation, and he and his team are in way over their heads. A major blunder was hiring a Jacqueline Hart to run the "trust and safety council" -- she canceled Benjamin's account soon after she started at the company -- and then giving her free rein to try to fix the crisis she created. In one disaster, she called a YouTuber ally of Benjamin to try to mollify him. In the course of the call, she asked several times if he was recording it. Well, he wasn't -- he apparently either had a court reporter listening in, or he was using transcription software. The call wasn't recorded, but a transcript of the call immediately became available.

Conte probably lost his chance to salvage the situation when he didn't fire Ms Hart on the spot. Instead, she now stars in a New York Times piece, looking like a slightly less frumpy Angela Merkel. This is the face of Patreon.

What can the Catholic Church learn from this disaster in crisis management? The first step is probably to recognize there's a crisis, and take it seriously. The second step is to be up front, admit errors, and make it plain that the organization is learning from the errors and is correcting them. The third step is to have a credible spokesman -- Comical Ali is not who you want.

A good start would be to get Cardinal Cupich out of the picture.

Illinois Discrepancy

From the Chicago Tribune:

A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged.

The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.

. . . Although the report says that “Clergy sexual abuse of minors in Illinois is significantly more extensive than the Illinois Dioceses previously reported,” it does not estimate how many of the allegations against the 690 clergy should have been deemed credible. Some of the allegations go back decades.

Yesterday's Download from Church Militant addressed this story.

The discussion raises one possible issue. At about 3:40, it quotes the Archdiocese of Chicago's reply, "Starting in 2002, we have reported all allegations of child sexual abuse to civil authorities, and at that time, we reported all historical allegations."

However, the question is what "child sexual abuse" means here. The Pennsylvania grand jury report, as well as the well-publicized allegations against McCarrick, refer to abuse of those below the age of consent, 18, and not just "children". It's plain that the Cupich agenda is to restrict the discussion to children and reiterate that policies to "protect the children" are in place.

But this leaves out the issue of sexual harassment against teens and adult seminarians over the age of consent, an issue corporations in particular have had to address since the 1970s, but which the Church seems reluctant to confront. This probably accounts for the discrepancy, but it will be a struggle to get Cupich and others to acknowledge the real issues.

I do find one encouraging aspect to the Church Militant discussion: the consensus seems to be that the gay problem, as well as the actual abuse of teens and adults, is limited more to chanceries and seminaries, and it's much less common in parishes. This is consonant with my impression of our parish clergy, as well as to remarks by Fr Schmitz and others on YouTube that they've never actually seen the sort of conduct that's reported by state authorities. This strikes me as credible.

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.

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.