[Campion]

It is too bad that Bishops can not be defrocked. Weakland is deserving of it, during this whole affair, he was having his own homosexual affair, stealing thousand of dollars in church funds to pay off his lover.

Bishops can be removed, but it's a very serious thing and never done for something trivial.

Weakland's homosexual affair and his payoff (he paid the money back, BTW) came out after his retirement. If it had come out much earlier, he probably would have been removed or forced to resign, IMO.

He was an awful bishop, and the general reaction among FR Catholics when he retired was, Deo gratias ("Thanks be to God!").

[Oratam]

I'm waiting to hear folks in the media say "In a very real way, Abp. Weakland is a victim, too." [Is that Matt Lauer's voice I hear?] If they haven't already said it. Isn't he a hero to those who seek to embarrass the Church as a means to "bring it down"?

I think the media is ignorant, possibly intentionally ignorant, of most if not all things Catholic. In the current controversy they throw around a term like 'defrocked' as if it had real meaning and care not to understand the organizational structure of the Church. I mean, isn't the priesthood like any other 'job' one can be fired from and isn't it easier to imagine the Church as GM with its various units and divisions all answering to a CEO?

As it's been pointed out many times on FR, the majority of 'cases' involve young men not prepubescent boys but why bother pointing out the distinction when we live in a culture that keeps pushing off the responsibilities of adulthood indefinitely . . . with gay men, the best exemplars of this new mode of living, celebrated by the elites. As the last 'sexual taboo' in modern society, the sexual abuse of children serves their purposes whereas priestly pederasty doesn't.

Confusion reigns.