Posted on 11/11/2007 10:48:29 AM PST by Alex Murphy
concerned dad notified the Archdiocese of Chicago in December 2002 that the Rev. Donald McGuire was sharing a bed with his son and "overwhelming" another teen with porn and sex talk.
Letters sent by the dad to the archdiocese also mention a third teen.
But the archdiocese appears to have done only a minimal inquiry, didn't tell civil authorities or immediately strip McGuire of his ability to perform priestly duties in the region, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Rather, the matter was referred back to the priest's religious order -- the Chicago Province of Jesuits -- even though the dad wrote that the order hadn't been responsive to his concerns.
Had the archdiocese been more proactive, it may have prevented the third teen, a minor, from being abused well into 2003, abuse prevention advocates say.
"There were all kinds of red flags that were ignored," said Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which also has slammed the Jesuits for lack of action.
Neither Cardinal Francis George nor his point man on sexual abuse, Chancellor Jimmy Lago, would comment for this article.
Last year in Wisconsin, McGuire was convicted of molesting two Loyola Academy students in the 1960s. Lawsuits filed by those victims in August and September 2003 ignited the criminal investigation.
The archdiocese contacted authorities in October 2003 after it learned of the allegations.
The Jesuits received years of complaints about McGuire. One came from an archdiocesan priest, the Rev. Charles Schlax, who told Loyola Academy in 1969 that a teen had confided in him about McGuire.
The archdiocese didn't know about Schlax's report until 2003, according to John O'Malley, director of the archdiocese's legal services. Schlax declined to comment.
O'Malley said civil authorities weren't notified in 2002 about the more recent allegations because the complaining dad's son was 19. Also, the dad didn't mention sexual abuse, O'Malley said, adding that the letter simply referred to McGuire's "controlling heavy-handed influence."
"What's the offense? There's no offense," O'Malley said. "We saw it as a Jesuit matter."
The two other boys' ages were not mentioned in the letters, but court documents confirm they were minors. The dad told the Sun-Times the archdiocese never asked about those boys or their ages.
McGuire faces new federal charges for allegedly molesting the two minors.
George will be in Baltimore in coming days for the fall assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he's poised to be elected president. Sexual abuse advocates oppose his election because of the archdiocese's missteps in handling pedophile priest Daniel McCormack.
McCormack was sent to prison in July for molesting five boys. Reports show the archdiocese failed to take proper action after repeated complaints.
The dad who contacted the archdiocese about McGuire in 2002 said he initially called the cardinal's office, which referred him to the victims' ministries. The letters he provided were from two families and originally sent to the Jesuits.
In one letter, the dad says his 19-year-old had to share a bed with the priest.
Another parent's letter relayed an alarming "pattern of behavior" McGuire developed beginning with a June 1998 trip to India with their son. At the time, the boy was 17.
"He stated that Father [McGuire] was overwhelming him with pornographic pictures and talking to him about sexual matters at every waking moment," the parent wrote.
ML/NJ
“”What’s the offense? There’s no offense,””
I can think of a number of canonical offenses, offenses serious enough to warrant excommunication in Orthodoxy, but maybe those sorts of problems just don’t amount to much when it comes to the Roman Church.
What is horrific is that in 2002, well after the wide spread scandals had already rocked the RCC, those in power still treated it as if it never happened.
I dunno but to me, being a simple man, it seems that this just isn’t facing the problem, but rather, it is dealing with the abuse by priests as a mere political issue. Just cover it up and tell the victims that it isn’t important. It will all blow over.
I hate the idea that vile lawyers are taking the lions share of all the money being taken from the RCC, but it is not like the RCC did anything about the abuse when it was happening or when it was exposed. It is almost as if God is using the lawyers much like He used the Assyrians. Both are doing His will, and both will pay for their sins for following their natures.
I just pray that the RCC learns that its parishioners are not people that can be abused and just left to stew in their pain, while enabling a few of it’s “Alter Christos” to continue in their abominable sins. Hopefully the unjust financial settlements will cause a bit more introspection, since they seem to ignore their flock. I hate to suggest it but it is almost like they care more about their wallets.
May the Most Holy Trinity have mercy on the decadent and evil leadership occupying the highest seats of responsibility within the Roman Rite Church.
Pray with me, Kolokotronis, for the protection of the faithful from those driven by Satan to darken the consecrated walls of the Vatican Holy See, and all other seats in the church occupied by men possessed of demonic forces preying upon His innocent faithful.
“Pray with me, Kolokotronis, for the protection of the faithful from those driven by Satan to darken the consecrated walls of the Vatican Holy See, and all other seats in the church occupied by men possessed of demonic forces preying upon His innocent faithful.”
We, as the people of God, the lower clergy and monastics, have to pray this everyday for The Church, in the West and the East, never, ever, forgetting that the floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops!
“the floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops!”
Was that St. John Chrysostom?
“Was that St. John Chrysostom?”
That’s the attribution, but there are some who also say it was +Jerome and aso +Athanasius the Great.
Thank you for your charity to the Lord’s Church. East and West, we are of one love for the Lord. Those infiltrators are evildoers of the worst order, and we must stand together. V’s wife
The plain point of fact is that it IS a Jesuit’s matter, not the archdiocese. As I was coincidentally explaining on another thread, a priest’s superior is called his ordinary. The ordinary of a diocese is a bishop, and all of the diocesan priests “work for” the bishop. But religious orders, like Jesuits, have their own ordinaries. In other words, a Jesuit priest doesn’t work for a bishop.
It’s like suing the 29th Infantry because a Fairfax County school teacher molested a kid. They’re part of the government, and they’re American, and they’re in Northern Virginia, but they’ve got no common administration.
The relationships between order priests and the local ordinary is always a little confusing. But certainly the local ordinary should have followed up on the matter, just out of concern for the souls of his flock, if nothing else.
BTW, why has no one ever sued the Jesuit order for these shenanigans? A fair number of these really bad priests seem to have been Jesuits, and I am sure their superiors received complaints about them. I even know personally of one case. But the Jesuits - the order that has either the highest or second highest incidence of AIDS - get to cruise on (ooops, just slipped out!) unimpeded.
The Cardinal has spiritual authority over, and duty toward, every soul in his territory. The Cardinal, although he was not McGuire’s superior, has the trump card to prohibit any religious whomever from having anything whatever to do with souls in his territory. And the Jesuit Provincial need not agree.
It’s NOT a Jesuit matter.
Are we both thinking the same thing? That the real issue here isn’t promoting justice, but heresy, and the Jesuits are already promoting heresy?
To stick to my analogy, doesn’t the military have the duty to protect and serve EVERY American? And are you sure about the religious not being a package deal? Because I certainly think that Cardinals O’Connor and Egan would much rather have booted a few college professors than having to “excommunicate” so many major Universities in their archdiocese (of NY).
St. John’s, St. Bonaventure, and many other universities in the NY metropolitan are officially no longer Catholic. And the reason I was told that the heresy was so ripe at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA was precisely that the Boston Archdiocese wasn’t wanting to have to remove the Paulist order.
... and for the record, I do think that the Chicago archdiocese should have done more to have overseen its flock. But I was talking legal responsibilities. The whole theory that parishioners and congregations and recipients of charitable aid should have to pay for the depravations of the sickos is based on LEGAL responsibilities.
Seems to me that the Dad was too tenative, too respectful of bureaucratic forms. Sometimes one must act heroically. In the end he could have forced an audience with the archbishop himself. More immediately he could have confronted the priest man to man, and asked him in front of witnesses: Why are you sleeping with my son?
The religious orders are virutally autonomous in the Catholic Church. The ordinary—the bishop—doesn’t have jurisdiction over their internal matters except in specific cases. Using your military analogy, the commanding general in a war zone has no direct control over CIA agents or foreign servive officials. Indeed, there are military units beyonf his immediate reach.
“Why are you sleeping with my son?”
It is an extremely grave sin to engage in sexual relations, heterosexual or homosexual, outside of canonical marriage. At a minimum it means being barred from reception of communion, indeed any of the Mysteries save confession. For a priest to commit such a sin must result in immediate suspension of his priestly functions leading to trial by a spiritual court and defrocking. The very idea that some hierarch, any hierarch, has not yet acted against this “priest” is really outrageous. If the sons and daughters of my friends can be publicly, and properly, refused communion for cohabiting outside of marriage, then the least that should happen to this wolf in sheep’s clothing is defrocking and excommunication. The father’s timidity is neither here nor there.
No the father’s timidity is very much a factor because Hierarchs are very much inclined to do nothing until they are pressed to do their duty. They must be pressed from above or from below. Spirital energy is required. Catherine of Siena, merely a young woman, was able from her holy force to make herself felt all the way up to the papacy.
Yes, if it was anyone that I knew of, I’d call the law and then I’d be camping on the bishop’s door. If nothing was done, I’d go to the media.
“They [hierarchs] must be pressed from above or from below.”
You are of course correct...and best if it comes from below if the laity is theologically educated in the “orthodoxy” of The Faith. Expecting much of anything except self-aggrandizement, pomposity and piousity from hierarchs is pretty generally delusional.
Heck, a priest in our parish was adjudged guilty because he spent too much time in a local widow’s house. The ladies of the Altar’s Society reported him to the bishop and his order was told to relieve him. He apologized to the congregation and left forthwith.
I hear you.
But let’s not confuse the outcome with the power. The bishop trumps everyone IN HIS DIOCESE except the Pope. That’s not naive; its the truth, and every bishop knows that he has that power.
The outcome of universities being stripped of their catholicity, or congregations of religious being booted, probably (because I am not privy) has to to with some President or religious superior defying the bishop in his right to purge one or two individuals. The “community” stood arm in arm, so the bishop probably canned them all together.
Cardinal George has authority over Jesuit Fr. McGuire. No matter what pressure comes with it, that authority is not up for grabs.
But politically...eh, that’s a quagmire. Jesuits, with all their high schools, Loyola University, and big shot alumni can stand pretty tough if they want to. Poor kid. Politically, his case didn’t stand a chance on the Cardinal’s desk.
If Cardinal George wants to make a politically astute decision, he needs to put his ear to the train track. If he thinks that now he doesn’t “have enough pull” to yank a buggery priest from under the protective arm of the Jesuits, what will he have with the people at large when he tells them the lie, “It’s not my call, it’s out of my jurisdiction”?
“Then neither will we heed,” say the masses.
>> But let’s not confuse the outcome with the power. The bishop trumps everyone IN HIS DIOCESE except the Pope. That’s not naive; its the truth, and every bishop knows that he has that power. <<
You say this, contradicting other assertions, but where is your support for this? Your entire post is just sweeping statements, and no specifics. What mechanisms has he to even investigate the matter?
Sorry about that. I went into canon law. It’s on the internet.
Canon 679: “For a very grave reason a diocesan bishop can forbid a member of a religious institute to remain in his diocese, provided the person’s major Superior has been informed and has failed to act, the matter must immediately be reported to the Holy See.”
Sandhills,
After more than a day without a reply, I pronounce you victorious in your point of debate that yes indeed a bishop can remove from his diocese a religious, and absolve you of the charge of sweeping generalization.
Sincerely,
Sandhills
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