Free Republic

A recent report by a Pennsylvania grand jury has put a scandal – the one about the Catholic priests guilty of sex abuse – back in the news again. Since this particular investigation and report deals with a period that goes back seventy years, there isn’t much actual “news” in it, but it includes shocking numbers and heartbreaking stories, so it has understandably gained national attention. This Pennsylvania grand jury cast a wide net to capture the entire picture, or at least, as much of the picture of an international organization and an international problem as a state judiciary can...

Updated | The Vatican has told new Catholic bishops that they have no obligation to report clerical child abuse, according to reports. During a presentation for newly appointed bishops, French Monsignor Tony Anatrella said they don't have a duty to report abuse because it should be the responsibility of victims and their families to go to the police. The comments were first reported by John L. Allen at the Catholic news site Cruxnow.com earlier this week. Anatrella, a psychtherapist and consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, is known for his...

CMT just issued a press release promoting “an evening full of laughs” featuring comedian Ron White. “The cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking White headlines the 90-minute special,” said CMT, “giving his thoughts on being banned from the popular dating site ChristianMingle,” among other hilarious topics. I find it interesting that CMT, which is owned by Viacom (which also owns MTV and VH1), would so prominently mention White’s riff on ChristianMingle. Especially in the wake of the recent arrest of a Del Mar, Calif. man charged with raping a woman he met on the online dating site. Police suspect that Sean Patrick Banks used...

Rome -- Repeatedly over the last three days, media agencies have asked me to comment on the following question: Did Benedict XVI really resign just because he's old and tired, or was it really because of the sexual abuse crisis, the Vatileaks mess, and the various other meltdowns that have occurred on his watch? My answer has been that it's not an either/or. Benedict may not have quit "because of" the pedophilia scandals or any other specific controversy, but it's hard to believe they didn't play a role, at least as background. One can certainly take Benedict at his word...

Remember when the apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee, commissioned a post-Judas investigative report on the causes of treachery? Neither do I. Bishops also agreed to spend up to $1.5 million from a $20 million endowment fund to partly fund a massive study on the causes of priestly sexual abuse. The USCCB hopes to raise the remainder of the cost of the study, slated to cost between $3 million and $5 million, from private foundations. Is there a single Catholic on the planet -- and I include the bishops' own mothers in the question -- who really believes...

The following article by Marco Tosatti, titled, "The Document That Put Ratzinger on Top," appeared in the Italian newspaper La Stampa last Friday (April 22). If the story it tells is true, it gives some grounds for hope that the will for reform may be taking root in places where it can make a difference. A confidential but highly detailed document on the situation of the Church -- and especially the situation inside the Church -- circulated among the cardinals over the past few days, making a vivid impression and probably contributing indirectly to the choice of Joseph Ratzinger as...

WHDH-TVSWAMPSCOTT, Mass. -- The pastor of a Swampscott church has stepped aside after he was accused of propositioning a 12-year-old girl and her mother. The accusation was leveled against him for alleged comments he made to the mother and her daughter at an Italian restaurant in Chelsea on Tuesday night. The Archdiocese of Boston said in a statement yesterday that the resignation was accepted -- quote -- "in the interest of all parties involved." The statement said that the resignation -- quote -- "does not represent any indication of Father Gillespie’s guilt or innocence." Gillespie did not return a call...

Priest quits after his assault conviction By STEVEN G. VEGH, The Virginian-Pilot © January 16, 2004 RICHMOND -- A Catholic priest who had been accused of sexually abusing boys in the 1970s abruptly resigned Thursday. The Rev. John E. Leonard, 65, had proclaimed his innocence throughout two church investigations and a criminal probe. His resignation ends both his role as pastor of St. Michael Catholic Church in Henrico County and his career as a priest in active ministry. He remains an ordained Catholic clergyman. Leonard acted after being put on leave Thursday by Cardinal William Keeler, who is temporarily heading...

BOSTON (AP) - The bishop who ushered a Massachusetts diocese through one of the most explosive clergy sex abuse cases before leading the Palm Beach diocese through its own troubles was expected to be named archbishop in Boston, according to news reports. Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley was the likely successor to Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in mid-December in the midst of the clergy sex abuse scandal rocking the church, said John Allen Jr., a reporter for National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper that covers the Roman Catholic church. Allen, who made his comments in interviews Monday with CNN and...

The sex-abuse scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood has already grown to the point where it poses a serious threat to the power, prestige, and credibility of the American Catholic Church. The sky, so to speak, is falling. An institution whose fundamental strength and continuity (whatever its many problems) could once be taken for granted is experiencing a genuine crisis. Yet, over and above its significance for the Catholic Church, the greatest lesson of this scandal has yet to be drawn. The uproar over priestly sex abuse — especially the calls to do away with both priestly celibacy and the...

Since the first batch of documents relating to Father Paul Shanley was made public by Roderick MacLeish Jr., attorney for the Ford family of Newton, in an April 8 press conference, their content has generated a fierce backlash against Cardinal Law for his handling of the issue. In their coverage of the Shanley case, the media have almost exclusively seemed to cite as facts, not the full content of the documents, but the interpretation of a few select passages highlighted by MacLeish -- to the point that many now believe that those interpretations are "facts" extracted from the documents. The...

OKLAHOMA CITY, June 22 -- At their national meeting this month, America's Roman Catholic bishops adopted procedures for stripping sexually abusive priests of their collars while leaving in doubt how bishops who have covered up those crimes might ever be punished. But Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma, who has been named to oversee a national, church-sponsored inquiry into the origins of the crisis, said in an interview here that he and a panel of prominent Catholics will seek "corrective action" for any clergyman found to be abusive or negligent, "from the most junior priest to the most powerful bishop." "We...

Dear Reader, After months of buildup to the bishops' conference, it seems strange that it has already come and gone so quickly. The best that can be said of the Dallas meeting is that it was a first step. Zero tolerance is a tough policy, and it was adopted against the counsel of no less than Cardinal Avery Dulles. But most Catholics remain dissatisfied! Why? The Washington Post printed a poll of American Catholics on Wednesday, asking for their opinion of the conference, and two-thirds thought the bishops hadn't gone far enough in their actions against offending priests. The problem...

For some conservative Catholics, the defining moment in the bishops' Dallas conference came when Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., proposed that the bishops commission a study of the role, if any, theological dissent and clerical homosexuality has played in bringing about this scandal. There were solid, non-ideological reasons for doing this. Even the liberal lay theologian Scott Appleby had in his address to the bishops cited the unofficial American resistance to Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical on sexual morality, as the starting point for a kind of double-mindedness about faith matters that led U.S. Catholics to grow comfortable...

Fr. Doyle, in case you didn't know, is the guy who warned the bishops in the mid-80s that they had better get serious and was almost completely ignored. Reaction to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People Thomas Doyle,O.P., J.C.D. 1. This is the strongest, most unequivocal statement that the US Bishops or any group of bishops have made concerning sexual abuse by the clergy and the related cover-up by the bishops and other church leaders. It will be received with skepticism and doubt by many because of the bishops' history of broken promises and empty statements....

As the American bishops meet this week in Dallas, the prayers of every faithful Catholic and most Americans of good will go out to them. Three large issues are raised by what we have learned. The first is how should church policy deal with acts of pedophilia and the sexual use of minor teens by Catholic clergy? The second question: Why are so many Catholic clerics accused disproportionately of sexual abuse of boys (including teens), and what can we do in priestly formation to prevent it? The third question is: How do we respond to the revelations of systemic sexual...

Catholic blogger, Amy Welborn, has responded to Mary Eberstadt's vitally important new article on the role of homosexuality in the priesthood scandal, "The Elephant in the Sacristy" [link is to FR Thread], and Welborn's response has been seconded by Instapundit. No doubt, this is only the beginning of a long-running controversy over Eberstadt's extraordinary article (Go read it at once!). Let me dive into the debate by commenting on Welborn's remarks. The most important thing to note about Welborn's response is that she says she "mostly agrees" with Eberstadt. Given the many critically important points in the "Elephant" piece —...

I did this transcipt from a tape I made of the show. For easier reading (and typing), I omitted 'um' and 'uh', 'you know', false starts and such, as well as repeated identification of show, host and guest, and other non-central material. Everything substantive, however, is here. HOWIE: We are now joined by Michael Rose. He is the author of the book Goodbye! Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church. The title of the book is Goodbye! Good Men, and it’s published by Regnery. Michael, thank you very much for being on the Howie Carr Show MICHAEL:...

<p>Under pressure, Cardinal Bernard F. Law implemented so-called zero tolerance and mandatory reporting policies for sexually abusive priests earlier this year, but a group of specialists on sexual abuse who met with Law in 1993 at his invitation say he dismissed advice they gave him then to adopt such measures.</p>

JACKSON, Miss. – A day after Bernard Cardinal Law’s admission that he allowed a priest accused of child sexual abuse to remain at a parish here 30 years ago, a second Mississippi priest has been identified as an alleged molester whose activities also went unchecked by Law. The Rev. Thomas Boyce molested children at St. Peter’s Parish in the early 1970s, lawyers handling cases against the priest and the Catholic Church said yesterday. Boyce served alongside the Rev. George L. Broussard, another alleged abuser whom Law was warned about but did not immediately remove from St. Peter’s, the Cardinal admitted...