Posted on 08/28/2018 7:03:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
PITTSBURGH -- Last Sunday, a city parish on the top of a steep hill overlooking the neighborhood aptly named Observatory Hill waited for her faithful to arrive for Sunday Mass, as it has every Sunday for over 102 years.
It was 9:00 a.m., just a handful of days after a report was released by the Pennsylvania state grand jury on alleged sexual abuse in 54 of the state's 67 counties, a report that has rocked this tight-knit community.
Some came to Mass. Some did not. Those who did had difficulty holding back tears.
The somber music played by the organist reflected the silent despair in the pews.
The parish had been hit hard in the 884-page report. The report identified over 1,000 children who became victims of more than 300 abusive priests in parishes large and small across the state.
This compounded the losses the parish has suffered as the neighborhood's population has become more secular and transient -- a big change from the working-class Catholic population who walked to Mass there in the 1960s and 1970s.
That's when I attended Nativity of Our Lord, over on Pittsburgh's North Side. I adored father John Maloney, a young priest who came to our church when I was 5 years old, and going to church at 5 meant different things than it does to an adult. For me it was the honor of wearing a lace covering my head the way the grown-up women did. (Before Vatican II, it was mandatory for women.)
But it was also the mysterious rhythms of the Latin Mass that seemed to be telling sacred secrets. Mass meant being with my parents, sometimes my entire extended family of aunts and uncles and grandparents -- all warm, comfortable, safe feelings that helped draw me into what faith would mean for me as an adult.
As I entered first grade, father Maloney was the parochial vicar (vice pastor). He said Mass every Tuesday for the entire student body of a parish that was at its peak, absorbing the blue-collar baby-boom children in the 1960s.
Before school and during recess, we would play on the asphalt playground that was attached to the parish school. It was sloped at an odd angle and littered with loose rocks, but we didn't ever seem to notice.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, father Maloney, who was just 22 years old, would come out and watch us play, as we jumped rope, picked teams for dodgeball or played a vigorous game of tag.
We were taught to respect and revere his station. It wasn't hard; he was young, handsome and charismatic. When he talked about the Scripture or Jesus, he made you feel as though he knew Jesus personally and he was simply sharing the stories that his close friend wanted you to know.
It was he who administered my first two sacraments outside of my baptism: He heard my first confession (I do not remember what sins I committed, but I do remember they did not require me to be sent to the principal's office) and did my first Holy Communion, which is a monumental moment for a young Catholic child.
When father Maloney was transferred to another parish when I was 11, I was sad.
When father Maloney's name appeared on the list of deviant offenders last week, I was devastated.
How could someone who had our complete trust abuse it in such a heinous way? How could he have robbed children of their childhood?
The report named 99 priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Three of them served in my parish when I or one of my siblings attended the school: father Maloney, father Ray Rhoden and father James Somma.
How can we trust the bishops that allowed this to happen?
Simply, we cannot. All of those responsible must be held accountable.
The actions of those priests and those in charge cannot take our faith away, but they have made it impossible for me to trust this church.
I've always held a deep fondness for that asphalt playground that strained to hold my boundless energy, along with that of hundreds of other children. For eight years, it was a place of carefree joy, where the only thing I dreaded when I stepped out of the school and onto the grounds was whether I would be picked last for dodgeball.
Now I cannot erase from my mind the knowledge that some children were deeply hurting on that playground. Some children were holding in a secret so dark and so humiliating that their souls burned with the shame and the fear they felt every day.
And I cannot forgive.
I have stood by my church in past crisis, thinking surely it will get it right somehow. This time, that feels impossible.
I will stand by my faith -- a faith that has guided and shaped me at my core and is difficult to square with the corrupt institution that allowed sick men to steal my classmates' lives and then facilitated them to do the same elsewhere.
The only thing that is uncertain now is how I will find forgiveness.
Every time I search in my mind's eye and scan the faces of my classmates on that playground, looking for signs of who needed help, I find it difficult to imagine that forgiveness coming anytime soon.
And modernism. Faggotry and modernism.
As an outside observer, I’d say the Church brand has been tarnished, if not ruined, by the prevalence of homosexuality and pedophilia in its ranks.
But, what I’m curious about, is how prevalent is it? 1%? 10%? 50%? Can anyone closer to the Church than I give their guesstimates?
But this particular priest targeted his victims from a young age, usually 7 or 8 when he began insinuating himself into their lives on a very personal and family level. I think he waited until they were 15 or 16 for legal reasons - he could challenge the dates of the abuse, claim it was consensual and avoid jail, which is exactly what happened.
His name was (still is) Peter Cheplik. Here is at a birthday party for one of his victims. I know the kid in the photo (he's about 50 now), I knew all the kids who came forward as victims.
It's not the Church's place to 'forgive' crimes... or cover for criminals. That's the job of the State - our court systems and laws.
Matthew 22:21 Jesus said "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." Romans 13:1 "Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God."
The Church can offer spiritual assistance... and like I said, that can be offered just as easily to a person in prison as any other place.
What's odd is Catholics wonder why their numbers get smaller every year as Church congregations age and young families don't replace the grandmothers and grandfathers who are dying out...
This cannot be stated enough. Your insight, I fear, is spot-on.
I was just trying to listen to always on vacation Laura ingraham
And her an that theatre fop Arroyo were basically making excuses and saying everybody does it
Horseshit
No they do not and the coverups and passing these freak priests around to hide them or sequester them sure doesn’t happen like in the Catholic Church
The remaining laity simply refuses to hold their clergy truly to account
Diehard Catholics make excuses for them
It’s this veneration idea I guess
I can tell you that even if a Baptist preacher as popular as Billy Graham was found diddling boys and then he and his administration caught moving folks around as they continued and paying folks off and hiding people from prosecution then by God that would be the end of that church
I’m appalled and that’s not easy to do....at hearing Laura and Arroyo make excuses and claim it’s all about 18-19 year young men in seminary
I turned it off and I’m a 24/7 paying member
Sickening
I know where the problem lies and believe me it’s a recent discovery and one I wish I had not made
Don’t blame Rome when it’s gone
Ain’t no such thing as a chaste homosexual
His house is not made with hands. There is nothing magic about a church building. Our adversary can enter wherever there is sin and rebellion.
It's one of the reason's you're here... standing up against evil in the face of overwhelming opposition and cultural liberal group think...
Man where do they get off telling non Catholics we’re going to hell
They worship their church
I realize don’t think they do but it comes off that way
And it explains why priests get away with it
It’s only the last month I’ve discovered how this went on and goes on
Laity won’t face the hard truth
C26
When I was about 5, I had 2 older sisters who shared a paper route. They must have been about 12 or 13 years old.
One day an old man on their route invited them in while he got his payment together to be collected. He then touched one of my sisters inappropriately. They ran straight home and told my father.
My father went directly to the man’s house and walked right in the front door without knocking, and closed it behind him. No police were involved in any way.
The man cancelled his subscription to the paper. He left town a short time later.
I can only imagine what happened in that house.
The laity don’t or can’t hold their clergy to account
Major major difference between Catholics and say Baptists
As long as Catholics believe priests to be the unavoidable link between them and God, there will always be those tempted to exploit that relationship.
This is NOT God's fault. He sent an instruction BOOK on how to have His protection and blessings. Man/woman/ since Genesis in majority decided to do things their own way. Notice what Adam did when he got caught naked ...
Genesis 2: 8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
**********12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.*********
God keeps the perfect record and a bunch of perverts are NOT hidden from Him... The 'head' of this religious organization has been making excuses and whitewashing this perversion to my knowledge, in their midst since the 70's. They claim this is just a 'homosexual' problem because the majority of the victims are post-puberty. It just does not 'sound' as bad to paint the picture that these boys were willing participants and sinned just as much as the pervert priests. God is not conned with this whitewash.
Mid 1960s?
They should be set upon faggots
Amen and that is exactly why the laity puts up with it
Unless it’s their child
best and smartest teacher in my HS Brendon Komiski an Irish priest. built in BS detector and maybe a genius. Became an irish Bishop. Priests molested and he moved them around, which was church practice, but no excuse. Times of London ran his tory and he went t the vatican the next day and resign as bishop. They put him in a small parish as priest in rural Ireland. Tragedy for the kids, waste of talent of him. Could have become a cardinal
I encourage all those who believe the bible to leave today, in spite of your hollow admonition that I’m going to hell. Sir, you are already IN hell
Imagine for a moment that you know of someone whose home has burned. What would that person do? Surely the pain and agony of experiencing such an event would be significant.
I would think person would not simply walk away from his/her home. That person would surely begin the process of repair, like cleaning up the debris, replace the burned parts of the home and eventually restore it to its viable state.
Just like a home, the Catholic Church has suffered damage. We must clean up the debris by removing any clergy or lay person from position of authority, and refer them to the proper authority to answer for their crimes.
If you walk away from the Catholic Church, you are helping Lucifer destroy the Church. You will be walking away from the fullness of the Christ Jesus under the guise of walking away from the men who did these awful things.
You can help be the solution by standing up and reaffirming your commitment to the Catholic Church, not running away. Do you think that Jesus called it quits after hanging on the Cross for the first hour? No. He went all the way.
I wonder if you were at the parish I was at. I was an altar boy at the time.
I remember that we studied Genesis and our priest told us that we should never pretend to be God. We were six and seven years old, and I guess he thought we didn't get what he meant, so he pretended to be God.
A few days later there was an obituary in our newspaper that he had died.. I often wonder it was because he had pretended to be God?
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