Those Catholics cynical about the higher ups in our Church do not know the half of it. Case in point:
In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.
Bishop Michael J. Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.
The gifts — one as large as $15,000 — were detailed in a draft of a confidential report to the Vatican about the alleged misconduct that led to Bransfield’s resignation in September. The names of 11 powerful clerics who received checks were edited out of the final report at the request of the archbishop overseeing the investigation, William Lori of Baltimore.
Lori’s name was among those cut. He received a total of $10,500, records show.
Go here to read the rest. Our Church contributions at work. Gangsters.
I now realize that the dissent/heresy over Humanae Vitae led to more than the acceptance of homosexuality in the clergy, it led to a denial of problems, a refusal to confront, a watering down of the faith, a relativism, a cafeteria-ism, a culture of cover up /secrecy, rot and filth.
All to be expected, as there are more demons on the seminary wall, than anywhere else in town.
There are still a crap load of scandals coming. You cannot have a hierarchy that is firmly entrenched in homosexuality or turning a blind eye to it without a host of other evils right behind it. It’s disgusting. You can’t tell me these scandals doesn’t put a kink in spreading the faith. Who would want to turn to our faith considering all these sinful scandals? Yet some do despite all that is happening. They are truly the ones drawn by God.
So money and sex and power preoccupy the clergy in the same manner as the laity.
I’d add more, but my good friend Louis Renault is rolling his eyes.
I think amounts for Church Contributions can be reassessed, then rerouted in good conscience to the many organizations that serve to please God, bring people to Him with words and actions relating His truth, goodness, and beauty, and these can be found where we find the American Catholic on the superhighway.
The best way to do that is to support Bishops like Paprocki when they do things you support them doing by giving as generously as your means allow. And then let your Ordinary know about it to encourage him to imitate his brother Bishop(s) whom you gratefully support.
Indeed.
For those who want to get into it a little more check out Fr. Malachi Martin on the corruption in the Catholic Church. Vatican II was the water shed moment when the Modernist plan for the Church became official. All of this would have the making of a conspiracy theory if introduced 20 years ago. But not now. What we have is a real conspiracy.
https://fathermalachimartin.blogspot.com/2013/10/primacy-how-institutional-roman.html
the dissent/heresy over Humanae Vitae led to
Our best guess from the John Jay Report is that sexual misconduct in the clergy has been a problem since about 1930, and it’s frequency grew rapidly after 1950. Specific corruptions the Church faces antedated Humanae Vitae. (My own wager would be that mucking around with the liturgy and other mundane practices like Friday abstinence generated more problems).
This guy was ordained in 1971, which is to say in one of the more rancid cohorts. We had reason to believe that under JP II and Benedict, the Church was putting some of this behind it, but crooks like this guy are just the sort of people Francis wants.
Some time back, our friend Dale Price was reviewing a different set of scandals at the center of which was…William Lori, then Bishop of Bridgeport. Comparing who was disciplined by the Bishop to who was not, DP offers that the rule in the Diocese of Bridgeport was ‘don’t screw with the money’. BTW, it was Beneditct’s Congregation of Bishops and Benedict’s nuncio who were responsible for Lori’s transfer from Bridgeport to the primal see at Baltimore. Sigh.
In the past 12 months, George Neumayr wrote a series about Catholic Church hierarchy corruption at The American Spectator. Bransfield was the priest in charge of the Basilica in DC. Supposedly, Wuerl wanted Bransfield in Wheeling, and Bransfield’s replacement at the Basilica, Walter Rossi, has a boyfriend with who he shares a condo in South Florida.
The American hierarchy needs to be hit with a RICO investigation.
Can we have a good old-fashioned Dominican led inquisition instead?