Pope asks forgiveness for 'evil' of child abuse by priests

By Naomi O'Leary

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis made his first public plea for forgiveness on Friday for the "evil" committed by priests who molested children, using some of his strongest words yet on the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis.

The Argentine-born pontiff said the Church, which last month named a high-level group on the scandal including an abuse victim, had to take an stronger stand on a scandal that has haunted it for more than two decades, and indicated there would be repercussions for perpetrators.

"I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil that some priests - quite a few in number, (although) obviously not compared to the number of all priests - to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children," he told members of the International Catholic Child Bureau.

"The church is aware of this ... personal, moral damage carried out by men of the church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem, and to the sanctions that must be imposed.

"On the contrary, we have to be even stronger. Because you cannot interfere with children," Francis said in unscripted comments as he addressed the children's rights body.

The comments, originally in Spanish, were translated by the Vatican Radio news service.

Francis did not specify whether "sanctions" would be church-enforced or involve civil justice authorities. In February the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of systematically turning a blind eye to decades of abuse and attempting to cover up sex crimes.

The scathing report urged the church to immediately hand over its records on the abuse of tens of thousands of children, immediately remove anyone suspected of abuse from their post and refer the matter to civil legal authorities. The Vatican called the report unfair and ideologically slanted.

Francis' words strike a different tone to comments he made in March to an Italian newspaper in which he defended the church's record.

"JUST TALK"

Criticism that Francis has not taken a bold enough stand on the issue, and did not meet sexual abuse victims in Italy and in a July trip to Brazil, has been a rare black spot in the overwhelmingly positive response to the pontiff in the 13 months he has been in office.

In particular, abuse groups have called on the church to discipline bishops accused of moving known child molesters from parish to parish, allowing abuse to continue.

"It's nice to have expressions of concern. But actions need to happen, and people have been waiting an awfully long time for that to occur," said Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org, which documents abuse cases.

"The best thing he could have done today would have been to step up to the microphone and announce that he is beginning to remove bishops who have behaved criminally in keeping priests in ministries where they don't belong, moving them around so that they continue to be a danger to children."

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which advocates for child protection and urges greater transparency in the church, said Francis' words should be received with caution.

"We beg the world's Catholics: be impressed by deeds, not words. Until the pope takes decisive action that protects kids, be skeptical and vigilant," SNAP Outreach Director Barbara Dorris said.

"This may be the first time a pope has talked of sanctions against complicit bishops. But that is all it is: talk."

Under Francis' direction, the Vatican announced in December the creation of a new dedicated group to help the church deal with the abuse crisis. Its members were named in late March.

The body of clerics and lay people includes Marie Collins, a survivor of abuse in Ireland in the 1960s who has campaigned for the protection of children and for justice for victims.

Collins, a founding trustee of the Irish abuse victims' organization One in Four, has in the past pushed for punishment for bishops who failed to implement church rules on the protection of children.

Child abuse litigation has cost the Catholic Church some $3 billion in settlements in the United States alone, and shaken the moral authority of leaders of the world's largest religious denomination.

(Reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Link:

• Pope asks forgiveness for 'evil' of child abuse by priests

Related:

• ‘We’ll Say You Touched Us’: Robbers Attempt to Extort Priest With Threat of Abuse Claim
• No priest is safe - The Catholic League
• Priests are victims too, Vatican told

Media Hysteria Prompts Public Witch Hunt Into Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, Investigation Finally Dropped

St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John C. Nienstedt fights off the lynch mob:

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi (l) and St. Paul Police Chief Tom Smith (r)

(The Media Report) Back in December, police began a surreal criminal investigation into whether St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John C. Nienstedt somehow "inappropriately touched" a boy four years ago in broad daylight in front of crowds of people outside a church following a public Confirmation ceremony.

If anyone needed another example of the wildly disparate treatment of Catholic clergy by the media and by law enforcement, one needs to look no further than this batty episode.

Common Sense on Vacation

Police finally concluded just last week what any clear-thinking individual would have known from the beginning: that nothing even remotely inappropriate ever took place.

But their conclusion was not reached until after a mob of investigators conducted an intensive three-month investigation with over a dozen interviews with "witnesses" and pored over photographs of the day in question like the F.B.I. examining photos of Dealey Plaza on the day that JFK was assassinated.

Think about that. All those public resources and tax dollars were expended to examine the nutty claim that a Catholic clergyman had in some way molested a boy while having his picture taken at a public event in front of hundreds of people.

Not only did the wild-eyed zealots at the anti-Catholic group SNAP admit that the kooky claim against Nienstedt was "pretty implausible," but even the boy who was at the center of the episode said that he "did not feel violated," that he was "concerned about the attention the incident was receiving," and that he "did not believe the incident was significant."

So the obvious question about the whole episode is: Why did such a bogus and inconceivable case receive so much public attention and waste so many tax dollars? (continued)

Click here to read more at The Media Report

Link:

• No Allegation of Abuse Too Crazy When It Comes to the Catholic Church: Media Hysteria Prompts Public Witch Hunt Into Minn. Archbishop, Investigation Finally Dropped

The International Criminal Court Has Dismissed SNAP’s Last Gasp

By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

(These Stone Walls)  ...In rejecting the petition last month, the International Criminal Court ruled that SNAP’s claims do not “appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court” which accepts only cases reflecting “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.” In other words, as The Media Report’s David F. Pierre pointed out, the ICC is not a place to air shameless publicity stunts.

And “shameless publicity stunt” was always the sole point of this petition. It was never a serious endeavor, and this outcome, though slow in coming, was always predictable. I predicted it in an October 2011 post on These Stone Walls entitled “SNAP’s Last Gasp! The Pope’s ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’ ”

The entire project was staged by SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) just to generate headlines, and the mainstream media took the bait. News of the petition appeared in almost every major newspaper in the United States. In news interviews, CCR attorney Pam Spees described the SNAP petition:

“Crimes against tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, are being covered up by officials at the highest levels of the Vatican.”

The tone and content of the rhetoric was eerily similar – verbatim, even – to another propaganda campaign against Catholic priests that I wrote of in “Catholic Scandal and the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic.” Few of the same newspapers that trumpeted the SNAP petition against the Vatican ever bothered to cover the ICC’s summary dismissal of the case. We had to rely on the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to issue a press release, and on The Media Report to publish this story. For me, the most shameful aspect of this SNAP publicity stunt was that I became an unwitting and unwilling part of it...


Click Here to Read More
Link:

• The International Criminal Court Has Dismissed SNAP’s Last Gasp 

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force

By Father Gordon J. MacRae

A decade of disasters and a surge in fraud led the Justice Department to form the Disaster Fraud Task Force, but who investigates fraud against Catholic priests?

“‘Well, if you want to accuse a priest of something, I can have $50-grand in your account by the end of the year – a $100,000 settlement split fifty-fifty.’ Randy was shaking with enthusiasm as he stood at my door. He said he told the lawyer that he lives in a cellblock with a Catholic priest who has been accused. ‘Even better!’ the lawyer reportedly said. ‘Tell him where you grew up and see if he can get you a name.’ ” (“Let’s Play ‘Name That Priest,’ “ Sancte Pater, July 26, 2011).

SNAP spokespersons and the contingency lawyers who have funded them may minimize or deny the existence of fraud in the Catholic sex abuse story, but it’s a denial of human nature. David Pierre’s media watchdog site, The Media Report has been especially vigilant about exposing some of the fraud. The evidence is all around us, and not only in the narrative of our own millstone of Catholic scandal. Fraud is by no means new or surprising in the field of personal injury law.. (continued)

Click here to read more 

Link:

• Why the Catholic Abuse Narrative Needs a Fraud Task Force

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Imprisoned Priest is Finalist for About.com's Best Catholic Blog Award

These Stone Walls by Father Gordon MacRae is a finalist in About.com's Readers Choice for Best Catholic Blog. In justice, it should win... but there might be hell to pay.

By Ryan A. MacDonald

(A Ram in the Thicket) How did such a thing happen? The Catholicism page of the media site, About.com provides an annual forum for readers to select the very best in Catholic media - everything from best Catholic book, newspaper, and television/radio, to best Catholic blog and other electronic media. This year, someone in the Catholic online world nominated These Stone Walls, the blog of imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae for the category of Best Catholic Blog in an enormous field of worthy candidates. These Stone Walls became a Finalist, and that this writing, it has shot up to second place in a short list of five of the best Catholic blogs selected by readers of About.com. Readers may register a vote, once per day if they wish, at the Best Catholic Blog ballot right here.

Though of course dwarfed by the coming Conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, the story of this honor bestowed upon an imprisoned priest and his writings is an important Catholic news story. For over a decade, accused Catholic priests have been vilified and bludgeoned without mercy in both the secular and Catholic media. Organizations such as SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and VOTF, the Voice of the Faithful, have risen up seemingly for the sole purpose of denouncing the Church's disciplines withing the priesthood and priests themselves when they are accused of claims that usually date back 30, 40, or 50 years. There is rarely any evidence beyond the word of someone who stands to gain a windfall settlement just for making the claim.

The result has been a decade of irrational finger-pointing during which the Constitutional and canonical rights of accused priests have been obliterated in the court of public opinion. These groups, and the mainstream media's unwavering commitment to giving their agendas the last and loudest word in all things Catholic, have teamed to demoralize priests and even turn them upon each other.

Ironically, Father Gordon MacRae provided a spellbinding example in a recent post at TheseStoneWalls.com published on the very day the Best Catholic Blog finalists were announced. In an article entitled "Giving Up Resentment for Lent," the imprisoned priest once again called himself and his readers to take the high road in the face of adversity. He wrote of the painful recent experience of being denounced by priests of his own diocese. Displaying the very attributes that make These Stone Walls consistently stand out in the field of Catholic media, the vilified priest wrote of his Lenten challenge to channel anger and head off through prayer his all-too human feelings of resentment and retaliation - "A toxic mix, destined for another but ending up in your own tea," he wrote... (continued)

Read More Here

Link:

• These Stone Walls is a Finalist for About.com's "Best Catholic Blog"

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal
• Vote for Best Catholic Blog
• Giving Up Resentment for Lent: Calisthenics for Your Soul
• The Catholic Press Needs to Get 
Over Its Father Maciel Syndrome
• Priests are victims too, Vatican told
• Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner-Priest (Father Gordon MacRae)
• Father Gordon MacRae's These Stone Walls - Musings From Prison of a Priest Falsely Accused
• Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest
• Special Report: New Appeal Filed in the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae
• New Trial Motion Filed for Father Gordon MacRae
• Memorandum of Law in Support of a Motion for a New Trial (.pdf)
• Thy Brother’s Keeper: Why Wrongful Convictions Should Matter to You
• Trial by Therapists - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• Dr. Bill Donohue Discussing Fr. Gordon MacRae and SNAP on EWTN's The World Over
• A Touch of Deja Vu: The Case against Rev. Gordon MacRae - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• A Priest and His Wounds: Padre Pio Under Investigation
• SNAP Judgments Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal 
• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins - by Fr. Gordon MacRae
• As The Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?
• SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - by William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

What Dreams May Come: Azazel and the Pursuit of Justice

By Father Gordon J. MacRae

(These Stone Walls) In “Nightmares and Dreamscapes from the Desert,” a TSW post during Lent last year, I wrote of a recurring dream I’ve had throughout 18 years of imprisonment. The dream had multiple variations and outcomes, all of them anxiety producing, but one version in particular seemed to be an archetype for the dream’s central plot.

You might remember its details. In the dream, I was lost at night in a city vaguely familiar, pursued by a mob hunting me through the dark city streets. I climbed the steps of a Catholic church for refuge. That particular scene came right out of my childhood, and I wrote of it in “A Glorious Mystery for When the Dark Night Rises.” In my dream, however, the church doors were locked and its sanctuary inaccessible.

Left on the stairs of the church with the pursuing mob closing in, I turned from them to face the huge bronze doors. There I saw an immense, finely detailed bas relief of the Crucified Christ cast into the bronze of the huge door. Someone in the mob let loose a stone aimed at me, but it missed me and struck the Crucifix. I awoke muttering something I’ll always remember: “The stone that was meant for me struck Thee.”

I have very vivid dreams in prison, sometimes with plots that seem to run all night long, though I know they don’t. That dream and many others very much like it have been both the cause and effect of anxiety, a problem that every prisoner seems to have in abundance. What’s central to the plot in every variation of the dream is the fact that I am a priest being pursued by a lynch mob.

A lot of people don’t know that “lynch mob” is a term that originated just after America’s Revolutionary War. In 1780, after America gained its independence from Great Britain, Colonial Army Captain William Lynch of Virginia organized his own private army. It was a band of former soldiers intent on seeking and punishing Loyalists, Colonists who remained loyal to Britain during the war. Too often, Captain Lynch’s only evidence came from anonymous informants, and with that spectral evidence he and his mob descended upon farms to summarily convict and hang their occupants. Hence the term, “Lynch mob” which used to be capitalized in the English lexicon.

My lynch mob dream is interesting because from it you can easily pinpoint some of the reality that has befallen many accused priests. With policies that left accused priests standing alone and exposed outside Church doors, the mob – aka, SNAP, VOTF, and much of the secular and Catholic press – closed in for trials without evidence and condemnations without defense. I happen to know first hand that once a priest is so condemned to wear the scarlet letter of accusation, there is great resistance in some Chancery offices to hearing any defense.

Some might think it’s risky to write of such dreams on These Stone Walls. Some think I shouldn’t let people into my psyche so openly, but there’s really not that much going on in here. Besides, I found that writing about the troublesome lynch mob dream robbed it of its power, and I haven’t had it since. Others have come to take its place, however, and I had one recently.

In this new emanation of the dream, I was brought in chains to a court hearing on our new appeal that has been ever so slowly evolving in fits and start since it was filed one year ago. In the new dream, I stood before a judge who in the end ordered all my chains removed and declared me to be free. The lawyers all congratulated each other and shook my hand in the dream, and then they got into their cars and left me standing on the courthouse steps alone. With my bonds of 18 years suddenly removed, I was free. I was also tired and hungry and I realized with anxiety in the dream that for over 18 years I had been a non-person. I had no money, no identity – at least no identity that anyone in my diocese dared acknowledge – and no place to go.

Then it was night in the dream, and I was on the city streets again. I knew I had been there many times before, but there was no mob. 1 walked to the only place 1 knew, the parish where I once served 30 years ago. A priest I once knew opened the door and declared, “I cannot help you,” then slammed the door leaving me in the cold. I went into the church through a back door found open, and I fell asleep in a pew, the Blessed Sacrament’s vigil candle burning brightly just a few feet away.

I don’t think I had ever had a dream about falling asleep before. Anyway while it was still dark, I was awakened in the pew by my brother priest who had called the police to have me charged me with trespassing. The chains removed just hours earlier were put back on me, and I was taken back to prison, full circle, to where the dream about freedom began.

The priest at the rectory door, and his “I cannot help you” comment, was also a real experience that Ryan MacDonald wrote of in an article entitled “To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy.” It wounded me deeply when it happened a few years ago. It troubled me again when I read it in Ryan’s article, and yet again when it entered my midwinter night’s bad dream. Obviously, my psyche and soul are telling me that it needs some attention.

WHAT THE JEWS KNOW OF JUSTICE

Ryan MacDonald’s use of the term, “To Azazel” in his title was very clever. It’s a mysterious term, used in Scripture on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) when the high priest placed his hands on a goat upon which was imposed all the sins and transgressions of the people. This Scripture passage in the Book of Leviticus (16: 8-10; 20-28) was the origin of the term “scapegoat.” The scapegoat was then sent into the desert, “To Azazel.”

The actual meaning of “Azazel” is uncertain. It appears to be both a name and a place, or even a social standing. According to the Jewish Apocryphal book, 1 Enoch (8:1; 10: 4-6), Azazel is the name of a fallen angel, a demon of the desert. The name also denotes the region to which the scapegoat is sent bearing the sins of others. Its place in the desert is the land of the lost, a place from which the scapegoat is never allowed to return... (continued)

Click Here to Read More at These Stone Walls

Link:

• What Dreams May Come: Azazel and the Pursuit of Justice

Related:

• Father MacRae’s opening judicial “hearing” in his bid for justice TODAY 
• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

SNAP: Support for Abuse Victims or Anti-Catholic Politicking?

Barbara Blaine, David Clohessy, and Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P.

Conference speakers indicate a larger political agenda.

By David F. Pierre, Jr. 

Anyone who has watched the Catholic Church abuse narrative unfold in the media over the past several years has likely encountered SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a body which bills itself as the “largest, oldest, and most active support group” for clergy abuse victims. The organization has been quite successful in building its presence and influence in the media, as journalists and writers often turn to the group when seeking a voice critical of the Church for its handling of abuse cases.

Barbara Blaine, a woman who claims to have been abused by a priest as a teenager, founded SNAP in 1988. The group convened its first meeting in 1991, and David Clohessy, a Missouri man who has also claimed abuse by a priest, joined the group in a leadership role a year later. Prior to joining SNAP, Clohessy worked for nearly a decade for the now-disgraced, radical activist group ACORN.

However, while SNAP’s stated mission is “to provide support for men and women who have been sexually victimized by members of the clergy,” the group’s leadership has allied itself with a progressive social agenda and a full-scale assault on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

The real agenda at play?

This past March in Washington, DC, SNAP President Blaine appeared as a featured guest at a high-voltage conference called “Women Money Power,” hosted by Feminist Majority, a very influential pro-abortion lobbying group. At the conference Blaine was joined noted activists Eleanor Smeal, Sandra Fluke, and Dawn Laguens (a vice president at Planned Parenthood) for a panel discussion titled “Bishops, Politicians, and the War on Women’s Health.”

The panelists took turns railing against Catholic leaders for their positions on “reproductive freedom” (read: contraception and abortion) and their opposition to the Obama administration’s healthcare mandate. Needless to say, the venom in the room against the Catholic Church was palpable.

Most notably, Blaine sat right next to Rev. Barry Lynn, the well-traveled president of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State whose progressive views have made him a fixture on cable television talk shows.

Blaine must have really appreciated Rev. Lynn’s talk (which can be viewed on YouTube), because just a few months later he appeared as a headline speaker at SNAP’s annual conference in Chicago. On that occasion, the energetic Lynn—a minister in the United Church of Christ—simply built upon his Church-bashing speech from the Feminist Majority conference, claiming that Catholic bishops have “no moral authority” to speak on women’s issues and human sexuality and asserting that the Church’s opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate was a “total fraud” and an “unimaginable distortion of the very idea of freedom.” According to Lynn, the Church’s objections to the HHS mandate were not really about religious liberty, but about being given “special treatment” and the “power” to impose their religious doctrine on others.

What did any of this have to do with the topic of clergy sex abuse? Why did Blaine choose Lynn to speak at her conference? They are good questions. Lynn made a brave attempt to tie the subject of clergy abuse to his talk, but ultimately the issue served as little more than a vehicle for a larger assault on the Catholic Church and advocacy for left-leaning social policies.

Child abuse is “allowed” in the Catholic Church?

Another speaker at SNAP’s Chicago conference was author Judy Braun (she has also published under the names “Judy Brown” and “Eishes Chayil,” which means “woman of valor”). In a wild presentation titled “Monotheism and Child Sacrifice,” Braun argued that Jewish communities and the Catholic Church view the sexual abuse of children as an acceptable form of child sacrifice, with roots in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac... (continued)

Read More at The Catholic World Report

Link:

• SNAP: Support for Abuse Victims or Anti-Catholic Politicking? 

Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound

From the Catholic League:

By Rev. Michael P. Orsi

Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories by David F. Pierre, Jr., Mattapoisett, Massachusetts: www.TheMediaReport.com

David Pierre is one of the country’s leading observers of the Catholic Church abuse narrative. In Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories, he presents case studies backed by hard data which clearly demonstrates some of the injustices foisted on Catholic priests and the Church.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is identified by Pierre as a major culprit in advancing the destruction of innocent priests. He outlines the methods used by the group to manipulate clergy abuse charges and how they play the media. The organization, he says, provides talking points and staging tips for accusers and their attorneys at the workshops they hold at their yearly conference. SNAP’s tactics, he says, have grossly exaggerated the clergy abuse problem in the Church. He contends, that with data garnered by expert crime investigators, it is not unreasonable for an observer to deduce that “approximately one third” of all accusations against Catholic priests are entirely false or greatly exaggerated.

It is important for Church officials to challenge and, if need be, litigate every accusation. The results of these investigations should be publicized. And, if the allegations prove to be false, the name of the accuser, if an adult, should be made public. Not to do so lets the lies live on and continue to undermine the Body of Christ. “According to a sworn declaration submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in November of 2010,” Pierre writes, “attorney Donald Steier claimed, ‘One retired F.B.I. agent who worked with me to investigate many claims in the Clergy Cases told me, in his opinion, about ONE-Half of the claims made in the Clergy Cases were either entirely false [or] greatly exaggerated.’”

Other culprits identified by Pierre adding to the abuse frenzy are plaintiffs’ attorneys and Church insurance carriers. Attorney fees, which are usually up to forty percent on a settlement have made pursuing allegations, even false ones, very lucrative for this new breed of ambulance chasers. These attorneys realize that many claims will be settled out of court because insurers and the Church would rather pay out “large scale blanket settlements” than go to trial where litigation costs will be exorbitant. They also fear losing a case due to a jury prejudiced against the Church or sympathetic to those claiming victim status. This may, in fact, incur greater putative and compensatory damages.

Dubious claims of the widely discredited psychological theory of “repressed memories,” have been used to put priests at a significant disadvantage in obtaining justice. In these cases, individuals claim that a priest molested them years earlier and assert that they repressed the memory due to the trauma. The alleged incident is often recalled, Pierre says, “through the suggestive questioning of an unprincipled therapist and, often under hypnosis.” Naturally, hypnosis leaves people open to the power of suggestion. Many experts believe that repressed memory is simply bogus. Dr. James McGaugh, from the University of California, Irvine, an expert in the area of memory, states, “I do not believe there is such a thing as a repressed memory… And there’s absolutely no proof that it can happen. Zero. None. Niente.” Dr. Richard J. McNally, Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University claims, repressed memory therapy is “the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era.”

Regarding Diocesan Review Boards, Pierre says, “they are very often composed of individuals who have profound sympathy for victims of abuse. These panels consist of child welfare advocates, social workers, therapists, child psychologists,” as well as “individuals who were actual victims of clergy abuse.” Perhaps this is why these boards tend to be less than sympathetic to accused priests. Another reason for these review boards’ bias may be the “credible” evidence standard that they use when determining whether a priest should be put on Administrative Leave. “When an accuser comes forward to allege abuse from decades earlier,” Pierre writes, “one can deem the accusation ‘credible’ simply because the accuser can show that he or she lived at a given time in the same general geographical area of a priest.”

Media bias needs to be met with the facts. For example, Pierre says, a book by Marci A. Hamilton─a professor at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, in New York City─ entitled, Justice Denied: What America Must do to Protect Its Children (2008), excoriates the Catholic Church for its handling of the abuse crisis and accuses the Catholic leaders of orchestrating the sexual abuse of children. Yet, according to legal experts, the book contains “a number of outright falsehoods and misleading passages.” For instance, when attorney L. Martin Nussbaum and his wife, Melissa, reviewed Hamilton’s book for First Things in an article entitled, “MarciWorld” they noted that “Hamilton claimed, that in some states, a child abused at age seven would have only until the age of nine to sue the abuser. That is simply false in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

Pierre notes that, “Hamilton has represented SNAP and has done extensive legal work for the organization.” She is also, according to Pierre, closely associated with the Philadelphia district Attorney’s Office, which Pierre shows to have a particular animus toward the Church. He says, “the Philadelphia D.A.’s Office has not targeted any other organization for its past abuses with the same prosecutorial zeal.” Pierre then cites statistics that show public school teachers have a much higher rate of abuse than Catholic priests. Yet, they have escaped the same kind of scrutiny by Hamilton.

Hamilton is a strong advocate of dropping the “statute of limitations” for private institutions under the auspice of “protecting children.” However, Pierre claims, “Hamilton has made it her crusade to lobby state legislatures to remove the statute of limitations in order to inflict maximum financial and institutional damage to the Catholic Church.” Alarmingly, Pierre points out that, “public schools have a special immunity from being sued.” As a government entity, they are shielded by the doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” which only allows an accuser a limited window to make an accusation and limits lawsuit damages, making claims less profitable for attorneys and their clients.

It is important, Pierre believes, to aggressively market the fact that the Catholic Church now has the safest environment in the world for protecting children. Data collected from The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) indicates allegations of abuse of minors to be on average less than 10 per year since 2005 nationwide. The Church’s safeguards and accomplishments need to be widely disseminated by Her authorities and related organizations.

The most troublesome accusations are those leveled against dead priests. Pierre reports that, according to CARA, 43% of all priests accused of abuse in 2010 were deceased. How can the dead defend themselves? The simple solution in many cases for a diocese is to simply pay out. And, unfortunately in some dioceses, the deceased priest’s name is added to a diocesan website listing him as a pedophile or accused of being one. The intangible losses in doing this far exceed the monetary costs. The ruination of a priest’s reputation along with the sorrow that it causes to his family and those whom he had served who have fond memories of him─ giving them their First Holy Communion, presiding over their marriage, or offering them advice and consolation in times of need─ is a source of great discouragement among the faithful.

There is an old cliché, “the best defense is a good offense.” Church officials have been too reluctant to expose the lies about priests, the obvious anti-Catholic bias in the media, the greed and the anti-Catholicism of some in public office which feeds the abuse crisis. This has caused a decline in clergy morale and vocations to the priesthood. Large monetary settlements have hindered Catholic evangelization and charitable work and have led to the bankruptcy of some dioceses. But, worst of all, it has also caused a loss of confidence by many Catholics in the institutional Church.

Father Gordon MacRae

A sure way to ameliorate the injustices perpetrated against priests and to rehabilitate the reputation of the Church would be to re-examine the cases of those priests found guilty due to false or dubious abuse claims filed against them. The widely reported case of Fr. Gordon MacRae, of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, would be a good place to start. Pierre outlines it in his book. It is quite obvious that Fr. MacRae did not receive a fair trial according to the facts cited in a piece published in The Wall Street Journal. MacRae’s accuser, a fifteen year old boy, had a lengthy juvenile record and presented doubtful evidence in trial testimony. The judge even went so far as to order the jury to “disregard inconsistencies in Mr. Grover’s (his accuser) testimony.” Father MacRae, protesting his innocence, refused a plea bargain deal of two years in prison. Now he is serving a 67 year sentence. His own, now retired, bishop believes him to be innocent. What a moral boost this would be for the nation’s priests and for the Catholic laity if the Church in New Hampshire began a petition drive to have this case reopened!

In a chapter entitled, “Kathy Told a Story,” Pierre chronicles the tale of an Irish woman, Kathy O’Beirne, who wrote of the abuse she sustained at one of Ireland’s institutions that cared for young women, the Magdalene Home. She reports being severely abused by nuns and having been raped by a priest. “Her chronicle,” says Pierre, “enthralled readers.” It received rave reviews and achieved bestseller status. Except, the woman’s siblings claim “Our sister was not in the Magdalene Home… Our sister has a self-admitted psychiatric and criminal history, and her perception of reality has always been flawed.” A further investigation revealed Kathy’s book to be a fraud. Nevertheless, this book continues to secure five star reviews in Amazon.com’s U.K. site and has respectable sales in England and Ireland.

If the late Paul Harvey were able to comment on this book, he would have certainly said, “And now the rest of the story.” This book is concise, easy to read, filled with verifiable data, and points out the problems with both the ecclesiastical and civil responses to the clergy abuse crisis.

Father Orsi is Chaplain and Research Fellow in Law and Religion at Ave Maria School of Law.

Link:

• Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal
• SNAP's Clohessy Evades Questions and Subverts Court Order While Lawyers Shred His Defense 
• Video: Priest Convicted Of Abuse Seeks New Trial (WMUR 9 New Hampshire)
• Father Gordon MacRae - Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest
• Dr. Bill Donohue Discussing Fr. Gordon MacRae and SNAP on EWTN's The World Over
• SNAP Judgments Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal 
• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins - by Fr. Gordon MacRae
• As The Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?
• SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - by William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

SNAP's David Clohessy Evades Questions and Subverts Court Order While Lawyers Shred His Defense

From TheMediaReport.com:

SNAP national director David Clohessy

Late today (3/1/12), TheMediaReport.com obtained a copy of the high-profile but carefully guarded deposition given by David Clohessy, the national director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), on January 2, 2012. The deposition was conducted in Clayton, Missouri, as part of an effort to determine the violation of a court-imposed gag order in the case of an accused Catholic priest.

[Click here to read the complete deposition]

The deposition exposes Clohessy as steadfastly refusing to answer many of the questions asked of him and declining to hand over important documents ordered by a judge. Clohessy did this despite losing a number of appeals before being forced to be deposed.

For years, Clohessy has been incessantly railing against Catholic Church officials for alleged "lack of transparency," "hardball tactics," and "avoiding tough questions." Meanwhile, it is these very traits that characterize Clohessy's January deposition appearance...  (continued)

Read More Here

Link:

• SNAP's Clohessy Evades Questions and Subverts Court Order While Lawyers Shred His Defense 

Related:

• Video: Priest Convicted Of Abuse Seeks New Trial (WMUR 9 New Hampshire)
• Father Gordon MacRae - Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest
• Dr. Bill Donohue Discussing Fr. Gordon MacRae and SNAP on EWTN's The World Over
• SNAP Judgments Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal 
• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins - by Fr. Gordon MacRae
• As The Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?
• SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - by William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

Father Gordon MacRae - Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest

From TheMediaReport.com

• Rev. Gordon J. MacRae, sentenced to 33½ to 67 years, has been in the New Hampshire State Prison For Men since 1994 on abuse charges.
• Newly released signed statements in a recent court motion contend that the primary accuser, Thomas Grover, made up the accusations to extract money from the Church.
• Grover's former stepson: "On several occasions, Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae."
• Grover's former wife: Grover is a "compulsive liar" and a "manipulator" who "can tell a lie and stick to it 'til its end." Most notably, Grover "never stated one word of abuse by [MacRae]."
• Former friend of Grover and accuser who recanted: I knew "full well that it was [all] bogus … I did not want to lie or make up stories."
• Former drug and alcohol counselor for Grover: Accuser Grover claimed abuse "by so many disparate people that his credibility in the [counseling] program was seriously in doubt"; Grover seemed like "he was going for some kind of sexual abuse victim world record." Plus, aggressive New Hampshire detectives applied "coercion, intimidation, veiled and more forward threats" and "threats of arrest" upon the counselor to try to extract a false incrimination of MacRae from her.
• Courtroom spectators during Fr. MacRae's 1994 trial: A therapist hired by Grover's contingency lawyer used hand signals from the back of the courtroom to coach Grover on the witness stand.
• Veteran FBI detective, after three-year private investigation: "I discovered no evidence of MacRae having committed the crimes charged, or any other crimes."
• Plus: A lengthy criminal rap sheet of accuser Grover reveals numerous arrests, before and after trial: multiple forgeries, multiple thefts, multiple burglaries, and assault on a police officer (after breaking his future ex-wife's nose). The jury at the trial never heard any of this.
• and more.

Eye-popping new evidence is shining a new light on one of the most disputed cases of the entire Catholic Church abuse narrative.

Rev. Gordon J. MacRae and his attorneys have filed a motion for a new trial in New Hampshire based on astonishing new declarations.

The motion for a new trial contains multiple, uncollaborated signed statements from a number of people who were close to accuser Thomas Grover at the time Fr. MacRae's 1994 criminal trial, and these statements indicate that Grover perpetrated a massive fraud in falsely accusing the cleric of abuse.

1. The motion contains an astonishing 2008 signed statement from the former stepson of accuser Grover, who was in the company of Grover for a period of years before, during, and after Fr. MacRae's 1994 criminal trial:

"[O]ver a number of months and years, Thomas Grover discussed the sex abuse allegations of [Father] Gordon MacRae with me. Grover often stated to me that he was going to set MacRae and the church up to gain money for sexual abuse. Grover would laugh and joke about this scheme …

"On several occasions Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae.
"Grover, on several occasions, called his civil case attorneys for money or cash advances on his expected cash award and Grover told me that his attorneys directed him to go for psychiatric and drug therapy to gain jury appeal in his court case."

[Click here to read this man's signed statement]

2. The motion also contains statements from the former wife of accuser Grover. According to this woman, Grover is a "compulsive liar" and a "manipulator," "who can tell a lie and stick to it 'til its end."
She also has claimed:

• Grover asked her to marry him in 1994 "because it would look better and, more importantly, he needed the security of a wife for a trial."
• In the entire time the pair were together, "never once did [Grover] say he was abused by MacRae."
• Grover claimed that his monetary civil suit was to pay for his needed therapy, but once he received his sizable settlement ($195,000 in 1997), he never returned to therapy again.

[Click here to see relevant court documents related to Grover's former wife.]

3. Also included in the file is a 2008 signed statement from a former friend of Grover who recanted his bogus claims of abuse by MacRae. The statement shockingly suggests that the lead detective in Fr. Gordon's New Hampshire case, James McLaughlin, attempted to manipulate the young man into making a false accusation:

"I was aware at the time of [Father] Gordon's trial knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved, also the reputations of those who were making accusations.

"I agreed to meet with the [detectives] after being told I would be reimbursed for my time/gas money …  [Detective] McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do is make up a story about Gordon and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had. McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could be easier for us with a large amount of money.

"I knew of the Grovers' reputation as well as others involved, many of whom I went to school with. It seemed as though it would be easy money if I would also accuse Gordon of wrongdoing. I left that meeting after being given I believe $50, easy money, like what would come from lawsuits against MacRae."

Fortunately, after being subpoenaed, the man had a change of feelings. "I did not want to lie or make up stories … Gordon had never done anything wrong towards me," the man has written.

[Click here to read this man's handwritten statement]

To Read More Click Here

Link:

• Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest

Update March 2015:  Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Related:

• Special Report: New Appeal Filed in the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae
• New Trial Motion Filed for Father Gordon MacRae
• Memorandum of Law in Support of a Motion for a New Trial (.pdf)
• Father Gordon MacRae's These Stone Walls - Musings From Prison of a Priest Falsely Accused
• Thy Brother’s Keeper: Why Wrongful Convictions Should Matter to You
• Trial by Therapists - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• Dr. Bill Donohue Discussing Fr. Gordon MacRae and SNAP on EWTN's The World Over
• A Touch of Deja Vu: The Case against Rev. Gordon MacRae - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• A Priest and His Wounds: Padre Pio Under Investigation
• SNAP Judgments Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal 
• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins - by Fr. Gordon MacRae
• As The Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?
• SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - by William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

SNAP Protects Child Molesters

(Catholic League) The weekly St. Louis alternative newspaper, Riverfront Times, published an exchange today between reporter Nicholas Phillips and David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Clohessy is quoted as saying the following about St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson: “Archbishop Carlson and his brother Catholic bishops have hired, hidden, transferred, defended and enabled child molesters. SNAP hasn’t. Carlson and his colleagues have ignored and concealed their crimes. SNAP hasn’t.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

I will leave it to Archbishop Carlson’s lawyers to respond to Clohessy, but I cannot allow the SNAP director to lie about his own personal involvement in the cover-up of a known child molester.

In the 1990s, David Clohessy knew about his brother Kevin’s sexually predatory behavior and never called the cops. Yet he has the audacity to condemn others for not doing what he manifestly refused to do when he learned that his brother, a priest, was abusing young men. The SNAP director said at the time, “he’s my brother; he’s an abuser. Do I treat him like my brother?” Well, Mr. Clean, accused priests are the brothers of their bishop, so what would you say to both parties?

Dr. Steve Taylor is a psychiatrist who is sitting in prison for downloading child pornography from his computer. He is well known to SNAP—he was one of their go-to shrinks for years. Indeed, the convict is so well loved by SNAP that the founder of the organization, Barbara Blaine, intervened on his behalf and wrote to the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners pleading with them to cut Taylor some slack.

In other words, SNAP has hired, hidden, defended, enabled, ignored and concealed the crimes of child molesters.

Link:

• SNAP PROTECTS CHILD MOLESTERS

Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well

By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

...From an analysis of typical comments in Catholic media, it might appear that a lot of people have ongoing and extremely negative views about Catholic priests. That may not be the case. What’s really going on is that a relatively small number of crusaders are “seeding” the Internet with their comments. If you take the time – and have the stomach for it – to track comments throughout the catholic on-line world, and at mainstream media articles about the Catholic scandal, you’ll see the same few screen names over and over.

They seem to be everywhere, and Chris Tressa ran into one of them. They are on a very personal crusade, but what makes this so personal for them? As Chris Tressa asked, “Who does that?” Is it because they are victims of sexual abuse? Perhaps so, but I know MANY adult victims of sexual abuse who are not crusaders. This prison and prisons everywhere are filled with men who were seriously victimized as children. A number of the readers and supporters of These Stone Walls are survivors of childhood sexual abuse who resent the venom being spewed in their names.

But it’s also a fact that many of the most vocal crusaders at SNAP, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), and Bishop-Accountability are not victims of sexual abuse. So what’s behind the nasty crusade of vilification and suspicion?

CLASSIC DEFENSE MECHANISMS

We got a hint of the answer in the case of Dr. Steve Taylor, a Louisiana psychiatrist and member of SNAP who has been one of the more vocal advocates for an end to all civil rights for accused priests. Dr. Taylor has argued loudly for an end to any state respect for the seal of the Catholic confessional. Dr. Taylor was also the founder of a local chapter of SNAP. “We have faces now,” he bitterly exclaimed to legislators and news cameras while SNAP members held up the contrived “Holy Childhood photos” described in “SNAP Exposed” and my own post, “SNAP’s Last Gasp!” in September.

Over the last three years, Dr. Steve Taylor has lost his medical license to practice psychiatry. He is now serving a sentence in a federal prison convicted on multiple charges of possessing child pornography.

Before he was sentenced to prison, SNAP founder Barbara Blaine and anti-Catholic author Jason Berry both pleaded for leniency for Dr. Taylor citing that his “problem” does not undo or overshadow all the good he has done. We might keep this in mind as SNAP leaders now vilify Bishop Robert Finn, charged with a misdemeanor for not reporting a priest fast enough when the priest was allegedly discovered with child pornography.

The crusade against accused priests that Dr. Steve Taylor was on has many of the elements of classic reaction formation, a concept first proposed by the father of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud. His descriptions of human ego defense mechanisms and hysteria included this entirely unconscious phenomenon which he described as an attempt to cover up something unacceptable in oneself by adopting a stance in opposition to it. It is the formation of a reaction to an encounter with self. When something disdained is discovered there, defense mechanisms like reaction formation can develop into an elaborate ruse in which the thing feared in oneself becomes the thing attacked in others... (continued)

Read More Here

Dr. Bill Donohue Discussing Fr. Gordon MacRae and SNAP on EWTN's The World Over

From Fr. Gordon J. MacRae's blog These Stone Walls -  I fast-forwarded the video to the start of the segment:

"You may be interested to watch Dr. Bill Donohue, of the Catholic League, discuss  Father Gordon MacRae and These Stone Walls on the most recent The World Over with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN:"

"Father is brought up at the 41:00 mark, and the actual segment begins at the 32:14 mark.  Thank you, Dr. Donohue!"

• Fr. Gordon MacRae Discussed on EWTN’s The World Over

Related:

• These Stone Walls
• Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights
• SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - by William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins - by Fr. Gordon MacRae
• To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy - by Ryan A. MacDonald
• Trial by Therapists - by Ryan A. MacDonald

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae: SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 24, 2011

The darkest days of the American Catholic priesthood crisis are behind us, but concerns linger for the justice without mercy it unleashed.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” (Thomas Paine)

In my recent post, “If Night Befalls Your Father,” on These Stone Walls, I wrote of a terrible tragedy in our Church. In the United States alone, some 28 Catholic priests have taken their own lives since priests became a favorite target of Satan and the news media. I wrote that I have personally known five of them, and three others who were murdered.

In 1994, just months before I faced trial, I received a call from a priest asking for help. I had met with him previously and I knew he had been depressed. I also knew his depression had become critical, but he resisted seeking treatment. I’m telling this strange story without his name, of course, but with his permission.

I, too, have lived in darkness, and know its grip on the human soul. On the day this priest asked for help, he had made a decision to end his own life, though I did not know this fact until he met with me. He spent the previous two days planning this out and putting his affairs in order. He decided that using a firearm would guarantee finality. His plan was to hike as far as he could into the Northern New Mexico mountains where he would not be discovered for months or even years, and he would take his own life there. He saw no light at all beyond his dark night of the soul.

Like most priests, however, he did not own a gun. New Mexico law required a waiting period for gun dealers to sell to private citizens, but private sellers were exempt from the law at that time. So my friend scoured the newspaper for a private sale, and found a prospect. An Albuquerque man had a 9mm semi-automatic handgun for sale for $500. My priest-friend arranged to purchase the gun that evening at 6:00 PM. after retrieving the funds from his bank.

So the priest drove to Albuquerque, and on the way to the seller’s address he stopped at the bank. The required $500 was just about the sum total of what he had in his account. The bank had closed for the day so he went to an ATM machine near the bank’s front door. With his mind made up and his plan in place, my friend inserted his card into the ATM to withdraw his funds as he had many times before. This time, however, the machine ate his card, then printed out this message:

“Your card has been retained for an unknown reason. Please consult an account representative during business hours.”

My friend looked incredulously at the printed message. His plan was ruined, and he drove home feeling defeated. The next morning he called the bank. An account representative told him she had no explanation for why the bank’s ATM retained his card. “It shouldn’t have,” she said. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your card or your account.”

She offered to mail the card back to him immediately.

After hanging up from talking to his bank, he called me and agreed to let me bring him to a center for priests in crisis. He interpreted the incident with his ATM card as a sort of divine intervention, and, in a strange way, it gave him hope.

Clearly, the last two decades have called upon Catholics and the Church to pay some attention to the quality of life for Roman Catholic priests. We are seeing the problems of priests – and especially the sex abuse crisis – with blinders on, addressing them only as personal failures of the priests involved rather than as a systemic failure within the priesthood. This has added to the tragedy, and the Church’s response to date – which includes the draconian policy of zero tolerance – has signaled every priest to keep his problems to himself... (continued...)

Read More Click Here

Link:

• SNAP Judgements Part I: Catholic Priests Among the Public Ruins

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal