Running with the anti-Catholics: Philadelphia Assistant D.A. Mark Cipolletti
At the annual conference of SNAP last July in Chicago, one individual whom the group proudly celebrated was Philadelphia Assistant D.A. Mark Cipolletti, a leading prosecutor in the current clergy abuse trial.
It is no surprise that the anti-Catholic group welcomed the lawyer, as he already had an established record of animus against the Church. During a pretrial conference just last year in the trial of Msgr. William Lynn, Cipolletti actually asserted that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had been "supplying [an accused ex-priest] with an endless amount of victims."
That's right. Cipolletti actually accused the Catholic Church of "supplying" abusive priests with victims, as if the Archdiocese wished to harm the children in its care. It was the truly unhinged thinking of an overheated prosecutor.
Now, only a year later, Cipolletti is trying to convince a jury that the wild claims of a 24-year-old criminal and admitted heroin addict that three different men – priest Fr. Charles Engelhardt, former priest Edward Avery, and former school teacher Bernard Shero – sexually assaulted him in the late 1990s are true.
Show me the money: Who paid for Cipolletti's trip to hang with SNAP?
TheMediaReport.com has sought to find out who funded Cipolletti's soirée with SNAP in Chicago, so in accordance with Pennsylvania law, we filed an "Open Records Law" request in October with the Philadelphia D.A.'s Office ("DAO"). We sought to find out who paid for Cipolletti's airfare, hotel, ground transportation, beverages, and meals for his Chicago trip.
[Click to read a copy of our request to the Philadelphia D.A.'s Office]
Curiously, the Philadelphia DAO responded by vaguely claiming that "the Office has no records responsive" to our request.
[Click to read the response from the Philadelphia DAO]
Hmmm. It was an interesting reply, indeed. Such a response leaves three scenarios:
1. SNAP itself (or a wealthy supporter) paid for Cipolletti's trip.
2. Cipolletti is so zealous that he paid for the trip himself.
3. The Philadelphia DAO is playing word games with our request.
As the Philadelphia DAO has endlessly badgered the Catholic Church about "transparency," the time has come for it to come clean itself about its arrangements between a member of its own office and SNAP.
[By the way ... This is not the first time we have documented the Philadelphia DAO's cozy relationship with SNAP. Check out Part I and Part II of our August 2011 Special Report.]
For those of you perhaps in other regions of our great nation, Philly, which is unfortunately within striking distance of my range, has become the corruption and crime capital of the country. The "little city that almost did, but didn't" suffers from the worst case of second city (or actually 4th or 5th) personality disorder I've ever experienced. It is crime-ridden, corrupt and filthy. I apologize if there are Philly-ites here, but, you know it's true.
My intent is not to further grind a once great little city into the ground, but to note the incredible deterioration, that which only could happen if it's leaders are corrupt, of one of our national historic treasures.
A city, or any population center, can not sustain the sins and disease of it's core for long before the pock marks and scars appears on it's face. The once friendly and educated population is also reflecting the disease within in the most unimaginably obscene ways.
We can't be surprised at this populations selection of poor leadership. And, we can't be surprised that their political targets portray the very opposite of who they themselves are and cherish.
"Philthadelphia", as it is known locally, has gone to the be-deviled dogs. God help her.
You must mean the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
The CBS Nightly news (Pelly) just covered the LA Archdioceses document dump in it's headline (one of three lead-in stories). The cherry-picking thru the story was astonishing.
What is becoming evident is that with the Catholic Church leading the legal charge against Obie's religious liberty take down (ObamaCare), the networks (good little soldiers that they are) will ramp up their assaults on the Church via the "abuse scandal".
As John Dickerson, CBS Political Chief recently said, strictly paraphrasing "…Obama will need to take out the GOP to successfully install His Excellency's socialist agenda". The only real threat to Obie executing his leftist, irreligious agenda is our Church.
Looks like it's Game On for the media Church bashers.
Take some time and read through the documents. It is sinful what went on.
Dear, your losing it.
SNAP is not anti-Catholic. It is anti anyone who abuses innocent children.
Patrick, we will give you the benefit of the doubt. Please immediately change the
"P" in your acronym to PERSON. Then, make the rounds on all of the news stations,
both local and nation wide. Let the WHOLE WORLD know that it became necessary to
change the acronym because of all of the UNCOVERED individuals and instutions.
Do it Patrick!!! Make our day!
Thank you Patrick!
Why isn't SNAP out protesting the teacher arrested today in LA who molested 20 kids?
They ARE anti-Catholic.
Yes Aman, and it seems like almost every day you hear about a non-clergy member of society arrested for abuse in Philadelphia-you see it on nightly news but NEVER in the Inquirer (which has only 300,000 readership on a good day).
This really stuns. To anybody who thinks that this Thing is and has been basically on the level – I would say that such a presumption cannot possibly be accurate. Not only is this prosecutor of a major (such as it is) case not disposed personally to any sort of detached professionalism, but he (in this case) makes no effort to hide his partiality, not only openly attending a SNAP meeting but accepting an award (and most likely making some remarks formally to the attendees). Even though there was clear indication that there would be a second trial (currently going on in Philly) and he would most likely be involved.
And this gives rise to the further observation that he clearly wasn’t stopped by any concern that the DA’s Office in Philly would forbid or even frown upon so clear and public a demonstration of connection with so publicly partial an organization as SNAP. (Although the DA’s Office now – as DP points out above – seems to have no records as to whether taxpayer money was used to fund this junket.)
Having ‘no records responsive’ is a classic dodge: it neither confirms nor denies anything, but rather simply says that there’s no way to know one way or the other from public records. It does not equate to saying ‘we keep clear records and would know if we paid this guy for this junket, and we have no record of his junket in our careful and full records’. Rather, it simply smiles and says ‘we don’t keep any records at all on this sort of thing’. And that’s really hard to believe, presuming that the Office is competently and honestly managed: you would have to have records to track official travel charges if the member were going to submit chits for reimbursement – these are public funds and this is taxpayer money, after all. At the least they should have been able to reply that ‘this Office did not pay for that trip – there is no record of it and we keep careful records of any official trips that are authorized’.
Nor – if he undertook this trip as a personal venture, whether funded on his own or by other sources – is it conceivable that in a well-run Office he would do so without checking with his superiors first and getting their approval or at least their no-objection nod. He is, after all, hobnobbing in public with a rather clearly-partial organization (itself under something of a public cloud after its Deposition-misadventures last year) that has a clear interest in the outcome of cases that the Office itself has made high-profile.
If he went without approval, then what is the DA going to do about that? If he went with approval (formal or informal), then what does that say about the subsurface connections tying in various special-interests that seem to have a nexus in the DA’s Office?
It might be claimed that this is no different from – say – a successful prosecutor accepting an award from a temperance or anti-saloon organization during the era of Prohibition. But the Catholic Abuse cases are not the same as Prohibition-era bootlegging cases: as we are continually seeing, the Catholic Abuse cases reveal themselves to be not a matter of prosecuting well-evidenced Charges, but rather of creating cases out of very little evidence, if any at all.
Dave, I hope you will report on the released L.A. documents.
My manly back and white hair made the front page of the L.A. Times today. I was also quoted about Cardinal Mahoney and Santa Barbara Bishop Curry in Steve Lopez's column.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy interview schedule to comment here, Jim.
LOL Dave thanks for the laugh. The media calls you when your front page; doesn't need you when you're not. That's in regards to all stories. All the time. Allways. Ask our suicidal soldiers
.If it makes you feel better I just had a radio interview from the very right wing KFI station. I don't think I was angry enough for their market share. Delph? Oh sorry these guys were on the victims side.
What with the Cardinal's hand signed memos protecting pedophile priests from the law by transfering them accross state lines. Rico anybody?
Thanks, Jim, for directing me to the LA Times piece by Steve Lopez. Oh, I miss his reporting here in Philly. Very interesting, and good for you for contributing your time and knowledge to the piece!
Maybe you can start rebranding SNAP with the growing BBC scandal; appears as though there was a huge coverup dating back over 30 years at that esteemed liberal organization.
I wonder if their boys-will-be-boys hijinks ever got in the way of their chronic Catholic-bashing?
So, who doesn't think that the Obama directive (or suggestion, if you lefties prefer) hasn't gone out to every sympathethic "news" organization and to every political friend (including DAs, DEAR) to ramp up the antiCatholic bashing so as to attempt to undermine the Church's opposition to ObamaCare (hey, check out the GAO reports from 2012 [unsustainable spending] and 2013 [gov't agencies blocking access to GAO for further economic health analyses/reports] for some interesting gems).
Perhaps, the response by the Church to any further inquiries into any of their affairs should be, ala Mrs. Clinton in response to the Administrations lies to the Behghazi consulate attack question, I paraphrase, "….what difference, at this point, does it make?"
I am quite sure the families of the four dead Americans could not agree more.
No one is being fooled by the witch-hunt being waged against the Catholic Church, and no one is doubts who benefits most. Let's at least be honest about your motives, if you can't be honest about the false claims. The Church (and her defenders and supporters) will take on the claims via outlets such as this one. Soon enough, the political winds will change, because, as usual, the lefties will have, once again, overreached.
And how many Americans did George W Bush kill? Illegal war remember? Completely unnecessary. In fact based on a lie.
If every warmonger had their own or their kids' butts on the line; they might not be so quick to sabre rattle. Delphin? I'm a veteran are you?
Here's a challenge to our Catholic- bashers; explain why destroying the Catholic Church is your PASSION in light of the horrors against humanity that plague this fallen world, such as:
Slavery as still practiced in Africa and Asia,
White Slavery (sexual exploitation, slavery, rape and murder of kidnapped female, including INFANTS) as practiced worldwide,
Child abuse and murder as practiced by parents and via stranger abduction,
Domestic violence and Rape, as practiced worldwide against women.
Just to name a few societal "disorders".
Why in the world would homosexuality, as practiced by offending priests, with mostly consenting young men (post-pubescent), and, as otherwise celebrated in the homosexual culture now and by pagans throughout history would garner such attention is hardly a brain-teaser.
You are the biggest phony blowhards on the planet.
Delph dear you've mistaken righteous criticism of the corporate behavior of the corporate officers of the corporate Catholic Church for an attack on your religion. And if you are just in too much of a hissy fit to be able to tell the difference between the two; well what can be said? You don't like gay people? Fine don't marry any of us. Consenting young men?????Not if they're under 18 they're not.
Gee haven't heard the church say anything about these societal "disorders".
And the circus goes on.
Meanwhile, over at the second Philadelphia trial (link to today’s article at bottom of this comment) a remarkable bit of news from Mr. Prosecutor Cipoletti: he asked a social-worker/victim advocate on the stand if she did not realize that “most victims of sex abuse exaggerate”.
That’s a thought-provoking bit of revelation in its way.
The possibility of exaggeration sort of goes with our creatively imaginative human species: folk-tales exaggerate (Paul Bunyan and his famous blue ox Babe), as can people writing resumes, used-car salesmen, weapons-makers pitching to the Pentagon, and – alas – politicians.
And some people exaggerate with benevolent intentions – and some people exaggerate with manipulative intentions. And – as we have seen with SNAP – some people even exaggerate manipulatively with good intentions (which is apparently a good thing to do, in SNAP’s way of conducting its business).
It’s altogether a complex and clouded ground, this matter of exaggeration.
Therapists (competent ones) are acutely alert to the possibilities of it. Law enforcement agents are (although how they decide to deal with it is another question altogether).
Courts are – theoretically and formally – against it. They want nothing but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in the matter of whatever Charges (criminal) or lawsuits (civil) are before them at the moment. So exaggeration – whatever its intention (benevolent or manipulative or that queasy-slippery admixture of the two) – runs the risk of being branded as Obstruction or Perjury (even if you don’t take the stand and have only signed an Affidavit or answered in a Deposition – both of which are done ‘under oath’).
Now we find ourselves informed publicly and for-the-record by a professional prosecutor – apparently referring to a generally accepted maxim of victimism – that “most victims of sex abuse exaggerate”.
This maxim simultaneously says too much and too little. It says too little because most human beings – at one time or another – probably exaggerate in some way in some context for some purpose. And perhaps some humans are multiple-exaggerators, and perhaps some are multiple-manipulative exaggerators. It’s a reasonable general assumption. But the real challenge – especially in the legal forum – is to figure out who is exaggerating and about what.
It says too much because it’s neither possible nor proper to assume without any further examination that the general human tendency to exaggerate is with a presumptive certainty operative in any specific human’s case or story. You have to analyze and examine each individual instance of a case or a claim or an allegation. No simple (and simplistic) generalizations allowed: it cannot be presumed beforehand that any individual or any class of individuals or any type of story is or is-not comprised of exaggeration. You have to carefully and fully look into each specific instance on its own merits.
And – I say this on the authority of Mr. Prosecutor Cipoletti – you have to do this especially in sex-abuse allegations since – to repeat – “most victims of sex abuse exaggerate”.
Mr. Cipoletti’s statement – as it stands in the record now – doesn’t justify any assertion that any allegation of sex-abuse (however defined on that broad and stretchy spectrum) must be an exaggeration. But Mr. Cipoletti’s statement certainly casts an approving light on the application of a certain amount of inquiring skepticism or at least a prudent need to check things out in any particular case.
So what Mr. Cipoletti’s statement has established is that you have to look carefully at sex-abuse allegations, with special attention to exaggeration.
I think that is sound advice for sex-abuse allegations, and for life generally. Who would buy a used car or a new car or a house or even a whizzbang new weapons system, merely on the basis of the seller’s initial presentations and claims?
And would it be considered ‘disrespectful’ or ‘insensitive’ to ask the seller or presenter for a tour or a test-drive or a field-demonstration of what s/he would very much like you to buy-into? Stocks and bonds, mortgage rates, stories of all kinds … it’s always good to look carefully before one ‘buys’.
How does such a seemingly basic and simple rule of common sense so often get ignored?
http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/01/billy-doe-told-catholic-social-workers.html#more
How does any of this Philly nonsense discount what both Cardinals Mahoney and Law wrote in their own hands re: the cover-up and and multiple transfers of multiple victim perps ( Felony criminal acts in themselves) in order to avoid the police, Pub? You've got an answer for "everything". Answer that.
And – to include a bit more from Mr. Prosecutor Cipoletti’s above-mentioned statement – he asked the social worker in cross-examination if she was aware that “male victims of sex abuse frequently exaggerate”.
Pub,I can hardly wait for your "stampede" analysis re. Cardinal Mahoney's memos. Was Mahoney just trying to get those poor molesters out of the oncoming herds' way?
Once again, let me assure the readership that I respond to material only if it seems to have a larger implication.
So, with that established, on to JR’s two most recent shorties (9:28 AM and 9:37 AM today).
We recall that my comments of last night at 9:26 and 10:52 PM had to do with Philadelphia prosecutor Cipoletti’s rather interesting revelation of the apparently officially-embraced wisdom that “male victims of sex abuse frequently exaggerate”.
Now any reader familiar with the TMR site might well have expected that a commenter with the (claimed) history that JR has shared on this site would have some ‘splainin’ to do. After all, if JR is – as he claims – a male victim of sexual abuse, then the Cipoletti statement surely raises several unpleasant possibilities, one of the most significant being that listeners/readers must be on the lookout for the aforesaid ‘exaggeration’ in the stories and claims of abuse and/or of the damage consequent thereupon. And for that reason, such a reader might well understandably be curious as to JR’s thoughts directly addressing the Cipoletti statement. Indeed, in a larger sense, the entire Catholic Abuse Matter is given a rather substantial (and officially-stated) new twist … which is no small thing at all.
But instead, we get JR declaring that Cipoletti’s statement and indeed that entire trial is nothing more than “this Philly nonsense”. Nothing further . But why should JR comment further since he has – rather conveniently, I would say, from both a conceptual and clinical perspective – simply classified the entire problem as being nothing more than “nonsense”? Don’t wanna talk about it and don’t hafta talk about it becuz it’s all dumb anyway. To which, as so often, the only response one can make is a politely murmured clinical Ovvvvvvvv Courssssssse.
He then tries immediately thereafter to move us all back to his own preferred and current excitement, to wit: the LA documents. He then a) characterizes the acts of various prelates as felony-level crimes and then b) – and this is the enduring scam that we are going to be seeing in all the discussion of these LA documents – refers to them as if they were the present tense rather than materials that come from a world and milieu now 3-plus decades in the past.
He then challenges me to answer how I will answer the documents. I have said and say again that once DP puts up an article here on the LA docs, then I will gladly put forth my thoughts. I will also ask him right here to point out where I have ever claimed in any comments to have “an answer for everything”. A simple date-time and quotation from any of my material on this site will do. Bets on whether we see anything responsive?
And then in his 9:37 comment he says he “can hardly wait” for my “stampede analysis” of the LA documents.
To which I will simply say: on the basis of all his prior commenting and the mental-process revealed in his commenting, I am going to bet that we will see no coherent and rational or sustained response to any material I put up when the time comes; instead, we will see a quick changing of the subject or avoiding of the points I raise, followed with a distracting stab at some new or invented excitement, followed – if necessary – by incoherent outrage at once again not being given the respect he feels due to his assorted keyboard productions.
The LA document article and its commentary will surely be interesting. I agree with JR: I can hardly wait.
Meanwhile, readers interested in the subject can go to the LA Times website and look at the articles. But even more than the articles, readers might want to look at the comments to those articles, to get an idea of the depth at which the LA Times is trawling and what sort of mentalities dwell at the depths at which the LA Times trawl is set.
It is sick and sad to witness the cheerleading for the possibility of another abuse scandal associated with the Church. How far will the Church's detractors go to see their dream of staining the Catholic RELIGION realized, perhaps even so far as to deceive?
What affects, or INFECTS, the perpetrators of these crimes against nature is a disease, like a virus. Viruses are indiscriminate in their targets, they will invade any organisms, or population, that is vulnerable. This particular virus is perpetrated by homosexuals, and the outbreak will occur wherever homosexuals exist, and congregate. That will be in our Churches, Mosques (unless "outed", at which time those loving people who bother no one will off your head), Synagogues, schools, athletics, British media (and all media), entertainment industry, prisons, and countless other venues for expressing one's carnal "rights".
I find it partucularly interesting that this subset of the population that PRIDES itself on its free-spirited/wheeling and excessive expressions of sexuality (think San Fran here) and for decades have sung the liberal lyrics regarding unbridling all our pent-up sexuality, especially as relates to our youngsters (NAMBLA, anyone?), suddenly prude-up when their own exercise their "God-given bents" in a Church.
Alas, I don't know how we're ever going to get through to those who don't even have a basic command of historical fact and/or easily recoverable data regarding the Catholic Church. I am convinced that the only reason they view and post TMR (for example, the last place on earth I would ever have any interest in dwelling for even a minute, never mind striking up a dialogue- no matter how dysfunctional, is some radical homosexual or atheist site) is to keep the TMR-faithful enaged in doing all the work that the Catholic-bashers are too lazy (maybe they live in that 47% of Takers-ville?) to discover or figure out on their own.
We may have left the realm of sanity. You both must be completely out of your minds. Delph I think you've left, completely left any pretense, of human decency behind squirming on the floor of history. You are truely the first person I've ever met that is completely irreadeamable. And people who sadly think as you do are going the way of the dodo. The way you describe a so called virus is exactly how the Nazi's described the Jews. Exactly to the t. Congrats.
No real person could possibly be this screwed up? You're a plant. Just trying to get me to leave. I'm not here to please you. I'm here to call your bull to account and to agree with you when I can. But everytime you destroy it why? For what end?
But that's Delph's real plan: to be like a stink bomb driving decent debate from the floor. How do you sleep?
Pub let me see if I've got this right. People who hold Cardinal Mahoney to account for passing around repeated child offenders to innocent new victims. And warned them and paid their way over state and international borders That unbelievable behavior is somehow good because a Cardinal did it? Somehow above the law? Or he did it with good intentions. Good for who? The Church and the perps? but not so much for the victims and our families.
You both have to be being paid to run such a lame political line. No real person could possibly "think" as you two do.
I think what is going on in Philly is a Showboat. With screw ups and bad guys and it's as set a piece as possible. More choregraphy than in a Balanchine ballet. It looks like a Nativity creche at Christmas. And isn't Philly a notorius wise guy town. Yea I'm really going to believe a screw up just happened there, with all due respect.
Explain the stampede again daddy? In the light of Cardinal Mahoney and Bishop Curry and your imaginary roundups?
Patrick: "SNAP is against anyone who abuses children". Hahahahahaha! I work at a newspaper. When any little thing happens on the Catholic horizon we get a vicious press release from SNAP that looks like it came straight from hell. Meanwhile, there have been some cases involving protestant pastors (with children), and teachers and coaches, and SNAP is MIA.
Alinsky-isms abound. Those silly techniques won't work on me. Dissemble the rationale (you won't because you can't, it is true).
Speaking of NAZI's, Commies, Socialists, Atheists, Pagans, Muslims and all those other committed enemies of the Church, incl. some poor confused Reformers; if you combined them all together over their all-too-long, dysfunctional histories they would have done far less to promote, support and provide for Humanity, including homosexuals, than has the Catholic Church. So, why do some of you homosexuals hate this Church so much?
Incidentally, not that you're entitled to this rare personal tidbit (because you itch so much to know who/what I am, another Alinsky tactic to personalize your attacks), I know homosexuals better than many of you know yourselves (mostly due to the myriad of personality disorders that accompany your "gayness"); I was raised/reared by your community at a time when it was far less acceptable, in a place that was ground zero for that greatest "civil rights" movement and moment (Stonewall) in gaydom – Greenwich Village, NY. My family owned and operated every gay establishment from the early 60s (when straight daytime establishments would secretly convert to gay bars at night) to the present day, and conceptualized and convened the first Village Halloween Parade that goes on to this day. My Gay Street cred is beyond reproach. Sadly, most of my gay family succumbed to the 80s "plague". And, you couldn't begin to match my military cred (Army 20 years and counting; brother KIA Vietnam, every generation every male served [many died] since Civil War) so stop trying to prove that you are somehow more worthy because you are gay and served in the military. We enlisted to serve, and die, not find boyfriends. Playing the Sailor-boy in the "Village People" doesn't qualify as serving, either (that was just FYI).
For the sake of sane, honest and productive debate, you need to assume that the Church-defending TMR contributors are "every bit as wonderful" as are the Church bashers.
Homosexuals, as a community, radicalized when they became infiltrated by Catholic-bashers. You have been infested/infected, as a previously loving, talented and compassionate community, by virulent Terrorists, just as the Muslims have been infiltrated by radical Islamists. You appear to be one of those infiltrators. My target is not the peaceful, honest homosexuals, my target is the imposter infiltrator (so, if the size 13 "pump" fits…..)
History lesson refresher for the intentionally ignorant- the Church only LOVES homosexuals and wants to save their poor, wretched souls (think of how many earthbound lives would have been saved [AIDS] if homosexuals complied with Church teachings). I would venture to say that is only one small fact that clearly exhibits the difference between the NAZI's virus analogy and mine (as a faithful defender of Holy Mother Church); the virus analogy applies, and as such, it stands – deal with it. If you knew your own gay history as well as you attempt to distort the Church's glorious history, you would know that it was the Church that selflessly and honorably served the gay community during the height of the AIDS crisis (I was there-don't even attempt to rewrite this history), long before your beloved Church-bashers ever lifted a finger (which was, and still is, generally that middle finger). While I know even an old Queen knows the difference between NAZIs and honest defenders of the Church (playing dumb is not an attractive feature at your Golden Age, go with the "Sage" role now), there may be other observers of this monologue (hardly a dialogue with only one honest participant) who don't know history. Your treatment of the facts are more accurately classified as histrionics, but then, that surely aligns with your radicalized Rainbow persona, I suppose.
Now, try to keep your mascara'd eye on the ball: the ball is that dishonest effort by some terrorist elements in the homosexual community that are determined to scandalize the Catholic Church. The payoff for you(r) terrorists is financial (talk about your "benefits") and idealogical. After all, using your [il]logic; if the Church is wrong, then by default, you are right.
If your family owned all the gay bars in the Village. My mascaraed eye is raised. I won't mess with a mob family member hired to protect the hierarchy and the wise guy money laundering schemes that go all the way to the Vatican. You win Donna Corleone.
P.S. Godfather/ mother, there was no Sailor in the Village People. You really bat 1000 at being wrong.
I am responding to JR not for the purpose of getting into the trough but to demonstrate the necessary conceptual work that has to be done in this sort of thing.
Demonstrate with a quote from any comments I made on this article where I have said that any particular action or set of actions was “good” or “somehow above the law”. I know we won’t get a response on this point because I never said any such things. Once again all we get is a collection of things that were never said, against which JR then proceeds to rail. Essentially – yet again – getting into a pillow fight with cartoons in his own head. When we get to the documents, I’ll deliver my thoughts but until then JR is either going to have to limit himself to what I have clearly said so far or else he is going to have to make up things against which he can vent. He appears to have chosen the latter option for himself.
In order to make serious comments about the possible criminal activity, one would have to a) be ready to say precisely what crime according to applicable law has been committed; then b) be familiar with the elements of the particular purported crime(s) in applicable law; then c) be ready to demonstrate clearly where those elements were met from the evidence in the documents.
Which leads me to “intention” which is also an element in the commission of a crime known as mens rea: that the accused deliberately and willfully set about to commit the crime(s) one claims the accused has/have committed. While I haven’t seen the documents in their entirety, yet from the documents I have seen one is going to have to make some leaps in analysis to claim that the intention was to commit a crime.
Possible ‘intentions’ or motives for actions-taken may well render the actions far more ‘believable’ and far less “unbelievable”.
We’ll discuss all this when there is an article up on the site here. At that time, in commentary on that article, JR would be welcome to provide quotations from whatever documents he likes in order to justify his assertions or claims about the hierarchs in question.
It will also be necessary to distinguish between the characterization of actions as “good”/good-for or “bad”/bad-for as distinct from asserting that such-and-such an action (as available to us through the documents themselves) was formally a “crime” (and, of course, just what particular crime that might be).
These are all parts of the task of seeing what is of value in these documents.
The classic claim that I (and apparently and ‘Delphine’ are “being paid” is just so much epithet and insinuation, par for the course in so much of the discourse in commentary on the Abuse Matter; you can see it in comments on this site, the Philadelphia sites, and not infrequently on NCR. The presumption on the part of persons making such an accusation is that their own spin makes so very much sense that there can clearly be no other reason for anyone to adopt a different position except that they were being paid to do so.
And are Delphine (and I am not presuming here to speak for Delphine) and I not “real”? Which leads of course to the question as to what JR considers “real” and just how reliable a judge of ‘reality’ JR is. I leave that up to the readership to decide for themselves. But epithets go with the territory in the type of high-school cafeteria mentality where far too much of the discourse on the Abuse Matter takes place.
And I also leave it to the readership to judge for themselves whether Delphine and I actually “think” in our comments, or whether we too simply have public pillow fights with the cartoons in our head which we have mistaken for clear and total perceptions of reality which we cannot imagine rational people could disagree-with.
Yes, I agree that what is going on in Philadelphia is a “showboat” (or – to use my term – a ‘show-trial’, as in Leninist or any other type of ‘revolutionary’ justice). I’ve been saying that all along and I would say it applies to the first as well as to the current Philadelphia trial. That has always seemed clear to me and I have explained why in a number of comments on various articles on this site.
The question is: who is putting on the show and why? JR – as I recall from other comments he has made – is of the opinion that the Church itself is putting on these show-trials … the reader is welcome to consider that possibility and wonder how such dynamics would operate. Along those lines – although this is not something JR has said – I noted a comment on the LA Times site in which one commenter was very sure that the Church had instigated the McMartin Satanic Ritual-Abuse Day-Care trials 30 years ago because it knew that priest-abuse trials would soon be coming along and it wanted to proactively “distract” people with the McMartin cases. Such is the level of ‘thinking’ one encounters far too often in this Catholic Abuse Matter.
I also note that comments by pro-prosecution types on the second Philly trial site (as also happened towards the end of the first trial) are now running against the prosecutors for bringing such a weak and embarrassing case (I would add: for again bringing such a weak and embarrassing case).
But – really – how could the prosecutors not bring such a shaky case? So very much of this Abuse Matter is based on allegations that are un-challenged, un-supported, and – now that Prosecutor Cipoletti has formally and finally let an old cat out of its bag – that at least in the “male” accusation-stories you have to factor in some amount of “exaggeration” (if the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel have been using this as a factor in their assessments, then perhaps the Bishops – especially if advised by experienced counsel and investigators – have been doing the same for quite some time).
And in that regard, to what extent must we too factor in “exaggeration” in regard to JR’s material itself? Hard to say but the challenge must be faced.
In none of these remarks here am I asserting or trying to imply that all allegations were groundless or baseless, nor that all Bishops handled the challenges of the Abuse Matter well at all times and in all respects. Not hardly.
But precisely because of these complexities, I would say that the Abuse Matter requires more – not less – serious and sober analysis and thinking. This is no place for Cartoons and for Cartoons substituting for such analysis and thinking.
If the Philly trial follows the time-line the judge set for it last week, then it should conclude and be given to the jury today. No doubt there are many, especially of a pro-prosecution frame of mind, who will be ready to claim that the whole trial was botched by the prosecution; when not trying to make a 1-for-7 conviction record seem a world-class triumph last year in the Lynn trial, that’s what a number of them did then and I can see indications in comments on the various sites that they are already preparing to go with that if the jury in this current trial doesn’t ‘do the right thing’ and convict the accused.
But I will conclude here by saying again that given the numerous difficulties and problems inherent in the Catholic Abuse Matter as it has mutated, I can’t see how prosecutors can bring a rational and conventionally-conducted case in the first place. If they want to go the trial route – for whatever reasons they may have – then they are going to wind up exposing all of those numerous difficulties and problems for all to see.
This seems as good a place as any to pass along some thoughts about the methods and tactics of propaganda as they were set forth at length in Funny Moustache Guy’s magnum opus, his book entitled Mein Kampf. I am taking these thoughts from a book I have mentioned not long ago, Klaus P. Fischer’s 1995 Nazi Germany: A New History, as his discussion develops on pages 172-174. (My copy is the 2003 paperback edition put out by Continuum Publishing Company in New York.)
I think you will see the relevance to the Catholic Abuse Matter without too much difficulty.
The way to seduce the German people into going along with the great racial mission Adolf Hitler (hereinafter: ‘AH’) had determined for them was to bind them through fanaticism. And the key method of fanaticizing them was through propaganda (as it was developing into a form of deeply psychological manipulation in the early 20th century).
Propaganda so conceived relies on the lowest common denominator of human motivation, which is to say on emotions, and the more visceral and powerful the better. You precisely do not want to engage the higher thought-capacities of people; rather you want to go after their un-thinking emotional responses, and the more basic or primal or primitive the better. Therefore avoid – and prevent – reasoning and thinking, especially in public or in any way that people might deliberate and reason together among themselves. The people are never to be left alone with their thoughts; they are to be ceaselessly ‘accompanied’ by the Party line through propaganda; active suppression of and proactive prevention of ‘thinking’ is essential for propaganda policy to succeed.
Because people – AH was sure – are more easily motivated by emotions and their need to believe. They want certainty, and they especially want certainties that are both pleasurable and affirming of themselves and also hostile toward some designated scapegoat Other(s). People “crave certainty” and the more simple and simplistic and viscerally emotional you can make their certainties, then the more success you are going to have. You don’t want to enlighten them; you want to manipulate them – but you want to accomplish this in such a way that most of them will think they are in possession of great enlightenment and knowledge and also that anybody who takes a different position is clearly deluded (and – ominously – a traitor to Reich and to Volk).
Once you have set them into your pre-planned set of certainties, then their emotional stance will harden nicely like concrete and no amount of reasoning will deter them from their unshakable commitment to the certainties you have given them.
Never let the discourse or discussion rise to any higher level than the most primal emotions; therefore never let people think or analyze, especially together and/or in public.
For your purposes you want to work in “vivid pictorial images” that also simple and simplistic (my term for this is Cartoon-thinking). You do not want to persuade them through reason, but simply to seduce them into accepting your “images” emotionally.
It’s always best to deal with crowds and large groups rather than individuals, because in groups – AH noticed – people tend to respond more like herds; they set each other off and support each other. All you have to do is settle them on the pre-determined course of images and feelings that you have set for them, and they will do most of the heavy-lifting by not only accepting your stuff but also by reinforcing it among themselves, supporting those who agree and quickly squelching those who disagree.
Then all you have to do is to police the discourse so no ‘thinking’ and skepticism can seep in, and keep up a steady flow of vividly and emotionally motivating ‘examples’ that you can cook up from whatever comes along. Or, at the advanced level of this game, you can create your own ‘great events’ or ‘outrages’ to keep people at the boiling-point.
Allow no shades of grey into the process: everything is to be cast as clear instances of Either-Or: thus totally good or totally evil, totally right or totally wrong. Leave no conceptual room for complexity or contradictory facts; label or hesitation or doubt as treachery or stupidity or insanity.
If you can then create a Gleichschaltung – a uniform convergence of government, media, and elites all working off the same sheet of (your) music, then the whole thing comes to appear as almost a force of nature, further discouraging any independent thinking or skepticism or doubt or dissent.
I would add that AH didn’t have the internet, only those mass, public, open-air meetings. But I would say that the internet – although it has many beneficial possibilities – also contains the possibility of making it far easier for those so inclined to whip up their carefully-misinformed crowds.
Pub you wonder how these "show trials" could be put on by the Church. One pressured prosecutor, Pressured by who? Who ever he/she is indebted to. Pretending "justice" in America is what it appears to be is nonsense. You believe that about victims and the Church don't you? It's o.k. for you to believe in conspiracies against the Church but I'm completely off if I say the Church has it's own conspiracies against victims. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. My conspiracies are just as valid as yours. But still no comments on Mahoney's and Curry's felony coverups? They're your leaders not mine.
Just for S&G, J-Rob, you're wrong, again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:In_the_navy.jpg
How interesting to note that other than an attempt at a slam at my heritage (guess since I am not a lefty or minority, your very derogatory ethnic slip is acceptable to you and your sycophants?), you had the predicted response…..NOTHING worthwhile.
"Let's move on, folks, nothing left to see here…", and a bounce back at Pub to see if you get another bite there.
Dangling all the pretty things, all the time. Such a sad, wasteful existence.
Why, we're fighting harder for your very soul more than you or any of your heroes!
I do hope that you're worthy of it, after all.
I just know who "owned" the gay bars in the Village. And it wasn't the Barzino family.
Sometime the guy's a sailor, sometimes an officer sometimes a Marine. or army guy. I've only seen the sailor cap on the In the Navy album. Maybe you are more gay than I am.
Jim, I just came across and listened to your interview with John and Ken, awesome! I hope you don't mind me commenting about the interview on this particular sight. I think some of the people on here should know how much other victims appreciate your ability to speak up. They also might be interested that the first point you made was that the scandal has nothing to do with the religion of catholicism. (However, your comment about the tooth fairy was hurtful. lol)
I am not including the link to the interview. I think that is up to you if you want to share.
Also David It's SNAP that wants the Church under attack and since SNAP is the Church. The Church is attacking itself in front of it's own congregation. Why oh why would the Church be doing that? So they can be the victim.
Well The Tooth Fairy is just another imaginary friend. Thanks for the kindness.
I think Delph's handlers( no not mental but the P.R. firm that writes her rabid junk) needs to rethink their approach. Why they have a little board room right between her ears giving her that old time "religion" 24/7. Wait! No, not religion, but bigotry that used to pass for religion.
Only in Uganda or the Vatican could you find that calibre of hatred.(45 calibre hatred) And for what, having same gender sex? Something the" biological scientist" ,that posts here, tells me is a "crime against nature". Really? I'm amazed that nature, hell, the entire Universe doesn't implode in horror at such crimes. Crimes against Nature, you can't make this stuff up!!!! LOL
F.Y.I. Grandpa Walton, Will Geer was gay and a lefty. And as American as apple pie.
David,You won't believe this I don't know how to link. Really I don't. I just don't, sorry. Was it difficult for you to find?
Here you go, guys:
http://www.kfiam640.com/common/podcast/single_page.html?podcast=JohnandKen
-
Aw shucks, Jimbo, flattery will get you everywhere (…in those throbbing, dark, smokey, liquor-soaked backrooms and basements in which you cut your……teeth).
Congrats on your five minutes of shame, err, I mean FAME, you so desperately crave (among those other "unmentionable" cravings). To Link: highlight address in address bar, right click to copy, place cursor where you want to relocate the link, right click to paste.
Homosexuals are as American as apple pie, especially, since we so embrace and celebrate the better angels in that culture (not so in your beloved Islamic nations). Lefties, not so much!
The lefties have gotten hold of your psyche, unfortunately. You are not offensive because you are gay, you are offensive because you adopted an unAmerican intolerance towards Catholics and towards our Church. You shamelessly use your gayness to push your agenda as your hero Sharpton shamelessly uses his race to push his equally unacceptable UnAmerican (communist, socialist, anarchist) agenda – and, the list of similarly-minded radicals, which you know all too well, could go on for too long and right to the current White House.
The enemy of my Church is my enemy. My Lord said I must love my enemy, but, He didn't say that I should not vigorously witness against him with all my might.
Are you feeling the love, yet?
P.S. Delph, So now it's "un American" to be intolerent of Pedaphiles and their so called "sane" enablers,; like Cardinals Mahoney and Law and Bishops Curry and Finn? Times have changed.
"Throbbing dark smoky liquor soaked back rooms and basements" owned by and profiting your family?
This is getting repetitive and I apologize to the readership for it, but we are back to square-one again on some of these points; consistent readers will recognize old points once again being made by JR.
JR believes that the Catholic Church is putting on these show-trials, as he says. If the Church has enough power to control civil and criminal trials then it had the power to prevent them (and save itself a billion or more in the process).
But a prosecutor pressured by political interests to bring certain cases – and against the Church … that is far more plausible and avoids the profoundly dissonant presumption JR’s theory of causation must embrace: that the Church controlled jurisprudential praxis in order to cost itself so much money and all the other costs and consequences of these past decades.
I have no idea who is “pretending ‘justice’ in America is what it appears to be” here. There appear to be elements in the train of thought that haven’t made it onto the page.
Consequently I have no idea how it connects with whatever JR thinks I think about “victims”. But I have put more than enough thoughts into comments on this site for him to work with actual quotations rather than take up time and space with his own ruminations about my thoughts.
I am not saying that only ‘my’ conspiracy theory is acceptable. I am simply pointing out that the conspiracy JR has chosen to believe – i.e. that the Church is controlling the civil and criminal trials – is a conspiracy hypothesis that has some huge and unanswered holes in it. Whereas the special-interest and Stampede theory that I have proposed answers far more questions and is strongly rooted in modern conceptual and historical developments in the theory and practice of manipulative propaganda. JR’s theory has to explain why – even more than how – an organization that theoretically controlled jurisprudential process would then deliberately turn that process that it theoretically controlled against itself, to the tune of more than a billion dollars and all the ancillary costs and consequences.
So: No, in this case it’s not a case of JR’s goose and my gander. It’s a matter of JR’s flightless dodo and my airworthy pelican. It’s not a matter of whether the “conspiracies” are somehow “equal” but rather a matter of whether JR’s conspiracy hypothesis can actually do the work a hypothesis has to do to gain credibility from reasonable and rational persons.
And – I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this – when the LA Times document article goes up on this site, I will discuss the LA matter specifically. I get the strong impression JR either ignores or doesn’t or perhaps can’t remember what he reads and things somehow get lost between looking at a comment on the screen and then typing in a comment in the post-comment box. Nothing to be done about that except to remain aware of it.
Quite the intellectual and factual leap to pretend I believe or said that the Church corporate has the power to controll all cases against it.
I do believe in certain cities pressure can be brought (bought?) And Philly may just be one of those "connected" cities. Don't you find it a bit conveinient that an imprisoned drug dealer and addict has such widely divergent stories about his abuse? Conveinient for the Church.
When martyrs and "miracles" are needed by the Church they always seem to appear. And when did this "odd" Philly case appear? Just as conveiniently as the case against SNAP's "fight" to present itself as a rape crisis center in Kansas City , historicly a notorious mob town and Philly also quite the "connected' metropolis.. How convienent if you add the victim beating up his perpetrator in California. You've got quite a triple play here on how to make victims look bad, out of control, perjurors; liars, violent and hypocritical; and to appear as, well funded re SNAP's fight to hide it's "records" all the way to the Supreme Court. Win Win Win. Waters muddied! And so publicly. Yet hardly any real victims stories like in L.A. for example, where real victims were paid over half a billion dollars, have ever been heard or read at all. (And in the old days the Church demanded silence for settlement.)Yet you've got Mark Cipriano reporting every detail of this case sponsored by a law firm. How convienient again. How stupid do you think we are?
Sometimes there are conspiracies: Lincoln's assasination Julius Ceasar's; the War in Iraq ; the War in Viet Nam and the conspiracy to get pedophiles out of state here in California by Bishop Curry and Cardinal Mahoney.
I do not wait for Dave to post anything on this sight. If I am being interviewed and quoted by the L.A. Times and L.A.'s top talk radio show in regards to the felonies commited by the hierarchy. I talk about it now. Your not talking about it now. Speaks volumnes.
To Delphin,
The issue is more an issue of selfishness. For example, the movie: Harvey Milk. Hollywood conveniently omits that in 1978 many drafted men had more pressing matters ( i.e. survival) than fulfilling their love life fantasies. If you partner this film with an uneducated audience, smug with their shallow college degrees: the result is movie patrons crying for a self-centered, selfish person.
Former POW's recall experience in Vietnam @ 'Hanoi Hilton." http://www.ksl.com
I don't think the draft was still on in '78. The war in Viet Nam was over. We lost; you may recall.
Responding to JR’s comment of 1205 PM today.
If you are not saying the Church is controlling the cases (as it controls SNAP, according to you) then what is the alternative source of “pressure” that you mention on the prosecution in the Philly case? If it is the Church then clearly it is no pressure at all since it hasn’t succeeded in preventing the trials (such as they are). I say that the ‘pressure’ is coming from that congeries and synergy of ‘special interests’ looking to reduce the stature of the Church and play to assorted ‘bases’ (radical feminism, secularism, and anti-Catholic and anti-religious feeling generally) by means of propagandizing the assorted loose electrons milling about and given amplified ‘voice’ by the vast expansion of the internet and internet story-telling.
But is your position now that the Church is ‘pressuring’ prosecutors but there is no evidence of it because it has failed? Because if that is your position now, then what evidence is there? And even if there is no evidence for it, what conceptual realities can at least make such an assertion possible, according – say for example – to the maxim of cui bono – meaning Who Benefits? How is the Church benefitting from whatever hypothetical pressure it is putting on the prosecutors? How has the Church benefitted?
And you then suggest – do you not? – that the allegant-victim’s story is so whacky and incoherent because … the Church somehow pressured him into making the allegation (and lawsuit claim in civil court) against the Church? I find that hypothesis not-credible. Who benefits more from this: the Church or the person bringing the civil claim and the prosecution that gets to put on a show-trial (such as it is)?
And are you suggesting and do you think that the recent spate of trials that have appeared so “conveniently” and that simultaneously have all made the allegants (I won’t use the term ‘victims’ because the genuineness of that status has not been demonstrated) look “bad” and “out of control” and “perjurers” and “liars” … has all been the result of some form of (hugely extensive and successful) pressure by the Church? I would propose an alternative hypothesis that doesn’t require such a phantasmagorical cause: the trials that have been brought have all made the allegants look bad because their cases are indeed legally dubious and weakly-grounded. And that’s finally beginning to become clear. And that then leads very logically to the possibility that many more of the cases and allegations may well have been of that same quality – which possibility is further buttressed by the prosecutor in the current Philly case letting the cat out of the bag that even the prosecutors have a maxim that “male victims of sex abuse frequently exaggerate”.
To suggest as well that Ralph Cipriano is a tool of the Church, ditto the law firm sponsoring the site, is an assertion that simply has to be left hanging out there where it has been put.
Needless to say, I won’t comment on JR’s question as to how stupid I think he is or may be.
I am not addressing the LA document material because when I do I will be using quotations from the documents and providing links to the texts to support whatever thoughts and conclusions I offer. That is the nature of intelligent discourse and analysis. What I will not be doing is simply tossing out assertions and characterizations with no supporting or enlightening references – which is, by amazing coincidence, precisely the type of manipulative-propagandizing technique recommended in the propaganda references I have made, most recently in comments above on this article here.
Being interviewed by radio and/or media outlets is hardly a qualification. Homeless people are found to make comments when there is an article on homelessness; the media will look for some representative of one ‘side’ in their framing of the subject and look for whomever might be around to provide a sound-bite. The same thing applies here.
But that brings up ‘representative’ and I will add this: I think JR is hugely useful to this site. Because he is indeed – I would say – ‘representative’ of a very very substantial chunk of the type of discourse and mentality that has been influential in this whole Abuse Matter since the beginning. The competent and calculating ‘special interests’ and their ‘front organizations’ (see my prior comments on propaganda techniques on this article and prior articles) appealed to a low common-denominator, gave them a ‘certainty’ and then let them loose to make their noises on the internet and – very occasionally – in actual media interviews.
JR is indeed soooo ‘representative’ that that is precisely why – as he has reported – he is banned from certain SNAP-friendly and victimist sites: he reveals wayyyy tooooo much about the actual quality and mentality of the herds of ‘bots that have been propagandistically programmed to fan out into the webverse. His banning is not the result of being too independent and critical and analytical. Rather, he is sooo obviously an example of precisely what they were looking-for with their manipulative-propaganda techniques that every time he says or types something he endangers the whole Game by making its basement furnishings far too clear and obvious.
But – as I said – that has been proving very beneficial to this very valuable TMR site because instead of having to shadow-box with the Correct phantasms that the special-interests would like us to believe are at the core of this whole Game, we get an actual, on-the-hoof specimen more than willing to spout the actual realities of the Game as it is being played by those special-interests.
Had I or anybody else merely surmised the existence of a large underbelly group with such primitive mentation and attitudes, so incapable of serious and careful thinking and analysis, then any reasonable reader would be justified in wondering if such a creature weren’t simply being created like a Frankenstein monster as a handy but impossible rhetorically-manipulative Straw-Man. But along comes JR and provides the real McCoy in living color.
Unless, of course, anybody wishes to hypothesize that JR himself is a ‘plant’ by the Church or is somehow being ‘controlled’ by the Church or ‘pressured’ by the Church in order to make ‘victims’ look half-demented and unreliable as sources of insight or information. Or perhaps that I myself am ‘controlling’ JR. Or ‘pressuring’ him to make the comments he makes and the revelations he so unwittingly provides in such glorious profusion.
I could make the assertion that I am not doing that. But there’s no way I can prove it.
But let me go on record here clearly: I fully support JR's presence as a commenter on this site.
Lol. The only insult I ever called you was verbose. But let the readers see for themselves everything you've called me in your last statement. I'll stand by my veracity and accuracy.
No decent prosecutor would ever put themselves in this position. It's just too easy.
Bravo! *clap* *clap*
Let's see Billy Doe is a drug addict he's doing time for 52 packets of heroin in his possesion. How hard do you think it is to get a heroin addict and a heroin dealer to behave badly? I am not agreeing with you that the "victim" is not one. It's that this case has too many strange tangents for anyone to pretend it is representative of the norm re victims cases. Especially since it's so spotlit. thanks to Mr. Cipriano and the Beasley firm.
I don't think most people see me that way half demented etc. I think they think I'm kind of interesting. A Big Hello from Hollywood! I amuse me. But Lordy Death's a comin and I got too get my sh*t straight; or burn. How about I continue on telling the truth as much as I know as I've done. It makes me feel like life's worth living after all.
Here's a link to the released documents in L.A.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/church-molestation-cases-distict-attorney.html
Anonymous- your link lost the content, but, I think (I admit, I am struggling here, though) I get your point.
Could you restate, please (so I don't rudely ignore you)?
Never one to "pile on", but Publion could not possibly be more accurate, right, correct-o-mundo, "nailed it", regarding the 1/26 @2:03 post. I might even go so far as to say that post was rather merciful.
Introspection is healthy.
Re: my "family profits": we could handle this two ways; first would be to say your latest attempt to deflect is not going to work as TMR is not about the posters personal lives, it is about the unlawful and immoral persecution of the Catholic Church by radical lefties like yourself. Or, I could offer further personal insight with a perfectly acceptable response (which would thoroughly undermine [slam] your contention) to your continued attempts to smear me personally, again (you wascally Alinsky-ite; speaking of Looney Tunes), but, that would only add to your inclination to launch personal attacks.
I opt for the first.
As a matter of clinical principle and praxis, there is no reason why “interesting” and “unwell” are mutually exclusive; some of the most serious disorders can manifest in rather ‘interesting’ presentations. And, frankly, I don’t often find JR’s material not-interesting. Indeed, they usually prompt several lines of thought simultaneously.
Keep in mind that in common usage, when one is trying to be polite or not open up a can of worms unnecessarily, remarking that such-and-such a comment or person is ‘interesting’ is certainly a fine and dandy way to avoid going further down a conversational road that one doesn’t wish to travel, either as to the quality of the comments the person has made or as to the capacities of the person him/herself.
I have the link to the LA Times document cache and have been going over the documents. I’m waiting, as I have said, for the formal article and conversation to start here; rather than getting a hefty discussion going on an un-related article.
But when that time comes, I’ll be looking to see some intelligent analysis and response in JR’s comments, and not simply the vivid but un-supported assertions we have seen so far here – which, as I have said – seem more aimed at spinning the public response emotionally and seem clearly to be precisely not-aimed at examining the documents and giving them some serious thought.
When Monsignior Lynn decided to obey his superiors - the Cardinals- and place his pedophile ordained colleagues among children in parishes, hospitals, etc. he and the Cardinals were "supplying" child rapists to hurt children, allright. Mr. Cipolletti speaks truth in that statement and all mothers and thinking adults do know this to be true.
The courtroom is a new arena of business for the priests and their powerful bishop and cardinal superiors. Even Publion might admit to the days when Roman Catholicism, as brought to us by the hierarchy, held sway over the courts, the cops, and the media. Just interview some of these old retired gents of the legal system and watch your hair turn white.
Praise be to Our Lord Jesus, His Most Blessed Mother and all the Angel guardians of children that bed men ( read men pretending to be of the Gospel while living evil, pure evil) are being identified for who and what they are and have been. Supplying the priests who rape the children of the parishes is no small item, Mr. Pierre. To pretend otherwise is cowardice and sycophancy of the worst kind.
Or thirdly you could make me an offer I can't refuse.
Listen I didn't say your family owned all the gay bars in the village. You did. I did say that as far as I knew in the early '60's most of the gay bars in the U.S. were mob owned. More power to them. If one of the "heiresses" get's religion and starts slaming gay's and this gay in particular. Some how the word hypocricy pops to mind.
What also is interesting is that no answers re :military service, are offered.
Pub , your veiled hostility isn't so veiled anymore.
“No decent prosecutor would ever put themselves in this position. It’s just too easy.” I can pretty much agree with that.
The question – as I have always said – is why a prosecutor or DA’s Office would go and purposely put itself into such a position. To imagine that the Church used its ‘pressure’ to ‘control’ matters to bring it about creates the rather abyssal logical gap as to why the Church would exercise its purported controlling pressure and influence against itself, rather than simply to quash the trials. On the other hand, the special-interests I have proposed – political and cultural and theological (inside as well as outside the Catholic fold) – could rather nicely account for a substantial proportion of the prosecutors’ motivations.
As so often happens when a trial actually takes place, the allegant turns out to be not so credible when the story is actually subjected to some amount of focused examination. Which then – especially when taken in light of Mr. Cipoletti’s revelation about males claiming to be sex abuse victims frequently exaggerating – leads to the obvious possibility that “exaggeration” has factored into many other allegations, at least the ones involving males. Nor has Mr. Cipoletti shared here a sudden revelation, but rather in his comments indicated that what he said was apparently common-knowledge among the prosecutorial (and perhaps law enforcement) professionals.
Are we to infer from JR that Prosecutor Cipoletti was somehow part of a devious Church plot to get the ‘exaggeration’ bit out into the public domain? Perhaps even that the first Philly trial was simply a calculated strategic work-up and lead-up to the second, in which Cipoletti actually spilled the beans?
If it can be credibly proposed that Mr. Cipriano and the Beasley law firm are tools of the Church, then it can equally be credibly proposed that JR is also functioning as a tool of the Church. I consider the former proposal to be even more non-credible than the latter. Perhaps, for that matter, many of the anti-Church commenters on this and other sites are simply tools and plants of the Church. I doubt it, but if you buy into a certain mode of thinking whereby suspicion without evidence counts as serious, accurate and sufficient analysis, then anything goes.
The only useful bit I find in FAAF’s comment is the final ‘prayer’, which strikes me as a nifty replay of a backwoods fundamentalist snake-handler intoning variations of ‘Praise Jeeeezzzzuzzzz’, but here with a Catholic flavor, larding her concoction with smarmy invocations of the BVM, the saints and the angels. Also the assertion of “men” priests being or living-lives of “evil, pure evil” and also being “child rapists”, although very very few allegations of child-rape have ever been made.
FAAF also complicated JR’s conspiracy-control-pressure theory by approvingly quoting Prosecutor Cipoletti’s remarks (in his closing arguments, where they were not subject to analysis) about the Cardinal(s) “supplying child-rapists to hurt children”. If there were any truth to that broad assertion, the Philadelphia DA’s Office could have brought far more substantial Charges indeed. (And in regard to the one ‘criminal conspiracy’ Charge out of seven on which Msgr. Lynn was found guilty last year, there are substantial grounds for the appeal of that single conviction and we may yet see a reversal of it upon review by a higher court within the State system.)
FAAF also recalls the days when the Church had more influence over media and police and courts. This infers that such is no longer the case (hence the trials now) – but that again throws off JR’s overall conspiracy theory in which the Church is still sufficiently influencing those various elements. But it seems clear at this point that a) the Church no longer has such influence as it had many decades ago and b) the number of allegations – which theoretically should be growing as more and more allegants find the ‘courage’ to come forward – have actually been declining noticeably. And again, so few of them involve or ever involved rape.
That leaves us with two theories (JR’s and FAAF’s) requiring some version of Church pressure/control, neither of which seems either i) sufficiently explanatory or ii) compatible with the other.
Meanwhile I will reiterate my theory: a) the prosecutors brought cases because of the pressure of special-interests; b) they did so despite the fact that the cases were legally fragile and worse; c) the subsequent poor showing of results based on the ‘evidence’ presented and the consequent negative-light in which allegants and perhaps all self-declared ‘victims’ have been placed is not a result of Church manipulation, pressure, and/or control of the prosecutors and trials but rather is a natural outcome of the weakness of the claims and Charges and cases that have been brought to trial. (So many of the civil lawsuits, as we know, never went to trial and – like the 500-plus Plaintiff lawsuit from LA half a decade and more ago – were settled for any number of reasons out of court and without sustained and substantive public analysis.)
Again, that is not to say that there haven’t been some demonstrably deficient individual priests and some Ordinaries who handled matters either a) wrongly or b) according to the lights of a prior era. But more on that when we get to the LA documents discussion and analysis.
Counter Intelligence, Genius. The Church could in no way be seen, given it's behavior and real crimes, as the innocent here. No way, any one else thinks like you guys here. Like it or not the world has drawn it's own conclusions over all as to the Church's behavior and that ain't positive.(The World has drawn it's conclusions from the very documents your hierarchs have written. In their own hand.)
So they, the Hierarchy (not all but enough) knew that unless they created "events" Cardinal Bernadin's "false" accusor for instance that makes the Church appear to be victimized. Just what the Church needed. That's something I and others claim has been the real politic behind SNAP's behavior. from the get go. Make the Church appear to be the real victim and not the real victims, the abused. Who SNAP really never shows.
SNAP is not what it says it is; but is what it in fact does. And those two divergent things are absolute poles apart. Just as the Church wasn't what it said it was not religiously but as a corporation in that it failed to protect children. A lot of children.
Publion refers to child raping priests as "demonstrably deficient" and their superiors who allowed them to continue harming children as either "wrong" or acting "according to the lights of a prior era." My, my, how you sound like a virgin celibate, dear Publion. Tell us, did seminary training numb you to the innocence of a child?
May I remind you that Monsignor Lynn allowed these men who were raping children and harming their bodies and psyches sometimes permanently, to remain on altars, desecrating all that is holy. May the Holy Spirit continue to help in the exposure of these very bad men who do what they do in the name of Our Lord.
Well, Jimbo-bimbo, you don't know much about much, as evidenced by your postings here, so don't go into shock if you're wrong [again] about your perceptions of my personal information.
You don't know me, and you don't know anything about my family, other than the strawman you've erected in your diseased mind. Now, you think you'll use your distortions of my life as a pinata from which to launch your puny assaults – not so, "Young Man" (this ain't the YMCA). Stick to the program here, Lucy – it's about you and your twisted sisters baseless attacks against Catholics.
Stop worrying about your erroneous perceptions about my life, and try to pick up the pieces of your admitted mess of an existence. It is you, an admitted gay atheist drug-addled communist (oh, your parents must be so proud!) that haunts a site dedicated to the thing you hate and fear the most- the truth about the politically-driven attacks on the Catholic Church. Do you have trouble focusing because of all the "medication"?
It would be brave (look it up – you sooo need a dictionary and thesaurus) of you to come clean about your "terrible evil priest ordeal" ("deer in the headlights", as I recall?) when as a hormonal teenager (apparently, a very weak one) you found your true-life calling in tickling some older guys "chatzkies" (Chicken meet Hawk).
You freely and willingly made your bed as a radicalized homosexual leftist (which, sadly, might be the most positive aspects of your sorrowful life), isn't it working out for you as an aged queen? Need wine money, honey? My Church will give you room and board, but, you"ll need to see your Messiah, BHO, for your taxpayer-funded pot and booze money.
While I do have an appreciation for Publion's perspective as pertains to using some posters mad ravings as sparring material (my words), I tend to see one poster that is more prone to act as a virus on the site. This exposure may innoculate the honest site participants in the short term; over the longterm it could lead to the expression of full blown disease.
[Removed by moderator]
Thank you for your comments, everyone!
We are shutting down this thread for now.