Willingly Manipulated: Media Touts Meaningless UN Committee Questioning of Catholic Church; More Free P.R. For SNAP

Can't wash you lot clean. Apologies.

On the 31st at 1135AM JR continues with his ‘when will you compensate’ trope. He insists that somebody “pick a year” [exaggerated formatting omitted] when the Church will “compensate your own Catholic injured”.

I would suggest that that year might be the same year when it can be clearly and definitively established who is a genuine victim. If JR – I say once again – can offer a workable plan to effect that determination, then he will have done a great deal to hasten the arrival of that year.

And in what year might we expect JR to submit his plan/solution in regard to the genuine-victim problem?

On the 29th at 1155AM “Dennis” had posted a link to an article with nothing more than the comment “most brutal abuser”, which – although it is in quotation marks – is actually an inaccurate quotation from the article to which he linked, which referred to the former-priest B, of the Philadelphia Archdiocese (hereinafter: AOP) as being characterized in the 2005 Philly Grand Jury Report at “one of the most brutal abusers”.

For readers who have read the article to which “Dennis” linked, I think the piece offers some useful material for thought.

For openers, the two Grand Jury Report in Philadelphia are – both as grand-jury-reports and as Philly DA characterizations – somewhat dubious as reliable historical reports. Which is a matter we have discussed in prior comments on this site and which was discussed on the BigTrial site as well.

But on to the historical facts that can be relied-upon.

This B was ordained in 1977 and defrocked in 1985 – which is a period of 8 years and, for those days, reflects a rather quick process from allegations to laicization by Rome.

There is an extensive recounting of what the neighbors in B’s housing complex in Dallas observed: while seemingly a hale and hearty fellow, who described himself as a retired Xerox employee with 30 years of employment at that organization, B seemed to always bring dinner conversations around to young males (he preferred them pudgy, he revealed), which seemed (and I would say rightly so) inappropriate and somewhat disturbing, even in an apparently out-gay group that existed in the housing complex.

Worse, B seemed to pay far too much attention to young male relatives of complex residents who came to swim at the pool there. And even went so far as to send gifts and emails to some of those (minor) youths.

Which prompted some looking around on the Web, where B’s actual history became known to the residents of the complex.

Some of them confronted him, and received a menu of excuses and claims of early-abuse victimization (in seminary) and such.

At some point thereafter B moved out without leaving a forwarding address, and his whereabouts are presently unknown.

The basic slant of the story is that the AOP failed in its putative duty to publish the residence addresses of even former priests.

Several thoughts come to mind.

This gentleman is clearly not somebody who, as far as he has demonstrated by his actions at the Dallas housing complex, would be suitable for priesthood (without, possibly, some major repair and rework – which is now a moot subject). The AOP was right to request his laicization after finding at least some of the accusations made against him to be credible.

Because of the Statute of Limitations, the article says, no criminal charges were ever brought. (The fact that B was the son of a police officer in Philly or thereabouts may have had something to do with that.) Thus B is not ‘eligible’ – as they say formally – for the national sex-offender registry, and is consequently not required to report his whereabouts to local police when he changes address. For that matter, it would seem that he has no criminal-record in the NCIC which would show-up if, say, he were stopped for speeding and his name was entered into the cruiser’s computer.

However, given what they had learned about his personal history and what they had heard in the dinner-party conversation and what they had observed of his behavior and action at the pool and with various minor males, it seems that any of the residents (or relatives or parents of the minor boys) had more than enough reason to bring B to the attention of the local police in Dallas (not necessarily with a 911 call, but calling the business number and asking for the sex-crimes unit).

It is possible that they did, and the Dallas unit did nothing; the article doesn’t say anything about any of this. But the point remains: in this Year of Grace the Two-Thousand and Fourteenth (or Thirteenth, if all of this happened in 2013), and of the Stampede the Twenty-Ninth (counting from the 1985 Doyle Report, but one might count from further back, perhaps to 1983 or even earlier), a whole lot of adults, with far more savvy than adults two or three or eight decades ago, and with far more information ditto, did not appear to take any action that might have brought local law-enforcement into the immediate picture, even if only for a serious chat with B and the opening of a file.

Why did they not do so? I don’t pretend to have an answer in this instance, but clearly the non-action of adults in regard to calling the police is as vividly demonstrated in this day and age as it was in any prior era.

Instead, this media report focuses merely on the AOP, which is putatively to be considered responsible for publishing the whereabouts of persons no longer in its employ, which persons are under no obligation to keep the AOP informed of their whereabouts.

And one need only remind oneself of the assault and battery perpetrated on that elderly priest in Santa Clara/San Jose a year or so back to realize that there is both a) an actual danger in publishing such information and b) a clear potential legal liability if as a result of such publication an individual is subjected to physical violence or other types of harm.

Nor has the Church or the AOP any legal authority to require that former priests provide current address information, let alone to release such information.

Or perhaps the residents did call the Dallas sex-crimes unit, B was visited and a file opened on him, and the Dallas authorities now have something that they can, if the occasion arises, provide to authorities in whatever location B has now moved-to. But if that is the case, then why blame the AOP for something that it does not have the legal authority to do and actually might incur legal culpability if it did try to do?

Would advocates care to approach legislators (State or national) and have it enacted into legislation that the Church is mandated and authorized and empowered legally to obtain and maintain and release the information? Would this media outlet care to spear-head such an initiative?

Instead, we get this media report that goes for all the usual Stampede talking-points but ignores far more relevant questions and avoids altogether the question of how the Church might legally achieve what is being demanded.

For the purposes of this discussion, I will follow the silence of this media report and assume that the residents did not call the police. Why did these adults not do so?

But if a reader wishes, s/he may run with the possibility that the police were called and did pay a visit to B. And what then was the result? B has now left town with no forwarding address (not that the police had the authority to prevent that, and perhaps they even initiated the suggestion that he move on – or, for that matter, perhaps the residents of the complex made the suggestion).

The gentleman is now at-large, with his unaddressed proclivities and his potential for creating more problems.

But I can’t see how the AOP is somehow to blame for it.