In partnership against the Catholic Church: Hollywood and The Boston Globe
The Hollywood industry newspaper Variety is reporting that a director has been assigned to command a movie about the Boston Globe's relentless reporting in 2002 about the Catholic Church abuse scandals.
Yet again we see that the media is always looking for another angle to rehash decades-old sex abuse in the Catholic Church. According to Variety:
"Due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, [Director Tom] McCarthy has been working in secret for more than a year on the project that chronicles the worldwide scandal …
"Producers have secured life rights of the Globe reporters responsible, including Spotlight Team members Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll, Spotlight Team editor Walter 'Robby' Robinson, special projects editor Ben Bradlee Jr. and Globe editor Marty Baron."
"Groundbreaking" work?
The proposed film is described as being in the vein of the 1976 hit film All the President's Men, which was about the efforts of the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to investigate the alleged Watergate scandal.
However, if the film seeks to portray the Globe as somehow being ignorant up until 2002 to the issue of sex abuse in the Catholic Church in the Boston area, the filmmakers will have some explaining to do. For example:
- In 1992 alone, the Globe published no less than 55 articles about James Porter, a notorious pedophile from the Diocese of Fall River who left the priesthood in 1971 and was formally laicized in 1974. (By the way, in a 1993 Globe article, a leading Boston attorney actually praised the archdiocese for its response to abuse claims.)
- Throughout the 1990s, the Globe published dozens of articles, including several on the front page, about claims of abuse and lawsuits involving the notorious pedophile John Geoghan.
- In 1997, when Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law announced a series of "healing Masses" for victims of clergy abuse, local television covered the announcement and the Globe reported the story on its front page.
- When the Church announced that it had laicized Geoghan in 1998, it was not only a front-page story in the Globe, but it was also the lead story on a number of local television evening newscasts.
- In 1999, the Globe reported that Geoghan's criminal abuse had prompted over five dozen civil lawsuits. (By November 2001, the number had grown to 86.) The Globe also covered Geoghan's high-profile criminal trial that year.
In other words, the Globe was hardly a stranger to the entire issue before January 6, 2002, the day the paper began its string of 969 articles just in 2002 about Catholic Church sex abuse.
Giving credit where credit is due
Meanwhile, while the Boston Globe has received endless accolades and recognition for its 2002 reporting, a lot of people have been unaware that it was the Boston Phoenix – the city's "alternative" arts and entertainment weekly (like the NYC's The Village Voice) – that was all over the story nearly a year earlier.
Beginning on March 23, 2001, the Phoenix's Kristen Lombardi initiated a series of devastating stories about Church abuse cases in Boston. (Her first piece – about the notorious John Geoghan – ran nearly 6,700 words. The Globe later scored its big break in November of 2001 when the paper won the release of Boston Church documents, which led to the scope of its 2002 reporting.)
But don't expect the Globe to give the Phoenix much credit.
As for the proposed film, stay tuned. Variety reports that the project "is being developed inhouse and has not yet been exposed to studios or financiers. While there are no actors currently attached to the pic, at least one A-list star has expressed interest in the material."
Neat. The film will revolve around everything prior to the past decade’s worth of reforms, so as not to complicate the plot-line. And since a flik requires Good Guys and Bad Guys, you can imagine who the Good Guys and the Bad Guys are going to be. And everything will flow on from there.
This will be a variation on the old silent-movie script: somebody tied to the tracks, the train coming, the Villain twirling his moustache, and the Heroic media coming to the rescue in the nick of time. All ‘stories’ gratefully accepted and they won’t be looked at too closely so long as they support the script-line.
It goes even better with fresh warm popcorn. It always has.
The ‘Globe’ – like its parent-company, the ‘New York Times’ – is on the rocks financially, so this might help. Young Bradlee gets to prove his chops while simultaneously reminding everybody whose kid he is (and pappy may appreciate the mention too). They could all use the publicity (and probably a share of the profits, such as they might be).
And for all we know SNAP is going to be written into the action as well, as one of the Heroes, of course. But then again maybe not: Hero-hood in a script is a zero-sum game, and you can only divide it just so many times before it morphs into something else (if everybody was a hero, then what was heroic about what they did?).
This, I’d say, is a venture that is driven by the ‘Globe’ and the ‘Times’ and so it will be worked from their angle and point of view. And that’s if it gets off the ground – and there are no guarantees there.
While it might not be of direct and immediate interest to the film-maker or even the backers (such as they may be), the project might wind up creating more problems for the ‘heroes’ than anybody else. If, say, some of the ‘stories’ turn out to be debunked after the film comes out, or if the publicity sparks further investigation about the background. Publicity is an unpredictable thing: you never can tell which way it is going to go and just what type of public interest it will spark.
But with the right selectivity exercised and sustained – focusing tightly on Cardinal Law and Messrs. Porter and Geoghagen (and, of course, the heroic reporters) – then you could certainly get a flik out of it. Whether it will be well-made, whether it will succeed with audiences, whether the media will hop on the bandwagon and decide to invest in jump-starting the pre-2002 era all over again … these are some of the eternal questions of film-making as a commercial enterprise.
I can't imagine people being interested in paying to see that, truthfully. The media has been so saturated with it I think people are sick of the media obsession and the topic in general because the culprits (guilty clergy) in this case are so icky and slimey. As are the reporters and editors in the way they handled it.
But what about the current criminal cases pending in the Philadelphia Courts courtesy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the District Attorney of Philadelphia?
What current cases??? Some of the bogus charges have been debunked….you, sir, just enjoy stirring up with talking points that are repeated again and again. And, to be perfectly honest (and I mean not to be insensitive to any old victim, I assure you), Philadelphia has moved on. There are reforms in place in the archdioces for years-(you would not find ANYWHERE else in any non-catholic church, organization, public school system etc.) any anti-catholic hate remarks on various blogs are made by the same old people who are not in church, who are not at the heart of things. If a movie was to be made about Philadelphia's old scandal, the interest would be minimal. Sorry, that is the truth about it.
I hope Hollywood keeps turning out movies on RCC corruption in order to defeat RCC centuries of global genocide, gendercide, sex trafficking of kids, looting, and terrorism against other religions.
Heil Mary, from your lips to God's ears. And if any here pretend the Church didn't do all Mary said you don't know your own history.
To which cases is M-Sk referring? The trial of Msgr Lynn? Have others been brought at this point?
By "courtesy of the Archdicoces" do you mean the Archdiocese is a plaintiff? That would be a civil case. The DA doesn't need the courtesy of any parties to bring a criminal case to bar.
And I'm not sure of the connection between the M-Sk question and the article or my or Julie's comments.
This story really comes as no surprise. The real news about The Boston Globe and its parent company, The New York Times is that they are both dying a slow, painful death. The Times tried to unload The Globe nearly a decade ago after this Pulitizer-endorsed scandal story, but no one wanted to buy it. The Globe's current subscription base is a fraction of what it was when the priesthood scandal broke in Boston in 2002.
I have a story about The Globe's coverage. In 2003 The Globe printed a story about a man and his wife who were charged with extortion for attempting to blackmail a priest they contacted online and with whom they shared a series of sexually suggestive messages. They then extorted $3,000 from the elderly priest under threat of accusing him and publishing the emails. The police conducted their own sting and arrested the couple. It turns out that the man involved had changed his name and under his previous name had accused two other priests and collected settlements in another fraud. When The Globe was told the whole story by me, the reporter and his editors had no interest because it would have called into question the legitimacy of other claims of abuse by Boston priests.
Way to post outrageous lies, HeilMary. Feel better?
What ‘Ryan MacDonald’ describes is the essential dynamic of what has come to be called ‘advocacy journalism’: the reporter (or media bosses) decides that some ‘X’ is sooooo good, and some ‘anti-X’ is soooo bad, that all news about ‘X’ should be supportive, and all news about ‘anti-X’ should be negative. In this way the media are not simply the stodgy old horse-and-buggy ‘reporters of objective facts’ (as best as any human objectivity can be) but rather are cutting-edge supporters of whatever ‘good’ things (like ‘X’) the reporter/media bosses think is good for everybody.
But of course, in this approach the media’s impartiality and objectivity go out the window. As does any concern for ‘facts’, veracity, and truth itself. Yes, this is all waved away by the claim that there is some ‘larger truth’ that is more important than the facts – but once you have crossed that tipping point and that Rubicon, then you are beyond the limits set by truth and by reality and start heading into Fantasy Land and, far worse and far more dangerous, Manipulating-the-Public Land.
And in the past decades this dynamic migrated to the legal and legislative systems as well: ‘facts don’t matter when you are making laws’, ‘facts don’t matter’ when you are adjudicating cases. The law and the case are to be determined by the Objective and the Goal, not by the actual Content of the law and its probable consequences.
The consequences of this change for the general integrity of a democratic system of government are clear: once ‘the free press’ (as the Framers called it) is no longer seeking to accurately inform Citizens but rather seeks to form their opinions by feeding them selective information, then a dangerous line has been crossed.
And, of course, if the media joins the government in embracing this type of approach, then there is a double-whammy, and an even more dangerous threat to the ability of the Citizens to govern their government. The Citizens are selectively fed information; worse, they are fed information specifically selected to move them in a particular direction; and even worse, they are fed information designed to inflame their emotions rather than to inform their minds.
In recent decades we have seen this dynamic run rampant in all areas of national life and discourse.
And we are now seeing with increasing clarity how this has been working in the Catholic Abuse Matter.
SNAP is a creature of this development. Worse, SNAP’s approach has been the media’s own approach. SNAP has ‘succeeded’ for so long because it was specifically surfing the same wave that the media has been surfing.
And the internet, as I have often said, has amplified this approach. In a medium that is so often impervious to independent corroboration and verification, the limits and boundaries imposed naturally by reality and facts and truth are hugely weakened, almost to the point of non-existence.
Add to all of this the fact that the internet so easily lends itself to claims and assertions that are not only beyond verification but that primarily embody emotions rather than thoughts, and you get a lethally toxic witches’ brew of elements.
Add to all of this the fact that the natural operation of this noxious multi-layered dynamic can quickly be intensified by persons who have deliberately embraced the idea that in a ‘good’ cause (however they define it) then factual truth doesn’t really matter, and things get even worse.
And I don’t consider it a mere coincidence that the public expansion of the Abuse ‘Crisis’ tracks the public expansion of the internet.
In fact, for me it was the examination of the Abuse Crisis that led to a deeper consideration of the phenomenon in all of its aspects noted above.
Where this film goes is an interesting question. But as I said, it’s going to have to keep itself ‘historical’, meaning that it can’t succeed as it is currently envisioned if it also deals with the reforms of the past decade. Rather, it will have to deal with past, almost as a nostalgic exercise in revisiting or re-igniting emotions (with very few serious thoughts) about an era now past. (In this, it reminds me of those military-themed satellite or cable channels that constantly replay WW2 newsreels and documentaries about how we totally won and then bestrode the world. Yet that era and its feel-good realities of total victory are irretrievably gone, and the emotions that accompanied that era are now profoundly and dangerously incompatible with the accurate perception of current realities.)
Investors and backers may be found to fund the making of this film; or the papers (‘Globe’ and ‘New York Times’) may quietly fund it themselves. But it will be an iffy proposition: by the time it is made, so much may have happened that will undercut any impact its backers hoped to have – perhaps the (media) discovery of abuse in secular venues like the Boy Scouts or the public schools or perhaps among other groups of professionals will distract-from or otherwise reduce public interest and concern in the historical issues of the Church.
Films are funny things like that. Back in 1940 Goebbels got the idea of producing a Nazi version of the sinking of the ‘Titanic’; the idea was that the film, shown to German audiences, would be a morale-builder, demonstrating how the British leadership led its people into disaster the same way the British captain of that ship pushed his ship into disaster. But there were problems with the director and it wasn’t until late 1943 before the film was in the can. And by that time, Goebbels realized that the whole thing could boomerang on him: the story of the ‘Titanic’ would – by 1943 – be more of a devastating commentary on the Nazis’ leadership of Germany than of the British leadership. So the whole expensive thing was dropped and the film was never shown.
That’s showbiz.
Pub it was shown a couple of weeks ago on TCM.
And then there’s the new CEO of the ‘Times’: Mark Thompson, former BBC honcho, who is now under increasing scrutiny for having kept in employment, and having squashed an investigative journalistic report of, now-deceased BBC TV personality Jimmy Savile, alleged to have been a voracious and omnivorous sex-addict and abuser who enjoyed decades at the BBC.
How this might connect to this sudden announcement by the ‘Globe’ is worth looking at. Certainly, the announcement about the film from its glory-days would distract people from the ‘Times’ (which is the ‘Globe’s parent company) new CEO.
That story has legs. Late last night, there was a piece on a news show (CBS I believe) about it.
Was the" leading Boston attorney" working for the Church at the time or ever? The reason for the Scandal was Bernard Law's accidentily admitting his coverup and transfering of Porter and Geoghagen (whose murder was outrageous unneccessary and very oddly allowed to occur.)
Get it through your heads, it's not about the abusors it's about the enablers. Pretending anything else makes you look stupid and reactionary.
I remember as a child being shown "the Song of Bernadette" with Jennifer Jones" Our Lady of Fatima" with Gilbert Roland De Mille's "the Ten Commandments" The Alec Guiness Roman au clef of Cardinal Minzenti "The Prisoner".i. John Ford's film " the Priest " with Henry Fonda. All religious propaganda "The Robe" with Richard Burton. "Quo Vadis" with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. "Going My Way" Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. The Bells of St. Mary's and Joan of Arc twice with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Seberg. All pro Catholic and or Christian propaganda and I survived. Save your outrage for important things. You'll survive a movie.
You know it's your unecessary hyper sensativity that makes you seem silly. Remember what Hitchcock said, "It's only a movie".
Nobody is pretending anything. Once again, Jim, you are off the mark.
I have just reviewed the TCM database. There are several films responding to keyword 'Titanic' but all are far more recent than Goebbel's 1943 film. There was a mini-series on the building of 'Titanic' earlier this month on one of the premium cable/satellite channels and entitled "Titanic: Blood and Steel", but not the Nazi version that I was discussing.
From a purely conceptual point of view, what strikes me here is mental process: that there is immediate response to a word, with no sufficient thought as to whether the word seen corresponds to the actual subject (in this case the Nazi wartime version) being discussed. And then the rush to the keypad and hitting the 'Post Comment' button.
Taking a large and general view, I would say that this is the type of 'research' and 'proof-making' that comprises so much of the internet discourse about the Catholic Abuse Matter. Far too many comment-makers see a word, jump to all manner of conclusions, make no effort to check their facts or ensure the accuracy and relevance of what they are thinking, and head for the keyboard. And thus the tuning forks set each other off, and you get the miasmic fog we see on so many sites like NCR and B-A and such, with so many thinking that they have hit some nail on the head.
I tivoed The 1943 Nazi Titanic. The entire film. It was introduced (TCM had never shown it before.) by Robert Osborn on Turner Classic movies at one in the morning last month. You don't believe anything because you trust no one . Unless they're wearing a pointy hat. Only abused people loose their ability to trust. That says much about you. The film had one German Character who was the hero and fought the decadent British capitalists racing the Titanic across the Atlantic. Of course all characters including the American J. Astor were played by Germans. The women in the film save for the stalwart German wife in steerage were very strange. Mrs. Astor in reality a young and pregnant bride looked like a whore. The heroine looked like Morticia Adams on a fast. Truely creepy. If I was a Bishop Pub would believe anything I say. What a really stupid thing to call me on. I swear I saw it. I Tivo'd it. Do you ever tire of being wrong?
I have gone back to the TCM site and reviewed their entire published daily schedule of films for each 24-hour period in the month of October, 2012 (up to today). And – waitttt forrrr ittttt! – there is no listing for any Titanic movie whatsoever. However, since JR tivo’d it, perhaps the date/time reference would be of help here. As for the rest, I’ll leave it for the readership to assess as they see fit.
You are nuts. Why would i lie? About a stupid movie? I am at my daughters in Georgia for 2 weeks. That's right a gay guy with a daughter who's beautiful and her 2 children who are also beautiful and her husband a psychiatrist. (Which proves anyone can reproduce including gay folks.) I know I erased the film from my Tivo because I am obsessive about keeping it clear. Pub, Mr. Trust Won't buy that, I'm positive. But it's still the truth.
It showed on Sunday September 30, 2012. Chump. I looked on the TCM line too.
Let me say that this is not about JR personally – whatever is aboard that boat sailed for parts unknown long ago, in my estimation.
This is about getting at truth. The 11:08 comment by JR – but of course – offers no date/time reference by which we might resolve the discrepancy between his initial assertion and the facts as they exist on the TCM site. (Nor can we presume, say, that it was a typo and he meant the TMC site, since JR specifically mentioned Robert Osborne, who is a movie-host on TCM).
But instead of a simple date/time reference, we get excuses and stories and thus distractions.
Why would he lie? – he asks. I'd say that is an excellent question. And why then cover-up with excuses (and this is hardly the first time)? And on top of all that, he also continuously insists that while he has erased the evidence (and already has a problem "remembering", as we recall) ) yet what he says is true and then brazenly demands to know what is wrong with anybody who can't/won't accept that … ?
The excuse itself is a distraction and the readership are welcome to place their bets as to its credibility. It's irrelevance to the matter at hand is beyond question.
All of which goes to demonstrate the extraordinary lack of demonstrable truth that I have been saying exists in so much of the SNAP and victimist commenting – and then the distractions slathered on like cheap frosting on an under-baked cake when the commenter is called upon it and presented with discrepancies.
I'm going to let this go now; the TCM site and its monthly schedule for October are available for any readers who wish to check for themselves.
JR’s comment timed at 1124 was not up when I posted my own most recent comment. I’m curious now as to just what is going on (and perhaps how far it will have to go to achieve some demonstrable resolution of fact).
I went to the TCM site and checked the TCM database. Using only the keyword ‘Titanic’ there are 46 films listed and none of them are the Nazi film from 1943. (My search last night used different parameters).
The function on the TCM site that allows you to check the monthly schedules has a ‘back’ button that doesn’t appear to work, although the ‘forward’ button will quickly give you November 2012. If any reader wishes to take the time and can somehow access the September 2012 schedule I’d be happy to hear about it – and perhaps the URL that would appear when/if ‘September’ is reached. Additionally, the search function only seems geared to accept movie titles or keywords, and doesn’t – as far as I have been able to accomplish – allow you to ‘search’ for September’s schedule.
I then went to the ‘TV Guide’ site, but that site’s movie-schedule function only works prospectively and not retrospectively (although it does allow you to go back one day – thus here to October 25th).
I then went to the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) but that site’s programming button only works prospectively and not retrospectively.
The next step will be to check hardcopies of TV Guide in a library. Fortunately, while September 2012, even its very last day, is hard to bring up online, it shouldn’t be a difficulty for any library that keeps back copies of magazines (or – if need be – newspapers).
So to recap: JR has suddenly ‘remembered’ that it wasn’t “a couple of weeks ago” but rather was the very last day of last month (and we are almost at the end of this month). He claims to have erased precisely the evidence he might have presented and thus there is no way he can prove his claims. But he has now also ‘remembered’ a date that is – as it turns out – the very last day of a month that (as far as my experience with a computer has been able to determine) is no longer accessible through the usual internet sites. All of this is circumstantial and not dispositive, and merely serves to pique interest at the curious coincidences here.
I will be checking hard-copies and will report my results – whatever they may be – when I find out.
Why go through this? Not to hound JR, which is not a necessary or productive use of time. But simply to demonstrate how much care has to be taken with assertions on the internet.
You owe me a big apology.
I'm vacationing with my family. do you think i would waste my time making up a story about such a thing as a movie? Here's a big fat fact for you. YOU ARE WRONG! ABOUT EVERYTHING. Why don't you take your nasty clerical self to a healer. Use some common sense and get over your sad self. Yes I'm angry. You expect me to behave like a lawyer or investigative reporter when I'm neither. I'm not a professor teaching a class people have paid for either. I am a victim who tells you the truth here about SNAP about the Church and about seeing The Nazi Titanic. And that's all I am doing here. I attempt to reach the goodness I believe is inherent in people. I believe if they hear or read the truth they'll know it and behave accordingly.
You know you must think your diety is pretty weak if it can't deal with people who were harmed telling the truth.
Please notice how Mr. Accuracy never mentions the Church opening it's records right along with SNAP opening it's. (As I suggested)
No response at all. typical!
Your worried about fake claims I would personally volunteer( and I know I could find other victims who would as well) to panel groups to check out victims claims but no we get The Church vs. SNAP and SNAP vs. the Church. more choreography than Astaire-Rogers.
P.S. the only person here who is in "parts unknown' is you. Estimate till the cattle return my dear. The majority of America likes gay people now. We are no longer the boogie men and women.
The only" curious coincidence" here in plan Titanic-gate is your lack of trust about everything I post. Do you meet that many compulsive liars in your life because that's what you paint me as? Maybe it's your relationship with the hierarcy that's destroyed your trust. Whatever it is; get better soon.
A call to TCM at their 888 number yielded a tip on how to get the past- schedules on the website and it is there for 0215 on September 30.
So yes, the movie was shown.
Sorry to all for taking up time, but after wading through 170pp of a deposition on the ‘Bishop Braun’ wild goose-chase I take no chances and nothing for granted.
2:15 AM
Titanic (1943)
In his drive to keep up his ship's speed, a luxury liner's captain sets his course for disaster.
Dir: Werner Klinger Cast: Ernst Fritz Furbringer , Otto Wernicke , Sepp Rist .
BW-85 mins, TV-PG,
The discription I posted above of the Titanic fits Pub and the pope.
No apology is required at all. After the track record that JR has set on this site and the most recent (and frankly disturbing) ranting, I treat no assertion of JR’s as credible until I’ve tried to check it. The initial and simple checking resulted in the no-October-showing, and things went on from there. I followed the skein until a demonstrable resolution of fact could be achieved and I reported that.
If JR is “not a lawyer or an investigative reporter” then he shouldn’t be making assertions and claims without justification or on the basis of inaccuracies that were easily discoverable with even a minimum of further checking or looking-up. And he has been demonstrated to have not-told the truth on several occasions, the ‘Bishop Braun’ claims only being among the more recent and time-consuming (as I said, Bishop Brown’s deposition was 173pp long and it took a while to review it all only to not-find the non-existent “sex orgies” material).
And I don’t know where this gay material comes from or why it keeps coming up in his comments to me, but as far as I am concerned, sexual orientation is nothing but a distraction to the matters I discuss in my comments. If – as he seems to infer – JR is himself gay, then that is not something I have ever raised and it is of no concern to me.
As for his claims of vacationing with his family, it’s just another claim, as far as I am concerned; perhaps in a bid to increase sympathy. For all anybody knows, he is on the sun porch or in the dayroom of a secure facility. Which, again, is neither here nor there since only the quality of the comment-material is usable in the internet forum; and certainly it’s only the quality of comment-material that is of any concern to me.
But JR is very accurate in realizing that at this point I trust almost nothing of what he claims or asserts until it has been somehow checked and corroborated. And if he cares to assert that I have no basis for that stance toward his material – given the track record of comments on this site alone – then he is welcome to do so. I wouldn’t go as far as to assert – as he does – that he is a “compulsive liar”, but I certainly think that, for whatever reasons, he is not demonstrating an ability to remain focused on demonstrable truth – and I have based that decision on nothing except the material he himself has put up in comments on this site. (Although there is also – as he has himself claimed – all that far more competent and insightful comment material that he has claimed TMR did not allow to be posted.)
Lastly, the Church’s records were opened sufficiently to provide information to the John Jay researchers and under the new guidelines the Church is now formally among the most transparent organizations in the country in the matter of abuse. My own assessment of the situation is that the “records” bit is simply another effort to Keep The Ball Rolling, not only by SNAP as an organization but also by individuals who have convinced themselves that somehow there are records in existence that will ‘prove’ this, that, or the other thing. And with this sort of gambit, even if the Church were to produce whatever ‘records’ are demanded, they would no doubt continue to insist that there are yet more ‘hidden records’ somewhere else. And thus the Ball can be Kept Rolling until the end of Time.
It remains to be seen, in that regard, why JR – who has claimed to have received a settlement in one of the lawsuits – did not rather refuse to participate in the settlement and insist upon a trial (civil or criminal, as applicable) precisely in order to legally force the revelation of ‘records’. Instead, he has apparently opted to have his cake and eat it too: if his own story is to be believed, then he allowed records to remain ‘hidden’ while taking settlement-money, and then yet continues to bray incessantly about the Church not opening the records that he himself helped to keep from public view when he had the opportunity to take and stand and do something about it.
JR seems to be too self-absorbed and protests a little too much. I have some trouble believing him period.
Jim, When you play fast and loose with the truth on the internet people are going to notice. That only works on liberal or fundamentallist websites when everyone there is a vicious anti-Catholic and they'll agree if you tell them Catholics have horns and killed three times the population of Europe in one swoop.
Blah! Blah! Blah!You put the A in Anal (a psycological analysis Dave) The skien you followed Andromache is of your own undoing and has naught to do with me. It was orgy singular re: Braun or Brom, what ever the old Qu*%n's name is, it's not Brown, smart one. So if you looked up Bishop Brown, U wrong again.
And again your wrong.The revealing of records was agreed to by the Church in my and other victims settlement deal here in L.A. So far, 5 years later, they still haven't released them. John Jay researchers are Catholic researchers Why won't the Church complete their settlement with us, who've they've "contracted" with?. Yet somehow they give "sufficient" revelation (what ever that is defined as) to John Jay to suit Pub.
You want SNAP to open it's records in Missouri. Well so do I. Yet when I want the Church's records opened you don't. hmmmmmmm?
It's published here constantly and accurately about SNAP's hypocricy re: demanding the Church release it's records yet refusing to release it's own and spending huge sums doing so. I AGREE WITH YOU COMPLETELY. ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY. But you want your cake both ways also. And you can't have it both ways.
And as always calling my sanity and veracity into question. Charming! What a bundle of joy you are.
Julie, your Missouri roots are showing. I think Catholicism is stupid. That's just one man's opinion. Have I ever suggested that your faith be shut down or closed? Seems to me you guys are doing a better job of that than I ever dreamed of.
History is usually written by the victors and still Catholic history speaks for itself as quite a hypocritical surrealistic lifemare. So what again, my silly opinion. maybe. But history is history and neither my opinion nor yours.
My Grand kids are adjusting the straps on my straightjacket as we speak. I can have them arrange yours.
You know maybe there's a God after all, My Daughter and her family are born agains and Republicans.( I told her she could keep one, but no)
Karma's a deep dish b%$#H. :^)
The scenario above-described, in which a court-recognized agreement and its stipulations has been flaunted by one of the parties for a period of more than five years without resolution, is going to require corroboration. The description of the agreement – that somehow settlement monies were paid by the Church and yet somehow release of records (Records of what? And of what relevance if the monies were paid and the settlement finalized?) was promised for a future date – is, to say the very least, legally counterintuitive. At this point, a far more plausible alternative explanation presents itself: that in an effort to cover-up his own doings, JR hastily cobbles together a ‘story’ that is merely designed to counter the immediately-relevant points that need to be somehow ‘answered’, with no thought as to how phantasmagorical or illogical they actually might be. Or how truthful they might or might not be.
Since he clearly has trouble ‘remembering’, let me refresh JR’s memory: I started looking for the “Bishop Braun” deposition which he insisted and claimed and asserted was an actual document; the best an online search could come up with was the Bishop-Brown deposition, and I presumed that once more JR’s marked spelling problem had misspelled the name; I read the Brown deposition, found nothing, and at that point went to the San Diego diocesan site and discovered that the actual name of the Bishop was Brom. And from there I discovered that JR had not only gotten the name wrong, but that his assertion about “sex orgies” was substantially inaccurate and wrong as well. As I explained at length in comments on this site.
As for the rest of the foregoing rant, there’s nothing of substance that requires further comment from me. It is, I would say, quite instructive on its own.
Everyone -
Thank you for your thoughtful comments and contributions!
I am shutting down comments for now.
Thanks.