"Out of steam": SNAP's David Lorenz, BishopAccountability's Terence McKiernan, and
therapist/Church basher Ann Hagan Webb
It seems that the mission of bludgeoning the Catholic Church for abuse episodes from a half century ago is not as thriving as it used to be.
Few major media outlets have overplayed and exaggerated the abuse narrative more than the Washington Post. So it was big news when even the Post was recently forced to take notice that the abuse story is now so old that professional Church-bashing groups such as SNAP and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) are dying and fading away, as they are comprised of an ever dwindling number of cranky codgers.
According to the recent Post article:
- Attendance at recent VOTF events has "plummeted, as have donations";
- Bill Casey, a VOTF board member, admits, "The average age is gray-haired folks. And they're 10 years grayer"*;
- Terry McKiernan, the crotchety but frequently quoted "head" of BishopAccountability.org, admits that the abuse story has now become so long in the tooth that his people have "run of out steam"; and
- "Many of the groups that appeared during the early and mid-2000s have shrunk or disappeared."
Indeed, the most recent national conference of VOTF looked more like a nursing home than the gathering of a burgeoning activist group.
Voice of the Faithful 10th Anniversary Conference in Boston, September 2013:
The remnants of the geezer rebellion.
As always, it was never really about sex abuse
As the Post chronicles the demise of SNAP, VOTF, and other Church bashers, it again becomes clear that these groups' true mission was never really about protecting children. Instead, the real motivation behind the formation of these groups had always been to try to force the Church to conform to their own "progressive" agenda.
As the Post notes, these groups were always comprised of dissident folks interested in "changing the church" and debating "dramatic structural changes such as electing bishops and allowing priests to marry."
The Post reports that SNAP member David Lorenz "worships with a breakaway independent group" and "his wife has become active in ending celibacy."*
In other words, the issue of sex abuse by clergy several decades ago has just been window dressing to conceal the real agenda of radical "reform," a point we have made several … times … before.
As the Church cannot change its essential truths to accommodate the demands of aging radicals, it is little wonder that these groups are slowly dying off and disappearing.
[* - Two lines in the original article have since been deleted by the Post: 1. The line that quotes Bill Casey, "The average age is gray-haired folks. And they're 10 years grayer," and 2. "[SNAP's David Lorenz's] wife has become active in ending celibacy." Fortunately, we captured a cached version of the original piece.]
These gropus have been fading away into oblivion for a number of years as they no longer serve any useful purpose but the media has kept the story under wraps. Thank you Wa PO for finally telling the truth about the demise of these nasty, old, hate-filled geezers.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Amen.
How old is Pope Francis the Very Young?
And isn't it amazing when groups created to fail and created to fall apart do that very thing.
It's awfully hard to hold peoples interest if you never show them the people they're supposed to be fighting for. And SNAP and VOTF don't want victims in the middle of their "show". Why we might actually meet each other. That's exactly the opposite of what SNAP and VOTF were created to achieve.
Why victims might actually organize and do something if we had ever been truly "networked"
Instead we were just screwed again and by the same people.
If it wasn't and hadn't happened to me (and continues to happen to all victims) I wouldn't have believed it. Honestly.
I never thought people could stoop this low except back in the bad old times at Bergen Belson and Auchwitz. Boy, have I learned my lesson.
And that is the worst picture of Terry McKiernan, who is a very good looking guy and one of your Tridentine supporters.
I was taken aback when I read this TMR article; the Washington Post has recently received as its new boss the former head of the Boston Globe, under whose direction the sue-the-bishops Phase was inaugurated on January 2, 2002. Neither ‘conversion’ nor even political opportunism could explain such a reversal of direction.
Kudos to TMR for capturing the cached version of the article.
But as I read the article, I saw the WaPo strategy: admit – as one has to – the now undeniable decline of so many front-organizations (see my most recent comment about “useful idiots” at the end of the immediately previous TMR article) that have enabled the Abuse-Matter for so long.
But then frame it as a heroic remnant now reduced to just keep itself going and tending to survivors (SNAP?) in the face of stunning Church intransigence.
And all this, the frame shrewdly continues, while the Abuse Matter is “bursting into the open around the world” and “taking center stage in the conversation about Benedict XVI’s successor”.
A few thoughts come to me.
First, just where is the Sex-Abuse Matter doing all that “bursting”? In Holland where the almost-mythical Dutch Abuse Report has disappeared without ever actually appearing? In Ireland where the Magdalene Laundries accusations and claims have been exposed as fraudulent? At the International Criminal Court in the Hague where the fabled SNAP Complaint about the Church’s war-crimes, torture, and crimes-against-humanity has been politely and quietly deep-sixed?
And while American media focused on the Abuse-Matter when reporting the comments of the few American cardinals, there is almost no indication of other regional prelates being preoccupied with it.
Second – and this is going to become increasingly important as time goes on now – serious discourse is going to have to distinguish between a) the Abuse-nik tide receding merely because people have lost interest and “run out of steam” (as the WaPo article does) and b) the Abuse-nik tide receding because the whole thing was an Oz-like balloon that, when finally examined with even a modestly-critical eye, quickly began to deflate.
Third, in the matter of the Scottish Cardinal who was forced to resign several months early because of decades-old allegations of some form of “inappropriate contact” suddenly broached by four (if I recall correctly) priests just as the Cardinal was getting ready for the conclave: it all seems rather too much of a coincidence. Four adults – and priests (perhaps a former priest among the bunch) – who each had a decades-old story, suddenly come forward in a gaggle precisely at the moment when the old prelate, on the cusp of retirement, was going to attend a world-historical conclave. And, even more curiously, none of them claiming rape or sodomy or anything beyond “inappropriate contact” (whatever that means).
It is certainly possible that this coming-forward is what it appears to be.
But it is also certainly a possibility that this was somehow a managed-event, created to take advantage of the Cardinal’s attendance at the conclave event. This type of ‘surfing’ is a long-established PR tactic: if you have little or nothing else, wait until your target is somehow guaranteed to be in the spotlight, and then use that spotlight for your own purposes, effectively turning your target’s momentary turn in the light as a ‘mule’ for your own objectives.
Whatever those objectives were, the ‘moment’ flashed in the pan and then … poof! It’s up to the Scots as to how they view being deprived of their nation’s role in the conclave. Meanwhile, the Cardinal very forthrightly resigned and did not exercise his right to vote in the conclave. If he did it on his own, it speaks rather well of him; if Rome required him to do so, he still took his orders faithfully and it says something about the Roman approach to abuse-issues now.
And – somewhat like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – only some older ship was taken out, while the vital material of the new Fleet remained intact and operational.
Cranky codgers is "journalism" to you?
How old are you?
How old do you intend to be?
Between you and D's "Hollywierd" reference. I know I'm seeing the very cutting edge.
I'm blinded by your youth.
And this new Pope is a mere strapling of a boy. And to have made it all the way to Cardinal and now Pope at his age. Extraordinary!
Ah but the race as they say goes to the swiftest and youth will have it's day
I have to go to bed now it's almost 8:00 p.m.
My nurse is calling me.
I keep tripping over my. ba…………………………varicose veins.
So these "Survivor" organizations will fade away and no one will see "Survivors" ever again not knowing they never saw "Survivors " in the first place.
Brilliant.
Evil, but brilliant I have to admit.
The prophecy the Church planned for will be fulfilled. Nothing ever happened.
The picture of the VOTF 10th anniversary conference says it all. The only few people I know that subscribe are all in their early eighties and do not seem to have much hope for the future. Thank goodness, they won't be here long. One need only listen to the commentators on the attendence of all the young people in St. Peter's square today-very young they all kept saying. Also, the pro-life march in January is more and more attended by the younger generation. There are signs everywhere that young families are alive in the Church. There is a wholesome joy.
And how old is Josie? 17?
And her new leader Francis is how old? 70 what? (I can't hear you I don't have my aids in.)
And Pub and D are how old? And you Dave are what 7 and a half is it? Trainer wheels for your next birthday?
Oh and let's not forget God, How old is God?
P.S. I see maybe one 80 year old in that picture but don't let a little thing like truth bother you.
You are a cranky codger arent you, Jim?
Wading through the whackness above (delivered as if on cue, nicely enough) I find a couple of useful bits.
First, the whole game-bit of declaring oneself a "survivor" (scarfed, sleazily, from those who managed to emerge from Hitler's death-camps) is not going to be so easy to play any longer. In that sense, the Abuse Matter sees the same problem that Jewish folk saw in the decades following the War: persons falsely claiming to be death-camp "survivors" who really weren't ever there at all. The solution here is the same as was insisted-upon then: demonstration and evidence required.
Next, genuine victims are not going to be kicked to the curb because the precedent of dioceses paying for therapy is already established - to say nothing of those who collected their tidy sum in the heyday of uncontested and never-proven allegations through mass lawsuits.
But what is going to be over – I think – is the Game itself: what German U-boat guys used to call "the happy times" (before the US started convoying merchant ships to England and you could just sail up and pick them off like fat targets). The Stampede will be over.
Persons with legitimate and genuine claims can still go to the police, perhaps even to the media – but there will be some examination of the evidence now, whereas in "ze happy times" one merely had to go to a tort-attorney or the media, speak the magic words, and Fantasy-Treasure Land's gates were instantly opened wide. As so many did.
So really all that's going to happen is that the distortions of the Stampede will no longer be so powerful.
But some commenters demonstrate a substantial un-ease with such a development. And rightly so: I expect that without the Stampede, so many claims will no longer be able to surf the Stampede, and perhaps there will even be some retrospective investigation and analysis of claims that had previously been allowed to sail through (perhaps even perjuriously, under oath).
So many possibilities. An historical moment indeed.
I'd like to express my bewilderment about the so-called 'happy times' with big pay-outs, to any half-way credible claimant. For a start have to say am not a lawyer, but would challenge anybody to produce a legal statute or legal text book that says that the accused must investigate the accused??????
The only book that it may appear in is "Alice in Wonderland" because a character in the book, "The Mad Hatter' might well have said 'the accused must investigate the accused'
Am sure you get my drift. Imagine that Farmer Brown woke up to find half his chickens stolen. He goes to the main suspect, the fox, and says.." I accuse you… and now demand that you investigate yourself". Yeah. Right!
Here in Australia we have some journalists, stirred up my victims support groups, and lawyers, accusing the church of shielding predatory priests and slandering Bishops over "sinister organizations". Then in the next breath accuse them of delaying the claims lodged by so-called victims????? In other words we are not investigating ourselves quickly enough, and also for dragging our feet with the settlement payments.Wow!!!!
The Mad Hatter would just love it.
Silly me… for thinking that the police were responsible for investigating criminal allegations. Only they can bring charges and trigger a criminal case, and only a court can decide on guilty or not guilty. A court can put a paedophile into prison and out of harms way, nobody else can.
So guess I have been missing something all along.
Maybe this is not about justice at all, it is about twisting the arm of the Church to obtain large sums of money.
Malc
March 13th
Some commenters can be such simpletons: as the degenerate progressive and radical 60s generation fades away (as just a bunch of malcontents and misfits), we will be blessed with the new generations that see the errors of our former ways. It is more about how wise you are than how old you are. When you're young and a conservative, you have no heart; when you are old and a liberal, you have no brain (…feeling the pinch in your huge big toe there, Cinderfella?). At some point, Peter Pan, you must grow up and face the reality of the earthly life God have given to us.
At least we're not trying to kill off all the old, conservative "whitey's" as our Most Beloved Leader here in America has implemented via His Majesty's Health [S]Care "reform". Once he pry's those bibles and guns from their frail little white hands, he'll be setting his AHCA death panel on what's left of our parents and grandparents.
Our new Pope is a wise and Godly man. It is just that simple and honest. It is the Truth.
In a nice coincidence, an editorial in today’s print edition of the Wall Street Journal abut drug-companies (“The Threat of ‘Innovation Liability’”, page A16) drops a revealing by-the-by that is of some relevance to the Abuse Matter.
Discussing a recent court decision in that area of affairs, the editorial notes that “Such principles don’t hold much sway with trial attorneys, who are more concerned with finding a deep-pocketed defendant to sue”.
Just so. And of course if the Game goes south – as it appears to be doing at last – then a whole bunch of hugely well-remunerated tort-attorneys are going to be deprived of a rather easily-obtainable source of money for themselves.
All of this, of course, on top of the “survivor” material I put up in my previous comment.
In fact, the Question still remains: how does anybody – including other “survivors” – know that a self-proclaimed “survivor” is actually and verifiably a survivor at all? And not just in terms of the internet modality – which we have discussed at length on this site already. But even if they are all together in the same room for a meeting, how does anybody know anybody else is telling the truth? Is there some sort of verification process in play in those meetings (I doubt it very much) or at the bottom of all this do we simply have one tuning-fork setting off all the other tuning-forks in an area that is of mutually remunerative interest to all of them?
When you come right down to brass tacks, if they are all pursuing the same agenda, then it’s in nobody’s interest to examine anybody else’s story in the first place. So – using the principle of Cui Bono (tr: Who benefits?) then it’s going to benefit nobody in the room if everybody starts asking everybody else for demonstrable evidence. Nor will it serve the interests of the ‘support organization’ that sponsors the meeting. Nor will it serve the interests of all the puppeteers behind the scenes who find all the self-reported stories “useful” to the ultimate objectives and purposes.
I forgot D also called me a simpleton.
Your Godly man may have aided and abbetted torture of his fellow priests. Really, during the junta's reign in Argentina. His fellow Jesuits.
I'm sure God just loves torture D. and how old are you again Honey?
P victims didn't call ourselves "survivors". SNAP did.
Heaven knows we thought it was a "great" idea, P.R. wise, to skip completely over being victims to tell the world we're O.K.. Just like cockroaches "we" can survive anything.
Except for one small thing.
Many many of us didn't survive.
Suicides.
Alchol and drug addictions
But hey don't let me put a damper on your delusions.
And P, me, and the other 66 year olds in the school cafeteria, are still "jail bait" compared to the Pope.
Would you like to share your age with us?.
Pope Francis has shared his with he world. But after all he's a better man than you isn't he?
The thing about "stampedes", P, is you never know when or how they're going to end.
And hey am I wacky or cranky or both?
What ever I am, I never supported torture.
Degenerate?
I am amazed in just a few paragraphs I've been called everything from Cranky Codger to Peter Pan, the boy who never grows old. to degenerate progressive to "60's radical to malcontent and misfit to Cinderfella (I love Jerry Lewis) to Nazi sub-mariner, to a stampede surfer to a possible liar and thief to traitor to Bible and gun snatcher and elder abuser.
I'm one very busy fellow.
After capitalism has finished with Grandpa and Grandma there won't be much left for you to inherit D. What is it $4000 and up for a nursing home, a month?
You know what health care Republicans have for the elderly don't you?
Poverty, then death.
Hey I left out whacky. P called me whacky.
My God! at last I know who I am: Everyman.
Not thinking those Alinsky-isms will work for you, anymore. Better find another prophet to follow, we're all on to the old, overused one.
Publion: those gay-ambulance chasers have a new "class" of clients to chase (since they've exhausted the Church abuse matter)- it's the married gays caught up in the netherworld of divorce. Seems as though that marriage thingie doesn't work out so well for gays, after all. They are getting "raped" (pardon the pun) by the lawyers exploiting their unique Fed vs. state "positioning" (pardon that pun, again) in this brave new world. Why, who would have thought that those the "fly-by-night, flit-to-flit love em and leave em ad infinitim-ites" would not have the foresight to see the emotional and financial trainwreck that is legal divorce (see New Yorker mag). If marriage is a bad fit for gay lifestyles, wants and habits (it certainly is), wait until they get a taste of divorce, American style.
I love God, he has such a sense of humor. You wanted it, baby, you got it!
Oh, if HIS children would only listen to him.
If Mr. Alinsky is as half as funny as me funny Ha Ha He's gotta be a good guy. I've never read him, heard a lot about him here the mere fact that he so repulses you. Must make him a good guy.
Has Alinskyism become the euphemism for truth , now?
I must have missed that because every time I tell the truth, D calls it an "Alinskyism".
So the Virgin Birth; The Transubstaciaton; The Assumption, the Ressurection all must be Alinskyisms.
Thanks for the info D.
P.S. The litany of Catholic truths I mentioned above have a tad bit of time on them as well.
I have no idea of what chronological age has to do with anything here. Unless one were to compare, say, the accumulated chronological age to the actually-achieved maturity as demonstrated by the thoughts and mental content one expresses. If one is beyond retirement age, for example, and still consistently evinces the mental-level of the high-school cafeteria … well, that’s kind of indicative of something. And thanks again to TMR for sparing us the obscenities; apparently Mr. Cipriano has now decided it best to adopt the same policy with certain obscenity-minded commenters – that’s why they used to have faculty patrolling in the cafeteria back in the day.
Anyhoo, about the Pope’s alleged collusion in torture: if the story as I read it online is accurate, he is supposed to have permitted the military dictator to kidnap two of his priests, and then arranged a ruse whereby he would replace the dictator’s personal chaplain in order to go to the mansion and beg the same dictator not to torture them.
Which story, to be true and accurate, requires presuming that a) a military dictator would care what a religious order superior thought or would consider himself bound to seek that religious superior’s permission before kidnapping anybody the dictator wanted to kidnap; and b) that a religious superior who gave such a ‘permission’ to said military dictator would then go to great lengths (and perhaps some personal danger) in order to then go to the dictator (who has just recently begged and gotten his permission) in order to himself beg the dictator not to torture the people whom he has just recently authorized the dictator to kidnap. To what sort of a mind would these dots appear connect-able?
And the answer is …
I just wanted to say
You keep talking about morality but keep skipping things like child endangerment and torture if it's your side doing it. No one believes your moral. That makes it hard for you because you pretend to have morality down not just for you but for everybody else. But you skip torture and child abuse. Hence your dilema.
….the answer is that if you sit on the side-lines, you're an evil priest that did nothing ala Pope Pius XII, and if you engage in the battle, you're an evil priest. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The evil ones will slime our priests with their lies no matter what they or even if they were there, or not.
Isn't it interesting what quick studies these lefties are when it comes to trolling the web-waves for the mere hint of a conjured scandal.
I am quite positive that the position Pope Francis held against Marxist liberation theology and his position on baby-killing (aka abortion), gay marriage and female priests has nothing to do with the lefts reception and perceptions of him.
All is well so long as the evil, Godless secular progressives are unhappy with our Pope. That means, we're doing our job. This cross won't be any heavier than those of the past 2000 years.
Yes, the secular press couldn’t wait to take the shine off! They were trawling through everything to try to dig up some dirt. Pathetic really and smacks of desperation. Jim, we are all on the same side. We want truth and I am truly sorry for what you went through. But many are just interested in smear. Where there has been real crime done we want it addressed and dealt with in the courts. There seem to be many, however, who have decided that they wish to damage the Catholic church because it stands against many things with which they don’t agree. And they are not going to let a little thing like truth stand in the way!
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0609/066_print.html
It's old (must be today's magic word), but, it is worth revisiting (for perspective) in light of the past ten years.
Faithful Catholics consider torture and child abuse wrong and evil. We were warned about wolves in sheeps clothing. We need to do a better job of chasing them out of the flock. Restorative/reparative justice does not work for these offenders, in or out of the Church.
On the other hand, secular progressives, atheists and the rest of the left embrace the criminals commiting those very same crimes, whether from the current White House or from the underbelly of the deviant homosexual and pedophile subcultures that rot away at your leftist/socialist/communist communities.
And, that it the difference bewteen the just/righteous and the unjust/leftist. We actually have morals and standards while your unholy relativism has neither.
Great catch, TMR, keeping the cached version of the WaPo article. It's an odd article indeed. It almost feels like they didn't want to write it but were forced to – because intelligent media outlets have been pointing out recently that the historical clergy abuse cases have been used as an (anachronistic) excuse to excoriate today's Church and push for various abominations like gay marriage and priestesses by the unhinged secular fundamentalist media. You can feel the WaPo almost choking on its words as it desperately tries to spin something from this tawdry story – heroic hold-outs? But it bizarrely goes to some lengths to describe just how irrelevant these anti-Catholic bigots have become, before being reined in in the post-cached version. Whoops! Somebody didn't toe the line. The NYT has become so ridiculous in its bigotry that it is being openly criticized by its competitors. Now the WaPo seems to be throwing the towel in. And SNAP is clearly a demoralized, spent force. Oh dear, the walls truly are crumbling all round the sorry loves.
Mark,
Check this out: http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/Martin_Baron
"Baron's editorial helm at the Globe has shifted the paper's coverage of international events to locally centered investigative journalism.
We are so blessed to live in a country with soldiers who fight what we fear, not us.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/13/a_troubling_after-image_of_stalin_60_years_after_his_death__117396.html_
If us leftists are rotting away, How come we keep winning? We keep winning because like in Argentina the people want justice for everybody including gay people. Ever heard of the People? You know all those folks out there you pretend are lost but that your Alinskyism (truth) can only save..
If TMR permits, I’d like to mention an issue that has arisen over on the BigTrial site about the second Philly case. Some readers here may be following that site so I won’t repeat much. But I think the issue that has arisen bears on an understanding of the dynamics of the Abuse Matter and prosecutions in the Abuse Matter generally.
Mr. Cipriano has a rather acute March 14th article on errors in the Philly Grand Jury Report of 2011 (there was also one issued in 2005). This has started a discussion in the Comments about the nature and role of the Grand Jury.
A bit of background: the purpose of the Grand Jury is to determine if a prosecutor has enough evidence to bring Charges. The Grand Jury thus exists to consider the evidence that the prosecutor has, and for the vital purpose of determining if that evidence warrants Charges and a trial. In a Grand Jury presentment, there is no judge and there are no defense attorneys; it is purely an affair dominated by the prosecution, in which the Jurors (not screened for bias in any way) are led by the prosecutor through such documentary evidence and testimonial evidence (from witnesses – who must appear in the session without benefit of counsel) as the prosecution has compiled. If the Jurors are in agreement with the prosecution, then they will approve the prosecution’s bringing Charges, and if not, not. (In Fiscal Year 2000, in this country, out of some 59 thousand-plus suspects, Grand Jurors refused the prosecution in only 29 instances.)
One anonymous commenter, who seems to imply a working – if not also professional – knowledge of the legal system and its workings, has said that material presented to a Grand Jury does not constitute evidence; and thus the prosecutor has to prove all of the Charges in the trial itself. But, the anonymous commenter continues, one cannot expect that what the DA presents to the Grand Jury is actually “evidence”. Frequently, this commenter says, prosecutors will embellish or otherwise accentuate their case when presenting it to the Grand Jury.
The thought quickly occurs to me: if a Grand Jury is expected to examine the actual evidence that a prosecutor has, but the prosecutor is not required to provide evidentiary-grade material, then how is the Grand Jury supposed to perform its assigned and intended mission? And consequently what validity does any subsequent Report by that Jury have? To what extent might its Report be deranged by the inaccurate information fed to it by prosecutors supposedly guiding the Jurors through the warrantable evidence for bringing Charges?
Further, since Grand Jurors are not screened for bias in any way, then it seems hardly a difficulty for an enterprising prosecutor to manage a rather ‘friendly’ bunch of Jurors. And this would be especially so if the public (from whom the ranks of all jurors are chosen) has already been pre-soaked in some form of PR Stampede such that they are convinced that they “know” “what everybody knows” about the subject of the prosecutor’s presentment.
So it seems to me – thanks to Mr. Cipriano’s recent work and the comments that his site has sparked – that the Grand Jury also becomes a possible (perhaps probable) tool in creating – not simply prosecuting – Abuse cases.
So SNAP and VOTF are fading away. Let's see if the same is true here in Australia of Broken Rites.
Lefties keep "winning" because they cheat, lie and steal, all with the complicit and corrupt media's assist. Why are good people in bad neighborhoods overrun by thugs? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do thugs, liars and cheats get elected,and re-elected? Why are our childre indoctrinated by socialists in the public school system? Only God knows.
We're just in a bad cycle. Not to worry, it's about to break for the better. Hang in there, there's still time to save our country, the world (as we leave that "leading from behind rap, well, BEHIND), and even you.
Hello Publion,
Nice job on your comments on Cipriano's Big Trial Net regarding the Philadelphia Grand Gury possibly creating sexual abuse cases.
Why don't you post this or something like it on Ralph's site?
Joe
Responding to Joe1944: Joe, I've been following that site faithfully and nice work on your comments on that site. It's getting a little rackety over there comment-wise and I can only handle just so much 'rackety' in my day.
Please feel free to adapt my comments from here and put them up over there, or just quote them, if you like.
You and some other commenters seem to have that site covered. If any of my material is useful for you, then I'm happy to support you 'from a distance' in your patch, but I'll stick to my own patch here just for a little less of the (admittedly valuable) 'racket' being generated by Mr. Cipriano's increasingly interesting and acute work.
As LBJ used to say: Let us continyuh!
Your on "a bad cycle" built by you.
If any one came up to you and said: My imaginary friend is better than your non imaginary friend. You'd run for the hills.
But beause you call your imaginary friend God and" call" my non imaginary nothing: "Evil Idols". That's sanity?
Since we are talking about BigTrial comments, I just point out for TMR readers that one of our more rackety and sophomoric commenters on this site has declared over there on that site that the Philly trial is not really a ‘Big Trial’ at all – so (apparently) who cares? And ho-hum and so on and so forth.
But we see here yet another dodge – and one that will probably become more familiar as the Ball ceases to Keep Rolling: these trials aren’t really that important anyway.
But if the Philly trial – which is as best I know the only Abuse-Matter trial of note going on anywhere – is not important, than what trial is?
Especially since all the other purported proofs of the Abuse-nik cause succeeding – in LA, in Holland, in Ireland, at the International Criminal Court in the Hague – have all been exposed as fraudulent or have disappeared, then what public assessment of evidence and what examples of the derangement created by this Stampede are left for public review and discussion?
We are approaching – it seems to me – a point similar to what would have happened back in the day (perhaps still today) if a gaggle of KISS fans and roadies (with all due respect to that band) suddenly realized that folks didn’t have a high opinion of the band.
But the Abuse Matter is, of course, on a far different level of importance for public discourse and deliberation (again, with all due respect to that band itself).
It also strikes me that there is a larger contextual point to the Abuse Matter and its enabling Stampede: given the tremendous (and so often deep and negative) consequences of secularist-elite policies that are now becoming difficult to ignore in this country, it becomes even more vital to de-legitimize as much as possible one of the still-strong alternative sources of belief and meaning for many Americans, i.e. the Church.
Once again, the Church finds herself a target for political elites desperately in need of a public distraction from their own failures. This has happened in many times and places throughout her history.
Your corporate hierarchs are a "political elite" of the first water. No one elected save the Pope and he by appointed Cardinals.
And isn't this entire blog built as a "distraction" for the Church's " own failures"?
People who live in glass houses etc.
And, here I thought all the while that the problem was with claims of a church abuse sex scandal cover-up, and not with the Catholic religion or our beliefs. If you're (the left's) only problem is with the "scandal", such that it isn't, why is it the (you) church detractors always deteriorate into diatribes against the Faith?
Oh please don't be a nit wit. I'm an athiest . You use God as a reason for everything you do. I respond personally that i don't believe in God.
That's it . It's me personally argunig with you personally. I don't represent anyone but me just as you,at least as far as I know, don't represent anyone but you.
Quit dehumanizing me. I'm a person with my opinions just as you are a person with your opinions; and that's all it is..
Not believing in your religion is not the same thing as attacking your religion.
That's the problem with some religious people . You don't believe what they believe? Your "attacking them". Nonsense!