A rally to drive out Newark Archbishop Myers is a bust.
Recent reporting from the New Jersey Star-Ledger about Newark Archbishop John J. Myers and his handling of a now-deceased priest in the Diocese of Peoria back in the 1990s would have you believe that New Jersey Catholics are rabidly up in arms to the point that they are fervently seeking Myers' removal.
However, the meager gathering for an August 20, 2013, rally outside Newark's archdiocesan headquarters, apparently organized by local gadfly/ex-priest/"Catholic Whistleblower" Robert Hoatson, suggests that anger against Archbishop Myers has barely extended beyond the editorial rooms of the Star-Ledger and the basements of the usual Church cranks, such as Hoatson.
A whopping three people showed up for the rally last week seeking the prelate's resignation.
New Jersey Star-Ledger arrives for support
Yet the paltry turnout did not halt New Jersey Star-Ledger ace reporter Mark Mueller from eagerly arriving on the scene to work the crowd of three and lend his tacit support to the cause.
Dogged NJ Star-Ledger reporter Mark Mueller (blue shirt) pushes through the crowd for an interview.
Moments later, Mueller was even joined by a cameraman from local community television's "NJ Today," who dutifully recorded the historic event:
A "NJ Today" cameraman gives angry ex-priest Bob Hoatson (brown pants)
media exposure for the big event.
After Mueller escaped the throng, and the cameraman somehow managed his departure from the frenzy, well … the excitement finally subsided.
Time to order a pizza? A busted rally finally draws to a close.
Information Update:
Accused – Father Andrew D. McCormick
Charges – involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, corrupting the morals of a minor, indecent assault, and indecent exposure.
Background – Father McCormick is 56 years old. He was ordained in 1982. He has served at the following parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia: Saint Adalbert Parish, Philadelphia (1982-1986); Saint John Cantius Parish, Philadelphia (1986-2000); Saint Bede the Venerable Parish, Holland (2000-2004); Sacred Heart Parish, Swedesburg (2004-2011).
Comment from Archdiocese – Father Andrew McCormick was one of a number of priests placed on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in March of 2011. Since that time Father McCormick has not been permitted to exercise his public ministry, administer any of the Sacraments, or present himself publicly as a priest.
I am to believe this individual is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers, and since I DO believe in our justice system I will do that. However, if this individual is found to be innocent I can live with that, but if found guilty will I or we once again hear the stupid excuses ?
That action was in response to concerns noted in the Grand Jury Report issued last February. The cases of those placed on leave at that time ranged from allegations of sexual abuse to boundary issues with minors.
Last night he was arrested and charged withenforcement that they received an allegation in December of 2011 which led to this arrest. This is a new allegation to the Archdiocese.
If you have any information regarding this situation please contact the Philadelphia Police Department Special Victims Unit at 215-685-3251 or the Philadelphia District Attorney's Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit at 215-686-8080
why are you posting this?
because he thinks he is making a difference and getting the word out. notice how little or no media coverage this case has gotten because it does not involve an official from the archdiocese. ask yourslef what kind of advocate this fraud really is and where he will be next week? we know it will not be in the courtroom.
Dennis that's great you were in NYC as a paramedic. Dan Gallagher also says he is a paramedic on his singlesbee site (along with a pro surfer – LOL) Coincidence? Friend of Danny's?
Did the media tell your cardinals to cover up perpetrators or did they come up with that themselves?
If that issue wasn't there, there would be no scandal
Josie,
Your not proud of your local priests and the accusations they are facing ?
Also don't forget once this trial ends there is another trial for another priest scheduled to begin on October 21, 2013. Information on that case will be posted soon.
No Bam I do not know Danny or his mother or father. However, one day maybe I will meet him, and at that time I will tell him Thank You. Thank You for having the strength to come forward, thank you for being the strength for other victims of not only clergy abuse but all abuse to report what they have been through to authorities. I would also tell him that he will have his bad days and on those days he must rely on his strength as he did in the past.
Now you think I am a fraud and that is your right. But once again I came forward with information about me that I so much wanted to keep private. I did it for two reasons, the first being I have nothing to be ashamed of and second to show Josie how much truly a fool she really is. My life is an open book for anyone including yourself to research. My information is only a click away.
Have a nice day son.
It's quite difficult to be a newspaper reporter, because you have to be a mini-expert on many different issues. Make it a Catholic issue and it's just easier to repeat what other journalists have written because it is a difficult water to navigate if you are completely unfamiliar with Catholicism. Liberal reporters absolutely tend to be anti-Catholic, and so there is another dimension to it. And as SNAP knows, dangle controversy in front of a reporter and they are going to bite. Catholics need to become more media savvy. It is one thing to comment on this site, which is an exellent site, IMHO, and another to write letters to the editor, send press releases, etc. Get the Catholic side OUT THERE. The ignorance among journalists is appalling, somewhat understandable, but many journalists are lazy and biased. I toil in the vineyard.
We're proud of the over 96% of the priests and their bishops that serve their parish, mission and God charitably, mercifully, honorably and faithfully, for over 2000 years – in every corner of this cruel and miserable world.
Are you proud of the much greater proportion of men (non-priests) that commit rape outside the Church; ditto the white men that perpetrated slavery upon black men and the black men that perpetrated slavery upon black men, ditto the men that beat, enslave and mutilate their women, ditto the men that perpetrate white slavery, ditto the men that offend against their own children, ditto the men of the legal system and the media that lie, cheat, steal (as part and parcel of their "jobs"), and convict honest citizens, ditto homosexuals that sexually offend, ditto black men who commit crimes disproportionately, ditto Islamists?
Are you proud of your Profiling? Does that Profiling only work when attacking the men of our Church or do you use it everywhere, against all men?
We are given an “information update” by commenter Ecker. My first thought, reading the first few lines, was that he was – perhaps not unwisely – refraining from revealing too much of his own mentation and simply putting up material from … somewhere else.
But then he adds his own bits further on, or some of his own.
First, the Archdiocesan press release – dated July 27, 2012 – is available through the first link at the end of this comment. As you will see by reading it, substantial chunks of it are simply repeated in the Ecker comment.
It was the AOP that removed this priest from practicing active and formal ministry simply “in response to concerns raised” in the second Grand Jury Report of February, 2012.
That “last night he was arrested” section – presented by Ecker without quotation marks – is actually from the text of the press release, and thus “last night” refers to July 26, 2012. The charges for which the arrest was made were based on an allegation made directly to a police agency in December, 2011.
The release further states that “this is a new allegation to the Archdiocese”, meaning – I imagine – that the police were the primary recipients of the allegation and did not inform the Archdiocese until the arrest was made seven months later.
The listing of this priest’s assignments is also from the press release.
And so is the exhortation for anybody with relevant information to call one of phone numbers given, to the Philadelphia Police unit involved or to the DA’s Office.
Ecker’s own material is in that “I am to believe” paragraph. If he can provide examples (accurate quotations, please, and perhaps an identifying link to the TMR article or the particular comment he is quoting, and perhaps an explanation of what he sees as “the stupid excuses” then that would be useful here; I don’t recall seeing any such on this site, but perhaps he could share his vision of what they might be. Or would that be – as it were – ‘a bridge too far’ for him?
In a Philly media article dated July 28, 2012 (second link at the end of this article) it is reported that the offending incident occurred in December, 1997. The article further refers to Seth Williams – the Philly DA – as saying that “it appeared that the priest had groomed a number of altar boys” at the parish involved, and the article and/or the DA urged any other “abuse victims” to “come forward”, although the article says that the police – acting on a list of possible contacts provided by the AOP – had interviewed fifteen possible victims. Whether any others have come forward or whether police have been able to discover any in the intervening 13 months is not reflected in the single-victim charges here, and it appears that the priest is charged with only offenses relating to the single allegant, who was “encouraged” (in July 2012) “by the news coverage of the abuse scandals in the archdiocese and at Pennsylvania State University”.
In a follow-on article dated October 4, 2012 (third link at the end of this comment) it is further reported that the felony sex charges against him were dismissed at Preliminary Hearing by a Municipal judge (although she retained the misdemeanor charges), but then the felony charges were re-instated by a Common Pleas judge “at a brief hearing”.
Certainly, in light of various dynamics exposed by Mr. Cipriano’s recent analyses on the Big Trial site in regard to the Billy Doe trial, there exists some very reasonable grounds for curiosity here.
In an article dated August 24, 2012 (fourth link below) further light is shed: the DA had argued that any contact - “however slight” – between an adult’s male organ and the youth’s lips constituted “sex” and a felony, while the defense argued that no penetration had taken place. The priest maintains his innocence.
The core offense with which he is charged appears to be forcing oral-sex on a ten year-old boy (making the allegant now twenty-six, if my math is correct); specifically, forcing his penis on the allegant’s lips and teeth, in the rectory of the parish involved.
The defense counsel is quoted as pointing out that if the Commonwealth needed to obtain a second hearing (in order to get the charges re-instated) then there is the clear possibility that the Commonwealth “will have trouble proving its claims at a trial, where the burden of proof is much higher” (than at a Preliminary Hearing). “If the commonwealth is on the ropes in round one, then perhaps they should reconsider this prosecution”, said the defense counsel.
The priest had been removed from actively practicing priestly ministry by Cardinal Rigali after the second Grand Jury Report was released.
I hope that the Big Trial site will follow this case. As with all priest-abuse cases, and certainly in Philadelphia, there rarely seems to be a ‘normal’ trial.
http://archphila.org/press%20releases/pr002015.php
http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-28/news/32890088_1_sexual-assault-sexual-abuse-mccormick
http://articles.philly.com/2012-10-04/news/34240198_1_altar-boy-sexual-assault-felony-charges
http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-24/news/33343435_1_felony-charges-altar-boy-sexual-assault
Thank You Publion for adding the additional information that I did not have time to mention.
Your not so bad after all.
Delphin – so THAT'S what this is all about? Thanks for the link to the article with Archbishop Myers' comments on the gay "marriage" charade. Now who would have guessed that those with ulterior motives (the homo-fascists) would seek to besmirch the name of a Catholic cleric who speaks the truth on marriage? In fact, whenever we hear a Catholic priest or bishop accused of sexual deviancy (barring the long-since-dealt-with historical cases), we need only look to what the ulterior motives might be: money, bigotry, vengeance (for whatever reason imagined) and attacking Catholic doctrine are the usual culprits. Such calumny and defamation has been going on for centuries. The Church outlives it all.
Thanks also to Publion for separating the facts from the…..hysteria. “….encouraged” (in July 2012) “by the news coverage of the abuse scandals in the archdiocese and at Pennsylvania State University”. Enough said. Ker….ching. Amazing how little encouragement some need. And how little evidence others need. Is Williams in prison yet?
When real facists, like yourself, Mark start calling other people, gay people, facistic because we want equal rights regarding marriage, only one thing can be said: Mark don't marry a person of your own sex. If you don't like gay marriage don't use it.
I attended a gay wedding of an old friend (since Christmas eve 1964) in Berkley the 26th. It was held in their living room on their 15th anniversary of being together. It was very nice. The next door neighbor kid, 4 years old, was the ring bearer. His mom and dad were very proud. There was real love and community in that room. It reminded me of the wedding in "The Best Years of Our Lives" very simple in the living room. Lovely. What business is such a nice thing of yours? How did that wedding affect your marriage, Mark? If you are married.
Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, but while commenter Ecker’s thanks are charming, I would be remiss if I did not state here that my purpose was not so much to do anybody a favor as it was to set a good example. Once one decides to set oneself to the keyboard, and for the specific purpose of providing an “informational update”, then one has committed oneself to the responsibility to provide as much accurate information as one reasonably can.
My own information came – as may be inferred from the links – from a simple internet query by entering the priest’s name into a search engine.
I had to commit myself to making the time available to do that, simply because to do otherwise would violate the integrity of the informational picture I had committed myself to provide.
I’ve always felt that internet commenting imposes its own discipline, if one is going to be faithful to truth and accuracy, and do justice to the subject about which one is claiming to provide information. Readers deserve no less; they do not exist to be manipulated, but rather to be informed.
I am familiar with the July 2012 notice that the archdiocese posted as well as the year old news pieces. I have seen nothing recently written or said about this trial dennis refers to. That is why I asked the question. I don't read bishop accountability so I don't know what they reported. It is redundant stuff, misleading and many other things that don't interest most people. Gee, Dennis, you must have all the time in the world if you read that. God knows you don't spend too much time reading the material here. You just throw out these bloopers all day long. Anyway, where do you see that this trial starts Monday-please tell us-no one is paying attention contrary to what you think so I don't think the spotlight is too bright?
"You go to church to pray to be given something or protected from something. That's a Morality based on greed and fear. Or maybe you just go, to revel in your own imagination; and that's called Narcissisum".
Faithful Catholics go to Church to worship God, and pray for the eternal salvation of others (here and hereafter) and for world peace. That is a morality based upon Faith, Hope and Charity (Love).
'Others' may go to Church for the reasons you cite, I trust your own experience there, with a subset of those 'others' who go to Church to defile the Sacraments, find boyfriends, or discover a new source of income.
Redefining words to suit one's ideology, such as narcissism, is the left's folly.
Some people don't have the time or care to do those in depth investigations or lengthy comments such as you. PEOPLE HAVE LIVES. People don't sit around a computer 24/7 as you and await for someone to comment so you can feel that you are making some intelligent response.
I could care less about McCormick. My support goes to his victims. If he is guilty would I like to see him punished ? Sure, just like any other survivor, parent, human being excluding you, Delphin and josie who feel because he wears black pants, black shirt and a white collar he should have a get out of jail free card.
Then you make the comment that you would like to see Ralph Cipriano and his blog cover the McCormick trial. I truly believe with that comment you do like biased and non objective reporting. The man who has a negative past in his reporting skills. The man who gave me a so-called lifetime ban to his blog only to send me an e-mail within a few weeks asking me to write comments again on his blog and stating "lets have some fun" Now don't you think if these were false statements that I was making he would have sued me by now. No, because he can't because he did teach me one thing by saying to me "if you have written statements you don't have to be Hemingway"
I'm no fan of TMR and D. Pierre but at least they have a set of rules even they follow and don't make them up along the way, and when they do edit a comment most of the time the meat of what the commentor has to say remains.
McCormick trial starts on Monday, but his case is not the only one that will once again thrust Philly into the spotlight. You have Brennan's re-trial next month (he should thank the Lord above I won't be on his jury) for abuse, and you have the appeal for Lynn also in a matter of days. the man who allowed TWO animals loose near a school. Yes I said two. One you know of as Ed Avery who admitted to abusing a child and has been in the media, but there was also a second priest who was allowed to work in the nursing home next to St. Jeromes school with accusations of misconduct towards children. Literally a spit away from the school playground were children go for recess and lunch. And what was his response. "I dropped the ball"
His appeal is not based on his innocent or guilt in his case, but a loop hole in the law if his job also MADE him protect children. What adult in today's world except for abusers, you and the catholic church feel adults should not be held accountable in protecting any child. Like I said before and will say again Lynn could have been the hero in all of this. Instead HE decided to be the follower instead of the leader and that is why he sits were he is and no matter if his conviction is overturned or upheld he cannot change what has happened to him or soon block out the memories.
Hmmm something a victim/survivor goes through.
'…. you, Delphin and josie who feel because he wears black pants, black shirt and a white collar he should have a get out of jail free card."
And, this is the main reason why the victim crowd has no credibility. They lie.
If they will lie, boldly [and rather obnoxiously] and in print, repeatedly, for which there is a clear written record of their 'newly accused's' stated position on guilty clergy who have been proven, with hard evidence (not railroaded by lies), beyond a reasonable doubt, to have harmed a child and the just punishment they deserve, then, they will lie about their own abuse story and they will certainly lie about their reasons (usually ideological) for wanting the Catholic Church to be persecuted.
You just got busted in another bold-faced lie. We don't believe anything you say.
"Did the media tell your cardinals to cover up perpetrators or did they come up with that themselves? …If that issue wasn't there, there would be no scandal".
The fact is that the media is fabricating the majority of the cover ups. There was some, to be sure, eminating from mixed motives on the full spectrum of reasons from sheer stupidity and fear to full-blown corruption, no doubt.
That fact is that the real abuses and the real cover-ups are/were not the norm, but the rarest of criminal acts. The media is lying about both, with lots of help from so-called victims and their advocates in and out of the legal system – all of whom have personal gains at stake, whether financial or ideological.
There is hard evidence of the persecution of the Church, more than there is of actual crimes committed by clergy.
And, that is the scandal.
If god was god he could snap his manly fingers and have world peace in a mila- second. But he doesn't therefore he is niether all powerful nor all good.
A good all powerful god wouldn't let the innocent suffer.
6 million children every year die from malnutrition. Some love. Why does your god need to be worshiped?
A needy god, great!
How does one defile a sacrament? Do you think your god is defilable?
Again what is this demand under threat of hell fire that your god makes on the next to powerless, mankind. We are powerless compared to it. Yet it, your god demands love or promises eternal flame? Superstious nonsense.
You aren't pretending that with out one tiny sherd of truth, i.e. evidence for your god's existence; that that isn't narcissism on your part? You want us to believe you or what you read. That seems to be pretty much all about you; therefore pretty narcissistic. Your god; your beliefs. you you you and more you. Nobody else is talking god and what god wants here but you and yours. God hasn't opened her gob. Hello Narcissisus.
LOL! this laughter is in response to your garbage about the rarity of cover up by your hierarchs. LOL!
All over the [edited by moderator] world, country after country, they behaved EXACTLY the same way. COVERING UP!. You can pretend it's not true but that's all you do any way pretend. Pretend you know what god wants pretend pretend pretend. You pretend we were not victimized. Hell you were victimized but you're too damned dumb to know it.
Far be it from me to engage in trying to conduct substantive interchange with an Abusenik simply looking to toss preferred piles and then trying to cover it over by claiming he’s just soooooo busy he can’t take the time to really do serious commenting work. So I will take a look at commenter Ecker’s 103PM material simply for those who are keeping a Notebook on the Playbook.
We recall that, having been caught in playing his old spinning-game under the guise of an “information update”, Ecker quickly came back with the excuse that he really doesn’t have the time to do anything more than what he does here. Of course, while he claims not to have the time to do any serious work, he makes it his business to make the most serious and sweeping claims, assertions, and allegations (and I’m only referring to his comments; let’s charitably prescind from whatever claims and assertions and allegations he made or makes about his own personal Holocaust experience of victimization).
Now at 103PM we are told again that he (under the myah-myah cover of “some people”) doesn’t have the time to “do those in-depth investigations or lengthy comments”, but then also that he doesn’t care. Why make comments at all, then? What is his ultimate purpose in making comments in the first place? To blow off steam (through the clearly limited piping system available to him)? To add his own distortions to the universal fog of distortions and inaccuracies already permeating so much of the Web (and the Catholic Abuse Matter)? Or perhaps because he is satisfied with the personal belief that what he puts up – even though he doesn’t have the time or interest for it – is somehow useful? Useful to what purpose?
And does a quick check in a search-engine constitute for him “in-depth investigations”? And is accuracy and truth not worth the “lengthy” comments required to demonstrate them (especially in light of some of the material that’s tossed at the screen by certain commenters here)?
We are told – in Ecker’s classic give-away tactic of all-caps exaggerated formatting – that some people (we are of course to presume this includes the variously super-busy Uber-Wig, Ecker) “have lives”. Apparently then Ecker is to be presumed to ‘have a life’, but that life doesn’t include doing or caring-about doing even the slightest bit of checking on his material before - in the midst of so very full, rich, genuine and busy a life – taking the time to hammer out something to toss at the screen. (Or – perhaps – Ecker’s commenting is actually a very substantial bit in that ‘life’, but its purpose precisely does not include accuracy.)
In order to effect that tactic, Ecker then has to presume that I “sit around a computer 24/7” (do I really, O Great Wig of Knowing?) and “await for someone to comment so you can feel that you are making some intelligent response”. Well, now, about that last bit: I do try to make intelligent and accurate comments, responding to material that – alas – does not always admit of rational explanation or comprehension.
Does Ecker – then – sit around all day making dreck-ishly misleading or skewed comments, and then wait to put on the Wig of Victimized Umbrage when somebody tries to make sense of them? No, that’s not his ‘life’ – I would say. Rather, he puts his stuff up and expects to be accepted as right and very knowledgeable and shame on those who think ill of it. And what we see here now is simply the visible irritation and confoundment at others’ not performing as the background herd in his own little version of the Stampede.
Ecker cares about McCormick’s “victims” and yet a) not only have we not established that anybody was his “victim”, but b) there is only a single allegant in this whole case and c) the combined police and DA resources have not been able to come up with anybody else (according to the Philly media reports I linked-to).
What Ecker is really going-for here is that in the matter of Catholic Clerical Abuse he isn’t interested in accuracy or clear-thinking, which – in that classic bit taken from ‘revolutionary’ praxis – simply get in the way of the ‘revolution’ and obstruct the achievement of the revolution’s ultimate and abiding ulterior motive.
Readers are welcome to make what they will of Ecker’s comment that the Big Trial site is an example of “biased and non-objective reporting”. Could Ecker explain that characterization in some detail? Or is he just too busy with his busy ‘life’ to explain his material and its claims?
Readers familiar with Ecker’s experiences on that site will recall the actual reason that triggered his being banned. So much for rational commitment to free exchange in the service of truth and accuracy. Ecker’s “ideas” (a rather generous characterization) were not the reason he was banned.
One doesn’t have to “be Hemingway” to write comments, but one does – as I said in a prior comment on this thread – have to have some commitment to the discipline of truth and accuracy … if one wishes to be taken seriously. And if one takes one’s readers seriously.
I am in absolutely full agreement that anybody – including also the justice system itself – “should thank the Lord” that Ecker isn’t serving on a jury on any case whatsoever.
Given what we now know of the Philly trials of the several clerics (or does Ecker care to point out any inaccuracies – accurate quotations required here – in any of Mr. Cipriano’s material?) and the fact that appeals are in-train, then it remains to be seen how those cases ultimately turn out. But even beyond the individual cases’ resolution, there remains Mr. Cipriano’s exposure of what most certainly have been demonstrated to be textbook examples of skewed justice deranged in the service of a foregone conclusion and agenda.
Further, in regard to the vivid but ultimately non-sensical imagery of children being “at recess and lunch”: is Ecker here seriously proposing that anybody was going to wade into the middle of a recess or lunch period and start raping or molesting or abusing? If not, then what’s the point of his bit here?
The difficulty with Monsignor Lynn’s case is not a “loophole in the law” but rather a violation of a profound and essential principle of Western law: you cannot be prosecuted for violating a law that wasn’t in effect when you committed an action. Otherwise known as the Ex Post Facto principle. If he isn’t too busy, he might want to do some research on it – it shouldn’t be too hard, even for somebody with so full and busy a ‘life’.
If he would care to explain (accurate quotations required) just where he finds accurate grounds for claiming (and imagining) that any commenter or article on this site holds that “adults should not be held accountable in protecting any child” then let him share that with us here. Surely he is not so very busy as to be unable to explain the rationale and grounds for his own claims? Or is such explanation not part of his business-plan in the first place?
Whether Ecker has the knowledge-base to know what a “victim/survivor” (again with the queasy, cheesy appropriation of Holocaust imagery) “goes through” is anybody’s guess. The key practical point – beyond the conceptual problems involved – is in establishing the genuineness of any particular ‘victim/allegant’. And that has always been the essential (and difficult) link in the process that Abuseniks have always sought to avoid.
So since Ecker implies (with that “Hmmm”) that he actually does do some thinking, then perhaps he can find the time to apply his thought and effort to explicating some of the issues I have raised here.
Didn't take much to trigger the usual ranting and raving meltdown of the lunatic fringe.
It is obvious that God is the main focus of their problem since they don't deteriorate into their usual diatribes with any focus on the sexual abuse of minors issue because we all know that would lead them out of the Church, far away from God, and right into their very own over-landscaped backyards.
'…why does God do this and not do that, why is he so mean to us..'. Oh please, grow up Peter Pan. Read a book, already, I could recommend a very Good one.
While you play childish Matron-of-Honor games in FairyLand (lefty Berkeley is so "over"), kids are being ruined by homosexuals (at over three times the rate of their proportion of the population). Why isn't that fact disturbing to you, is it OK because it is your own community causing that carnage?
You'd rather debate the merits of 'gay marriage" and the existence of God then have to face the fact that it is predominantly homosexuals that prey on minor males.
I suppose the next hissy-fit we'll have to endure will be the usual "I'm outta here…." for the fortieth time. How boring.
Allowing 6 million innocent children to be born and starve to death every year is beyond just "being mean" it's evil.
Can you count? Do you ever tell the truth? If I leave again it would be my 3rd time. "Fortieth"?. Since you exaggerate everything, somebody should reign you in.
There is one athiest posting here of two victims. Veracity isn't your strong point. Playing the self written part of a truth teller requires one tell the truth. Since that seems beyond your ken; why not give it up? The pose that is. When you start telling the truth that will be amazing. I have nothing to watch for; that day will never dawn.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/conservative-leader-abbott-expected-win-australian-election-polls-022037221.html
Predicting the DownUnder lefties witch-hunt against the Church may lose it's ideological fuel.
Also predicting life will get better for all Aussies.
Fr. Andrew D McCormick Docket Link:
http://ujsportal.pacourts.us/DocketSheets/CP.aspx
That's for you Josie since your church would like you to remain in the dark.
Publion, Where in my comment do I say I don't have time to do my research ? I reread what I wrote and I believe it says people.
Get it right !!!
Is this a put-on?
Commenter Ecker’s 1141AM link is simply to the general intro-page for the Court of Common Pleas docket page. So what here is that the “church would like you to remain in the dark”? Additionally, the docket sheet is simply going to have the materials the validity (or otherwise) of which have already been discussed above. If he is actually going to do research (instead of simply putting on the Wig of Research) then why did he not go a step or two further on that court site, read the documents pertaining to the priest, and then give us his thoughts (with references to the documents) on the topic. Instead he a) gives us nothing useful (although he could as easily have given us more) and b) demonstrates that his idea of ‘research’ is nothing more than mimicry.
He then tells me that he didn’t say he didn’t have time to do research but simply that “some people” don’t have time to do research. But if his comment was not meant to refer to him, then of what conceivable relevance and use was it here?
I think that in regard to comnenter Ecker I have indeed ‘gotten it right’: a) he is committed to his Wigs and nothing is going to stand in the way of that; and since his primary Wig requires an evil Church and all the rest then he is going to hang onto that too.
But also b) looking at his material we are looking at someone who appears to be capable of coming up with nothing more than tactical excuses for his failures, which he quickly throws out even though they are either illogical or incoherent (in light of other claims and material) or both, and then will continue to come up with more excuses and diversions as those excuses fail under analysis.
But in a larger sense, we have seen this characteristic in the material of so many of the Abusenik commenters here: claims and assertions which fail, and are then pooh-poohed with an excuse, and then the excuse itself creates more problems, so they come up with more excuses and distractions. The bottom line being that we are dealing with people here who are only on nodding terms with truth and accuracy and surely give no indication that they are or ever have been seriously committed to truth and accuracy or are competent in deploying truth and accuracy.
And instead will try to mimic such commitment and such competence. And then don assorted Wigs of outrage and umbrage when their material is again exposed.
These are people who made claims and allegations and continue to do so. And readers are welcome to give some thought to that.
Just food for thought, for the thoughtful-
http://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/prosecutorial-misconduct
There is no pain on God's green earth as the pain of another human being destroying the entire future of your child, he or she, of whom you have attempted to nurture to be ALL HE OR SHE CAN BE and anyone who has not experienced this pain has no business talking or joking about it. This is one subject about which you must feel on a personal level for the 43 years that I have felt it as have many friends with whom I share their pain!!
Ms. Taylor, thank you. You've expressed the reality of sexual abuse.
Some interesting stats…"just the tip of the iceberg".
And, these cases had actual 'witnesses and evidence'. Imagine the numbers of convicted "innocents" sans any evidence and chock-full-of bucks for the "victims, their liars (err, lawyers) and prosecutors who are either promoted or jump into private practice based upon their conviction rates.
http://theweek.com/article/index/228292/25-years-of-wrongful-convictions-by-the-numbers#
Delphin,
I am really starting to believe you don't give a damn about your priests. What you really care about is how much money each victim/survivor is awarded because of the pain your clergy has inflicted upon them. Are you jealous ? I'm sure any victim/survivor would love to turn the time of hands back so they would not of had their childhood stolen from them.
We know how much you hate homosexuals just by the words you place on this blog without being at least man enough to come out and say it.
Grow up people your church, its leaders, and its clergy are being trashed because they deserve it. Next time you go to church look around at those empty pews, they tell the truth.
Yes that is only the link. But it is the link to enter the information that they request. Such as name, common pleas court, criminal case and so forth.
I did not know I would have to hold your hand like a little child and walk you through the steps.
Can't you people do anything on your own ?
Innocent priests and their families feel pain, also.
No one is minimizing the pain of real victims of abuse.
And not enough are worried about the pain caused by wrongful convictions.
Liar!, you are a liar. You can't even name any innocent priests in this country that a jury didn't convict.
1. http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/madison-priest-acquitted-in-sexual-assault/article_dfe349a4-1fce-11e1-bb34-001871e3ce6c.html
2. http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/105858723.html
3. http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/127337678.html?id=127337678
Gee Dave 2 of your referenced priests were accused by adults as adults. You've got one I know of another in Ireland. That's 2. 2! Out of thousands of accusations and you've got 2!
Please could you attempt to publish what I write in response to D? She/ He/ It says the most biggoted racist nonsense. Aren't you ashamed to print her dung?
http://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Priests-Falsely-Accused-Stories/dp/1466425334/
Commenter Taylor sounds the hardly inaccurate note that “there is no pain” as great as “another human being destroying the entire future of your child”. I would add that to do such a thing is also a grave sin – something that – rather significantly – does not appear in her comment, which focuses on the trope of “pain” (however defined).
However, a) the key to the legal aspect of the Catholic Abuse Matter is not to merely (if vividly) imagine the crime but rather to sufficiently establish if the crime has been committed by the specific person(s) accused. What has happened in the Catholic Abuse Matter (as a subset of the larger sex-offense and “pain” focus of the past few decades) is to become fixated on the worst-case scenario of an imagined outrage, and then simply use the legal system in a secondary sense as an adjunctive weapon to strike out at the perpetrators of the pain in that vision, wherever they might be imagined (or presumed) to exist. This is precisely why the Catholic Abuse Matter is compared so often to the Salem (and other) witchcraft trials: the core dynamic is the same.
And b) we see here clearly the tendency to i) imagine the worst possible consequences of an (admittedly repellent) act and then to ii) presume that those worst-consequences are and always will be the outcome of every instance of such an act. This dynamic is the essential lubricant of a Stampede.
It has not been established in any research I have seen that every single instance of ‘abuse’ (however defined) along that long and broad spectrum of definition results in the ‘destruction of the entire future’ of an individual. Indeed, common sense would seem to indicate that the species would not have survived if the allegedly long-rampant ‘abuse’ (not merely by clerics but by any adults of the species) had such totally-destructive consequences.
That is not in any way meant to excuse the actual perpetration of abuse by any adult upon a child. But it is meant to emphasize that there is (or was) a legal system designed specifically to handle such accusations of crime. The lethal civic consequences of a Stampede (the core dynamics of which I have described above as well as in prior comments) are that the public is inflamed by the vision – the phantasm, even – of the worst-case scenario and thus is led to unthinkingly presume that every allegation of such is true and that every instance occurs at the extreme end of the spectrum and/or creates the worst-case consequences. And this illogicality – irrationality, even – cannot but have profoundly lethal consequences for the justice system and the public sense of how order is maintained through a legitimate justice system that maintains its integrity and principles when dealing with any claims of crime. As we have already seen happen in the Philadelphia cases and as we saw happen as early as the McMartin Daycare Ritual Satanic Child Abuse trials (quickly repeated in other locations throughout the country) three decades ago.
Personally, I am happy for the Church in this country that the crucible of the Catholic Abuse Matter has taken place: the Church in this country had, I would say and have said, become something of a garrison-and-parade force. It is in that sense that I recently suggested that Rome declare the US once again a ‘mission country’, to recognize and require American Catholics (clerical and lay) to recognize just what a challenge faces the Faith – and indeed all religious faith – in this country nowadays. For this we need the mentality of the legions, as it were, rather than the ho-hum complacency of a parade.
More specifically, I see whatever instances of Catholic clerical abuse that have occurred as stemming in great and essential part from this complacency among all Catholics – clerical and lay: were all of us more vividly and robustly alive to i) the challenges facing the Gospel and the Kingdom of God and therefore ii) the great responsibilities facing us and therefore iii) the tremendous responsibilities that those challenges lay upon us … if we are more alive to those fundamental realities then the laxity that allowed any actual instances of abuse would be eliminated.
The Dallas reforms have demonstrated themselves capable of eliminating almost entirely the formal allegations of abuse. But that is only the first step, in my opinion. There remains the responsibility to embrace and deploy a more robust spiritual sensibility as Catholics engage the condition into which the country has fallen.
And that condition comprises not only a variety of cultural and societal and economic and foreign-policy realities, but even more vitally a fundamental collapse into the Monoplanar flatness and imprisonment within a merely this-worldly vision of human existence and potentiality and future. It is this threat to our common and individual “future” that is the most lethal and dangerous, not only for “children” but for all of us and for the Americans to come after us.
Then to commenter Ecker who now claims (in a style we have seen from other commenters on this site when caught-out in their mimicry and gambits) that he is not responsible for doing our homework for us – neatly packaged in a whining yet assaultive plaint that we can’t do anything on our own and thus: must poor Ecker (the Wig of Exasperated Goodness firmly planted on his head) then do everything for us?
His ‘research’ is the equivalent of claiming to have information on a specific subject and then linking not to – say – a particular article in The New York Times but simply to the general Times website; or claiming that a particular element in the federal budget is vitally of concern, but then merely providing a link to the text of the entire, multi-thousand page annual federal Budget document.
But this is not mere laziness or the incompetence to actually provide useful amplification and justification of his claims. There is an element of queasy sleaze in it: because in providing so vague a link Ecker can avoid actually having to tackle the court documents themselves. A task which is either beyond his mental capacities or which – he may well suspect – would not do his histrionic Wiggery any real good and may actually undermine his performance.
And yet he demonstrates a quick and obvious (and sly) capacity to somehow cover his tracks by blaming the whole thing on the rest of us. I imagine that if I were to put up an extended examination of the court documents here, we would then be informed by the Wigs that it was merely a verbose exercise in defending pedophiles or what-have-you. Readers are welcome to comb the records of commentary on this site for instances where the Abuseniks responded substantively to substantive analysis of court documents and other documents; such readers will find little in the record because the Abuseniks studiously avoid such engagement. And that is, I would say, not simply out of laziness but out of a sly awareness that careful analysis isn’t going to help their Game in any way.
Had Ecker done any work at all, he would have discovered that the Court site requires more information than simply the name of the accused (or the defendant); had he any respect for the readers here – rather than for his own Wiggy performance – he would have done us the courtesy of giving us a quickly useful link to the material that he himself recommends (presumably as justification for his position).
And thus Ecker concludes his vaudeville with the Wig of Exasperated Adulthood facing the childish children that are the readers here. He has thus – in that childish way with which any serious adults are familiar – gotten himself off the hook here (at least, to his own satisfaction) but at the cost of revealing both his own character and his opinion of the readership.
Wigs confer neither genuine adulthood nor character. Even vaudeville performers should know that.
Pain maybe a "trope" to you, you're the only one here who thinks that it's a tact taken to allow evil ends; but to a victim and our families it's just pain we didn't have to go through if your hierarchs had been protecting your flock. If you Can't imagine , or empathize with humans who go through that pain, it might be that the fault lies with you and not with us victims. If you didn' feel Constance's pain in what she wrote. Well that speaks volumes.
You define virtues like adulthood and character by your judgements (as I do by mine) and you don't qualify as having either, in my opinion. You are the protector of abusers. Otherwise why presume the hoi poloi are the liars and not the clergy? If lying was ever the subject I notice it's not the subject coming from you when your patriarchs lie. Why is that? Deny and hide. Hide and deny. You're amazing!
Inhumanity 'permits' the suffering of all.
What have 'you' done to change anything for starving children, you seem to spend an inordinate amount of your resources on frivolity, such as "gay" marriage, style-fashion, theatrics, drugging and hooking up, and protesting everything in our society that is traditional and good, among the rest of your usual OWS-grievance whiney nonsense.
That antiCatholic profiling 'sickle' of yours swings both ways – for which you should have a 'special' appreciation.
No entity on the planet, across all generations, has done more for the suffering, especially children, than the Catholic Church. A fact that even the lying-lefties cannot deny.
Of course, the only retort the left ever has to this inarguable historical fact is their massive distortion and destruction of historical facts (silly revisionists) that claim that the Church killed more than any other entity, too – which is pure rubbish so save your fingers the extra work – no one, except your own 'kool-aid crowd' can be so easily reprogrammed from perceiving the truth to accepting your lies.
Those lies have about as much veracity as the concept of 'gay marriage', which had to redefine the meaning of an ancient word and human practice (oh, what to do about uncooperative nature, our very basis for existence among the evolutionists?) to pass the laugh test - even among your own two-percenter community.
If you're truly worried about starving children, get off your antiCatholic soap box and start banging that drum, and then make the largest contribution you can to any one of the myriad of Catholic charities and missions that tend to those children.
Or, better yet, take your Church booty (anything left?), board a plane and head off to those netherlands of the starving - just dont the little gay cat thing out of the bag because you're not likely to have the rainbow carpet displayed for you upon your arrival unless you're in a Christianized country, where there will likely be far fewer suffering as compared with a non-Christianized culture (wonder why?).
No one stops you from making a better world, God has apparently given you many resources, so what have you done to alleviate the truly suffering?
Stop complaining and start acting.
Your god permits "the suffering of all".
Who's anti catholic? Have you ever seen any anti catholic demo's at your church's? You've seen SNAP demos but that's a ploy so that you could start screaming anti catholic. SNAP is YOU. I'm anti god as defined by anyone. I'm not against people. When has their been a headline about anti catholic mobs ravaging believers?????? Where? Being held responsable for actions committed by your leadership against your own children is not a persecution by any stretch of even the most gullable of imaginations. Except somehow here.
Isn't Uganda a christianized country? Can't be gay there. Can't be gay in other African "christianized" country Liberia for one. Does christianizing something make someone antigay? Is being anti gay people the primary not so secret secret tenant of christianity? Why? Cui Bono?
Why did the church change how people could recieve communion? Did it look too much like a sexual act? I'm not being crude. I'm being accurate. Freud would have had a field day. You see you've been programed. The Jesuits had it correcto: Give us the child and we'll give you the man. Programed to accept horrific behavior and if it's called good by the right person(s) It becomes good to you. If it was done in the name of a god you don't believe in you'd be appalled but because it's done in your god's name. It's o.k. Hence every real persecution that's ever been launched any where.
By the way D, posting here is an attempt on my part to "alleviate the truly suffering".
[edited by moderator]
Words of Wisdom for those of us that are still too blind to see or too deaf to hear-
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/08/are-believer-in-exile-invite-to-try-god-again/
God who, which one? Yours or Mohamed's? Your an athiest about all gods but your own. How lucky you were to be born into the "right' religion. Yea, you were.
Thanks, Delphin. A very impressive interview. Anne Lotz is charasmatic and humble.
charismatic
More from the journalistic angle and the Anderson Axis.
An AP article reports that in Boston a few days ago (see link at bottom of this comment) that area’s most notable tortie practitioner of the Anderson strategy press-released the names of seven persons (5 priests, a nun and a lay choir director) for allegations against whom that Archdiocese has settled within the past year.
This strikes me as interesting for several reasons.
First, the alleged abuse occurred between 1963 and 1985, thus 28 to 50 years ago.
Second, at least four of the accused are deceased (for how long and did they have a chance to defend themselves or were they already dead when the allegations were made?). The whereabouts of two of the priests and the nun are not known nor is any information as to whether they are living or dead. The article does not go into any further depth on this aspect of thing.
Third, the settlements were each settled for amounts ranging from the high-five-figures to the low-six-figures; thus perhaps from somewhere between – say – 75 thousand and 125 thousand dollars. That this particular attorney, well known for his immensely lucrative settlements in Catholic Abuse cases, would settle for such comparatively paltry sums is a point that the article does not pursue.
Fourth, this attorney does such press-releasing of names “periodically”, while simultaneously excoriating the Church for not doing the same. Yet in this case four of the settlement-targets (their guilt not having been formally established by trial – such as trials are in this type of case nowadays) are dead and the others must be rather advanced in years. So this bit leads me to think that the attorney is simply tossing in his usual boilerplate, although it is actually irrelevant to the cases that he has named in his press-release.
Fifth, the attorney claims that “public disclosures are necessary for the victims to heal and also as a matter of public safety, if the alleged abuser is still alive”. In regard to the ‘healing’ bit: I don’t see where it is so much a matter of being a necessary element of ‘healing’ (a term which begs definition in this context) as it is either of i) vengeance on the part of the allegant or ii) a further nail driven into the coffin of any possible future examination of the allegation and/or iii) the tortie’s opportunistic use of the names for the purpose of drumming up more business. (In (iii) the cleric is thus used – as old time meatpackers used to do with the carcasses of animals – for every possible bit of profit and advantage to the tortie.)
And “public safety”, as I said, seems clearly irrelevant here: even if the three unaccounted-for are still alive, they are well along in years. Again I see this as a form-letter type of boilerplate to be used in the texts of any press-release that reveals names.
Sixth, the article gives a valentine to The Boston Globe by describing it as the media outlet that made the Catholic Abuse Crisis ‘break’ “nationally” in 2002. We have already seen the actual dynamics and tactics and objectives of that paper in D’Antonio’s book (where, by the most amazing coincidence, it was precisely this attorney who forged an Anderson Axis with the Globe back then, playing as well on the ulterior personal and professional motives of its then-new editor who was looking to make a splash for himself).
Seventh, one of the allegants claimed that long-ago her target-accused had reached under her clothes and “fondled her chest”, so much so that – she says – his nails left a physical scar. This is clearly a case that would not be able to stand on its own, and one in which the particular physical ‘evidence’ could quite easily be alternatively explained.
Be that as it may, the Archdiocese settled – for whatever reasons.
Eighth, the attorney is mentioned as saying that “despite the decreased media coverage, the clergy sex abuse crisis is on-going”. And yet clearly what we see in this report does not support that since these cases are anywhere from three to five decades old. More standard boiler-plate trying to a) maximize the use of the carcasses but also trying to b) Keep The Ball Rolling (although the size of the settlements indicate that the Ball Is Not Rolling quite so fast and lucratively any longer).
And he is directly quoted as saying that “I don’t expect it ever to end”. I would call this a manipulative expression of a ‘hope’, coming from a person who – like a Cold War defense contractor back in the day – has every motivation to make the ‘Reds’ seem as dangerous and powerful as possible. Otherwise he loses the income that is thrown at him out of public fear that he himself has helped to whip-up and is trying to keep at fever-pitch.
Ninth: I wouldn’t call this AP bit a ‘report’ so much as the stenography of a press-release sent to the ‘reporter’ by this attorney. There is no effort to examine the assertions or background of the information that is ‘reported’ and everything plays to the advantage of the press-releasing attorney.
This is what journalism has come to in this Abuse Matter.
But I would also say that this appears to be where the Abuse Matter is now heading: such torties as are still trying to stay in the Game are scraping the bottom of the barrel, and it is only the continued stenographic support of some media outlets that gives any enabling help at all to the gambit.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/09/04/lawyer-for-clergy-abuse-victims-releases-new-list-of-alleged-abusers/
[Delphin] [edited by moderator] was talking about false convictions, Dave, not false accusations.
That dead priests can and did commit crimes in secret, while they were alive. This is news?
Hitler's dead. Did he ever personally kill a Jew or Gypsy or Jehovah's Witness or a GAY person or a Communist? Probably not. Who does the world hold responsable for those slaughters?
In California we are most likely opening a window to sue. I have a friend who was molested by 2 priests as an 11 year old. He will now have his chance to tell his story of what happened to him and seek compensation. And you will pay for your church's sins of ommission.
You should be happy to compensate the people you've helped to injure. (Helped by supporting the perpetrators.) That's if you were good. But you are the ones inventing fake persecution stories that don't pan out. And then you project that on to injured victims.
If I wasn't watching you do it. I wouldn't have believed it possible.
What's real persecution to you? Being held responsable for your actions? Where's the morality there? You have to make the victims out to be liars. If we are telling the truth somebody else is lying to you and if it's the hierarchs doing the lying . Well where's the all good god in this best of all possible churchs if it's leadership lies?. Not there? .
Everyone,
PUBLION NEEDS EVERYTHING SPELLED OUT FOR HIM.
So if you place a comment make sure it is something a child would understand.
See priest walk towards child, see child runaway.
Easy enough for you now ?
Hasn't it occured to anyone else but me, that a huge chunk of P's arguement is a smoke screen designed for a perpetrator to hide behind? Are you a perpetrating priest or layman P?
A simple yes or no answer will suffice.
Your question does not deserve even a simple answer. I would hope that noone else thinks the way you do. Without question, you are a very sick man.
[edited by moderator
If others here don't think as I do, maybe they are too busy imagining things, like the existence of a god perhaps.( Call your god Apollo and substitute Apollo's name for god when you talk about your god and see how quickly your beliefs become questionable).
Why shouldn't P answer. It's a simple yes or no question. Is he too good to be questioned? His behavior says he may not be so great. Maybe if you asked more of your leadership questions about their behaviors; there would be far fewer people like me, demanding they be answered now.
Hitler killed plenty of Catholic religious and faithful – yet, they were intentionally and quite conspicuoulsy omitted from the latest pants-on-fire rant - I wonder why? Don't they count?
Perhaps the antiCatholic bigotry is just so ingrained that the perpetrators no longer even consider covering their biases, um, I mean bases, anymore?
The fact is that there are fraudulent claims of clergy abuse, which means that there are innocents that have been persecuted. Why is that fact so distasteful to self-proclaimed 'victim advocates'? No one suggests that real victims should not realize justice and that real perpetrators should be penalized (a fact that goes chronically unnoticed by the professional lefty whiners). Of course they should. But, why is it so offensive to the "advocates" that we also want to see real justice for the accused innocents and the perpetrators of victim fraud?
Must be something besides the quest for justice in play here, perhaps a certain political agenda is at risk?
But, of course, Comrades.
But we weren't talking about catholics and victimization of catholics. We were talking about the lack of evidence for any remote flicker of persecution on your side . If you had any such evidence of persecution You'd yell it from the house tops and rightly so; but you don't have any evidence of persecution because there is none.
"In California we are most likely opening a window to sue. I have a friend who was molested by 2 priests as an 11 year old. He will now have his chance to tell his story of what happened to him and seek compensation. And you will pay for your church's sins of ommission."
And, as promised in a previous submittal by this commenter (think an overdramatized Scarlett O'Hara swearing 'never to go hungry again' as she grasps the soil of her beloved 'Tara') you can be sure that this friend has been thoroughly coached on exactly how to lie, err, I meant 'testify', to get his retirement booty from the bad old rich Church, sans any evidence, witnesses or anything else but a long-winded and tear-laced politically-correct story that does not even remotely resemble an actual [factual] case to be made against some poor unsuspecting innocent priests.
Notice, there is no mention of Justice in that direct quote from the 'victim advocate'. But, do remember, we're told by the 'victim advocates ' that it is the innocent priest advocates that are focused on the money.
Projecting again D? How do you know what evidence my friend has? Oh that's right you don't.
What other compensation would you suggest other than money? What else have you got to give? You're obviously morally bankrupt. Empathy is not a strong point with you. You tell me. What have you got to give that will compensate for the damages that occured? Oh that's right you don't want to pay for anything you've done. Believe me we all know that. Hence you are morally bankrupt.
And again you accuse people you don't know of lying and felonious behavior. With you the innocent are criminals and the real criminals are being lied about by their victims. That's your position and frankly it sucks. It sucks because it isn't true. And if you can't tell the truth how have you any hope of being considerd moral?
Justice would be much harder than money for you to muster. you're already lying about the innocent. Who would believe you but someone who needs to believe such lies.?
I have no idea who is more in tune with reality Delphin or Publion !!!
Or could it be they both have no idea what truly has happened, what is going on, or what future holds for their church.
Do they need to be sat down like a child and be told the difference between right and wrong ?
I give up on those two. The term keep it simple keep it stupid. They give it a whole new meaning.
Oh God, Publion most likely will want this spelled out for him also.
Dennis in accuracy, the anacronym is KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid.
KISS is used in 12 step programs. Addicts tend to complicate matters that their life can seem harder to deal with and thereby have an excuse to "use". FYI
Dennis, sociopaths don't care about right or wrong they only care about themselves.
People, who deny victims cases while defending perpetrators and their enablers, belong in a catagory yet to be named clinically. But sociopath seems good enough.
Dennis, you didn't walk, you ran into this one. You have adopted the "keep it simple (as in lacking in knowledge or expertise) keep it stupid" as your motto. Just stay with that to keep you happy as a clam with the confidence that you have acquired. However, don't waste your precious time, busy as you are, figuring a way to "spell" it out to anyone. You will confuse us if you do that and besides your spelling is not good.
The only comrade here is me. So stick to the singular. You should be able to do that you're all about the individual as long as the individual is you.
I would never coach anyone to commit fraud because a, it's immoral and b, it's a criminal offense. and c. there are more than enough real victims for you to deal with. The same victims you've failed over and over again. to deal with.
I'm amazed at the condescension and vapidity of the posts here by Jim and Dennis. So in their minds, if only we knew what really happened in the church, we would see things their way. Give me a break. Rolling eyes. It appears to me that neither has read very extensively at all on this issue. And Publion has. As have I.
The fact that Dennis and I were abused by your church, in your church, does not qualify us as having more information than you on said subject? Oh! okay…….??.
Vapid? Really?
Has Dennis' abuse story ever been verified? It's a claim and that's it. Another in a long line of individuals out for money if SOL is lifted.
More for the Notebook on the Playbook: commenter Ecker now suddenly changes his bit. He now steps back from indicting the entire readership and shifts back to me: I need everything spelled out for me. Referring to his failed mimicry of ‘research’ by simply tossing up the general link to the Court website, without sufficient information to actually reach any relevant documentation on the case he himself had pointed to.
We see here minds that work merely at the level of myah-myah cafeteria table back-and-forth. But in the process, so sleazily and slyly avoid coming to grips with the issues that they themselves have raised.
We are also so floridly bethump’t by JR, who this time around offers not even an excuse (such as: “It amuses me” to comment with “immoral” types such as are on this site). Apparently we are expected to forget everything that has gone before and simply welcome a new wise and insightful and acute and serious commenter. Readers may do with that what they will.
The problem with “pain” is that it is i) an entirely subjective phenomenon (not all people are ‘pained’ by the same things and “pain” cannot be guaranteed to affect all persons in the same way) and ii) it is – in a marvelous symmetry – ‘spectral’, meaning that anybody can claim to be afflicted by it and yet nobody else can actually determine that independently of the claim. A claim which, on top of all that, might well be merely mimicry or outright deception.
Thus the introduction of “pain” as an actionable phenomenon has – who can be surprised? – reintroduced “spectral evidence” into a modern world that had once upon a time grown beyond such things.
Let us not be long-detained by the many many things that (so he claims) amaze (and stun and stupefy and otherwise discombobulate) JR.
I would submit the following thoughts on a deeper theological rumbling that has showed up here: there is a distinction between ‘theism’ and ‘Christianity’. ‘Theism’ is the belief in some form of divine being(s). ‘Christianity’ is a specific subset of theism that is grounded in the belief that in the life and experience of Christ God has revealed the nature and meaning of human existence and experience in this world.
This is the core ‘stumbling block’ because Christ’s revelation is that there is most surely an unavoidable and profound suffering that is built-into human experience in this world and that it is (as the Christian community realized) a profound mystery that God’s love somehow still permits the consequences of human sin to affect history (and other humans), and many times in ways that ordinary human intelligence (i.e. unsupported by faith) will find confounding and unacceptable. This is why genuine Christianity is a seriously adult challenge, requiring a heretofore unimagined level of spiritual maturity – simultaneously drawing-upon and nurturing and sustaining a human self open to the fallen-ness of this-world while anchored in a faith-relationship with the divine love.
It is hardly surprising that such a reality (and Reality) completely escapes the analysis of persons who do not participate in the initial faith-relationship. Thus we see many such types – of varying levels of competence and maturity – claiming that a God who permits such pain and suffering is clearly no God or god at all. (And is there anywhere in the history of human culture a god who does not permit it?)
Personally, I see Christians as Resistance agents in the Occupied world of 1941, sustaining their efforts despite the nay-saying of those who say that what has happened (the Nazi Occupation of everything around) is pretty much the way it’s going to be and there is no hope for the Allies or any ‘London’ to ever redeem the situation and so we should just settle-down and settle-for the New Order. Thus the secularist and atheist collapse into Occupation by the Monoplane. And active collaboration with that Occupation by the Monoplane.
Thus much of the adolescent croaking we have seen here about ‘God’ and His presumed failures and shortcomings is just a modern (if adolescently-put) variation on the ancient Stumbling-Block problem that has been around since the earliest period of Christianity. The various croakings merely demonstrate that Paul was pretty much spot-on with his Stumbling-Block observation.
So the frogs (and their croaking) we will always have with us – and let us proceed from there.
Just a quick run-over of some of the lavishly-provided examples of the Playbook that popped up.
As to Sunday’s 439PM comment: we precisely do not know if the dead priests committed the alleged crimes or not. That remains the problem.
And it is perhaps an unintentional revelation that this new possible CA allegator will indeed by telling a “story”.
As to Sunday’s 701PM comment: Being held “responsable” is exactly the problem and has been all along. We haven’t really established the responsibility in so very many of the allegations.
As to Sunday’s of 459PM: Has it ever occurred to anybody that the Abuseniks here are doing nothing but putting up a “smokescreen” to cover the fact that the whole Stampede, like an inverted pyramid, rests on very very little demonstrable and demonstrated evidence? Also: No.
And if something has occurred only to JR, then … perhaps it has not occurred to him that there are several substantive alternative explanations for that admittedly odd phenomenon.
As to Josie’s of Sunday at 1101PM: I think she’s onto something here.
As to today’s at 134AM: Have we not seen the quality of JR’s own “evidence”? How reliable a judge would he be of “evidence”? Especially if it’s – as he claims – from a “friend”. Further, we still haven’t seen much that establishes the truth and accuracy of his own allegations. And indeed we have seen material here from him that would give any reasonable reader grounds for doubt as to his commitment to truth and accuracy. But as I have often said: the settlement of the brilliantly-conceived legal tactic of multiple-plaintiff lawsuits left the path open for allegants to claim that the settlement itself ‘proved’ the veracity of their allegations while their actual claims now remain hidden from public examination.
As to Sunday’s at 1029PM: Apparently the new scam is that anybody who asks Ecker to explain his claims or the grounds for those claims “needs it spelled out”. Even if that were an accurate characterization, then Ecker could demonstrate his reliability by thus ‘spelling it out’ (I’m sure he didn’t want his phrase to be taken literally). But I think that a) this new ‘spelling it out’ trope will be Ecker’s fallback come-back for a while now; because b) it gets him off the hook for being ‘held responsible’ for his claims while making it look like he is the Mature and Knowledgeable Adult who is simply being harassed by ignoramuses. Another chance to trot out a Wig and start hoofing the vaudeville boards with it.
And lastly, as to today’s at 156AM: we have precisely not established how many “real victims” there are.
With the possible exception of the ‘spell it out’ trope, there is nothing here in any of these JR and Ecker comments that we have not seen and discussed and addressed at length. Which demonstrates a) that the Abuseniks are not so much interested in trying to get at the bottom of anything but rather are simply tossing the same old-same old up on the screen (and do they actually then imagine that they have done a good day’s work?). And demonstrates b) that they truly were projecting when they claimed that if it weren’t for them we would “have nothing” to discuss on this site.
ONCE AGAIN the defense has asked for an extension to prepare for Comm V. McCormick.
Nothing new and NOT shocked.
However, what more does this "innocent" defendent need to prepare except tell the truth ?
Once again, Dennis, you have failed us and "dropped the ball" (as you have quoted others saying). You have not done your homework, been as bright as you claim to be. The trial date is February 24, 2014. This was decided on August 26. So there you go again, forcing us to just look up these difficult things ourselves.
I suggest that you busy yourself studying how Philadelphia court cases go. It is not like other counties where you might have as many in a month as Philadelphia has in a day. The defense has a reason to want a speedy trial. Sometimes the procecutors witnesses bail and more time is needed. Apparently, both sides were good with a continuance.
I guess that new bottle of champagne will be chilling a lot longer in your frig.
P.S. Are you being coached by SNAPpy personnel/torties related to them? Just wondering..
Yes or No? Simple enough to answer……
My friends' "story" could also be called "his history of abuse by priests".
What's your story?
You keep quoting from "the greatest story ever told"; but we can't tell our real stories of our real abuse in our own real lives.
Let me list the insults you've written above in order:
"Playbook". (I never got my copy. Oh, that's right you invented it for me)
"His (Dennis's)"bit" not insight or position but "bit". (degrading)
"indiciting the entire readership" (He didn't indicite me or any other victims here)
"failed mimicry" and "tossing" (Dennis must be an inferior and a loser)
"minds that work merely", "merely" (Not enough to suit you? Dennis and I are both inferior. So you also said about Learned Council, but only after you'd kissed his butt for being a Harvard grad. The butt smouching stopped when you found out he wasn't up for your toadying )
"sleazily" and "slyly" ( I guess with satan on our side [IRONY] we must be sleazy and sly. I never heard you call a perp or enabler "sleazy or sly" only former child victims. wonderful!)
"myah -myah". I don't know what that is. Anybody else know? ( Aren't we ever allowed out of your self created caferteria?)
I "floridly bethump" ( I wouldn't call anybody florid if I were you)
I need to offer an " excuse" for being here? O.K.! (I did but Dave didn't post it. I'll repeat it now. "I'm here at my pleasure not yours.")
And all that in the first 3 paragraphs of the above posts. What a shining example of intelligent discourse. (irony) It goes on for 20 more paragraphs of insult and innuendo.
He finishes his post's first half by calling us "croaking frogs".( Kiss me. I'm really a Prince)
All of his psuedo intellectual nonsense belies the fact that what he really responds with are insults and personal attacks.
No need of intellect with you. I will always return in kind. Mozel Tof!
Just an observation [fact-based] – it is the abused that typically become offenders. Just something for the professional victim crowd to keep in mind as they sling their mud (apparently, about the only thing at which they excel). "Mirror, mirror, on the wall….wicked Queen".
Another observation – why is it that TMR 'attracts' a minority of those that are not supporters of TMRs research, as published in the authors' books on the subject? The rest of us are honest about why we are here, basically as 'believers ' in DPs investigations into and revelations of the well-documented legal system and media transgressions that define the treatment of the Church abuse matter.
Just to sweeten the pot for both the believers and the mudslingers, I strategically placed a copy each of Double Standard and Catholic Priests Falsely Accused in a large gathering area (library/kitchen/break room) utilized throughout the work day by over ~800 employees in my home office and another copy of each in two field offices that house another ~200 employees (across three states). The revelation of the truth regarding this media-generated fairytale has expressed itself in healthy discussion, and much astonishment that another side of the issue actually exists.
And the best news of all – the pews at the Catholic Church across the street from the home office are starting to be occupied by more colleagues (primarily Gen Xers) every day. Can't claim that it is DPs outstanding research and writing skills that are responsible, or if it's just time for that errant pendulum to swing the other way – back toward the light. Probably a little of both, and a lot of God.
We can expect the wolves to get even more vicious, naturally, as the Truth boxes them in.
Correction to an item in a previous comment I submitted: the 40K active priest estimate is certainly national, not worldwide (kind of a no-brainer).
Well she's 180'd it.
Now we victims are perpetrators.
Only a catholic could come up with this and hand it to the people injured as "fact".
Perpetrators also put their pants on one leg at a time does that mean all pants wearers are perpetrators?
This is what no morality brings you. You are not the way; not the truth; and certainly not the light.
What you are is…….. Just guess what I think you are.
Delphin,
i have been finding more and more that people get it now-the media bias and the out of control hunt for victims by greedy lawyers. People realie that fraudulent suits have been filed. I have talked to many people who are not Catholic since this business started and exploded; they get it.and are appalled the way the Church is still being portrayed.
I would also add that I see people in Church all the time, supporting their parishes,participating in the mission of the Church, volunteering and being a community of believers who have not abandoned their faith. It has been a rough patch ;the awareness that victims suffered is still painful but for the most part people are moving on knowing that the child protection policies that have been put in place by the Catholic Churchare like no other church or organization of any kind. Those that are still yammering haven't got a clue, but do have their other agenda. They were never faithful to begin with and seem more and more to be in their 70's and 80's so they are not really the future of the Church. Not many paying attention to the old protesters anymore.
P.S. Did human original sin cause your god to create a world where 7/tenths of new born baby sea turtles are devoured by birds as they race, crawl really, to the sea just after hatching? No pain there. What was the sea turtles original sin? Did they have a forbidden sea weed of knowledge that they ate of?
Your's is a brute god. Smashing galaxies for it's pleasure?
No pain there either I suppose.
I just watched this Militant Church guy Voris out of Detroit, D are you him? Your rap is identical. But he doesn't like the church fathers because he's too far right and they won't put him on their network.( In the "90's I directed the move operation for ETWN( or is it EWTN sorry] from Hollywood to Burbank.a friend who had left the L.A. Weekly became their treasurer and she gave me the job. a diversion sorry.) Voris is the product of the new catholicism the J.P.2 Ratzinger brand of catholicism. Obama is satan to this guy. Literally and Voris graduated from Notre Dame in 93. Wow! I remember when a catholic education made you smarter not dumber.
Obama may well be satan. I would have expected more pyrotechnics. Well he does want to shed more blood in Syria. smart move let congress take the heat. 72 percent of Americans don't want another war. Maybe democracy will work for once. Maybe. Maybe the economy needs a push. Spending on wars is all we seem willing do.Therfore we must have a war. Is that the reality for the number one moral leader of the free world? No morality there.IMHO
At 813PM last night, a curiously sustained go-through of my comments of yesterday at 1128PM and 1202PM by JR.
Let’s see what we’ve got.
I did answer with a simple Yes or No. Did JR miss that in his reading despite his extensive education acquired through “reading” like they do at British elite universities? But since we’re into such questioning: Did JR ever receive a psychiatric diagnosis? A simple Yes or No would suffice – but it’s a rhetorical question I pose here since the answer couldn’t be relied-upon anyway. To keep it simple: no answer requested or required for my immediately-preceding rhetorical question. However I would point out that with his tossing around of “sociopath” JR has opened the field and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The ‘story’ could be characterized any number of ways; that’s precisely why analysis and examination of a ‘story’ is required. Which – as I have often said here – is impossible to do with almost all allegations and claims.
Once again with the question “what’s your story?”. I have no allegations to make in the Abuse Matter and thus present no ‘story’.
We have no way at all of knowing whether any allegants are telling “our real stories of our real abuse in our own real lives” – that’s precisely the problem and has been all along. Nor has JR increased the probable-believability quotient for himself by his performance in material presented here. Would he care to put up here the relevant bits of the official Complaint relevant to his own ‘story’; this would be the one he swore under pains-and-penalties was true. Then perhaps we might have something more substantial to consider. Surely he still has his own copy of the Complaint from his own court case.
And now to the “insults” (and presented in some coherent order – most unusual).
“Playbook”: I didn’t “invent” it, I identified it – there is a difference, if that has to be pointed out. And that is something nobody was ever supposed to do. And the material here has simply been analyzed for more bits from the Playbook – which Jeff Anderson had pretty much put together as D’Antonio reveals in his book.
The “bit” is a repetitive trope deployed in lieu of actually engaging the material at hand. If you don’t want to be ‘degraded’, then don’t use “bits” and instead simply engage the material at hand. Handsome is as handsome does, says the old proverb. And we recall that incisive exchange between Molotov and Harry Truman: ‘I have never been talked to like that by anyone before in my life’, whined Molotov. To which HST responded: ‘Honor your agreements and you won’t get talked-to like that’. The ‘agreement’ here on this site is to participate in substantive exchange in a serious way. ‘Nuff said.
Whether JR considers himself indicted is JR’s business; Ecker’s statement grammatically indicted the entire readership. Perhaps those two can do lunch and work it out.
“Failed mimicry” is precisely what it is. It’s JR who draws from that observation the conclusion that “Dennis must be an inferior and a loser”. Had I wanted to make an assertion that went that far, I would have provided grounds for it when I stated it.
Ditto about “minds that work merely”. Also: kindly provide a quotation where I ever “kissed Learned Counsel’s butt for being a Harvard grad”. First, I never have accepted that he is; second, I continually pointed out the gaping discrepancy between his intellectual performance in comments here and his claimed intellectual formation at Harvard. Ditto about the “toadying” to Learned-Counsel because of his alleged (and highly suspect) claims and his clearly insufficient performance in comments. I gave him a brief initial period where I presumed his claims were true, but that period quickly ended when I encountered the quality of his material. And before long he was rather unhappy with my reception of his material.
As for “sleazy and sly”: I don’t have any evidence that any “perp or enabler” (more properly: accused) was “sleazy and sly”. I have, on the other hand, a voluminous amount of material from JR and Ecker upon which I have formed my assessments and explained them often and at length. And – as always – we really don’t know if we have ever encountered any genuine “former child victims” here in the first place. Nor have any of those who have claimed such done much to demonstrate their credibility or reliability in matters of truth and accuracy.
“Myah-myah” is what one’s little sibling would say as a come-back when s/he didn’t have anything else and had been caught in a tight spot. We encounter it a great deal on this site, but then it’s part of the Playbook that I have identified.
Who really cares what JR thinks about my use of “florid”? (It’s used in psychiatric diagnostic discourse, by the by.)
I was looking for an explanation as to how any rational and competent and mature commenter could so clearly and definitively take his leave from a site (yet again) and then return with nary an explanation a short while later. Of course, there is a rather clear possible explanation for such behavior … but I was giving JR a chance to provide a less-unflattering one. Apparently not, though. And, logically, while JR can do whatever he wants for his “pleasure” and it’s his own business – yet when entering into commentary on a serious site then one enters (see above about Molotov and Truman) into an “agreement” and therewith goes a certain responsibility (or “responsability”, if that’s more familiar).
Thus my “20 more paragraphs” worth of “insult and innuendo” are subsumed under my foregoing observations.
The “croaking frogs” was a literary reference, of course. But I thought it quite apropos on the basis of the material under discussion.
If JR can explain “pseudo-intellectual” and then how it is aptly applied to my material, then let’s see it … without merely deploying the Wig of Intellectuality himself.
But then – and marvelously – JR indicts himself in conclusion: if my material is “pseudo-intellectual” and JR “will always return in kind” then …
Again, what’s of use here is more bits for any readers’ Notebook on the Playbook.
Another observation – why is it that TMR 'attracts' a minority of those that are not supporters of TMRs research, as published in the authors' books on the subject? The rest of us are honest about why we are here, basically as 'believers ' in DPs investigations into and revelations of the well-documented legal system and media transgressions that define the treatment of the Church abuse matter.
James, I'm really starting to believe we are not wanted here. If I am to believe what Delphin has to say is the catholics have a new God in Dave Pierre (I think Bill Donahue would have something to say about that) and what he writes here on TMR or his book can only be considered as the New New Testament or bible.
Instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the catholics now have Publion and Delphin. I would include Josie and Julie but since I am led to believe by their names they are women they would not be welcomed to have a voice in the new church. Only followers as they are now.
….and you and I must be considered as the devil himself, with the court rooms being hell and the district attorneys the lions that are in the arena we are sending their innocent priests.
Now to be fair I will agree with one thing that Delphin did preach and that is you and I are the minority on TMR but he fails to mention we are the majority when it comes to seeing and applauding the convictions of their guilty priests, and if Delphin and his friends would take a step outside of TMR they will be able to see those facts too.
The following is a comment that I read on NCR by one catholic who feels to solve the problem of sexual abuse by priests now and in the future. This catholic is not looking for pity as those here are looking for.
"its not natural for a man to deny his sexual gift (to an adult consenting person). Maybe they should castrate all Priests in a Holy Pageant Ceremony at the Vatican, and solve the problem once and for all. They truly will be Celibate just like the Power of the Catholic Church insists."
This guy would get my vote for pope.
You are a hopelessly immature and,stupid man! You are actually quoting a commenter on an article written on NCR without even naming the article? You actually think that this commenter has any sense or is capable of adding anything constructive to the discussion about abuse? I am sure that the editors and writers of NCR would not entertain anything that your "commenter" has to say. As usual, you add nothing to the discussion either.
You must have missed my comment above in answer to your lack of information on the trial you think deserves coverage (there has been none in local news or papers) Being the sicko priest hater that you are, I thought that you would be on top of the story for us.(Maybe you are too busy reading comments on random articles so that you can make dopey comments here). Your bloviating does nothing for your cause. If anything, you are making people distrust you more as a victim. Someone needs to tell you (if you have any family,friends or advisors with any sense) that you are not making a good impression here. I, for one, cannot understand why you don't go to an catholic hating blog that can share your soap opera all day long. They are repetitiveand boring but you would get the attention that you so desperately need (and I suspect needed and didn't receive in your childhood).
Jesus Josie. So Dennis didn't reference by name the article he quoted from? SO WHAT? If you'd treated people respectfully; all you would have to do is politely ask him. But no you can't do that. Why?
Jim,
Dennis did not quote from the article, whatever it was. He quotes a "reader comment" because he thinks it is real nasty and pertinent. Who knows? He desperately needs attention (as I suspect you do as well)and he just throws these things out bcause in his small little, absurd mind, he is upsetting everyone. (He also has absolutely nothing to do but read and type all day long albeit he doesn't comprehend all he comes across.)
The "reader comment" he "quoted" was just ignorant as well as mean-spirited. He doesn't deserve any respect. Read his comments. And what exactly does he do for victims-he is a fraud as well as obnoxious far as I'm concerned.
The antiCatholic bigots need to get their religious instruction from another source, hopefully at another site, re: Catholic dogma, doctrine and philosophy on suffering, death, creation, nature, etc. I might only point out that unless you gain your sustenance from thin [purified]air, you, too are likely getting your daily caloric intake from other living things (which also reside in our water), and be thankful to God (at least, you should be) for the opportunity to do so (as are those evil birds being cited). We all want the lion to lay down with the lamb, some of just have trouble expressing that desire and recognizing that promise, accurately (with Gods help).
Is the dialogue here regressing down into the emotional and intellectual depths of "why is the sky blue" adolescence, or is it just another figment of my reportedly vivid imagination?
On the other hand, at least there is some progress on the political front, because, if even the leftist ideologues can see the errant ways of our current socialist/communist wannabe "dear leader" ('from behind' would be a vast improvement at this tragic point in time of our glorious history), then, that pendulum has been sufficiently primed to swing back to the middle (or sligtly right), where it belongs. We're certainly in the proverbial 'outhouse' when a Russian [former] KGB-bred dictator shows us how to lead the west away from war, and hopefully back to freedom from radical Islamists (don't kid yourselves, lefto-kiddies, this IS a global Islamo-Christian war drumbeat). What an unbelievable mess the progressive loons have caused for us, politically, internationally and domestically. Perhaps less "rainbowing" and more effective foreign policy and leadership at perhaps the most dangerous time in our short history is warranted.
We may consider ourselves blessed with a relatively painless lesson in humility from God, for sure-
Jesus' apostles personalities and characters ranged from the sweet and gentle devoutness of the Beloved Disciple, John, to Judas Iscariot, the traitor, with everything in between. It is the Judas' in our Church that grieve us, most recently.
There is no God-given law about how you follow (and fight for) Christ, so long as you do it justly, honestly, and faithfully.
I admit, my 'style' may be more in line with Simon-Peter, or the Archangel Michael. I am honored to be a warrior for Christ. Focus less on the 'style' and more on the 'truth' of my words (a good suggestion in all aspects of life). Substance over style.
And, I am also proud to defend my country. Keeping her free (as in faithful to her fabulous Constitution) so that her detractors, mostly found on your dazed and confused side of the political aisle, can continue to complain about how terribly grieved they have been/are, is only one of my many objectives.
Victims of sexual abuse are more likely to offend than other segments of society, that is no secret to anyone – but, the faux outrage response is mildly entertaining, just the same.
If you don't like the profiling I undertake to attempt to reflect your own profiling of my priests and religion, you should stop. You started it, I only decided to reflect it back to you (and the rest of your posse) by using it on your own precious protected classes. How does it feel?
If Judas hadn't betrayed Jesus (in your fairy tale) there would have been no redemption. Remember "Redemption" the very purpose your god sent his son to earth in the first place.
If he didn't die for your sins; you could never be forgiven.
So no Judas. No redemption. You should have made him a saint.
Commenter Ecker is now into making an “observation” – nice. Better than an ungrounded assertion, certainly.
But it’s a bit difficult to follow. Who is this “minority” that are “not supporters of TMR’s research” and yet Ecker includes himself among “the rest of us” who are “honest about why we are here, basically as ‘believers’ in DP’s investigations … “ and so on? As best I can make out the thought-sequence here, Ecker is “a supporter of TMR’s research” and a ‘believer’ in DP’s “investigations and revelations”. But does that make any sense in light of the material he has put up here?
Also: it is not so much a matter of “belief” when it comes to evidence; belief comes into play when there is no evidence that commands intellectual assent. Thus, for example, the photographs that are the subject of this TMR article. (Let me save us all some time here: in the Catholic Vision, in matters of religious belief, the faith-encounter with God precedes but does not overwhelm the intellect, which is then free to consider what it will do with the divinely-proffered Gift of Faith. What we might call ‘true believers’ (as the term is popularly used today) refers to persons who have preconceived notions and will thus reject demonstrable evidence if it conflicts with their preconceived notions or agenda. As I have said before, these are the types who will figuratively ask: who are you going to believe – Abusenik dogma or your own lying eyes?)
Then we get to more familiar territory: Ecker has a one-on-one with JR (“James”, if you please) to the effect that Ecker is “really starting to believe we are not wanted here”. Once again, inaccurate conclusions from the clear evidence: what is required here is serious discussion about a serious Matter; such is always welcome here – and such as is not that is what is not well-received here. Thus the personalizing and exaggerated conclusions by such as Ecker and JR create a situation that does not exist (but that does give them a chance to trot out the Wigs).
I am now – in another gross and unjustifiable exaggeration – included among the Evangelists. I hereby most robustly decline this honor. But if Ecker and JR bring to the Gospels the same flawed ‘reading’ competence that they have demonstrated here, then it is no surprise that they find Christianity a stumbling-block.
Or perhaps Ecker is simply exaggerating for some deliberate effect. That’s certainly a possibility, but then we have to wonder if the same characteristic was a factor in their claims, assertions, and allegations.
Then a cutesy bit with a feminist twist that has no other relevance to the matters at hand here.
But: if Ecker is implying that without the ability to be ordained as a Catholic priest then women cannot achieve the fullness of their personhood, then that says either a) an awful awful lot about the importance of priestly ordination or else b) doesn’t hold women’s ability to actualize themselves in very high esteem. Would Ecker care to elaborate on his thoughts in this regard?
As I have said before, the “persecution” image is not one I would use, but the underlying dynamics actually are very similar. And the similarity to the essential dynamics of witchcraft trials is – to my mind – even more striking.
And thus in such a condition of public inflammation, then determining the guilt or innocence of this or that accused becomes an even more iffy task, and outcomes are consequently cast in a dubious light. As I have often said, the trouble with a Stampede is that you wind up so fundamentally deranging the legal process in order to get what you want that the very legitimacy of its findings are cast into doubt. The hot ironies of historical process, no?
And it is an odd “majority” that never seems to show itself when it could be photographed (the photos here; the Boston 2012 SNAP conference). At this point Ecker’s “majority” seems more akin to Sasquatch (and, for all we know from what we have been able to examine here, so is the elusive ‘genuine abuse victim’).
And I no more trust Ecker’s capacity to identify an actual “fact” than I do JR’s self-presumed confidence to distinguish a “pseudo-intellectual” from a genuine one.
And from the 504Pm comment: who is looking for “pity” on this site, except the Wigs (if they can manage to hit what they think are the right buttons among the readership)?
It is – indeed – not “natural” to be a committed celibate; it is – not to put too fine a point on it – supernatural. In fact, and as I have been mentioning in comments, it is precisely because the American hierarchy allowed a merely ‘natural’ and “garrison” and “City Cohort” mentality to seep into priestly formation that have had such incidences of actual and genuine clerical abuse as have occurred. The multiple simultaneous cultural derangements of the 1960s should have prompted an intensifying of priests’ ‘supernatural’ grounding, rather than allowing a drifting descent down to the Monoplane. That would be my take on that subject.
Needless to say, I would not trust the responsibility of the papacy to either the NCR interviewee or to Ecker. But I don’t classify the possibility of such an event happening as being imminent.
She just makes it up. And so viciously too.
A warrior for Christ? Now there's the Prince of Peace for you. Is there only peace when we all agree with you?
Is it only your country or is it mine and Dennis's too?
What if John and Jesus were gay? What if the "beloved" got to third base?
The only protected class in America is the top. Since you work with 800 other people I don't see you as being in that percentile. But you're going to "warrior" it out for Jesus, to protect the part of the populace you will never, never be apart of. And you're at war with us who were raped.
You know St. Michael before he was an archangel was considered along with Gabriel in ancient Israel, god's kid. But when the boys took over and tossed out Mrs. God the kids were transformed into the leaders of the heavenly army. Onward Christian soldiers. LOL!
Hey why don't you go to war? You said you had a military career. Could you kill a few more Muslim babies for Old Gory…. I mean Old Glory. After all they'll only grow up to be Islamic. Or are you just another chicken hawk?
Do you even know what profiling is? How many priests have been stopped and frisked?( Not including the priest who was caught screwing a sex worker in a cemetary.)
I profile no one if a victim says something happened to them done by a priest I listen and that's it. I profile no one. I'm not in charge and you're not being threatened with anything but your own self imagined fear. All people are precious from all classes. Everyone but you, that is.