Masters of malice: SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris
Lest there be any remaining doubt about the nastiness and true motives of the anti-Catholic group SNAP, the organization is now publishing on its web site the personal phone numbers and email addresses of priests who have merely been accused of abuse.
TheMediaReport.com has examined two recent media statements where SNAP has published such personal information. In both cases, the accusations against the clerics date back many decades, and neither cleric has ever been charged criminally.
Below are redacted screenshots from recent media statements composed by SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris:
[We are not linking to SNAP's media statements and have redacted identifying information in order to protect the privacy of the priests.]
We cannot imagine any other reason that SNAP would publish priests' personal phone numbers and email addresses except to incite the group's followers and the public to contact the clerics and harass them. Publishing priests' personal contact information obviously does nothing to benefit victims in any way.
This practice by SNAP is disgraceful and only adds more evidence to the fact that SNAP is a mean-spirited and bigoted organization whose real agenda has absolutely nothing to do with sex abuse.
[See also: *SNAP UNCOVERED* Shocking Facts About the Media's Favorite Church-Bashing Group]
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Sunday the suspension of a priest who it had allowed to continue working for nearly a year after multiple accusers alleged he had sexually abused them.
It was only after "multiple, new allegations" surfaced within the last two months against the Rev. John P. Paul, formerly of Our Lady of Calvary Parish in Northeast Philadelphia, that church officials decided to place him on administrative leave last week.
As has been its practice, the archdiocese declined Sunday to release any details about either the old or new allegations against Paul except to say that in all cases his accusers said they were abused more than 30 years ago.
Paul, 67, could not be reached for comment Sunday.
The news of Paul's suspension came a day after parishioners across the region began learning the fates of seven other previously suspended priests who faced investigation by an archdiocesan review board into claims they either sexually abused or acted inappropriately around minors.
Reread that first paragraph folks. "Allowed to continue working for nearly a year after MULTIPLE ACCUSERS alleged sexual abuse" This from an organization who swore to do everything possible to protect children. How many parishioners knew of these accusations ?
I would tell someone to run and run fast and not look back but he has already drank the kool-aid and its pumping through his system. I can only hope there is not a third sacrificial lamb for him to ask the questions how or why.
Jim stated before its not our job to protect your children. But how many parents this evening after learning of this information are thinking to themselves we have been sending our child into a possible lions den ?
How many more priests are at parishes with sexual abuse allegations working with the archdiocese knowlege and how many children are being put at risk ?
It will be interesting to read how some will ATTEMPT to defend the latest news out of Philly.
Jim,
I'm tired of proving myself to these people. I or you could post a video of our abuse and they still would not believe. I can post here in detail the events of my rape. But why would I do that ? For some sick minded individuals we know who in the back of our minds exist here to receive a cheap thrill. I proved here my position as a firefighter (independent news photos) if they wish to doubt let them, if they wish to doubt my position because of bad grammer let them. The only conclusion I can come to is maybe they think because of the abuse we suffered at the hands of their clergy we both should have curled up and died.
WRONG !!!!!
Once again we are seeing the true faces of evil being plastered all over the media in Philly, and rightfully so. The faces of these animals are more scary then any horror movie especially to the children they harmed. It makes no difference to me if the abuse occurred yesterday or 30 years ago, because our out dated laws which prevents them from seeing the inside of a court room the pain and memories of a living hell does not run out because the sols did.
I don't know about you my friend but I am going nowhere. If it is not TMR it will be some place else. Until the church lives up to the promise of protecting children, something clearly evident they have failed to do in the case of Mr. Paul and helped those who have already been harmed by their inactions I'm staying right here.
p.s. Most likely my statement about the failure of the catholic church to protect children will draw questions from those doubting Thomas's. Remember Mr. Paul was allowed to work for a full year after sexual abuse allegations came about. What was the Archdiocese waiting for ? Another childs life to be destroyed.
On the 15th at 1006AM JR shares with us his ideas about what he finds “funny”. Not that there aren’t some rather substantial issues on the table for which he might consider the need to offer rational and coherent thoughts, but that’s not his style or level and – marvelously – it’s not what the Playbook recommends anyway. And thus once again we see demonstrated here the neat strategizing of the Stampede: luring up to the surfaces all manner of self-winding life-forms who will, on their own, keep ticking away trying to Keep The Ball Rolling, through any combination of stories, allegations, and distractions and so forth.
My characterizations are perfectly legitimate, in the absence of any convincing material that would demonstrate otherwise. JR might not like the, but what else would we expect him to try and say?
But note again: if you refuse to be Stampeded, then you are ‘smearing’ the Abuseniks (or – marvelously – you “smear their rational”). When all along that smearing is precisely the Game they themselves have been playing (and some of them have collected quite a bit of swag for it).
I have not “called” or “inferred” anything about anybody’s sexuality here; I go with the material I am given. Indeed, it is – but of course – the Abuseniks themselves who demonstrate a fixed predilection for making irrelevant and queasy sex and gender comments. Nor have I ever used the term “homos”. Once again, and as the Playbook would approve, JR avoids the actual challenging material, makes up his own stuff, and then complains of being victimized by the stuff that he himself has made up.
It’s ludicrous and it would be pathetic, except that in the era of the Stampede this sort of gambit was stenographed with a straight-face by the mainstream media. But that was then and this is now.
We are now informed that JR is “always ‘high’ – and so forth. If he’s telling the truth, I imagine it is to deflect too much thought about various types of impairment having to do with the mental or emotional; if he is not telling the truth, then he is just being himself all over again. If he is just joking (as he claims so often after-the-fact) then it’s merely irrelevant and what’s new with that?
Then at 1012AM – and I really never thought to imagine the actual self-satirization would reach so overt a level – JR dons … waittttt forrrr ittttttt! … the actual Wig of J’Accuse and delivers, on stage and with a stentorian bray and a straight face, the eponymous line. From delivering fake-Papal pronunciamentos wearing the Triple-Tiara Wig (what a doozy that thing must be), he now delivers the Emile Zola line from the Dreyfus case (wearing … whatever Wig goes with Emile Zola). Is there no end to the histrionic creativity here?
But words “bore” JR – alas. His alleged rapidly-promoted military experience as a passport control clerk must have been a world-class trial; there are only a few pictures – perhaps only one – on a passport, and yet all those … words. Ah well, JR is what he is. I certainly have never been bored by his material. And I deeply regret not having the artistic gifts for drawing the images his material prompts. But at least in some small way, suited to the capacities of his equally-capacious mind, I have “succeded” – how happy for me.
But now on to the news of the day – no good vaudeville roster can simply stay with the slapstick.
On the 15th at 248PM “Dennis” gives us his stylings on a recent Philadelphia news article. Apparently “Dennis” has only read some of the parts (hardly a way to make a proper diagnosis, I would say) or else he has been rather selective in his report to us (hardly a way to make a proper report, I would say).
Archbishop Chaput “has permanently removed five parish priests from ministry over allegations of sexual abuse”. And the rest of the comment is simply (un-noted) quoting of the text of the report (hardly the way to properly handle quoted material, I would say).
If we read the complete report we discover that: five were removed and two were restored. Of the five removed: two had what were declared to be ‘unsubstantiated’ charges of sex-abuse but were removed for “violations of ministerial behavior”. Now this is interesting, since it seems to indicate a level of Church clergy discipline that begins to resemble a State Medical Board holding physicians accountable not only for ‘best practices’ but also for certain appearances and deportment necessary for a professional. I am pleased that the concept is being implemented, although – as always when such progress is made under pressure – I am concerned for priests (or any persons) simply caught up in the new nets without sufficient cause. I hope that Archbishop Chaput – whom I commend for requiring this new level of performance – also keeps a steady hand on the controls so that the new requirement doesn’t run amok.
Then two others had no allegations of abuse against them, but were simply removed for “violations of Church standards”. And once again, my comments immediately above apply here.
The last one – the priest who had previously been cleared year – had another person come out of the woodwork with a 30 year-old allegation which the AOP’s officials found to be (somehow) “substantiated”. Following my thoughts above, I am interested in just what that ‘substantiation’ consisted-in; and I have to admit that from what little we know at this point it is perplexing: unless the priest actually admitted to the offense (which is hardly impossible) then what level of evidentiary standard is the AOP using? And whatever level it is using would have to conform to canonical norms (from which, we recall, the classic Western legal template was derived, some centuries ago).
If the priest admitted the offense, then the procedure is largely (although not completely) acceptable. If there is some other ‘evidence’, that would be something I’d like to know about. But if we are going to be seeing a Church-imposed Stampede to try to counter the long-established Abusenik Stampede, then – as I implied above – that would not be such a good thing.
But there’s insufficient information at this point to draw any conclusions and I do not do so here.
This leaves, the Philadelphia report continues, only two outstanding cases awaiting AOP action: one is a case which the authorities refused to prosecute and the other involves a priest awaiting civil trial for some form of ‘abuse’ charge.
I also note that although this Philadelphia article is only around 24 or so hours old, the comment thread on it has already been closed, after only 45 or so comments.
As I said, the value of this article is, I would say, in these new apparent levels of responsibility being imposed by the AOP (which, I have to imagine, has been done with the approval of the National Conference and that new commission or panel very recently set up by the Pope to advise on sex-abuse issues). And I think that – so long as its implementation is handled carefully – it is a solid move in the right direction for the Church.
And KenW, feelings, emotions are bad things? I did not know that. And showing one's feelings about being raped by a priest is a wrong thing to do? Could you show me where in the constitution of this country it says Thou shall not tell the truth of your life? Or even in the decalog, does it say, 'Thou shall not be honest'?
If the feelings and emotions involve propagating lies, yes, they are a bad thing. No experience that you may have endured justifies using your emotions to appeal to other's emotions to propagate lies. That is wickedness in it's purest form, regardless of how much wickedness you yourself may have endured.
KenW, What lies?
for starters, Dennis' gross misrepresentation of what is going down in MN
From JR (addressing ‘Ken W’, the 16th, 104AM; in a very uncharacteristically-styled comment for JR) we get yet again the now-discredited bit about “the institutional church who enabled the real Nazis” [sic]; this is apparently off KW’s characterization of one of “Dennis”s rhetorical ploys (about “children”) as being Goebbelsian. I point out yet again that it is the rhetorical ploy – and not the deployer of that ploy – that trails clouds of Nazi praxis. And there is utterly no basis upon which it can be denied that such rhetorical ploys were a major element in Goebbels’s propaganda praxis. And as I have said here before, the similarity in propagandistic praxis between the late Reich and the Stampede is clear – regardless of how uncongenial the connection may be to some.
So let me say outright that “Dennis” and JR are not Nazis. That they deploy various Stampede gambits and ploys that the Nazis used – is another point altogether, but an undeniable one.
But rather than address the serious point about that similarity in tactics, JR will – in best Playbook style – simply draw an inaccurate conclusion and then claim he’s victimized by the (inaccurate) conclusion that he himself has drawn. You might think that this is just a confusion, but it is a confusion-with-a-purpose: the discussion has now effectively been derailed from the actual point to a more congenial (because it is self-serving in that it can ‘justify’ the whole victimization bit) point. Classic Playbook – except that we don’t fall for those bits so easily on this site.
And (once again and again), here’s the problem: we don’t actually know if JR and “Dennis” indeed “were harmed” and – even more amazingly – that “afterward our entire lives changed radically never to be the same”.
And as for the ‘radically-changed’ proposition: this is classic tortie and Playbook stuff: maximize however possible the visions of ‘damage’ and ‘tort’ in order to ramp-up the damages claim. But it is also classic Goebbels: whomp-up the damage to whomp-up the outrage towards which you want to manipulate people. (Thus those grainy propaganda newsreels of German mothers holding babies who were allegedly raped and wracked by the barbarous and brutal (fill in the blank: Poles, Czechs, etc). But the cameras were only allowed to roll after Goebby’s make-up artists had spent time working on the ‘victims’ physical appearance, just as we don’t see allegations until the tortie staffs have gotten through cosmeticizing them for max effect.
And we are also back to the Causality problems and the probability that even a brief and non-penetrative experience of (alleged) sex-abuse can so utterly ‘change’ (meaning ‘derange’) a life. If this were true then the species would never have survived to this point. And is there something specifically special about ‘sex abuse’ (even on the lower end of that definitional spectrum) that can allow it to wreak such damage while other of life’s challenges and incidents cannot have such a globally and fundamentally deranging an effect?
Thus the stentorian direction to KW (“don’t dare to compare us to Nazis” [corrections supplied]) can be left hanging in the air where it was put – in what is, again, a curiously formatted comment for JR.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think “emotions are bad things” – but they, like any other human capability, have to be handled well or else they will run away with the wagon (the ancient image of the charioteer, trying to control the multiple horses – usually construed as Reason and Emotion – that pull the chariot, comes into view here). Thus to manipulate human emotions and allow them to run riot, un-balanced by any rational energies, is a key element in modern mass-society propaganda. (Edward Bernays, the founder of modern PR (although he considered himself above ‘advertisers’ and ‘marketers’), was reportedly very upset and even surprised when it was discovered after the war that Goebby had copies of the Bernays books in his personal library. But given the techniques and attitude Bernays embraced (manipulating public emotions is a harmless fact of life in modern mass-society and people need to be guided in their opinions and government should do it) Bernays’s surprise says more about his own self-delusion than about the range of Goebby’s professional reading.)
But in regard to the Abuseniks here: since we don’t really know if their asserted allegations are true (and the material they have put up certainly doesn’t help their position in this regard) then it can’t generally be accepted that they are merely “showing [their] feelings about being raped by a priest”. And that is a repetition for the umpteenth time.
Ditto then the various further bits in that paragraph trying to dragoon the Constitution and the Decalogue into supporting their claims. The key problem – not to be emotionally overridden by tossing-around documents of such stature – is that we don’t really know if the allegations those documents are rhetorically intended to support are accurate and true.
Although that paragraph’s final bit about the Decalogue’s requiring one to “be honest” is something the Abuseniks might want to take to prayer – or to whatever mental operation they might substitute for it.
The “Dennis” comment of the 16th at 1219AM is time-stamped after mine time-stamped 1236AM so I presume he did not get a chance to read it before putting up his own. Which is too bad since it pretty much undermines his own comment that further tries to make his case for against the AOP in these most recent events.
But this 1219AM comment again gives us no reference as to where these ‘facts’ are that he purports to report here. (I also note that – again – the we again see here in the text of this comment what seems clearly to consist of a great deal of material taken without attribution from some other source.)
But are we not back to the same Fr. Paul whose matter had been previously discussed here? And is this a fresh development or simply a re-hash (and without attribution) of material from back then?
I would also point out that if the allegations are under police investigation or are already in some stage of legal action of a lawsuit type, then they may already be restricted by operation of law. And they remain, at this point, “allegations”.
And once again we reach the matter of whether allegations and accusations can or must or should be publicized if they are as yet unsubstantiated or otherwise restricted by official process. Which is a point that has been discussed here recently in comments.
When one knows of accusations, just what more does one ‘know’? Until investigation is conducted, one actually knows little. And imagine the Abusenik alternative: anybody can come up and make an allegation or accusation – even informally or without police or tortie involvement – and … the Church is supposed to immediately publish that allegation or accusation or story as if it demonstrably had evidentiary merit?
The following paragraph (beginning “I would tell someone”) clearly is the work of “Dennis” and in a characteristic give-away it makes no sense as written.
And yet I think we can detect in it the deployment – yet again – of the classic Abusenik Stampede demand that we not allow such ‘technicalities’ as due process of law to interfere in giving the Abuseniks what they want. And the equally queasy and emotionally manipulative justification that to observe due – or even rational – process would involve another “sacrificial lamb”.
Ditto the further bit about “a possible lions’ den” [corrections supplied].
Ditto the further bit about “How many …” and so forth.
Then the concluding bit which – I hope it isn’t too presumptuous – is aimed at myself as well as, perhaps, others. (This convoluted reference to “some” here is, of course, the result of the histrionic claim “Dennis” made that he doesn’t and won’t read some commenters’ material – wheeeeee.)
So – speaking for myself – I don’t and won’t attempt to “defend the latest news out of Philly” since a) I am not sure what the true and accurate “latest news out of Philly actually is” (and my immediately prior comment expands upon the quality of the-news-according-to-“Dennis”).
And b) I don’t “defend” – I ask questions about dots that don’t seem to connect, in the face of manipulations and assertions that seek to move us beyond those un-connecting dots.
That’s “how it works” in the real world of serious assessment. Although it is not the way it was supposed to work according to the Playbook’s manipulative and truth-twisty objectives; objectives that seem as familiar as pie to more than a few Abuseniks.
So, that should all be “interesting” enough to any rational reader.
A bit of a tough last note for Publion. Because he is a writer and critic of writing, I always expect perfect prose.
"JR might not like the, but what else would we expect him to try and say?" [sic][sic][sic!]Yes, JR does not like 'the.' In fact. I bet he hates all definite articles.
" . . . hardly the way to properly handle quoted material, I would say." Hardly the way to split the infinitive and misuse the subjunctive, I say. And have now said.
"We are now informed that JR is “always ‘high’ – and so forth." My accurate quoting of Publion here yields one misplaced quotation mark in front of the word 'always'. This is strange from a person that always bangs so hard on the quotation marks/omissions of others.
Making some mistakes is no big deal, unless one writes professionally and constantly stresses the quality of their material. And that is, after all, all that we here have to judge.
Perhaps, Publion's writing was off just a degree or two because he was so baffled by the lack of essential information about the AOP decisions in that article. He did not realize before now that the church 'rolls' like this, as they say on the streets. Bishops admit what they must and withhold all that they can. Sorry they leave you wanting. The AOP has no interest in helping people understand what happened or how matters were decided. No information forthcoming. What right do you claim to any of the decision-making information any way, Mr. I'd-like-to-know?
Also, Publion, you sound slow and bureaucratic and unionized when you write about the 'new standard' for professional comportment and its application that you so critically hope is being brought forth and applied without duress. I know you are not that dumb. But you will apparently say anything to further your perspective, dumb though it may be. There is nothing new in such a standard for priests to behave well, really well, better than others. How can there be a new standard on this? And then, you are worried about how rapidly and harshly the new rule is being applied. Please. You make the priests sound like victims, you infantilize them. The boys did not know the rules. You have to give them a chance first.
They did not know how to act aaaaaallllllll the time. Where does it say in the rule book that you cannot do that? How was he supposed to know that he should not wrestle with young teens, for example, in his room at the rectory. He did it in front of everyone at a pool party too.
When I read the church documents and the news reports, I see accused priests admitting to all sorts of inappropriate talking, touching and situations and then insist that the really really bad stuff did not happen. I say that men who are normal would not do these admitted-to inappropriate things and would not have any interest in doing them in the first place.
But wait! Here is the really important part. The evidentiary standard applied to any cases of misconduct should conform to canonical norms! Yea, they'd better! That is really not worth pointing out. One does not need canon law. All one needs is a normally formed adult human brain in order to reason that some activities or conversation serve no legitimate purpose and are inappropriate for a priest or any other adult male to engage in with children or teenage boys or girls. For example, usually, normally, typically, men have a difficult time talking to and teaching their own children about sexual development and sex. These questionable priests seem to jump right in there though. They often admit that. And there defense, upon accusation, is, "Yes. I counseled the teen but that is all." Maybe that was all but that is inappropriate. Sometimes this inappropriate behavior gets swept under the rug because the really bad thing that the priest was accused of cannot be substantiated. Serious attention should be given by the employer/authority to priests merely acting inappropriately. And if that is new or abrupt or harsh, hide your head in shame and weep.
Just for the record, the 'KenW' character is the most bizarre one yet on this site. I assume that he is modeled after the powerful political character, the conservative racial minority. The apparent contradiction serves to strengthen the character's position. If a victim of clergy sexual abuse, actually someone from a whole world of abuse, says that the catholic church is super safe and abuse-proof, then it must be! Behold! Look who is saying it, a guy who should be most on-the-look-out. Good luck with it, KenW. Just be happy that you found the one true church and don't worry. Nulla salus, awaaaaaaay!
Jimmy, Dave would rightly edit what I really want to say to you. It ain't pretty.
Are there unions for dilettantes?
Jimmy, p will never answer the questions you ask. He'll only pour out more of the same drivil he always does. Intelligent dialog is not what he is here to engage in.
Dennis Ecker, Give me a break.
Is it you who is asking for a break ?
or
Is it for members of the "Fondling Five" ?
~~"The archdiocese is and remains firmly committed to protecting children and young people," said Gavin, the church spokesman. "It has taken various steps since 2011 to strengthen and reinforce those efforts."
Gavin should watch the news media or read what parishioners of OLC are saying. I think the word of the hour is BETRAYED.
On the 16th at 112PM we get something to read that actually should be in a personal email communication (but instead is cattily and histrionically put into this stage-whispered scenario in front of us here).
“Dennis” – the Wig of Innocent Exhaustion – is “tired of proving myself to these people”. What, pray, has “Dennis” ever proven here about anything – and certainly that’s true about any of his allegations, claims, and assertions about himself. And actually, the key point is that there is never a “video” in these abuse claims; if there were, then we wouldn’t be needing to have all these conversations.
But why would “Dennis” try to prove anything to us anyway? Because “some sick-minded individuals” will simply point out the dots that don’t connect. And if they – the Wig of The Imagined Jesus, here – won’t believe me when I simply tell them, then they don’t deserve proof or evidence. Charming; and so mature.
What “Dennis” proved (which, actually he hasn’t since we really don’t know for sure that the screen name ‘dennis ecker’ is the same entity in the photos) about the firefighter bit is irrelevant to the main point: whether his disability pension is or is not a variant of the Abusenik ‘compensation’ scam. But for all the self-pity here, we get no further info. And, in fact, we simply get “Dennis” cattily telling us – as if (wink, wink) he were telling JR confidentially – that since we don’t believe him then we don’t deserve to see any evidence. That’s a neat trick, but at this point rather obvious.
So “Dennis” and JR have proved utterly nothing in regard to the primary points at issue. Instead what we get is this scam: since we don’t believe them, we don’t deserve the evidence. This is truly another Note for Notebook on the Playbook.
Then the usual and as-always give-away bit about “Wrong!!!!!” [scream-y caps omitted].
Because – “Dennis” would have us think – we are “seeing the true faces of evil” in Philadelphia. But we have only managed to establish that his ‘reports’ about Philly are grossly in error, and – it would seem – systematically so.
Then the bit about “the faces of these animals” being “more scary than any horror movie”. Although we haven’t seen the evidence that the accused are guilty, or of what they are guilty. Note the use of presumption-of-guilt coupled here with repellently manipulative and exaggerated characterization (“these animals”) – which serves to reveal far more about “Dennis” than about any persons about whom he claims to accurately report.
Then the bit about how he couldn’t care when the abuse occurred, and that the SOLs are merely “out-dated laws” (which, by the by, are blocking any effort he might wish to make to try in his State what JR managed to pull off so lucratively during the CA window). All of which has been addressed before – and we note that Abuseniks don’t engage conceptual material that differs from them; rather, they simply scream and repeat their own stuff.
Then, in one of his few credible assertions, he confides in “Jim” that he is “going nowhere” – which I imagine was a realization he had on the ride up to NYC a dozen years ago.
Then – using the “Jim” doll as a voodoo stand-in for readers whom he doesn’t care to engage (but whose material he has clearly read, contrary to his assertions) – he goes on again about Fr. Paul, but merely repeating his own material without addressing the issues that have been raised in connection with it.
But then we get something of a bit more interest: commenter ‘Jimmy Carr’ (we recall the flight-student who actually wasn’t … or whatever) returns.
But – setting the tone for what we might expect from him – he addresses none of the numerous problems with his prior comment on this thread.
He makes vague reference to “a bit of a tough last note” in some bit of my material (he doesn’t bother or hasn’t thought to identify the material).
He then decides – again, his prior comment is now dissolved into some Abusenik ‘yesterday’ and we are expected to imagine here that he arrives fresh as a daisy with credibility intact – to go for a grammar assessment of my material (rather than a conceptual defense of his own material).
Let’s just leave him to it on that score.
He appears unaware that in the “high” quote I was quoting a quotation within my quotation, necessitating the complex use of both single and double quotation marks. Perhaps he should have taken an online courses more useful to him, perhaps, than the (alleged) online flight-school course.
But then, amazingly, he doesn’t think that making mistakes is a big deal. No doubt he would – and perhaps in terms of accuracy as well as grammar. But that’s the problem: if the grammar and spelling are largely deranged, then one has to wonder if the deeper cognitive processes are also in some disrepair. Things are connected inside the head-bone – which in a way makes the human ‘craft’ like an aircraft in that there are interlocking and interactive systems. But perhaps he didn’t get that far in flight-school or grammar school.
Then he will assert that the reason there isn’t enough information in the article about the AOP (just which one – there being several – he does not say; lack of attention to detail doesn’t make for a competent pilot; perhaps even the online flight-school (if it existed) realized that) is that “the church ‘rolls’ like this” (adding – for creds, so very much like “Dennis” and the working-man’s working-man, JR – the histrionic bit about his knowing what “they say on the streets” … why is all of this so familiar?).
He clearly hasn’t read – or has chosen not to deal with – the information from Federal Judge Schiltz about just who it has been who wanted agreements made secret; nor about the legal requirements of what can and can’t be divulged without the permission of a court; all of which are topics discussed even on this thread – but he seems not to have read any of it, or chooses not to address any of the issues thereby raised.
And apparently what he is going for here is that it isn’t the Abusenik commenters’ fault for their contentless posts; it’s the Church’s fault for not giving out enough information that the Abuseniks want. (And yet: the Abuseniks, even with all that lack of information, still go on making their allegations, assertions, claims, and so on.)
Then – another owner of a Wig of Knowing – he asserts that “the AOP has on interest in helping people understand what happened or how matters were decided”. And he does know such things? And he has the information to contradict Judge Schiltz about who has really been pushing ‘secrecy’ in these matters?
And then – non-sensically – he asks what right I claim for access to “decision-making information”. Well, to be sensical about it: if we are confronted with assertions about the state of affairs (including the characterization of the dynamics behind decision-making), then we need to know from independent sources about the decision-making informational bits in order to get a clear sense of what’s going on. Was that not clear to him? It’s what the site is about.
Then we have his ideas on how I “sound”. Good luck with that. If your ears are as deficient as your eyes appear to be, then this is a swamp I’ll choose not to wade around in, thank you all the same.
Then some nasty epithetical bits (“dumb”) and other of his takes on this and that.
This is a comment from a very similar mind as some we have seen here before, both in (in-)competence and in style and tone. Perhaps that sun-porch serves an entire wing of the facility.
Publion, I address you directly instead of using the falsely polite 3rd person that you pretend with in these posts. Good move in your last post to act like you do not know which post of yours I am referring to. Don’t take ownership of anything. None of your tricks are new either which is weird for a professional writer. Creativity is usually a key skill with writers. I mean to loose track so quickly of your writings that you need me to do time/date citations to the ones you most recently wrote. That is weak but part of your purposeful evasiveness and vagary. I guess that is just how you roll.
The RCC gives out no more information than it must, even to those looking for ways to prop it up. Sorry that you will get your questions about the bishops’ decisions answered in full. Your last post was pure victim-ist, I mean, martyr-ist. Keep suffering for the faith. You do it so ironically well. Dry your eye. Your frustration with me showed through in the tone and tenor of your last post. Do you need a citation or do you somehow recall what you just wrote? See you on the sun porch. I guess you think you know something about me.
The important thing to be said here in part is that SNAP is a false flag effort.
How do I know abuse happened? I was there.
I was in-between things when I composed my immediately prior comment (at 358PM) and didn’t have a chance to cover the ‘Jimmy Carr’ comment of 209PM as much as I wanted to. So I’ll complete my thoughts here.
In regard to the “lack of essential information” bit: without sufficient information we can neither a) understand accurately what the nature of the situation is and b) we cannot draw conclusions because you really can’t draw conclusions (and then make subsequent assertions, claims, accusations and so forth) unless you have sufficient information. The less accurate information you have, the more limited your conclusions must be (presuming you are conducting a rational assessment, of course). But you can see how inconvenient this maxim is for fomenting and sustaining a Stampede.
Then the rather odd bit about my sounding “slow and bureaucratic and unionized” when I “write about the ‘new standard’ for professional comportment and its application”. While the three adjectives he uses here certainly seem intended to be epithetical, they don’t quite seem to follow from what I said.
There is – contrary to ‘Jimmy Carr’s Wig of Knowing – a great deal that is new in the AOP approach as I limned it in prior my comment on this thread. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers have always had to conduct their work under the possibilities i) that they could be sued for malpractice in their respective professional endeavors and ii) that they might suffer withdrawal of accreditation by their respective professional oversight Boards. This – had ‘Jimmy Carr’ not been aware? – has not been true of priests.
Thus the AOP approach that appears to be developing recently is working precisely toward a greater sense among priests that a) they are and must be professional (in the best senses of that term) and b) that they can rely on some degree of oversight and they are under some responsibility to maintain “Church standards” (the equivalent, here, of ‘best practices’ as the term is used in other professions).
In all previous eras, the status of priesthood was such that it was under no such institutionally-structured sense of immediate professionalism. What the AOP – with, I presume, the approval of the National Council and the papal panel or commission and the Pope himself – is initiating here is indeed something very new to the conduct of priesthood in the Church. (And, personally, I see it as a good thing: boundaries Shape and Define as well as Restrict; they channel energies and thereby increase the intensity and acuity of service-provision. All of which are positive goods for the Church to instill in her ministry.)
Thus the question “How can there be a new standard on this” reveals either ‘Jimmy Carr’s ignorance of Church matters or his failure to think through his position or both.
I am confident that I explained sufficiently the dangers that need to be considered (in the Church as in any organization). If ‘Jimmy Carr’ doesn’t see the dangers then he is clearly not familiar with organizational dynamics in a time of change, especially a broad change.
Just how that standard concern that flows from standard organizational dynamics leads to the characterization of my “infantilizing” priests is anybody’s guess. My own surmise is that ‘Jimmy Carr’ is simply stitching together whatever stuff can be found between the burgers, the fries, and the ketchup packets in order to whomp-up a composition to submit for next period, perhaps distracted as well by assorted ketchup-fingered associates. That’s what happens when you try to do your homework in the cafeteria.
And as I said, there was not the sense of “rules” in the same vivid and real sense as it exists and has existed among other professionals. And while for quite some time the nation’s culture and the Church’s strict exo-skeletal structure themselves provided boundaries, those circumstances have – in this country in the past half century – changed and the individual priest now must be robustly reinforced in the development of an endo-skeletal structure. Frankly, I thought this was necessary at least forty years ago, but better late than never.
I would point out that wrestling “with young teens in the rectory” is hardly an apt example since it is not a crime. However, it does demonstrate behavior that – regardless of its intent – apparently will no longer be acceptable in Church standards. And – surely – “doing it in front of everyone at a pool party” precisely demonstrates that a) there was much more latitude in public opinion in an earlier era and b) doing something – the “it” here grammatically can only refer to the aforementioned ‘wrestling’ – i) publicly acceptable and ii) not in itself criminal does not constitute criminal activity.
The danger here is – again, as in all organizationally-applied changes – that the restrictions may go even further; will the playing of basketball with students (teens, not children) be excluded? Things like that. As I said in a prior comment, I don’t have the information to draw any conclusions and I do not draw conclusions here.
“Inappropriate” is a very context-dependent and era-determined term and has to be handled carefully in intelligent analysis. It’s not well-handled by zingy one-liners (which, it surely seems, are the basic operating mode for ‘Jimmy Carr’). But beyond that, “inappropriate” – however it is now being changed or is now evolving – does not rise to criminal behavior. And yet the Church now has instituted various organizationally-imposed categories such as we have seen on this thread: boundary-violations, inappropriate behavior, behavior contrary to Church standards, and some similar other categories.
Overall, I am pleased with these developments.
The bit about whether ‘Jimmy Carr’ thinks “one does not need canon law” clearly reflects an ignorance of how the Church works (and may also reflect a subterranean ignorance of the value of the type of norms that the Western system of justice (toward which the Abusenik/Victimist mind is so hostile) derived from the canon law centuries ago). So I will say that it was indeed worth pointing out and ‘Jimmy Carr’s assertion (unexplained) has done nothing to change that.
And while some conversations are not necessary, others are necessary – this is a judgment call for the competent professional in the situation, and no zingy blanket one-liner maxims jiggling in the mind of ‘Jimmy Carr’ are going to substitute for that.
The examples about “these questionable priests” jumping right into talks about sex-education describe scenarios that I have not seen in any material on the Catholic Abuse Matter and may simply reflect ‘Jimmy Carr’s imagination off on a ziggy roll. Thus the remainder of the “But wait!” paragraph wobbles queasily.
And then the seriously odd sequence of remarks about “the ‘KenW’ character” – as if he were not an individual. And the further ruminations about ‘Ken W’s being “modeled after the powerful political character, the conservative racial minority” starts to veer precipitously into rant-land or – at the very least – some sort of racing imagination process that needs some slowing-down. The images don’t connect to the thoughts, which themselves don’t connect with the conclusion. We are apparently meant to take-away from his performance here that the Church is not “super-safe and abuse-proof” just because somebody says it is (even – oh my – “a victim of clergy sex abuse”). But by the same token, the Church is not super-dangerous and abuse-riddled simply because an Abusenik or a gaggle of them say it is.
The concluding ziggy zinger – tossing in some accurate Latin, nicely – is yet oddly familiar in a stylistic way.
And in all of this, but of course, ‘Jimmy Carr’ has nothing to say about his flight-school comment’s problems, nor does he seem to possess the self-awareness that might caution him that on the basis of that highly-dubious initial performance, any subsequent material was going to have to labor under a number of self-inflicted burdens in the credibility area.
OK, well that’s that for the added material.
I’d like to say this as well: Readers might well be wondering: where are the serious Abusenik commenters? Where are the ones who can sustain an idea and an argument (in the formal philosophical sense of the term) and put forward their position in a mature and credible way? That thought has occurred to me more than once (although I do appreciate any opportunity to examine the Playbook in action). But then, you don’t encounter them on other sites either; there are myriads of comments with the type of material we have so often seen here (and even worse by far), but there is very little serious and sustained explication and defense of the Abusenik position.
The thought has to be considered: there is no serious and honest explication of the Abusenik position to be made and thus nobody who even might have those skills wants to get his/her hands dirty; nor can s/he respond credibly to the many dots that don’t connect, nor address the difficulties with credibility and demonstration of evidence . The Stampede vision of the Church – rife with “rape” and cover-up, extending for vast distances in space and backward in time (and apparently forward into the future), oppressing innumerable myrmidons of victimization – has no foundation in reality under it. In the end and beneath it all, there are actually only the myriad stories, claims, allegations and accusations which – when examined – don’t seem to hold up well at all (and which their own creators and counsel don’t want examined at all).
And that if it weren’t for all of those myriads, and the media amplification of them in ‘reports’ and reports on reports, and the few persistent Abusenik commenters trying to keep the Playbook in play, and the occasional opportunistic pronouncements from the front-organization SNAP … if it weren’t for that, there is no there there.
I'm tired of having posters here being insulted by the person calling himself Publion. I and the following signators demand that something be done about the length of his posts at least. He slows down the dialog and inhibits the conversation. It's not what he says; it's how long he takes to say it. Sign your name with a reply if you agree.)
There’s something oddly familiar about this whole ‘Carr’ opus here – although I can’t yet place it. Somewhere back there a very similar mentality indeed did “roll” just the way the ‘Carr’ material is rolling.
Anyhoo – for the moment I’ll go with the thought that this is material that is from a commenter new to this site.
We notice (the 16th, 626PM) that he begins by not-addressing any of the issues previously raised in any of my comments about his prior comments (and there are more than a few issues, had he actually wished to engage them). Instead he’s going for yet another tack, and will try addressing me in the 2nd person rather than – we are informed by yet another Wig of Knowing – the “falsely polite 3rd person that you pretend with in these posts”. (Note the unfamiliarity with grammar in this “pretend with”.)
I use the grammar and 3rd-person a) to give good example and b) to avoid inflaming various whacky sensitivities and c) so as to avoid getting into the mindless and witless snarky and nasty exchanges with assorted challenged-minds with which much of the internet overflows. And I will continue that practice here, for obvious reasons.
He then tries to whiff away his own neglect as to specifics and claims that I made a “good move” by – the Wig of Knowing knows this! – putting on an “act like you do not know which post of yours I am referring to”. Alas, Wiggy one, I did not know and the polite thing for a competent interlocutor to do is to identify at the outset the material to which he will refer. But I am already sensing that what we have in the ‘Carr’ material is simply more of the same ketchup-y cafeteria stuff; and “competent interlocutor” is not a concept or even phrase that would naturally occur to the denizens of that demimonde.
I own everything I write – I simply didn’t know which of my writings had attracted the attention. And will we be seeing ‘Jimmy Carr’ owning that whackjob first post about the flight-school (or not or whatever)? Or are we soon to be advised – in accents familiar to any regular reader here – that he was only joking and shame on the bunch of us for being so dumb as not to see that … ?
For someone who seems to think himself rather informed about ‘professional writers’, ‘Jimmy Carr’ doesn’t demonstrate either the technical or conceptual qualities one would associate with ‘professional writers’. So we are left – as so often with Abuseniks – with dots that don’t connect.
And indeed he seems to “loose track” [sic] of stuff; but then wants to blame me because I can’t recall which of my “writings” are which. I can recall that, but what I can’t easily fathom is the mentality behind the ‘Jimmy Carr’ material, nor do I think it worth too much effort to try. If you put up material, own it; if you refer to material, identify it. It’s not rocket-science. (Of course, even model rockets don’t fly well if ketchup from the cafeteria has gotten into the works.)
We can leave ‘Jimmy’ to his guesses about how people “roll” – I doubt that’s a part of the demimonde we need to be exploring here.
No organization gives out more information than it must. Does ‘Jimmy’ have in mind one that actually does? And certainly, the Church could not have given out the information the Abuseniks wanted: a) some of it required legal authorization; b) some of it had been shielded by the operation of law (i.e. an investigation or lawsuit was already underway) or by virtue of the legal rights of personnel not to have their file information released prematurely; c) some of it had been shielded at the demand of the torties and storytellers themselves; d) some of it had not been released because of the presumption of innocence of an accused.
Once one has factored all of that in, one can then also add e) the standard organizational saw that no organization likes to give out information, especially if that information is likely to be taken negatively (can you say “Pentagon”?).
But the scam was that the Abuseniks could scream that the info they wanted was being withheld, while also ensuring that their own highly dubious stories were secured in secrecy from any scrutiny.
And – the Wig of Catholic Knowing now – ‘Jimmy’ will lecture us on what we can and can’t expect to see from the Bishopa (because ‘Jimmy’ knows these things the same way “Dennis” does). Ovvvv coursssssse he does.
He is “Sorry that you will get your questions about the bishops’ decisions answered in full” – which doesn’t actually make any sense, unless he has suddenly changed course 180 here.
I have no idea how he gets to my “suffering for the faith” as evidenced by my “last post” (which post would that be, given the time-lags in submitting, posting, and being read … ?).
He seems happy that I am ‘frustrated’ with him: this is the mentality of a ketchup-fly from the cafeteria whose main adolescent project is to confound anybody else’s intelligence. But I am not ‘frustrated’ with him; that is a histrionic and self-serving exaggeration that simply enables him to think he is somehow carrying his weight here. Rather, his presentation has simply sparked long-standing thoughts I have had about the quality of Abusenik commenting in general.
And then, marvelously, this Wig of Knowing who thinks he knows a lot about a lot of various things, is then irritated that “I guess you think you know something about me”. The classic line from any patient who had convinced himself that since he can’t see any problems when he looks in the mirror, then nobody else can either. The dysfunctional version of Harry Potter’s “cloak of invisibility” or the kiddie’s idea of covering his/her eyes and then exclaiming “you can’t see me!” – and, here, ‘Jimmy’s annoyance that he actually can still be seen.
As I have said before: commenters cannot but reveal themselves through their material. The Abuseniks like to think that the double anonymity of the internet and the various Wigs will function to fool everybody and manipulate other readers into thinking that Abuseniks are mature and competent and honest and serious persons who are trying to come to grips with serious and complicated issues. But the record here demonstrates something far different. And ‘Jimmy’ can read up on that record.
But he’s not going to be able to sashay in and expect to pass-for what he’s not; especially after a) that initial presentation and b) his subsequent avoidance of it, now in the record.
And – lastly and again – where are the mature, honest, competent Abusenik commenters?
Publion's last post illustrates nicely the irreconcilable disconnect between us. I read the forcibly released church documents and most of the press in, say Boston, MA, and I see convincing information on priests who sexually abused children and teens and sometimes even adults. With priests like John Geoghan or Joseph Birmingham or Paul Shanley, I see no room for even a little doubt or argument against the claims made about what these men did.
Publion reads the same material, through the self-imposed lenses of nested stampedes (one lawyer- and media-driven and the other bishop-driven, both punitively against the priests presumed guilty), and finds no certainty. He concludes that there is nothing in the material worthy of more than more questions and that almost no question is answerable, short of a full admission to everything by the priest himself. And even then, one could not be certain as to the truth of the matter because there could have been coercion or any number of exigent circumstances. This way of thinking just goes on and on.
Publion takes the position that there may have been some actual abuse but that none has been convincingly demonstrated, certainly not here in this forum. And that is it. If these notorious guys cannot be agreed upon as sexual abusers, then no proper basis for serious discussion/debate exists. I mean, we can go on and on but we will never get anywhere.
We will never get anywhere good. But we can enjoy the journey. Publion clearly enjoys attacking opponent points of view because he writes to provoke. It's fine.
But the part that gets crazy, hysterical and conspiratorial is the recurring Hitler and Stalin analogies. The 'nets' sweeping up priests and their rights and, by inference and implication, the rights of all of us are just not there and they are not coming. I do not care how extensive or accurate the history and the parallels are because I do not fear all of these conjured-up violations coming our way in the 21st Century United States.
In somewhat unrelated news, 'KenW' is an idea with some real person behind him. Ideas come from people. The idea of 'KenW' seems to me to be a character called 'KenW' portrayed in the writing. Good luck trying to prove here that 'KenW' is a real person. If Publion wants to believe that 'KenW' is a real person, whatever that means, it is just surprising because he is so skeptical about almost everything else. Not about his faith. But that's why they call it 'faith'. And that's why the call it the weekend! Ohhhhhh, yea.
JR’s (the 17th, 136AM) demonstrates yet again the problem with the conflation of the personal and the public and the legal forums: whatever JR may ‘know’ through personal knowledge (and his material on this site about that story offers little to inspire confidence on that score), it is utterly insufficient as a basis of demanding belief from other persons (the public forum) nor – surely – demanding that on the basis of his personal material then the Sovereign Coercive Authority can and must be forthwith deployed to the satisfaction of his demands (the legal forum).
And that leads us to see again demonstrated the shrewd dynamics of the Stampede, which precisely did achieve that multiple-conflation through the stratagems and harnessing of dynamics – all of which has been discussed at length on recent threads.
Jesus! I'm dumb because I'm lying and trying to get away with it on one hand and shrewd on the other because I have gotten away with it according to laughing boy. So not only am I a liar but also a thief.
Do I sound or write like that kind of person?
Normal people trust other people when they tell the truth. That's what honorable people do. Investigate away. But respect people at least. Remember that if you can; (but you won't. It's not in you. You've found your imagined conspiracy and your sticking to it).
Why is it, that the crooks always paint them selves up as being close to virtue? All they have to do is to pose as religious. Religion becomes a part of their fraud. And it seems so easy to do the way they do it. Claim virtue by defending a faith that isn't even under attack and then attack the already harmed. That is what's happening here. IMHO
Recently Archbishop Nienstedt of St. Paul gave a homily to parishioners stating
"I am here to apologize for the indignation that you justifiably feel. The negative reports about past incidents of clerical sexual abuse in their local church have rightly been met with shame, embarrassment and outrage that such heinous acts could be perpetrated by men who had taken priestly vows as well as bishops who failed to remove them from ministry."
With the headlines breaking today: Archbishop Nienstedt removes himself from public ministry amid accusations of inappropriate touching. I cannot help think while local authorities begin their investigation, when the Archbishop John Nienstedt was saying those words above and looking down onto his congregation if he was not truly laughing inside and saying to himself IF YOU PEOPLE ONLY KNEW THE WHOLE TRUTH.
I can only hope as the authorities progress with their investigation into MR. NIENSTEDT the truth is told and maybe the words that man spoke will have meant something.
~~A clearly frustrated St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith said Tuesday that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has failed to cooperate with investigations into alleged clerical sex abuse.
"We have through written and verbal requests made clear our desire to speak to individuals connected with the archdiocese, and we've been told no," Smith said at a news conference.
His comments came several hours after the Roman Catholic archdiocese said Archbishop John Nienstedt has been accused of "inappropriate touching" of a boy on the buttocks in 2009.
The police chief says the archdiocese is “not cooperating,” but no U.S. citizen – even innocent ones – are under any obligation to talk to the police. (See the Fifth Amendment and subsequent Court rulings.)
In fact, one can argue that by offering lawyers to talk to the police, the archdiocese is indeed “cooperating.”
The Archdiocese has had a zero tolerance approach to sexual abuse of minors in Church ministry for more than 20 years: a person accused of such abuse is removed immediately from ministry pending the outcome of an investigation. We cooperate immediately and FULLY with police and other civil authorities in all investigations. Victim assistance services are offered from the outset.
The above statement comes directly from the Archdiocese of St. Paul. I will assume by TMRs statement that the when the Archdiocese printed these words that cooperate immediately and fully with police it can be translated into meaning we will cooperate fully up until we feel there is a chance of prosecution then we will hide behind counsel and instruct our employees and clergy to claim the 5th.
When is forwarding investigative questions from the police to the lawyers anyway possible the meaning behind cooperate fully with the police and other civil authorities. ?
And moving right along.
On the 17th at 1020AM JR bleats – so very characteristically, when there is nothing else he has to throw at the screen – that he is “tired of posters here being insulted” by me. We then discover that he has posted – he seems to think – an internet version of an Open Letter or Petition (with multiple signers, un-named) and thereby doth “demand” that “something be done about the length of his posts at least”. Because – waitttt for ittttt! – the length of my posts “slows down the dialog and inhibits the conversation”. He’s not – he assures us – irritated about “what [Publion, i.e. me] says; it’s how long he takes to say it”.
Regular readers here will recognize that I do not often – if at all – bleat about the complications thrown in my way by other commenters’ material. After all, whatever inconvenient annoyances or complications are put in the path of assessment by some of the gambits that Abuseniks attempt to run by us here, the informational and revelatory value of their material overrides it. And when one is dealing with the cafeteria crowd, a certain amount of ketchup-splattering is to be expected.
Whether the Abuseniks are actually participating in “dialog” and “conversation” here, or whether JR (perhaps speaking for others of his ilk) is simply annoyed that the usual Playbook one-liners are looking rather threadbare in comparison to my efforts to explicate what I see as valuable … readers may consider for themselves.
And we may rely on JR’s working-definition of ‘insult’ about as much as we can rely on his working-definitions of any other English words and terms.
No doubt, the cafeteria mentality cannot understand why a five-page paper is necessary when they can simply consult their mental shoebox on a subject such as, say, ‘Julius Caesar”, and come up with the appropriate snarky one-liner (e.g.: he was power-mad or he was philandering with Cleopatra or he was brutal in Gaul) and – but of course- why shouldn’t that be enough for today? Why bother to put the fries aside and go the library, read up on him in depth, and then try to think-through to a rationally-derived and rationally-defensible position and then write it up coherently?
This is life as seen through the fry-fly and Abusenik eyeball.
Thus, with a minimum of conceptual changing-of-gears required, we proceed to ‘Jimmy Carr’s of the 17th at 251PM:
There is, he slyly inserts, an “irreconcilable disconnect between us”. Let us therefore prepare ourselves here for the Playbook gambit recently run by “Dennis” vis-à-vis DP/TMR: we are equals in the debate over an insoluble conundrum.
Thus fortified, we can consider what is tossed on the screen for our consideration:
‘JC’ doth “read the forcibly released church documents and most of the press in, say Boston, MA” [sic] and he doth “see convincing information on priests who sexually abused children and teens and sometimes even adults”. This may not be much of a conundrum, if it all boils down to what ‘JC’ doth “see”. And how easily he is convinced by such “information” as he finds in “most of the press” (clearly, he hasn’t read D’Antonio on the role of the press in the Anderson Strategies).
Then – oh my – he asserts that “Publion reads the same material” but – oy – “through the self-imposed lenses of nested stampedes” and in the process Publion “finds no certainty”.
So far – aside from raising some questions about his own tendency toward setting a rather low-bar for “certainty”, ‘JC’ is half-right: I don’t find sufficient grounds for “certainty”, on the basis of the afore-mentioned cases, that we are dealing with sure and certain evidence of the Stampede’s vision of an abuse-ridden and cover-up ridden universal Church, extending backward (and perhaps forward) in Time and widely dispersed across the globe in Space. (He might want to read over my prior comments on the necessity of probability-of-credibility in issues to which one has not been a personal witness.)
He then goes on – illogically and inaccurately – to assert that “there is nothing in the material worthy of more than more questions and that almost no question is answerable”. If I find that dots don’t connect in subject X, and thus that there are more questions in regard to Subject X that require some credible answers and/or at least credibly rational theories as to how they might be answered, then that’s par for the course in any competent analysis.
And if in regard to Subject X “almost no question is answerable”, then the rational assessor’s only response can be that there seems something very mushy about Subject X to begin with. And that therefore further careful and skeptical assessment is required, and that ‘heightened scrutiny’ is required in the matter because Subject X is clearly more dubious than initially imagined.
The fact that ‘JC’ doth “see no room for even a little doubt or argument” says more about ‘JC’s (lack of) analytical competence and chops than it does about Subject X’s evidentiary weaknesses.
If, for example, a sight-challenged spectator at a baseball game who is also not familiar with the rules declares that he did not ‘see’ the runner cross the plate, that does not in and of itself immediately create a situation that is at best accurately described as merely a valid and equally-authoritative difference of opinion with the umpires as to whether home-plate was actually crossed. [Time-saver here: does some Abusenik wish to claim that comparing myself to the “umpire” in this analogy is ‘elitist’? At this point, after almost two years with the Abuseniks, I say: oh well, folks, then prove your umpirical creds by coming up with more than mere assertions as to the validity of the matter.)
And might it not be equally proposed that ‘JC’ (and others similarly-minded) are themselves viewing the Catholic Abuse Matter “through the self-imposed lenses” of Abusenik and Stampede-generated visions of indubitable horror?
And – concluding this (second) paragraph in his comment – he works, as “Dennis” did recently, to the conclusion that since “one could not be certain … [then] [T}his way of thinking just goes on and on”.
Which isn’t quite the case here at all. I have pointed out – has ‘JC’ not read prior material here? – that since the probability-of-credibility is utterly indispensable in any case where third-parties who were not personal witnesses to events are asked to form conclusions about those events, then the utter indispensability of credible corroborative evidence is simply inescapable. (Unless, of course, one wishes to propose eliminating this profound problem by side-stepping it or taking short-cuts – which was precisely the objective of the Anderson Strategies and the usual tactic of torties in any similar situation.)
But then but then but then: In his next paragraph (beginning “Publion takes the position …”) ‘JC’ now goes for the further steps in the gambit: “If these notorious guys cannot be agreed upon as sexual abusers, then no proper basis for serious discussion/debate exists”. First of all, they are “notorious” – as far as anybody knows – only because of the media reports in the echo-chamber precisely called-for in the Anderson Strategies (as outlined and revealed in D’Antonio’s book).
He then continues: “we will never get anywhere”. But it is exactly here that he reveals the Game and the Scam: the objective all along has indeed not been to find out if there is demonstrable evidence sufficient to justify the deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority against the accused. Rather, the objective all along has been “to get” … ‘somewhere’.
And where, I ask, might that ‘somewhere’ be? It is, of course, that ‘somewhere’ where the Church is presumed without further ado to be precisely the time-and-space devouring abusive monstrosity that the Abusenik Stampede’s scream-y vision claims to see. So ‘JC’ – and the others similarly-minded and looking through similar “lenses” – has never approached this matter as an objective and independent and open-minded observer, maturely and competently aware of one’s own need for some demonstrated probability in the absence of any evidentiary support for that “certainty”. Rather, he came to the matter (perhaps, as I said in prior comments, lured to the surface by the cumulative effect of the Anderson Strategies) already ‘certain’ as to what the reality and accuracy and truth of the matter is, was, and always has been.
He then tosses in some happy-face wall-poster-talk to the effect that even if we can’t reach the destination, the journey can be something we all can “enjoy”. Phooey. We are talking legal consequences and lives here – as affected by the deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority of the government. And thus this is no place for happy-face pap about ‘enjoying the journey’. The consequences for the accused of that ‘destination’ are too formidable for such pabulum, tastily ketchup-splattered though it may be.
(Time-saver here: Will some Abusenik seek to come out of the woodwork to bleat that in light of the awful pain and horrific experience undergone (allegedly) by the allegant, then we can’t afford to waste time in some old-school, lock-step idolatry of out-dated legal maxims and principles? In response, I note that the Communists and the Nazis said the same thing in their day: in the face of such an emergency as the Party has discovered, what (insert here: ‘member of the proletariat’ or ‘Party’ – or – ‘patriotic German’) can object to the immediate overriding of outdated principles and maxims of so-called ‘Western justice’ in order to combat this monstrous emergency?)
And again and again and yet again – we see here the old Abusenik bit about any observation that their storied dots don’t connect as being “attacking opponent points of view”. I will say this: there are only Abusenik “points of view” – but there is are no rationally-presented, coherently-explanatory Abusenik position that is sustained in the face of questions by sufficiently responsive rationally-grounded counter-points. Abuseniks simply keep tossing the same points up on the screen, and rather than engage subsequent questions they simply change the subject or distract by epithet or bleats of victimization (by means of being-questioned at all) or other similar gambits that have been discussed at length on this site in prior comments.
Then – the Wig of Knowing just ‘knows’ this – Publion “writes to provoke”. No, I don’t. I write to get answers to the dots that don’t connect. And that is precisely what is not forthcoming from the Abuseniks. To propose that I am merely in it here for the fun of irritating the various Abuseniks down in the cafeteria is a classic-giveaway of some form of unripe adolescent oppositional mentality about which any competent school-counselor could quickly pull a hundred files.
Then, however, ‘JC’ will try to deploy some heavier artillery: “the part that gets crazy, hysterical, and conspiratorial is the recurring Hitler and Stalin analogies”. But – as I have said and now say again – it is not about “Hitler and Stalin”, rather it is about the indubitable similarities in the dynamics embraced and deployed by the Abuseniks and the dynamics deployed by the regimes overseen by those two leaders. Thus – alas for ‘JC’ – I am not at all comparing Abuseniks to “Hitler and Stalin”; and had he read any recent material, even on this thread, he would have seen that issue addressed and would – if he were a competent commenter – addressed here the fact that the point he is trying to go-for has already been addressed and he would have to address that somehow. But instead – in typical Abusenik form – he simply tosses the old plop up under his own screen-name and figures it’s fresh material (and so very clever).
But the second sentence in that paragraph (about “the ‘nets’”) makes no sense as written. Perhaps he just doesn’t have the patience to sufficiently explicate his ideas. Cafeteria-compositions often suffer from that problem. But he doesn’t care because – marvelously – in effect, ‘JC’ just doesn’t “fear” that any of all that historical horror could happen here. I would say that this is the mentality of callow youth, and not well-educated either. Perhaps he would care to enter something like ‘possible government totalitarianism’ into a search engine and see how many references come up with in less than 10 seconds. Readers can afford ‘JC’s reading of the national political tea-leaves exactly as much respect as they think that reading deserves.
But he does imply the validity of the parallels in that paragraph, does he not?
Then (the 1th, 251PM) we are treated to ‘JC’s effort to get around the problems in regard to his characterization of ‘Ken W’ (waitttttt for itttttttt): ‘Ken W’ “is an idea with some real person behind him”. If you think that simple homework compositions from the cafeteria are dubious, wait til you try some of the philosophy and psychology delivered from those precincts on the inevitable ketchup-splattered tissue-paper napkins.
And then I am dismissed in this matter with the bit about “If Publion wants to believe that ‘Ken W’ is a real person, whatever that means, it is just as surprising because he is so skeptical about everything else”. Well, we are clearly either down the rabbit-hole or onto-the-sun-porch here. I may have explained why I have my doubts about the stories and mentality demonstrated (whether they realized it or not) by this or that commenter, but I have never doubted that any particular commenter actually did exist, or asserted that s/he was not a “real person” and was, instead, … what – an algorithm connected to a dial-up? JR and “Dennis” and others may well be many things, but non-existent they certainly are not and I have never suggested that they were non-existent as actual human individuals.
And then – quickly stitching together some one-liners to get himself (and his Wigs) off the stage – ‘JC’ goes into some sort of verbal vaudeville buck-and-wing about “faith” and then (somehow) “the weekend” and concluding with the childish and irrelevant final declamation.
We are clearly not dealing with any exemplar of the long-sought mature and competent Abusenik mentality and commenter here. Perhaps in his mind and experience – as to any grade-school mentality – “the weekend” really does merit the exclamation point.
Now then “Dennis” will save me a bit of time by raising the very recent Minneapolis developments in the matter of Archbishop Nienstedt (the 17th, 928PM).
Instead of answering the usual “Dennis” bits in the usual way, I am going to offer my thoughts and leave it at that (saving us all the burden of more repetition).
We have the following situation: a short while ago, a female who for half a decade held some position in the Minneapolis-St.Paul Archdiocese sex-abuse offices left; shortly thereafter, MN public radio suddenly opened up a sustained reportage on a priest who a decade-ago (allegedly) had child-porn on a computer (although the police had examined the material and said No); then there surfaced a man who had bought the hard-drive at a rummage sale a decade ago and had found the stuff but hadn’t (or had) thought it was child-porn; this fellow a decade later suddenly came forward and said that he had made a copy of the entire (now long-lost) hard-drive porn but had forgotten and has stashed it somewhere in his digs; the police (the SVU under the command of a woman who doesn’t want to talk about any of this) were then supposed to be examining this ‘new’ (and legally highly dubious) ‘evidence’ and we have heard nothing since; in all of this the role of the female as feeding info (or more) to MN public radio has been quietly ignored, as has any further explanation about this odd purchaser who made his own copy (of child porn?) and stashed it for himself.
Now – in the hometown of the Jeff Anderson legal operation – the Archbishop himself is suddenly accused – anonymously – by somebody who claims that in 2009 – with the Catholic Abuse Matter galloping along – the Archbishop, in the sight of many and for the camera, fondled him on the bum while posing for a post-Confirmation picture.
From the Anderson Strategy point of view this could be a doozy of a story to Get The Ball Rolling Again: Archbishop is so incorrigibly given to lewdness and so outrageously two-faced and so flagrantly hubristic about his own unassailable position that he fondles a kid’s bum right on camera in the process of a major Church sacramental event. (Perhaps I should add here: “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)
Shocking and outrageous. And exactly what Anderson and the Abusenik honchos have been saying all along and now they are proved to have been right all along. (Perhaps I should add here: “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)
Yes, so very spot-on. I’d like to see the photo. I’d like to get a grasp on how an Archbishop in the Year of Grace the Two-Thousandth-and-Ninth and in the Year of Stampede the Twenty-Fourth (dating from the 1985 Doyle paper, but we could go back further) could actually do such a thing.
I am reminded of Thomas More’s response (in Robert Bolt’s play and movie) to Sir Richard Rich’s perjurious testimony to Henry VIII’s court that More had indeed made an outright verbal exclamation of treason against the Crown in Rich’s presence (though at no other time): “Is it probable? Is it probable?”
The police chief – neatly – has nothing to say about anything, except that – as “Dennis” has quoted (without, of course, documentation) “the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has failed to cooperate with investigation into alleged clerical abuse”. And – apparently – despite all the requests publicly made for ‘victims to come forward’ – as the saying goes – there has been nothing but this amazing story-allegation.
However, and rather very conveniently, the police have now got themselves a meeting with Archdiocesan officials set up in the very near future. Those who know “how it works” in law enforcement, might wonder: will this suddenly-discovered (if highly improbable) unidentified accuser suddenly ‘go away’ if the Archbishop plays ball with the police and Jeff Anderson, and tosses a few coins in the fountain to Keep The Ball Rolling? Are we seeing unfolding before us a good old-fashioned extortion-under-color-of-law? And for a waning Stampede that itself is highly dubious (and perhaps has embroiled more than its share of law enforcement agents) to begin with?
I had thought that the claim (made on this thread or a recent one) of a son (or two sons) being raped by a priest (or two priests) in front of an altar and at gunpoint was pretty much pushing things as far as these Abusenik stories could be pushed.
But apparently not. Because – I think – in the fortress of his own hometown, the old lion Jeff Anderson has scraped together a few final allies (in the police department, and perhaps elsewhere) for one last-ditch grand assault that will Get The Ball Rolling Again and on track once more to the Inevitable Victory.
Winter 1944 has come, finally, for the Stampede . Out of the snow-clad woods will burst forth one last big push against a big target to see if It All Can’t Be Kept Going. Just in time for Christmas. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
No one is valid, as a poster here, but p. I see it so clearly now. How could I have been so blonde before.
I don't know what words mean in English or anyother language. I 45#$%#@@#8. TTT23?? Or perhaps blah de blah de blah de blah.
I so very sorry I never pip peep poo poo doo doo blip lip sepia! And still I'm clearer than Betty Boop:p for brains %&^* Carlotta sanque de flores para los muertos.
Ther is only one true voice. One tru user of a language I do not know (how I typin' me no know) and that's p. Got iT goo goo blabsky! Ta!
And a large round of flatulence for all.
Jesus, you are one sad dude. Mozel Toff!
Yes, Mark, but Dennis and Jim think different standards should be applied when the accused is a Catholic cleric. They don't believe in fairness, just their own agendas. Sorry guys, the scandal isn't going to destroy the Catholic Church, no matter how many ridiculous comments you post on here.
Julie,
No one is out to destroy your church. I could care less what happens to it.
BUT OUT OF EVERYONE WHO POSTS HERE THE ONLY HOPE YOUR CHURCH DOES HAVE IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE JIM AND I.
We are two out of many who police YOUR church because you are afraid to do so. When you and other parishioners step up and do the job YOU are suppose to be doing and question the actions of your Bishops, Archbishops and pastors then I guess you wish us to continue doing what we are doing.
You write our agendas. Is that not ridiculous ?
An investigation of SNAP, similar to this one, is in order:
*Miller, State AGs Commend FTC Patent Troll Effort
Through baseless patent infringement claims, patent trolls extract huge fees and settlements from businesses, non-profit agencies and even consumers
(DES MOINES, Iowa) Attorney General Tom Miller today joined 42 attorneys general in voicing strong support for the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to investigate so-called patent trolls. The 43 state attorneys general submitted a letter to FTC Secretary Donald Clark.
In early October, the FTC announced its plan to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of known patent trolls, also known as patent assertion entities (PAEs). The proposed investigation would arm consumer protection authorities with valuable intelligence as they escalate actions against abusers of the patent system.
Patent trolls make baseless claims of patent infringement to extract fees or settlements from consumers. They acquire patents solely for this purpose. Consumers, small businesses and non-profit agencies are often targeted because they have purchased or used off-the-shelf commercial products that rely on common, everyday technology. These products include printers, scanners, wireless routers and other products used in homes and businesses.
“Patent trolls use our legal system to shake down and, in some cases, take down businesses,” Miller said. “The legal costs to fight these types of frivolous threats and lawsuits can ruin a company that did absolutely nothing wrong.”
The patent troll business model works because defending patent infringement lawsuits is expensive, particularly for small businesses. A company accused of patent infringement can easily spend thousands of dollars just getting preliminary legal advice about the scope of the patent and its validity. Successfully defending a lawsuit may cost a million dollars or more.
Though patent laws make some provision for awarding attorneys’ fees, a party that defeats a patent troll in court has little hope of getting its money back. Patent trolls generally operate through undercapitalized shell companies that are effectively judgment-proof. Targets of patent trolls often pay several thousand dollars to settle claims of patent infringement – however dubious – instead of risking an expensive legal battle.
Miller and the attorneys general expressed optimism that the FTC’s nationwide patent troll investigation will assist with future federal and state law enforcement efforts.
“We believe the (FTC’s) collection of such information will greatly assist enforcement efforts against PAEs where they are found to violate antitrust and unfair and deceptive trade practices laws,” attorneys general wrote.*
Regarding the Minnesota tragedy and the 5th amendment: Excuse me. Didn't your church say it would be both "open and transparent" ? Wasn't that the paid for, public relations line the church used for years?
I said: Didn't your corporate church promise to be "OPEN" and "TRANSPARENT"? When's that going to start?
~~A diplomatic standoff appears to have developed in recent months between the Vatican and the New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into sex abuse, chaired by Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen.
Copies of correspondence released by the Special Commission this week show the papal nuncio to Australia, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, claimed diplomatic immunity in response to repeated requests for archival documentation that might assist Cunneen with her inquiry.
With the past information from the St. Paul Police Department we have been told the archdiocese has failed to cooperate with investigations into sexual abuse by clergy members. We are now learning from across the world, Austrailia to be exact, Archbishop Paul Gallagher has claimed diplomatic immunity as a defense to produce documentation that may assist the investigator regarding sexual abuse claims.
But why would anyone especially from the catholic church who has sworn to the world we are doing everything for past and present victim/survivors of sexual abuse claim the protection under diplomatic immunity ?
Diplomatic immunity definition – A exemption from criminal liability granted by statute or process of law to an individual or group. It applies to diplomats in their host countries, ensuring that they can't be arrested or criminally prosecuted by the host country for any violation of local laws.
Remember who Gallagher is representing ? THE VATICAN
In regard to JR’s of the 19th at 208AM: I have never used the term “lying” or any of its variants (e.g. ‘liar’) in describing JR’s material or JR; I have pointed out where the dots don’t connect but that’s not something he would care to explain and instead goes the ‘being-victimized’ route.
Let the record show that I also did not call him a “thief” but rather that he put that up himself.
But there is a valuable bit here for persons keeping a Notebook on the Abuseniks and their Playbook: persons who have done clinical work with various types of addictive or troubled personalities will recognize that such an individual may well have a smallish store of factual information and knowledge but yet has an almost innate shrewdness in how to try and manipulate conversation such that topics s/he doesn’t want to discuss are somehow always derailed. And I would say that the record demonstrates exactly that type of dynamic here.
Is the second paragraph’s question an honestly-put question or simply a rhetorical ploy meant to move readers to a negative answer? Hard to say. But self-awareness would, I think, move one toward giving the question some hard and serious consideration.
Then we get the bit about “normal people trust other people when they tell the truth”. But a) the internet modality is not a ‘normal’ mode of communication compared to face-to-face interpersonal encounters where – in addition to the factual content of the conversation – an interlocutor can rely on numerous other unspoken cues in order to determine for him/herself if the material s/he is being told seems true and accurate. None of that works in the internet modality.
And b) a review of the record here – and the many issues and problems of un-connecting-dots left unaddressed by any coherent response – also supports the possibility (or probability, some might think) that what we have been getting is certainly not ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’, as the classic phrase puts it.
Thus the further bit reaching toward some sort of rhetorical manipulation (about what “honorable people” do and do not do) also fails here.
Thus then also the invitation to “investigate away” – which is what, I would say, I have been doing, and with results which I have often explained at length (thus, in many instances, my long posts which JR would like to see suppressed).
And while the irritated exhortation to “respect people at least” may have worked after the first or second of fifth of JR’s comments here (which would go back quite a ways in time now), the whole bit is at the very least disingenuous at this point, with so much material on the record. But it’s a shrewd ploy to try to keep the ‘victimized’ high-ground, rhetorically at least.
I’m not sure what constitutes the “conspiracy” and I say again – as I have before in comments on this site – that while the Anderson Strategies were a strategy and assembled what certainly amounts to an effective synergy of numerous interests and elements and players, I have never called the Stampede a “conspiracy” (because we don’t have the evidence to justify such a conclusion).
Thus – yet again – the allegants participated in the synergy but were not necessarily involved in a conspiracy. However, if – speaking purely conceptually here – allegants working with the tortie staffs knowingly participated in the filing of a lawsuit allegation that they knew to be in some way wide of the truth and the whole truth, then – yes, in such a case such allegants would indeed have been involved in a criminal conspiracy. And if on the basis of such an allegation an allegant banked monies derived specifically on the basis of such an allegation, then that would indeed constitute a further criminal offense. Speaking purely conceptually here, of course, since there is no evidence nor even material to examine, at this point.
I am not sure who the “crooks” are here but I will presume that I am not included. Other than that, I can certainly join in JR’s plaint: “Why do the crooks always paint themselves as being close to virtue?” [italics mine]
I could even suggest that we could perform a substitution of one term in the next sentences: ‘All they have to do is pose as victims. Victimization becomes a part of their fraud. And it seems so easy the way they do it. Claim virtue by allegating victimization … and then attack the questioners …’
And that, I would say, is what may very well have been happening with some substantial frequency in the Stampede.
Jim,
We know that Publion is annoying. We know that he is the latest prescription for insomnia.
I would be the first to sign your petition. However, would that be fair to him ? In addition would that be fair to us. ? If we could get him removed over a petition it would only be fair to others who would wish us to be removed simply because of the truth we tell.
We could ask TMR if possible to limit each posting to a certain amount of characters, but then he would only post more. I am afraid we are stuck with him. Make sure your scroll button is fully functional.
We can only ask nicely if he wishes for us to believe he is articulate as he wants us to believe he can come to his point without all the fluff.
p.s. We can scroll past his comments. Think of the poor moderator who has to read his comments. How many cups of coffee does it take to get past them ?
Pss. showing him attention only makes it worse.
You are making a fool of yourself…and puttting commenters through enough at this point. If you have any pride as an adult person, try to finally grow up.,(You seem happy as can be here, trying to exude your importance. What a joke when on another website/blog you play poor victim who is so messed up. Another reason people do not believe you.
You are right Dennis. It was an attempt to cut to the chase.
Julie seems to be on a rant now.
How faith got confused with the corporation in her mind. I don't know.
Here's a story http://www.kansascity.com/2013/12/09/4681920/former-altar-boy-sues-national.html Billy Donahue's had a bad day.
And continuing.
JR (the 19th, 1237PM) submits his own take on things as if it were my take on things, and then snarkily disagrees with that take on things (that he himself constructed).
He might have started addressing some of the many many dots that don’t connect, but he chooses not to, and instead simply creates something more congenial to his preferred and established approach: bleating that nobody is “valid, as a poster here” except me.
Beyond that the comment dissolves into something best left to the contemplation of the readership.
Then comes “Dennis (the 19th, 319PM).
Characteristically – both for himself and for the Abusenik Playbook – he too addresses none of the points raised about the material he has posted (or copied) here recently. And instead, puts up a fresh pile that he has come up with. (And without any link to the original news report or article or whatever source it may be from which he has – apparently here – copied some text.)
Presuming – for the purposes of the discussion here only – the accuracy of the material in the text of his comment, I would say this:
Why the papal nuncio to Australia has claimed ‘diplomatic immunity’ would have a great deal to do with the request actually made by the New South Wales commission. Did that request involve material that involves not local intra-diocesan matters but rather communications between the nuncio (a formal diplomatic officer) and his ‘government’ in the Vatican (a sovereign state)?
This of course is wayyy too much thinking about the matter for the Abusenik Playbook: the game is to demand all the information they can possibly get – perhaps to see if they can (and inevitably they will) find something that they can spin so as to wave it around like a proverbial bloody-shirt. And it is even conceivable that the New South Wales commission knew that it was making a diplomatically-impossible request but figured that they would then have a chance to claim that the nuncio rebuffed them. In fact, presuming that the New South Wales commissioners are not complete amateurs, it is very probable that they knew what they were doing when they made the request in the first place.
We have seen similar official tactics run in the current Minnesota situation, where local government officials deploy their authority in ways that are almost guaranteed to create a congenial sense of crisis and outrage and so on.
There are American-influenced governments that are now trying the Stampede-pinata tactic. And why not? First, it offers to the public a handy distraction from national issues that the governments would prefer not to face up to in public discussions. Second, it offers the equally distracting attractions of both a soap-opera and a lottery (where you too might be eligible to grab a chunk of limitless Church wealth). Third, it offers a secularist-liberal government the chance – as it did in the American version – to reduce the public credibility of an organization that i) opposes many favorite secularist-liberal agendas and projects and ii) represents an alternative source of meaning for citizens who – in the secularist-liberal worldview – should be totally depending on their government for not only material but spiritual substance and meaning.
That’s quite a bunch of bennies for a certain type of government.
Thus the rest of this “Dennis” comment and his (apparently) ideas about Why the Church would have to hide anything (the ever-preferred innuendo) if there were not things to hide … fails here since there are formal-process possibilities that must be considered even before considering whatever the material in the NSW commission’s request might be.
And – looming unspoken in the background here – is the deliberate non-transparency demanded by the torties and the allegants, such that their claims and allegations (for which they have collected quite a bit of cash) are now hidden from any subsequent assessment. But that was part of the torties’ plan all along and now it constitutes part of the Game.
And, lastly, we see here the attempt to reduce the whole thing to the Church refusing to provide information “that may assist the investigator regarding sexual abuse claims”. Which is not at all necessarily so. Nor, again, can we any longer simply presume that a government agency is acting in good-faith; as we have seen in Philadelphia and surely Minneapolis-St. Paul, it is now obvious that government agencies at local as well as national levels can join in the Abusenik Game under the color of public authority.
Why would such agencies do that? Because the government interests desire and require the continued efforts to Keep The Ball Rolling, because The Ball and The Game have served government interests all along.
And for that same reason, government agencies at local levels can play the Game with little if any fear that higher-government authority will investigate or examine or review their actions. We have seen this demonstrated in the Santa Cruz/Santa Clara case, in Philadelphia, and so far in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
And then – in scream-y caps – “Dennis” reminds us of the obvious: the papal nuncio represents … “the Vatican”. Why yes, yes he does.
And then (the 19th, 428PM) we are treated yet again to an intimate just-entre-nous exchange cattily and histrionically conducted in full view for our benefit: “Dennis” confides unto “Jim” that “we know Publion is annoying”. Sigh. But it’s very true, I imagine: Abuseniks find questions irritating and they really don’t much like questions and they aren’t really prepared to deal with questions. In the eternal press-conference that is the Abusenik performance, the sign “no questions allowed” endlessly scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
Would they not find it all less “annoying” if they were simply to address the dots that don’t connect? I don’t think so; from what we’ve seen of their material, there really isn’t any way that they could escape a great deal of questions.
Then the discussion – as if they had some sort of authority and power in the matter – whether it would be “fair” to me if they “could get [me] removed”. As if. (The bottom line being, curiously, that “Dennis” isn’t going to sign-on to “Jim”’s petition.) But could anyone ask for a more vivid and forthright example of how Abuseniks deal with questions? Or even the observation that their dots do not connect? They will try to get the inconvenient and “annoying” questioner or observer “removed”. Pitch-perfect.
So pitch-perfect that one has to wonder if they don’t actually know what they are doing when they put this sort of stuff up. Can anyone really be so utterly un-self-aware as to expect that such a sentiment or thought could be expressed without it opening them to bemused dismissal? But again, I think that we see in this sort of thing the operation of mentalities that are not so much engaged with others and with the real world as they are playing out – within themselves and among themselves – some personal soap-opera. Commenting as therapy – or at least some fancied version of self-therapy that is actually merely self-display of the existing difficulties and ‘issues’, as they say in the trade.
And once again, what “truth” do the Abuseniks “tell” here? What sort of “truth” cannot be discussed or questioned, but merely accepted, on pain of being “removed”? (And for those in the home audience, the answer is … Abusenik “truth”.)
Then “Dennis” lets it be known (as if JR didn’t already ‘know’ it) that he scrolls-by my material; thereby, as I have previously noted, relieving himself of the necessity of having to make any response or looking like he hasn’t made any response; because – doncha see? – “Dennis” … hasn’t actually read the material so how can he rightly be victimized by being expected to make any response to the material? Thus, thank you very much, he’ll just keep tossing up onto the screen the piles he likes to toss-up onto the screen and that’s that. Except that he can also then continue to claim that nobody pays proper obeisance to his “truth”. Neato. Mucho neato.
Whether I am or am-not “articulate” is – had he not thought this through? – not actually a matter of belief, since my material is up here for everyone to consider and assess as they will. And once again, the Abusenik modus operandi is revealed accidentally: it’s all only a matter of what one wants readers to believe. As if readers can be manipulated by commenters as if they were cattle. But – of course – that is precisely a presumption of the Anderson Strategies and the Abusenik Playbook.
And also again: my ‘points’ are buried in so much “fluff”. Yes, to Abuseniks and fry-flies ‘words’ and ‘ideas’ (let alone ‘questions’) are all just so much window-dressing and “fluff”. They don’t pay much attention and shouldn’t have to – doncha know? – because it would simply re-victimize them all over again and again. Every word, idea, thought, or question is an abusive act, perhaps.
And then – the cattiness now taking on that queasy teen-y diary aura – there is a “p.s.”: as if he hadn’t already discussed it above and mentioned it in prior comments, “Dennis” confides and counsels “Jim” that “we can scroll past his comments”. Which point has already been dealt with above.
And then – the cattiness and queasy teeny-y diary aura now becoming positively giddy – there is also a “pss.” (perhaps meaning ‘p.p.s’): “showing [me] attention only makes it worse”. Possibly true – except, as I have mentioned before, I am not seeking their “attention”; I am simply wondering if we might get some answers about all the problems with their stories, claims, allegations and assertions.
I would be very happy if the Abuseniks favored me with no-attention but did make some coherent and rational response to the problems observed in their material. That would be very nice. In fact, I think it would make me positively giddy. And if such a nice thing were to happen and they were to make such coherent and rational response, then I might even exclaim Oh Goody!
But I don’t think it’s in the cards. That’s not the way Abuseniks “roll”.
I'll answer anyone's questions here.(as if I haven't already!) If they identify who they are and from where they post. (State will suffice. Could it be Missouri or Illinois or Louisiana?) I need a few" dots connected".
Until that never to come day; I'll give certain parties the big Hollywood skip.
~~we are asking anyone who knows anything about the accuser (someone knows who he is) to come forward. Please email us at pr@catholicleague.org.
What is the difference between SNAP posting information about clergy, and Bill Donahue publicly requesting any information that is known about the accuser of a St. Paul Archbishop. Information that clearly can be used to INCITE HARASSMENT against a possible victim.
TMR, although I will not accuse you of anything Donahue does.
It does show PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES SHOULD NOT THROW STONES.
In regard to my immediately prior comment, I would also point out that since the Abuseniks are “scrolling-through” my material, then there appears no cause for their concern about the readership’s ‘dialogue’ being somehow thrown out of whack. And – again – given the standard and well-demonstrated Abusenik Playbook gambits precisely designed to derail inconvenient and uncongenial trends in discussion, then the Abuseniks are hardly the ones to suddenly start proclaiming a tender and burning concern for the integrity of the discussion on this site.
On a completely different note, I can highly recommend the following article for interested readers: in the January, 2014 online edition of the journal First Things there is an article by Grant Kaplan about the theological grounding of celibacy, taking the topic in a remarkably fresh direction in a historically and theologically competent way. This article is one of the few on this site not behind a pay-wall, and is listed in the section called “Free Articles”.
From “Dennis” (the 20th, 141PM) we get another snippet without any identification or URL. (Although he accidentally provides, instead, the email link to the source.)
The snippet is from a Catholic League article about Archbishop Nienstedt. The article is seeking any photos or videos of any Confirmations conducted by that prelate in 2009 (the year of the alleged fondling that took place in a post-Confirmation photo session). I am going to imagine that the CL organization is also a bit suspicious of this verrrry convenient and yet anonymous accusation, which just happens to put the Archbishop over a barrel with the police. (Nor, we recall, have the police had anything to say about that suddenly and conveniently discovered cache of child-porn which they were reportedly investigating … how long does it take to figure out if a photo is child-porn?; nor have we heard anything further about Ms. Haselberger after whose departure from her job all this Minnesota brouhaha suddenly developed.)
Apparently not trusting the police in Minneapolis-St.Paul to do their job properly (see paragraph immediately above), CL is trying to see if it can come up with any information, especially of the specific photo itself.
It is in that context that CL then asks for any information about the accuser to email that info to CL (that’s the email address “Dennis” put up). Because, as the CL text puts it: “somebody knows who he is”.
In the light of the foregoing, the comments made by “Dennis” (i.e. “What is the difference” between SNAP and CL?) clearly reveal their failings. First, while SNAP is posting information already known, CL is seeking information that is not known – which should have been obvious to “Dennis” even as he wrote his own comment, since he had to use two very different verbs, “posting” and “requesting”. This reveals a problem even deeper than weak reading comprehension of unfamiliar material; he doesn’t even grasp the meaning of his own material.
Second, while any information can in any way at any time be used for illicit purposes, the SNAP venue and purpose is certainly intended simply to publish the information (and to a niche of readers who might well be predisposed to nastiness without too much thought).
But there is a) a clear purpose for the CL request for info: CL may well not – and not without reason – trust the local authorities in the Twin-Cities. And b) there is no clear indication that CL is going to pull an Abusenik-type maneuver and simply publish indiscriminately whatever information it might obtain; it is equally possible and I would say probable that CL is going to pass that information along to competent and authoritative legal counsel who will handle the material from there.
This is, certainly, an unusual role for any opinion-media organization to undertake. But then this ‘Winter-1944’ last big push effort in Jeff Anderson’s Twin Cities has now revealed that the local police are not presumptively credible as competent and objective investigators and, rather, have somehow enmeshed themselves in participation in Anderson’s end-game push. As I mentioned in a comment a few threads back, the Stampede has corroded the professional integrity of every organization that it has roped-into its Strategies.
The sentence/paragraph beginning “TMR” makes no sense as written.
But once again, and marvelously, “Dennis” then screams his now-clearly-insufficient conclusion that is based on his now-clearly-insufficient analysis.
The link to the CL article seems to activate that ‘php’ message so readers can go to the Catholic League site to the article entitled “Archbishop Nienstedt Deserves Justice” to read it.
I have just come across the “Dennis” scream of the 19th at 1147PM.
The idea that “Dennis” and “Jim” are doing any sort of “policing” – in the sense of reliable and competent investigative or assessment work – simply needs to be left hanging there where it was put. And it reinforces again the idea that for some commenters here it’s really a matter of some sort of personal fantasies that really only serve the personal needs – such as they may be – of those commenters.
But it ties in, I would say, with this: what we are seeing in the Twin Cities indicates with increasing clarity that what is happening there is a corrosion of the integrity of the law enforcement services there.
The Twin Cities events indicate an effort by Anderson to cobble together a last big push, using the materials at hand: a woman who left the employ of the Archdiocesan sex-abuse office, a police SVU commander willing to do her part to push whatever can be pushed, a police chief who is clearly not interested in reining-in her efforts, the MPR media outlet which is eager to try running the old Stampede media plays (and thus has created ‘news’ for other outlets as well), and – probably – political influences behind the scenes.
And as a result we get the oddly-disjointed reports with dots that don’t connect, about an increasing number of oddly-coincidental yet unexamined ‘events’ and ‘developments’.
Josie,
It is clearly evident that you don't like me. However, I will not say that about you. I have never met you. So before me saying I don't like you I would have to get to know you first. You may have some underlying condition that would make those who you attack look the other way and say " That's Josie"
I maybe the only one who thinks this but your comments have no merit or"guts" If you wish to disagree with somones comment that's fine. But don't you think you should counter with information to debate the original comment. That is what it is here a debate.
Your name calling and your repeated statement "Another reason people do not believe you" not only about my rape but that of others who post here is now old. We get it. Your catholic clergy and the archbishops, bishops and cardinals are angels, This is all a big ploy by victims/survivors to accuse your priests of one of the worst crimes known to man to bring down your catholic church.
In conclusion, if you know information about me I want you to post it. Make sure it is true. There is no reason why you should have failed to mention the other site I comment on. I have nothing to hide. I welcome anyone to read my comments or comments of others on CATHOLICS4CHANGE. I hope they read my one comment when I speak of the CATHOLICS on that site and end my comment saying YOU GUYS ARE GREAT. That is from a guy who is self-excommunicated who would not enter a catholic church if my life depended on it.
I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas (I do mean it)
Dennis,
In their belief system, lucifer was also an angel. pope Frank's Time's "man of the year". As far as I can see he's just lipstick on a pig; fascism with a friendly face.
The church will never recover from our rapes untill it does right by all it's victims. You'll know that day has come when you here it from us and our families. And that will be the day that the world can and will start trusting catholicism as what it pretends to be: virtueous.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20131222_Friar_who_headed_Archbishop_Ryan_to_be_paroled.html
NOTHING SHORT OF PUTTING A MURDERING PRIEST BACK ON THE STREET.
Extraordinary! It seems the church was more concerned about getting it's money back than helping Mr Baselice and his family. They got the money and the Baselice family lost their son.
I had a friend murdered in college, trying to protect his car from a thief. He was shot through the heart while trying to stop his car being stolen. His death destroyed his family; and killed his mother and dad. Both were dead within 5 years and they were in their late '50's. He had been their only son. Many lives were stolen with that one act.
That is what is left out in all these crimes. Not only the victim is harmed but there are horrific repercussions that effect the entire family.
So the father, Mr Baselice sits shiva in front of the Philly archdiocese every month for 7 years and lives his life without his son. Sad; sad; sad.
Mr Baselice, if you read this. Sorry doesn't touch your pain. Other victims and their families know what you are going through.
On the 21st at 739AM “Dennis” responds to ‘Josie’ (the 19th, 1145PM).
Since ‘Josie’ had told him to “try to finally grow up”, “Dennis” neatly concludes about ‘Josie’ that “it is clearly evident you don’t like me”. In the first place, we see here a clear demonstration of this Abusenik predilection to conflate what people think about one’s material with a personal-rejection of the Abusenik himself. This stems, I would say, from there not being much of sense of the conceptual, such that one might be able to separate one’s self from one’s expressed conceptual material. For the Abusenik, there may be no other option besides ‘love me, love my material’ – especially since, really, in most allegations one has no evidence and must simply rely on a personal decision to buy the story. Or not.
But there’s also a method to the madness: since ‘Josie’ doesn’t “like” poor “Dennis”, then in his construction of things “Dennis” is under no pressure to make response to ‘Josie’; he only talks to people he likes (doncha see?), and if people like him then they agree with his material. Neato.
And in the second place, the conclusion that one is not liked also casts one as a ‘victim’ (of personal rejection) and thus one can now declaim whatever lines one has composed for the occasion from the throne of victimization, wearing the appropriate wig. Neato again.
And he has indeed composed some lines for this occasion.
First, he runs the old you-don’t-know-me bit, hardly unfamiliar to clinicians working with the variously troubled, addled, and challenged. Had he not scrolled-through so much material, he might have seen on this very thread some discussion of this very same gambit. And might realize that after people submit enough material, they are knowable in a real if not total way (as if anybody could know anyone else completely). And that has happened in the case of “Dennis” here, after all the material that’s gone into the record.
But then, the Wig of Diagnosis now concludes (from his already flawed conflation and presumption noted above) that ‘Josie’ “may have some underlying condition that would make those who attack you look the other way and say ‘That’s Josie’”. It’s a bit of a job to follow the coherence of the thought process in this quoted bit, but apparently “Dennis” is going for the idea that it’s not he but ‘Josie’ who has “some underlying condition”. In other words, another Playbook (and infantile) come-back: I’m Not/You Are (often to be followed in direct interpersonal exchange with sticking one’s tongue at one’s fancied oppressor and then intoning a sing-songy Myah Myah).
But what I think really has him going here is that with very few exceptions, nobody here will simply shake their head with a rueful smile and say ‘That’s Dennis’.
He continues his prepared lines: ‘Josie’ submits comments that “have no merit or ‘guts’”. If he had explained just where and how specifically-identified material from ‘Josie’ justifies the judgment that her material has “no merit”, then a rational reader might at least grant that he had put some serious thought into his claim. But characteristically he simply delivers – as is his predilection – his negative bits without even an attempt to explain or justify them.
Thus also the no “guts” bit: this bit of manly-man lingo from somebody who puts no ideas or justifications forward for consideration, and then claims that he gets no respect for the “truth” that he doth “tell”, and won’t even read uncongenial ideas that he can’t otherwise ‘make go away’. A true paragon of the manly-man, not only courageous but rational, coherent, competent, and mature.
And then feels himself justified in lecturing ‘Josie’ about her not countering “with information to debate the original comment … [T]hat is what it is here a debate” [sic]. Has anyone ever been-to or participated-in a “debate” where one interlocutor never submits justifications or explanations for his assertions and claims and where that same interlocutor refuses to consider the questions of interlocutors to whose material he cannot – or doesn’t want to – make response?
Then the next typically sly bit: he slides his “rape” in as if it were established and demonstrated fact or even – at least – a highly probable possibility. Isn’t this “debate” guy aware that in debating a mere unsupported assertion doesn’t qualify as a fact?
I am pleased to see that he is sensitive to “name calling”; perhaps he might lecture his fellow ‘victims’ here on that topic.
Then he asserts that such non-belief “is now old”, meaning it’s no longer of interest. I disagree: the continued skepticism about various claimed instances of “rape” here never gets old because the various claims, assertions, and stories just keep on coming.
He then constructs a position that I have seen no commenter on this site claim – that clergy and hierarchy are “angels” – and proceeds to register his dissatisfaction and disagreement with this claim (that he himself has created). Now that gambit really is “old”, and at this point is already in the Notebook on the Playbook of every commenter who’s keeping such a listing.
He then segues immediately into a thought which – given the grammatical presentation – indicates that he is stating it as a fact: “This is all a big ploy by victims/survivors to accuse your priests of one of the worst crimes …” and so on. To which I might only add ‘alleged’ to “victims/survivors”; but then, on second thought, and to avoid the queasy Holocaust filching, I would actually substitute “allegants” for “victims/survivors”, just for the sake of factual accuracy.
We are then treated – rather formally – to his “In conclusion” (the Wig of Seriousness, here): ‘Josie’ is told that she can post any “information” she might “know” about “Dennis”. Again, as if the thoughtful examination of so much of anybody’s material doesn’t give a reader sufficient grounds for coming to some working-conclusions. But as I have said before in comments, this gambit is old-hat to clinicians working with the variously addicted, addled, troubled, and otherwise characterologically unripe.
He then – marvelously – declaims that “I have nothing to hide”. He perhaps doesn’t recall (since it exists now only in some “inoperative” Abusenik ‘yesterday’) his comment about not sharing his own “rape” story with others here (while yet continuing to refer to it as if it were a demonstrated fact). And generally, if allegants had nothing to hide, why did their counsel insist precisely upon hiding their claims through ‘secrecy’ requirements once the checks were cashed?
We are then ‘welcomed’ to go to some other Abusenik website and read his comments there. But a) if he puts up such allegedly worthwhile material on some other site, why then does he not put up similarly qualitative material here? Perhaps he might put up here whatever single comment he wishes us to read – or is there some reason why that option won’t work for him? (My thought: since that other venue is an Abusenik site, his material is simply going to be taken for great-stuff, unlike the ‘debate-y’ reception it gets here.)
And b) we have seen many many times that when “Dennis” offers a compliment it usually has a touch of nastiness in it – and perhaps therefore his merely writing (or screaming in caps) that “you guys are great” means little as a compliment and functions more like the rattle of a rattler.
And once again, he needs to be reminded that there is no such status as “self-excommunicated” in the Church. He is a lapsed Catholic, more accurately. But that latter term doesn’t really hit the right self-dramatizing and histrionic note for him, so he has invented the status and term of “self-excommunication”. Neato again. Because – doncha know? – it takes a true ‘hero’ to ‘self-excommunicate’.
Ditto: he wouldn’t walk into a Catholic church “if my life depended on it”. And in what conceivable universe would that scenario even be possible? But it hits the right self-dramatizing and histrionic notes.
And then and then and then: we are all wished a Merry Christmas. And – marvelously, as if he knew that bit would need some lard to lubricate it – he adds “(I do mean it)”. Such niceness; I feel better already.
But then – suddenly – we are back to some other “Dennis” on the 21st at 213PM with screaming about “a murdering priest”. Perhaps the mere changing of Wigs changes “Dennis”.
Readers may or may not be familiar with the story (for which he uncharacteristically provides a link). Oddly, this Philly media source dates this article as being posted on Sunday, December 22, at 3:01 AM, which, nicely, puts the article officially out of space and time. There’s something nicely apropos in that.
A Franciscan friar is being paroled soon after having served time for the embezzlement of $900,000 from the Catholic high-school where he served as president. He was sentenced to 3 to 6 years in prison in 2009. It was alleged (but never tried in court or even Charged) that a former student of that school (in the mid-1990s), who developed a drug habit and died in 2006 at the age of 28, was initially hooked-on drugs at the age of 16 by this friar (and, allegedly, a second friar), and that this abuse “continued for years after he graduated” and further that the friar had apparently continued to give this ex-student a great deal of “hush-money” (hence, in this telling, the embezzlement from the School).
It is also claimed that the friar could not be Charged with sex-abuse “because of the statute of limitations” and – for that same or for some other reason – the other friar was not Charged with anything. Which itself seems odd: a) we have seen in the recent Philly cases how little and how fungible DA interpretations of the applicability of the SOL can be; b) if this were ongoing abuse, then would it not have extended far closer to whatever SOL parameters applied? But perhaps the prosecutor really didn’t want to get mixed-up in what might have been a Billy-Doe type trial situation a decade ago; or perhaps the fact that upon the age of 18 it no longer was an issue of alleged sex-abuse of a minor but instead raised some far less congenial legal possibilities also stayed the prosecutor’s hand from bringing Charges in the sex-abuse matters.
Meaning that as it stands today, this friar is an ex-con with an embezzlement record. And nothing else because nothing else was Charged, let alone proven.
However the father of the deceased continues to “hold both men responsible for the death of his son”. He holds a monthly session outside the Archdiocesan offices, with photographs of the two friars and a sign that says “Partners in Sexual Abuse”. Readers might wonder if there isn’t something not quite legal in publicly claiming – with no evidence – that somebody is guilty-of such a claimed crime. But this is one of the nice side-effects of the Anderson Strategies: if the Church brings libel charges then it is persecuting the allegant (now deceased, and thus also now the bereaved parent of the allegant); if the Church doesn’t bring charges and allows this father’s activity to continue, then the Church has convicted itself by its silence; if the Church denies the charges, then it is lying.
Any one of the three options can – in this time of Stampede – be made grist for the Abusenik mill. Neato.
The father of the deceased also claims that he is doing this because he fears this friar might continue to minister, although – especially in such a high-profile case – there seems little possibility of that. The Franciscan Order has not dismissed (expelled) him from the Order at this point. Nor could he exercise ministry without the approval of the AOP or whatever Diocese he may reside-in for the up-coming year and a half of his probation. And nowadays the Vatican also gets a direct say in his ministerial future status.
The PA Board of Probation and Parole nicely avoided an abyss for itself by requiring, as a condition of granting probation, that the friar “submit to an evaluation to determine [his] need for sex-offender treatment/service”. The DA’s Office (that did not prosecute him for any sex charges) says through its Chief Deputy DA that in his opinion “I believe he could still be a danger to children” – although that is a) a statement with obvious give-away qualifiers and b) there is no demonstrated evidence of sex-offenses. Nothing but the allegations.
This creates an interesting legal scenario: although he was never Charged with sex-criminal activity (and thus also is not eligible under federal laws that now allow prison authorities to hold sex-offender convictees beyond their legal sentence if those authorities feel the inmate is still a threat), he had to – as a condition of parole – accept an assessment by … whatever State agency or contractor conducts such assessments. The question of the ‘science’ of sex-offender assessments remains at issue here, although there are more definite parameters for the clinical “pedophilia” diagnosis, which – however – doesn’t seem applicable here, given the age of the student at the time of the alleged incidents and subsequently as the deceased entered his legal majority.
What happens if the friar is not judged in need of the sex-offender treatment/services? What are the chances that a PA assessment agency is going to find him not-in-need of such services? These are questions for which there is insufficient reliable information to draw a conclusion.
But there is most certainly sufficient information to judge that the “Dennis” characterization of this friar as a “murderer” [scream-y formatting omitted] is not justifiably accurate, to say the least.
We are now (the 21st, 1002AM) assured by JR – as if the last year or two’s worth of his material never got into the record here – that he will “answer anyone’s questions (as if I haven’t already)”. He has connected no dots that were pointed out as unconnected in all of that time. Is it probable that he will or can suddenly change his modus operandi overnight and at a whim?
But instead he seeks to mimic with the Wig of Questioning by claiming that he too has been victimized by not having dots connected – specifically, what State I come from. (Or perhaps: height, weight, color of eyes, favorite ice cream?) Readers can consider the relevance of the dots that he deigns not to connect with the relevance of the dots he wants connected by me.
But – of course – having to his own satisfaction (as low a bar as that may be) – assumed some sort of equal-ground in the connecting-dots department, he can then bring his skit home with a spiffy Hollywood reference: he doesn’t have to explain how the dots don’t connect in his stories, allegations and claims since I won’t tell him what State I’m from. Neato. But at this point, so very obvious.
Some one seems obsessed with you and I, Dennis. But, unlike believers, I have no faith in any critic who refuses to show himself as himself. If you and I can do it so can sniper boy. Come out of the closet dear.
Jim,
SHAME. I cannot see any other reason for it. When an individual responds to anyones postings without "standing By" their comments by not letting us know who they are is nothing but shame. They are ashamed of what they post. NO PRIDE in what they post.
Also, when did Publion start speaking for others who post here ? I had to see it for myself after being told he was doing so. But it appears the comment that I made to Josie was answered by Publion. I guess Josie, Julia, KenW, Mark Manos and the rest can shut their computers off since Publion will speak for them.
Let the record show that Publion shall never speak for me. He lacks the information and education to do so.
I BET THERE WILL BE A FULL PAGE RESPONSE ON THIS.
Sorry Jim
Any JR comment that opens with “Extraordinary!” should get whiskers twitching; unless JR has gotten his hands on a Wig that actually does change the style of writing, this puppy needs to be handled with gloves.
If JR has detected any reliable evidence that the allegations of the sex-abuse qualify as anything more than allegations, he is welcome to share that with the readership. Otherwise, this whole comment is merely an exercise – at the very best – of spinning the available material in whatever way would best serve to Keep The Ball Rolling.
As for – yet and yet again – a sudden revelation about – now – a friend who was “murdered in college”, this genre of spot-on, I-too-was-Stalin’s-confidant gambit has indeed been seen once too often in JR’s achieved corpus of material in the record here. Readers are welcome to make of it what they will.
We don’t know if any “crimes” in regard to the sex-abuse allegations have been committed. Had JR seen information to the contrary somewhere? Or perhaps more accurately – imagined that he had?
As for the allegant’s father (himself now an allegant, I suppose) continuing his sessions in front of the Chancery: I have pointed out the remarkable and shrewdly-constructed box into which such a gambit puts the Church (see my comment on this thread, the 21st, 643PM, and specifically: “However the father of the deceased continues to “hold both men responsible for the death of his son”. He holds a monthly session outside the Archdiocesan offices, with photographs of the two friars and a sign that says “Partners in Sexual Abuse”. Readers might wonder if there isn’t something not quite legal in publicly claiming – with no evidence – that somebody is guilty-of such a claimed crime. But this is one of the nice side-effects of the Anderson Strategies: if the Church brings libel charges then it is persecuting the allegant (now deceased, and thus also now the bereaved parent of the allegant); if the Church doesn’t bring charges and allows this father’s activity to continue, then the Church has convicted itself by its silence; if the Church denies the charges, then it is lying.”).
Surely there is something “sad, sad, sad” about it [corrections supplied]; opinions no doubt may differ on just what constitutes the ‘sadness’.
And then – in a marvelously misjudged effort at multi-purpose manipulation – JR addresses himself (almost as if in an Ode) to the bereaved father/allegant, that if he happens to “ read this” comment of JR’s here, the gentleman may rest assured that while indeed nothing quite ever touches the pain (thus ticking off the indelible –pain-of-the-victim box) yet there are those (including JR, if he does say so himself) who “know what you are going through” (thus ticking off the JR-as-genuine-victim box). Neato.
But would that bereaved gentleman be reading this site? And wouldn’t it have been more efficient to contact him by other means and make this – as it should be – a personal communication?
But that presumes that JR is actually trying to say something to the bereaved gentleman; when actually another far stronger probability that covers the questions here is that JR put it up here to manipulate this readership, making himself out to be the outraged yet genuine and experienced and co-victimized consolation of the Churchly-oppressed. The bereaved parent, thereby, is made grist for the Abusenik mill, used like the proverbial hostage in a bank-job-gone-bad, to further the purposes of the Stampede – his loss here being made a mule for JR’s self-promotion (which is itself so queasily dubious a proposition). Neither the Stampede nor the Abuseniks themselves can avoid doing this – that’s how deeply essential to the Script and to the Game and to Abuseniks themselves this gambit is.
Extraordinary? Nope – par for the course the way the Abuseniks play the Game.
I think I hear some mumbling. Oh It's just a rat squealing.
In regard to JR’s of the 22nd at 1127AM: We see again the method in the Abusenik madness. We get JR’s psychological (“obsessed”) assessment, attempting to simultaneously a) reduce the whole matter to one of personal and psychological dysfunction (which, all things considered, is not so surprising coming from him); b) making it seem as if JR and “Dennis” are personally valid objects of attention (who have ‘succeeded’ insofar as so many pixels are being deployed in regard to their material); and then c) the stab at self-justification by claiming that JR has “no faith in any critic who refuses to show himself as himself”.
In regard to (a): I am not interested in JR or “Dennis” as persons. Rather I am very interested in the material that they put up here, since that material gives us an unusually clear glimpse into the Abusenik mentality that had been drawn up from the depths to help sustain the impetus of the Stampede. And the record here demonstrates how useful that material has been in that regard; we now have the makings of quite a Notebook on the Playbook, as well as quite a store of ideas and thoughts as to the core workings of the Stampede and everything that has gone into Keeping The Ball Rolling.
In regard to (b): If I spend a great deal of time with their material, it reflects no high personal estimation of them, but rather it reflects a necessary attention to offering analysis and counter-point to their material – material which so vividly and clearly demonstrates just how the Stampede came to be what it became.
Naturally – the internet being what it is – I have also faced the challenge of ensuring that in wading into their material, assessing it, and reflecting upon it I not be drawn into the usual internet dreck-exchanges of content-less one-liners and nasty back-and-forth that are the normal default mode for so many mentalities to be found in various precincts of the webverse. This site, after all, occupies a unique niche in the webverse, being one of the very few sites to sustain a serious analytical focus on the Catholic Abuse Matter.
And while I have always realized the remarkable opportunity for gleaning insight presented by the material of various Abusenik commenters here, I have also always been aware that in garnering the advantages, it would be necessary not to import their notable (and oft-seen) derangements and deficiencies of content and approach, which would certainly contaminate the quality of what this site offers if many other readers were to let themselves become enmeshed in it.
In regard to (c): Thus, I consistently present my material as the sole focus of attention, which thereby actively presents an example of how to – and how not-to – conduct assessment, especially in the internet modality. I do this because i) it is precisely the fact that attention was diverted from the vital core material that enabled the Stampede in the first place. And because ii) there is utterly no value to ‘screen-names’ as being either useful information (e.g. is ‘tomdoyle’ actually the still-Father himself?); guarantors of the quality of the material (as we have seen so vividly demonstrated in Abusenik comments on this site for so long); or even accurate identifiers (if I were to post as ‘mike jones’ would that do anything whatsoever to contribute to the quality of my material?).
So that is my purpose in retaining the screen-name “Publion”: it serves as a reminder that it is the material – and nothing else – that is of vital and fundamental concern here.
This, of course, is gall and wormwood to Abusenik mentalities since the Playbook requires that a) substantive assessment of material (stories, claims, assertions, allegations) be absolutely avoided and b) that the void thus created be filled with whatever distracting bits can be mustered and injected into the “debate” or “dialogue” so as to derail and derange it and prevent such assessment.
Which then greatly confounds and irritates the Abuseniks because i) their success in achieving the Playbook’s (and their own) objectives has been almost entirely dependent upon distraction, derangement, and the derailment of any actual assessment. And because ii) they are not and never have been any good at operating at the level of conceptual analysis and assessment anyway, whether as analyzers or analysands. And therefore that they must – absolutely must – drag any discussion down to their distracting, derailing, and deranging level or else face the prospect of being made clear examples of the reality that in the matter of the Stampede (and their own claims, stories, allegations, and assertions) there is no there there.
Thus to remove any large chunk of possible opportunity for distraction, derailment, and derangement pretty much leaves them with nothing to work-with … unless (as we have so often seen here) they actually create distracting and derailing and deranging (if not also deranged) straw-positions and then declaim as they can against those straw-positions that they themselves have had to create.
Lastly, from a military point of view, I would greatly disagree with the accuracy of JR’s characterization of my activity as ‘sniping’; I am delivering rather sustained and concentrated barrages. The relevant military imagery here would come more properly from the artillery rather than the infantry milieu.
Although, in the contentless one-liners and snark, they do, indeed, return merely ‘sniping’ fire. But what else can they do and what else have they got? A review of Stampede-related material on relevant sites will reveal to the reader, I think, as it has to me, that there are no serious presenters out there to make a sustained, comprehensive, rational, coherent, and convincing case for the Stampede.
That being said, we can sit back and see what further scattered rifle fire we get in return.
Dear imaginary god I have to thank you for sending the caliber of opposition to victims that your wife, the church, has mustered here. Since they find no interest in us as people. That's sociopathy by definition. No empathy. No compassion. Untruthful and unkind. That's the best you can do, lord? It's obvious by sending sociopaths out to defend sociopaths only proves our victims' points. Your Mrs. is running a sick show. And the whole world is watching it.
One again “Dennis” (the 22nd, 747PM) gives us to a catty, teeny-y myah-myah type of comment, again masquerading as a personal communication (that should properly be an off-site communication – if “Dennis” actually intended his missive as a personal communication).
In the “Dennis” universe, the only way one can (or needs-to) “stand by” one’s comments is to put up a personal-sounding moniker as a screen-name. Thus – so very neatly – absolving them both of having to “stand by” their material by, say, explaining the material or defending the material where objections or questions are raised.
If “Dennis” has anything more than the tickles of the Wig of Knowing to demonstrate where I am “ashamed of my material” (which, apparently, he has not scrolled-through, but rather has read) he can put it up here – like a manly-man debater. But, of course, that’s not how “Dennis” “rolls”.
If “Dennis” has any justification for the assertion that I have taken it upon myself to “start speaking for others who post here” he can put it up ditto. But ditto again as to that happening.
I commented-upon “Dennis”s public comment to ‘Josie’; but that’s what commenting is for. (Was “Dennis” under the illusion that a public comment, if addressed to somebody, is a private communication like an email?) ‘Josie’ is more than welcome to put up whatever responsive material she would like to put up, as are all commenters. And I specifically put up my comment as a study of the revelations contained within the material “Dennis” put up, not as any presumptive response that would pre-empt whatever ‘Josie’ might wish to put up.
But again: if they didn’t have self-invented quibbles like this to snipe about, just what would the Abuseniks have, really? It’s distractions or nothing.
Then – the Wig of Lawyerly Authority – “Dennis” doth declaim and pronounce that “Publion shall never speak for me”. Y’a think? Why and in what universe would I ever want to do such a thing? I have more than enough to do analyzing his material, and I frankly can’t imagine how to enter into the mental-universe “Dennis” occupies in order to figure out how to speak for him. That would be mushy ground indeed, and there be pink elephants and other fantastical creatures. With which we need not let ourselves be detained..
If I have so little “information” and “education”, imagine what further frakkery his material would reveal if I had more “information” and “education”. I’ll see what I can do.
Meanwhile, we see demonstrated yet again the operation of the Anderson Strategies: lure these types of mentalities up to the surface and create an atmosphere where they can do some free-range spewing, confident that nobody would dare to challenge their material because they have shrewdly clothed themselves in the mantle of victimhood – which, marvelously, they had imagined to work sort of like Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility: when you don’t want to be seen, nobody can see you if you just wrap yourself up in it. But – alas – the Cloak doesn’t work on Wigs, thus leaving one confronting nothing but a Wig suspended over nothingness and hanging in the air. Picture that scenario as a film-director, and how it would look through the camera’s lens.
Thus, as LBJ would put it, “let us continyuh”.
On the 23rd at 1256AM JR deploys some of the usual Playbook bits:
All that is here on this site is “opposition to victims”, which is a neat two-fer: i) JR slides by his putative victimhood as if it were established and ii) anybody who questions the story ‘opposes’ victims generally. The presumption beneath this bit being that victims exist to have their stories unquestioningly accepted and anything else is “opposition”. But what I am opposed-to is stuff that doesn’t add-up and to dots that don’t connect; the fact that JR has used ‘victimhood’ as the setting for running such a gambit is secondary.
For the purposes of the work on this site, personal-relationships with commenters is irrelevant and distracting (although I would share here that from what I have read of their material, I certainly feel no urge to get to personally interact with the Abuseniks commenting here). But we see in this bit precisely the conflation of the personal and the evidentiary: the only thing the Abuseniks have is their personal credibility (such as readers might judge it to be) because there is utterly no evidence and the Playbook solution for that rather significant problem is to surf over it with a play for personal-sympathy (for an experience that nobody really knows ever happened). Thus too the oft-repeated insistence on their personal credibility (i.e. the Abuseniks would never lie and have nothing but “truth” to “tell”), although on the internet there is absolutely no basis for anything “personal” in the sense that readers can establish a personal knowledge to substitute-for the evidence and compensate-for the lack of evidence.
Then the Wig of Diagnosis claims that “no interest in us as people” constitutes “sociopathy by definition”. No, it doesn’t. Sociopathy requires a global lack of interest in other human beings; a mechanic focused on fixing one’s car but not particularly interested in forming a personal relationship with the owner of the car is not a sociopath; he simply has priorities that don’t include the formation of a personal relationship in a specific situation or setting.
If JR has any quotations of material indicating that I am “untruthful” he is welcome to put them up.
And then – in a remarkable demonstration of putting his building blocks together – he comes up with “sociopaths defending sociopaths”, which fails doubly.
But then – more method in the madness – he tries to go for the idea that if “sociopaths are defending sociopaths” then that “only proves our victims’ points” [sic]. This breaks some new ground out in the swamp: ‘we don’t have to prove our points or stories because you opposers and doubters and non-believers of us ‘victims’ prove the truth of our allegations and stories and claims by very virtue of the fact that you are sociopaths, which sociopathy you have already proven by the fact that you don’t believe us’. Mucho neato. If you get a little dizzy trying to follow the logic of that bit the problem is not with your set (as they used to say in the early days of TV). This bit of JR’s is a construction held together with spit and baling-wire, but it’s good enough for Abusenik ‘logic’. But this isn’t an Abusenik site and the usual dreck-y bits won’t work here like they do elsewhere on the web.
And thus we also see again so very clearly why the Anderson Strategies didn’t want to allow any of these types up onto the stand in any trial: confront any of these types with questions and they start getting smoke coming out of their ears and began yammering along the lines of what we see so often here.
And why absolutely every element of inquiry had to be eclipsed by the intense and unremitting insistence upon the ‘story’ and the emotional valence of the (unproven) experience of victimhood: without the emotional surf kicked up by the mere claim of victimhood, there is nothing whatsoever to establish the genuineness and actuality of that victimhood in the first place.
Then – with a nicely histrionic, self-dramatizing, and self-heroizing touch: “and the whole world is watching it”. So … “the whole world” reads this site, does it? That’s a change in the usual story. But of course, Abusenik stories are very liable to change from one day to the next – but unless one is a “sociopath” one shouldn’t really notice that. Ovvvvvv courssssse.
But I agree with JR that the more of the world that watches what goes on here on this site, then the better it is. I absolutely agree with that. And perhaps that is, to an ever-increasing degree, what is happening.
Everything I've said happens to be true. You know simply and honestly true. Just plain old true. No gravey. What's is your problem? You're like an octopus throwing up a cloud of ink to hide behind. Hiding's what you do. Hiding and deprecating then obfuscating all with more ink.
How would we know who reads these arguments? Numbers of readers are never shared. I would love to see the the demographics of Dave's readership. Dave?
Princess, Has my story changed from day to day? I don't think so.
And more from the pitch-perfect Abusenik music-machine: on the 25th at 431AM JR simply repeats the old refrain that “everything” he has said “happens to be true”. Readers are welcome to consider the probability of that assertion being accurate and true.
Then the bit about “what is your problem?”. Apparently either reading-comprehension is a “problem” for JR or else he has – in best Playbook form – simply ignored my numerous explanations of my concerns (including the most recent, on this thread, on the 23rd at 803PM: “But what I am opposed-to is stuff that doesn’t add-up and to dots that don’t connect”).
And again the effort to make it seem like I am ‘hiding’ behind “a cloud of ink” (‘pixels’ would be the more accurate term here) – and yet it is precisely the Abuseniks’ ‘hiding’ their allegations, claims, and stories behind i) formal and formally-demanded secrecy-agreements and ii) the ever-deployed effort to simply keep repeating their assertions (rather than explaining or demonstrating their credibility and probability) that is the “problem” here and in the whole Abusenik Playbook and the Stampede that it has enabled.
Then – as if he hadn’t just recently written about “the whole world is watching” – he now questions whether anybody here can know how many people are reading this site. But it would be not merely a case of numbers; instead it would be a matter of the particular readers: are they just internet surfers or are they persons who think carefully or perhaps even persons in a position to give their thoughts some traction?
And in any case, this site now constitutes an extensive and publicly-accessible record of just how the Playbook works and how well (or not) Abusenik stories, claims, allegations and assertions hold up under even modest examination.
Then, one minute later (the 25th, 432AM) JR slides into snarky gender-bending (always a characteristic give-away that the material isn’t going to be very good so hopefully readers will be distracted by the snark instead) as a lead-in to the remarkable (perhaps “Extraordinary!”) question as to whether his “story has changed”. As if readers here might not be able to go back over the record here and watch the contortions and changes unfold before their eyes in regard to JR’s “story”. But the type of mentality suctioned-up from their usual depths by the Anderson Strategies lives only in an eternal ‘today’ and there are no ‘yesterdays’ – only the assertions and claims and stories can be considered, ever-fresh and ever-repetitively tossed up at the screen. Abduction-by-aliens stories come to mind.
(Time-saver here: in using that abduction imagery I have, of course, opened the possibility of extended Abusenik riffs on bits such as ‘priests are aliens who abduct victims’ and assorted variations on that theme. I think the any such entertainments that might be provided with such riffs will be worth the risk.)
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia's response to the Superior Court overturning Msgr. Lynn's conviction is honest and sincere. They have wisely refrained from making statements during the time that Msgr. Lynn has been incarcerated. They have reaffirmed their commitment to the protection of our young people again and again. Nowhere else, in any other institution has there been such procedures and training for all involved with children. (Anyone who is unfamiliar with the policies needs to get caught up and be honest about the efforts made that span over 10 years). They have also continued to vow support for past vicims that are healing as a result of abuse and always conclude with a realizationof how these news releases can affect legitimate(my word) past victims
Of course, the haters will take any opportunity to resort to the same old responses with no real justification . As has been pointed out here on media report.com and elsewhere, the "Stampede" (Publion's apt word for the movement) does not care about justice for priests. My feeling has always been that the victim "advocate" roleplayers are out of control as they ignore the truth in order to embrace their own agenda, which in a lot of cases has nothing to do with child abuse .I also have felt at times that the falsely accused are not getting a fair shake in the midst of this "Stampede".
Who are you to call others "haters"?
See http://www.archphila.org/press%20releases/pr002297.php