The Boston Globe and the Catholic sex abuse narrative: A story yet to be told.
When the Boston Globe excoriated the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002 for relying on therapists to treat abusive priests from the 1950s to the 1990s, the paper somehow apparently forgot that in 1992 the Globe itself was enthusiastically trumpeting the psychological treatment of sex offenders as "highly effective" and "dramatic."
In a front-page article on June 18, 1992, the Globe opened:
"A new generation of treatment programs for sex offenders is proving highly effective, dramatically reducing the percentage of cases in which offenders repeat sex crimes, research shows.
"Recidivism rates declined from 9 percent for untreated offenders to 5 percent for those who underwent the new treatment in one study, and from 38 percent to 6 percent in another.
"While there is no complete 'cure' for sex offenders, the new findings indicate that many of them can learn to manage their aberrant sexual impulses without committing new crimes. The promising new treatments focus on helping these offenders control the complex cauldron of social inadequacies, distorted thinking, and deviant sex fantasies that prompt them to rape women, molest children or exhibit themselves in public."
By this very article the Globe confirms that the Church's then-practice of sending abusive priests off to treatment was not just some diabolical attempt to deflect responsibility and cover-up wrongdoing, but a genuine attempt to treat aberrant priests that was being widely promoted by secular experts in the field.
The Globe's therapy amnesia
Indeed, the Globe editorial board itself was also an ardent proponent of therapeutic treatment for sex offenders. In an editorial only eight days after the above article, the Globe editorial board published "An offender's right to treatment," which forcefully petitioned the Governor of Massachusetts at the time (William Weld) for "improved treatment programs" in the state, contending that it was "wrong to impose harsh punishments on sexually violent criminals without offering them treatment."
Around the same time, the Globe also published another article seemingly endorsing the manner in which the Catholic Church handled abusive priests:
"[Those who treat sex offenders] and other specialists said many offenders can be returned to active ministry so long as the clergy and their supervisors accept lifelong restrictions and follow-up care."
The Globe went on to say that "society will suffer" if offenders are not afforded therapeutic treatment, as such measures are "cost-effective" and successful.
The hypocrisy here is rich. After first promoting psychological treatment for sex offenders in 1992 – including the Church's own treatment programs for offending priests – by 2002 the Globe was scolding the Church for doing in 1992 exactly what the Globe itself said it should be doing!
Perhaps the Globe should consider unleashing its crack "Spotlight Team" to delve deeper into this story and investigate itself and its own rank hypocrisy.
Here's what the church did wrong.
It never asked the parishiners if they wanted to experiment with the lives and safety of their children.
It failed to report crimes.
Are we to believe that the Boston Globe lured Cardinal Law to pass known perpetrators to new parishes?
Off point Jim.
Read the post.
Crimes that were unreported (and then repeated by the bosses transfer of the predators) were still crimes.
Send them to therapy after the crime's been dealt with by the justice system.
Therapy was given to circumvent the justice system.
That's why you're wrong.
Parents had a right to know the history of these priests.
The unfortunate reality is that it was not just clergy that failed to report the matter to police. In some cases, the parents became aware of the accusations and took the matter up with church authorities rather than reporting it to police. By failing to have police deal with the matter, and instead choosing to rely upon deficient church procedures, these parents were part of the group that were causally linked to future harm other children suffered. But are they being held accountable by anyone?
Parents have a right to know about Uncle Ernie. Parents have a right to know about Geometry teacher, scoutmaster, and "confirmed bachelor" Mr. Hunt. Parents have a right to know about Baptist youth pastor Shawn Davies.
That's right Ken W. Parents have/had a right to know about predators in authority no matter what the authority.
We see in several comments here a fine example of the basic skein of presumptions fueling the Stampede.
It works like this: i) it has glommed onto the general American Victimist/Feminist tide of the past 30 or so years whereby matters sexual are now a major priority of government; as a subset of this, the definitions of sexual-abuse and even rape have been greatly expanded such that a hugely wide variety of activities can now be characterized as ‘abuse’ or even ‘rape’.
Then ii) it anachronistically applies the standards of today to institutions of that earlier era (primarily the Church, although it would also be true of the police and courts and the military and just about every other large societal institution – government/public or private).
Then iii) it deploys what has been one of the greatest regressions or deformations of that Victimist/Feminist agenda in matters-sexual: i.e. that ‘evidence’ is not necessary either for a) a ‘story’ or ‘report’ to be believed or b) that ‘evidence’ is not necessary in order to pursue legal action (civil or criminal, and the law in both forums has been deranged and regressed in order to accommodate this. This neatly and slyly sidesteps the vast problem of ‘evidence’ (call it ‘The Evidence Problem’) in this type of case, a problem as evident back then as it still remains nowadays (readers can recall recent dust-ups in the collegiate and military arenas).
Thus iv) it seeks to waltz everybody by the glaring problem of Genuineness of the claims, and not only in the present but in the past. So that – neatly – one can go ahead and judge the performance of those long-ago institutions and institutional agents (in the Church or any other institution back then) by the standards of today rather than by the standards of then. Because it was quite possible and even probable that back then the lack of evidence could have undermined any investigation or proceeding.
But v) it also waltzes everybody by the Dog That Didn’t Bark Problem: the Church didn’t ‘report’ to the police for any number of possible reasons, not least of which are a) the possibility of therapeutic rehabilitation and/or b) the lack of sufficient evidence for any police investigation or legal process to consider. (Indeed, do we not see so often today the continuing claim that – even after decades of ‘awareness’ and ‘reform’ – police are still said by various interested parties not to be doing enough? This is the URL of a just-published McClatchy news-service hyper-linked article making precisely that claim:
http://www.bnd.com/static/media/VOT/index.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter
But that still leaves us with the problem that even though the allegated action back then was on the books as criminal, nobody else called the police either. Indeed, we have seen that some persons claiming that the Church should have reported it didn’t even tell their parents at the time (and – yes – many excuses have been developed by Victimist-Feminist thinking to explain-away this problem). This is a shell-game masquerading as a coherent thought or position. As far as can be determined by any of the cases we have been able to examine here on this site, the Church very often took action that was in keeping with the best thinking of the day (and still, as we see from the Globe pieces above, was considered as such in the early 1990s and may well still be considered as therapeutically effective today).
So it would be far more legitimate to judge the Church of today by the laws and culture of today and the Church of then by the laws and culture of then. Rather than trying the conceptual legerdemain of judging the Church of then by the laws and culture of today.
None of which above is intended to imply that there were not some awful instances where a priest should indeed have been brought before the courts. But – as always – I would say that it cannot simply be assumed now that i) all of the allegations from the past were genuine; and ii) all of the allegations from the past involved horrendous rapes (classically defined); and that ii) all of the allegations from the past involved nothing but rapacious and sex-besotted clerics and fully-aware and eagerly complicit ‘cover-up’ bishops.
Finally, what – exactly – did parents have a right to “know” in the culture as it was back then? That a priest had been accused? That a priest was sent for therapy? Have we not seen many cases even here where the outcome of failed therapy was removal from ministry? One can certainly say that in this or that case the priest was not removed soon enough and in some cases I would imagine that would be indubitably true. But it’s a slender reed of an issue upon which to ground the Stampede as we have it now.
Which brings me back to what I have been wondering about the current Vatican situation in this regard: with the Church now possessing one of the most advanced child-protection systems of any institution on the planet, and with the Stampede now waning (if current fresh allegations are counted), is the Vatican now going to wind up infusing fresh life into this dying beast by acting as if it were still 30 or more years ago and it will now take all sorts of steps to placate or address issues that have already been effectively systemically addressed over the past dozen years?
Are there those who will claim that since the consequences of ‘abuse’ are life-wrecking and last a lifetime (itself an assertion neither well-grounded nor demonstrated scientifically, as I have discussed at length several times here) then all allegations must be seen as ‘current’? That would require the demonstrated genuineness of the claims and the demonstrated connection between the allegated abuse and the current condition of the claim-er. And – but of course – the Playbook dogma has a way to sidestep all of that necessary and vital spadework: any such examinations and assessments must be prevented … because they merely ‘re-victimize’ the ‘victim’ (whose genuineness itself is not yet established).
It is upon such circularities in this hall of mirrors that the Stampede has been based all along.
Publion's comment on the 21st at 5.41pm was remarkable in it's grasp of the subject. Not only very insightful but also expressed with great clarity. I understand that the blog has been graced with this particular commentator for some years.
However in this particular comment it all came together like a completed jig-saw puzzle. Will print it…. so I don't lose it. Because it really does sum everything up…. superbly.
Going more deeply into material in my immediately prior comment, I can recommend to interested readers either feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon’s 1989 Toward a Feminist Theory of the State or – far more recently – feminist thinker Anne Fausto Sterling’s just-published and revealing article trying to salvage the feminist rape agenda from the recent deconstruction of the ‘one in five raped’ figure so often tossed about. In her article – although at less length than MacKinnon explains in her book – Sterling elaborates upon the new ‘philosophy’ that was developed to try to justify the derangement of the evidentiary rules: “Feminism”, she says, “has changed ideas of where knowledge comes from [and] who has authority to know”.
Interested readers can read Sterling’s article here
http://www.bostonreview.net/fausto-sterling-sexual-assault-statistics
It is this ‘knowledge’ issue that underlies so much of what we have seen in the Stampede. Sterling notes the “backlash” against this new feminist theory of knowledge (‘epistemology’ for those who might recall the subject from college days): this “backlash” “shores up conventional ideas about knowledge that feminists have sought to undermine … since the 1980s” (italics mine).
Specifically, “feminist philosophers” have sought to undermine “the dominant theory that the primary, and perhaps only, way of knowing something is by direct observation”. In this “dominant theory” schema, an Observer (the knowing subject) directly observes something and then makes a Propositional Claim about what s/he has directly observed and seen. This assumes, Sterling continues, that “the most reliable source of measurable knowledge involves direct observation under controlled conditions” (which, I note, is pretty much the assumption underlying the Scientific Method as well as classical evidentiary law and principles).
No, Sterling says. “Feminist philosophers” argue instead that “knowledge that matters to people’s lives is more complicated”. I note immediately that we must bear in mind the distinction between a) “knowledge that matters to people’s lives” because they experience (or claim to experience) it and b) knowledge that can be used by third-parties (such as police and jurors and judges and any other persons who did not directly ‘experience’ such ‘knowledge’).
Thus sexual-assault ‘knowledge’ is different from the knowledge of, say, a pencil lying on the table in front of you: such ‘knowledge’ as one encounters in (claims of) sexual-assault is (somehow and she chooses not to go into it any further) has to do with “cultural tradition and the law” and how they “define what counts as rape” (about which “during the 1970s feminists transformed rape”, she says).
But I would say that the core problem is not primarily how ‘rape’ or sexual-assault is socially construed or constructed, but rather How any third-party observer can assess a claim to such ‘knowledge’ as being sufficiently factual so as to justify deploying the Sovereign Coercive Authority of the government in legal proceedings, civil or criminal). The only way to smooth her path is – ultimately – to rely on some form of the old medieval ‘spectral evidence’ maxim: there are things that only the claim-er can see (or ‘know’) and such things are the valid concern of courts and such ‘knowledge’ constitutes sufficient ‘evidence’ as to be validly within the scope of any court’s authority … this is the theory that fueled witch-trials such as in Salem in 1692.
But this glaring and fundamental and conceptually vital yet intractable problem was ignored in the service of enacting what Sterling calls the “reform” in law and culture which “feminists vigorously and successfully pursued”.
She then selects only one possibility for the increased “incidences of rape” since 1970: it was simply due to the expansion of the definitions (or ‘cultural understanding’) of what constitutes rape and sexual-assault. But it is equally possible, if not also probable, that the claims of rape and sexual-assault increased not merely because the definitions were broadened, but also and more fundamentally because the evidentiary principles were deranged and regressed (not ‘reformed’) back to the old medieval ‘spectral evidence’ principle.
So when she then says that “the assaulted person” did not back then “count as a possible knowing subject” we are fundamentally and merely seeing a polite way of trying to avoid saying what has really changed: we have regressed back to the medieval ‘spectral evidence’ where an individual claiming something which was invisible to anybody and everybody else) is considered a valid source of ‘evidence’.
But she gives the game away when she then observes that it was precisely because the claim-er of sexual assault was not considered a sufficient source of evidence that “hence the law demanded a third-party observer”. Of course the law made such a demand (back in the days prior to Sterling’s vaunted feminist “reform”); could the law and the courts legitimately deprive accused of liberty or property or even life if they only had the claim-er’s story upon which to rely? (Short answer: in the past decades of this era of “reform”, they much more easily can and people should consider that a sterling example of legal and cultural ‘progress’.)
Sterling also tries in the article to counter the thinking of Christina Hoff Sommers and others who object to the “zombie statistic” of that one-in-five claim. As I have often said in comments here: once you rely merely on ‘survey’ and self-reporting, and don’t try to independently corroborate the claim-ers’ claims, then whatever ‘results’ you might get are prime candidates for being characterizable as “zombie statistics” and even – I would say – “zombie facts”. )
The Boston Globe was on Point then and is so now. There is a huge difference when you look at PROFESSIONAL Theraputic practices and the "therapy or counseling" these men were given by (in most cases) other members of the clergy (Therapists liscensed or not), who were pressured or unduely influenced to return these men to ministry by church leaders.
Just look at the Philadelphia Grand Jury report and you will read of many examples where then Cardinal Bevilaqua simply chose to ignore suggestions and advice of counselors NOT to return certain men to ministry or to ensure they were supervised and not have access to children. And at times, bishops insisted or encouraged evaluations be rewritten, so these men could be returned to ministry. Time and time again we saw how these men WERE NOT supervised, and they simply offended again. Father Daniel McCormick of Chicago, returned to ministry by Cardinal George, even though his own review board recommended otherwise. Fr Michael Fugee of the Newark Archdiocese was allowed to minister to children even though the court ordered he NOT have access to children and recieve counseling. That didn't stop Archbishop Myers from allowing him to return to ministry. I can think of countless more examples of clergy who abused, were reported, later cleared for ministry and then went on to abuse many others…these men were sent to Church run, Church supported and paid for institutions, strictly for clergy. Are we to believe this was done out of the pure concern for the predator Clergy? Of course not, these men are sent to Church run institutions like St Lukes institute so these Bishops can maintain control of the situation and keep the actions and crimes of these men from the public.
I reported my abuse to the church as it was happening. What did they do? They transferred him and promoted him to head a high school in Hawaii. The idea that rape is somehow not rape because of different time periods is both evil and ludicris.
On the 22nd at 739PM – once the validity of therapy as supported by the Boston Globe is acknowledged – we get a scenario for which a great deal of knowledge is required if it is to be credible, and yet nothing whatsoever to corroborate the scenario: on what evidence does ‘Another Mark’ base his globalized assertions that a) priests sent for counseling were treated “by (in most cases) other members of the clergy”; and that b) such therapists “(whether licensed or not)” – are licensed personnel not to be considered “professional” (scare caps omitted)?; c) were “pressured or unduly influenced to return these men to ministry by church leaders”? (corrections supplied)
In the comment’s second paragraph we are then referred to “the Philadelphia Grand Jury report”; yet there were two of them, and the second one has been demonstrated by Ralph Cipriano’s analysis to contain a number of factual errors.
Further, we are told that Cardinal Bevilacqua overrode the advice of “counselors”, which contradicts the scenario asserted in the first paragraph. And that that Cardinal, and Cardinal George in Chicago, also overrode subordinate bishops’ and reviewers’ advice. (Which says something, as well, about the competence and insight of the subordinate bishops and reviewers.)
The matter of Newark’s Fr. Fugee is raised, although that case – if memory serves – involved both the reversal of a conviction on the basis of improper instructions to the jury by the trial judge, and Fugee’s violation of both a court-endorsed agreement made with the prosecutor’s office and an Archdiocesan ban on working with minors. When the conviction was overturned on appeal, the Archbishop apparently considered an agreement made in the case between the Archdiocese and the prosecutors to be null. Fugee has since been laicized by the Vatican in a remarkably rapid process and I don’t think the ministry is worse off for his departure; photos taken of him with teens seem to me to strongly indicate that he far more enjoyed being one of the kids rather than trying to prepare them for a more capable adulthood.
And I note the familiar but merely rhetorical claim of “countless” other examples, which as stated gives us nothing and certainly nothing that supports the idea of ‘undue influence’ by hierarchs upon counselors and therapists.
I think Newark Archbishop Myers’s handling of Fugee was insufficient even though the conviction itself was overturned. But in any case, the Fugee case does not support the comment’s scenario that counselors were “unduly pressured”.
Lastly, in regard to sending priests to Church-run institutions over the decades: in those days there were very few institutions specifically set up for sexual abusers and offenders. There were still some mental hospitals and asylums, public or private, but the focus was on serious mental aberrations rising to the levels of psychosis; compared to those cases, an abusive priest – especially if it were not a matter of rape, classically defined – would be considered a small (and relatively normal) fish indeed.
In light of that, the Church’s setting-up of institutions specifically designed for abusers – so that they wouldn’t simply be treated as small fish and their issues receive only cursory treatment – seems rather clearly to be a step in the right direction for dealing with the issue. To my knowledge, no other institution – public or private – ever set up any such facilities to specifically deal with the issue of their own sex-abusive agents, members, or employees.
What did the church "set up" for it's victims? SNAP? Tom Doyle?
This is the second time Ihave looked at this website and I generally avoid it because it defies both reality and historical accuracy. That being said I saw my name and the connection so I will answer the question and try to clarify some of the erroneous information. First off, the institutional Catholic Church has never set up any instititions to help the victims of clergy sex abuse. It has only paid for therapy when forced to do so. Most victims in our era (1950's to the present) were ignored, intimidated, threatened, and in some disgusting cases, even countersued by the Church. As soon as they challenged the monarchy they became enemies. Second…the church has set up or has sponsored, therapy centers for clergy and religious who have had substance abuse issues, psychosexual issues or other mental health issues. The St. John Vianney Center was founded by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1947. The Paraclete Fathers established their first foundation in New Mexico in 1947. Southdown near Toronto Ontario was opened in 1965 and St. Luke Institute was opened in 1978. Prior to any of these beiing opened, bishops and religious orders often sent priests with psycho-sexual problems including child abusers, to Seton Psychiatric Institute which existed in Baltimore until 1972 (I believe that is the correct date). Third, the archbishop of Boston occasionally sent priests accused of sexual abuse to medical professionals. The revelations of 2002 exposed the fact that in many cases the medical professionals were hardly suited to evaluate or treat men with psycho sexual disorders. John Geoghan for example was sent to a general practicioner at one point because the doctor was a devoted Catholic with a love for priests. This was often the case. The doctors chosen, and some were psychiatrists, were always men who were "devoted to the church" with a great "devotion to the priesthood." More often than not their diagnosis of the abuser was something that was both completely inaccurate and silly. These are not simply my opinions. This is information that came out inthe documents. The Boston Globe had their facts correct before they began publishing anything in 2002 about Boston. The same cannot be said of The Media Report
1. We welcome this response from Fr. Doyle, but as he accuses us of “defying both reality and historical accuracy” and not having our “facts correct,” he fails to provide even a single example of an inaccurate or false statement on the site!
2. Fr. Doyle correctly notes that a general practitioner (not specifically trained to treat abusers) once evaluated the notorious abuser John Geoghan and repeatedly recommended his return to active ministry. However, did this ever matter?? Here’s why we ask:
In March of 1989, the Church removed Fr. Geoghan once again from active ministry after accusations of abuse, and it sent him to the St. Luke Institute in Maryland.
Who operated St. Luke Institute? Fr. Michael Peterson, St. Luke’s founder and the co-author of the well-known 1985 report about Catholic sex abuse with Fr. Doyle and lawyer Ray Mouton!
Peterson wrote a supplement to the report in December of 1985 and added about sex crimes (emphasis added):
It’s true! Peterson clearly believed and advocated that priests who abused kids, if properly “treated,” could most certainly return to active ministry, even if they have served time in prison or been sued!
So when Cardinal Law – who has been said by Doyle to have been an “early supporter” of the 1985 report – removed Geoghan from ministry in 1989, he sent him to the very treatment center of the so-called “expert”! St. Luke’s then shipped Geoghan to The Institute of Living – a secular inpatient facility in Connecticut.
It was there at The Institute of Living that Dr. Robert F. Swords, M.D., would then conclude in December 1989:
A year later, in December 1990, Dr. Swords even penned a second letter in which he stated that Geoghan was “fit for pastoral work in general including children“!
In other words, the so-called “experts” in treating abusers like Geoghan gave the very same advice as the so-called “unqualified practitioners” about returning Geoghan to active, pastoral ministry.
The way we see it, following the advice of Peterson, Doyle, and Mouton regarding the treatment of abusive priests proved disastrous to the Church.
We finally add that in 2002 the Boston Globe did not accurately report the contents of the 1985 reports.
Fr. Tom Doyle O.P., What was "The Project" to do as suggested by you in your initial report to the American Bishops in 1985?
What were "the committees" to be doing that they needed secret funding by American Bishops?
Why are you the only "rebel" priest in the whole wide world "working" for "survivors"?
Who asked you to represent us? Particularly when you have said that you are still "working for the church"?
Why, where you are considered an authority and have testified in Ireland or Australia or Canada etc., do victims get less if they get anything at all?
You have been called a hero by both SNAP and VOTF. Why?
Why don't you ever speak about victims' trauma and damages at any length?
Don't you only mention victims in passing to authenticate yourself as being "pro victims"?
Why do you never speak at any length about victim's compensation?
You are a fraud. A fake. You still work for the church. Never for victims.
How, the fuck, do you sleep at night?
Why, Fr. Thomas Doyle O.P., Why, when you do mention victims, do you then go on to talk about the hierarchy of the church; and the need for change within the church?
When did fixing the church become a bigger issue than "fixing" uncompensated victims?
The church will only fix itself when it has to; or when it wants to; or when it's forced to. Meanwhile it's very real victims remain, en mass, completely ignored; unattended; and most obviously uncared for because of "heroes" like you Father Tom.
With "friends" like you, who needs enemies?
One more thing: How did you get time off from your Air Force chaplain duties to be this testifying authority on church sex abuse world wide? Were you the chaplain at the notoriously conservative and "christian" U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado? Where adverts for Mel Gibson's "the Passion of the Christ" film were placed at each place setting in the dinning room there?
Why should we believe that care for victims would come from people still inside and still serving your hyper conservative; notoriously anti caring, of it's own victims, church?
If you are a really decent man you would have left the priesthood long ago.
"~~ It is a fallacy (one that historians call 'presentism') to judge the past by the standards of the present."
Publion is correct. The waltzing syndrome he is describing is the same as judging certain actions of someone in medeival times for example, by the standards of today. My thanks to Publion for pointing out this yet another shell game out to us. Presentism indeed!
We are about to revisit subjects which – for new readers here – have been discussed and assessed at great length in prior comments going quite a way back. Thus I will be brief here.
On the 23rd at 1102AM JR demonstrates several elements of the Stampede Playbook.
First, the use of ‘report’: this verb implies that one is giving notice of an indubitable fact; it is not legitimately deployed here if we are – as we indeed are – trying to make a case for third-party individuals who were not direct-observers of the (claimed) event(s). The word ‘claim’ (or, to add a legal tint, ‘allegation’) is a much more appropriate word here, rather than ‘report’.
Second, we see the ‘They Did Nothing’ trope. But a) it is clear now – as it was then – that there were no corroborators to the event and thus the administrators – as third-party individuals – had nothing to go on but the claim/allegation.
Third, still in regard to this trope: The administrators – as we saw here from then-contemporary documents in the administration’s files – actually did do something: they considered the allegation, considered JR as he was known to them, and concluded that the claim was more likely connected to a vengeful effort against a teacher in whose class JR was doing poorly. In regard to the overall Stampede Playbook, what we see here is an example of the effort to conflate ‘they didn’t do what I wanted them to do’ with ‘they did nothing’.
Fourth, we see a clear (whether deliberately or through incapacity is open to consideration) effort to create a statement I didn’t make in order to have something to appear to refute: I did not say that “rape is somehow not rape because of different time periods”. What I discussed was that the term ‘rape’ was legally defined differently i) in the way-back and ii) in some quarters during this era of rape ‘reform’. That is to say: the term itself became a variable rather than a constant. In order to reflect my position accurately, then, JR’s characterization of my position would have to be modified thus: rape as defined then is different from rape as (in some quarters) defined now. Nothing ludicrous about it, let alone ‘evil’.
Then, a few minutes later on the 23rd at 1105AM we see an effort to dodge the problem of institutional therapy as I proposed it in comments above on this thread by simply distracting us with snippets which (for new readers here) hark back to JR’s vision that SNAP and Fr. Thomas Doyle are simply tools and cat’s-paws of the Church (as are the tort attorneys). Old readers are familiar with this and enough said; new readers may wish to refer back in the archived commentary.
Shall we go to history? The Rape of the Sabine Women for example; or the rape of German women at the end of WW2. People have known rape is wrong for eons; but we're to pretend the rapes of children after/during/before WW2 were somehow diffrent? You want different treatment because it's your bishops and cardinals who were criminal?. An excemption from child rape because religion is involved? Because your religion is involved?
Dave's getting nervous about "Spotlight". He wants to call down the wrath of God on the Boston Globe like Law did. Soon we'll all be knowing what kind of guts it took for a newspaper to go up against Law. And it'll be Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton showing us. I'd be getting nervous too if I had Liev Schreiber arguing against me.
It's gonna look really uncool for the Pope to keep shielding Law from American courts after this movie comes out. What was it that the Pope wrote in his letter to all Bishops? The one where he told them to cooperate with the sex abuse commission that hardly ever meets and never actually does anything? I think he also told them to comply with the law. Interesting. Law can't even set foot in this country without being arrested. We're all going to get reminded about that this year. When does this movie come out? I totally appreciate Dave publicizing it like this.
All we have from JR on the 23rd at 423PM is a little historical excursus based on his originally flawed (willfully or otherwise) construction of a position I do not hold.
The actual problem is not ‘rape’ as – to use my qualifier – ‘classically defined’; rather, the actual problem is that today the definition of rape has been changed (in some quarters) to encompass a much broader range of activities. Thus – as we have seen – even the sexual assault allegated by JR is insistently presented to us as ‘rape’.
I am not asking people to believe that actual and classically-defined rape is any different; I am pointing out that presently-defined ‘rape’ is very different from actual and classically-defined rape.
But it’s a neat little gambit, isn’t it? Use the same word even though its meaning has been so fundamentally changed, in order to piggyback one’s present agenda onto the power of a concept whose meaning has been deranged to fit that agenda.
Is it not clear just what an ‘exemption’ Abuseniks demand from the constricting parameters and boundaries of clarity, coherence, and logic?
Then, on the 23rd at 739PM, ‘Sarah TX2’ tries to spin a web by riffing thusly: a) TMR has put up some material from the Boston Globe; therefore b) ‘Dave’ is “getting nervous about “Spotlight” (an upcoming film giving the old-school Hollywood heroic treatment to the Globe’s 2002 sue-the-bishops phase of the Stampede); and c) what ‘Dave’ is doing here with this TMR article is simply trying to “call down the wrath of God” on the Globe; because d) it took “guts” for the Globe “to go up against Law”; and e) ‘Dave’ is right to be “nervous” because now a whole bunch of movie actors are going to be “showing us” … something.
But in regard to (a): TMR has simply put up links to articles that the Globe itself published and discussed that accurately-quoted material. What we see here is merely the Playbook attempt to distract or denigrate any analysis of material that indicates incoherence in the Stampede.
And in regard to (b): since the 1970s we have seen a slew of movies that hero-ize people for this or that campaign in this or that cause. And – Hollywood being Hollywood – the script has to fit the basic template known since the earliest days of silent movies: pure Good bethumped by pure Evil with the Good rescued from the train-tracks by the Hero. The 1970s twist added pure Individual Good bethumped by pure Corporate Evil and after Watergate added media types to the Hero list.
And in regard to (c): I can see no place in this TMR article where “Dave” is “trying to call down the wrath of God” on the Globe – perhaps ‘Sarah’ can provide an accurate quotation. But we see again how quickly Abuseniks like to deliver themselves of a pronunciamento against any effort to analyze and assess; Stampedes have to squelch inconvenient and uncongenial analysis and assessment by any means necessary. Is there any material in this TMR article that misquotes the Globe material? Might ‘Sarah’ have any thoughts about the relationship between the Globe’s 1992 articles and its 2002-and-subsequent position?
For that matter, it should be interesting to see how the Hollywood scriptwriters (working under the requirements of that ‘hero’ rubric) finesse Michael D’Antonio’s revelations in his amply substantiated book about the run-up-to and implementation-of the Globe’s January-2002 story. As we saw when that book was considered here a while back: there was a great deal of not-heroic flim-flam that went on. Don’t expect to see it in the film.
And in regard to (d): the Globe in 2002 was the premier – arguably the only – liberal-Democratic leaning paper in liberal-Democratic Boston (whose political machine was still heavily influenced by the Kennedy interests; the same interests who in July of 1964 in Hyannisport were already conniving with liberal Catholic Jesuit interests to make abortion acceptable as a valid Catholic political position). By 2002 the Church in Boston was already on the ropes from prior media focus on individual priests’ cases (in which the Globe played no small part); all the Globe did in 2002 was buy into the Anderson Strategies to stop focusing on the criminal cases against individual priests and start working toward the immensely lucrative sue-the-Bishops/Church phase. There was nothing of the ‘heroic’ about any of it and it required no “guts” whatsoever. But you can expect the script-writers to have finessed that uncongenial and inconvenient reality as well. If it really were to have required “guts” for the Globe to go after Cardinal Law, then Law’s position would not have so quickly become untenable.
And in regard to (e): we see here with a charming and disarming clarity at just what level the Abusenik mind is operating here: now real movie actors are going to … what? Act out the script the writers have put together? Perhaps ‘Sarah’ might find her intellectual and analytical capacities overwhelmed in a conceptual exchange with Liev Schreiber; that doesn’t necessarily hold true of other readers of TMR.
Then ‘Sarah’ indulges in some (to her) congenial imagining as to how the Pope will “look” (“really uncool”) after the movie script has done its work. Let’s leave her with her tea-leaves and see what actually happens.
The Vatican sex-abuse commission held its first meeting at the beginning of this month. Thus it is less than accurate to say of it that it “hardly ever meets and never actually does anything”.
And she concludes with another bit of charming clarity. TMR didn’t ‘publicize’ the film; ‘Sarah’ brought the film up. She then wonders when the film will “come out”; it is in post-production and has no release date at this time. It may be awhile.
Let us “totally appreciate” ‘Sarah’ for giving us such a revealing performance here.
Good post P.
Have not heard from you in a while.
You remind me of Bush who said that waterboarding wasn't torture but "enhanced interrogation".
Some points of clarification are needed for comments by Publiion and another Mark says. With respect to Fr. Michael Fugee, the Archdiocese of Newark did not "consider the agreement null and " after his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. Fugee had not been in ministry from 2001 until 2009. In fact, the Memorandum of Understanding regarding Fugee's return to ministry was executed after the appeals court's actions. That Memorandum of Understanding was written by the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, and it allowed Fugee to return to ministry after a NJ Court – appointed psychologist advised the Court and Prosecutor that he could be returned. The Archdiocese never assigned Fugee to any ministry that involved children. However, Fugee disregarded his restrictions and engaged in ministries without the permission or knowledge of the Archdiocese. When we learned of his actions, Archbishop Myers removed him from ministry.
In regard to the comment by ‘Thomas Doyle’: Dave Pierre responds to it as if he were (at least reasonably) certain that this comment is from the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle; I am not so certain (about which see more below).
First, I am struck – and not impressed – by the somewhat heavy-handed manipulative opening sentence: once again we get a comment from somebody who doesn’t really follow the site (and has only looked at twice) … because the site is to his/her mind substantively deficient; yet how would one know from only a single visit (plus the current visit that prompted the comment here)?
Second, while I can certainly understand a reasonable commenter disagreeing with material on the site, I can’t see where the site can reasonably and accurately be characterized as ‘defying reality’. And what ‘reality’ might that be that this site defies? A person of sufficient competence to have ostensibly co-authored the 1985 Doyle Report doesn’t bother to say. This smacks of the type of juvenile plop-tossing that one wouldn’t expect from a commenter ostensibly as experienced and educated as the Fr. Thomas Doyle who has played so significant a role in various large matters under consideration here.
Then – getting specifically to my own material – the comment states in its third sentence that “the institutional Catholic Church has never set up any institutions to help the victims of clergy sexual abuse” (corrections supplied). I never said it did. I was referring quite clearly to institutions that the Church set up to help priests with abuse problems. And I have considered at length in prior comments on this site the various complexities (legal, therapeutic and emotional) involved in the Church setting up therapy for anybody claiming to have been victimized by its priests.
Then a bit further on, the comment lists a number of institutions set up by the Church for troubled priests, without any sense of irony – or perhaps even awareness – of the incoherence.
So far, then, we have from this comment a point that has nothing to do with actual commentary material here, and then a point that simply expands upon a point that actual commentary material here did make. Thus, so far, nothing that supports the initial characterizations to the effect that this site “defies both historical reality and accuracy”.
I would further say that before we can make judgmental assertions about how “victims” were treated by the Church, we have to make some sort of informed assessment as to the genuineness of the allegations (the Church cannot be so easily characterized negatively if it had at the time reason to doubt the credibility of the claim/allegation). This is a combination of the Genuineness and the Evidentiary Problems.
In that regard, this site – I would say – does not ‘defy’ “reality and historical accuracy” but rather this site consistently tries to discover the “reality and historical accuracy” as a third-party inquirer not privy to any spectral-illuminations or to any Fausto-Sterling feminist-philosophical personal-claim-that-carries-the-weight-of-an-objectively-corroborated-claim. As I have said before on this site, this is a key conflation of the Stampede: trying to get people to accept i) a claimed personal knowledge as if ii) it were a clearly demonstrated knowledge easily evident to sufficiently-informed and reasonable third-parties. There is an almost abyssal gap between (i) and (ii) – and it is a gap that the Stampede does not want anybody thinking about.
The comment about ‘challenging’ “the monarchy” seems – again – rather heavy-handed and junior-varsity for someone who ostensibly is well-educated, experienced, and capable of co-authoring that 1985 Report.
And most certainly, the same dynamic which this commenter seeks to apply to the Church (“as soon as they challenged the monarchy they became enemies”) is one that we have seen operative on the part of Abuseniks on this site: to question or doubt or assess their material is to attack them and makes the questioner evil.
As for “the revelations of 2002”, it remains an open question as to the efficacy of therapeutic approaches for sexual-abusers. While patients accurately diagnosed as clinically-defined pedophiles (or pedophiliacs) are not considered to have high prospects of recovery or cure, various other types of sexually-abusive patients are more reachable clinically and there is a higher prospect of successful outcome to therapy.
Whether troubled priests were sent to appropriately competent therapeutic evaluators and practitioners in every case by every Ordinary is certainly open to question. Boston’s Fr. Geohagen, if memory serves, was the younger relative of a high-ranking and influential cleric in that archdiocese and I would not be surprised if that element played a role in his being handled as he was for so long. But it is “historical reality” that the Church set up institutions for troubled priests and that therapeutic opinion in that era (and today) is that non-pedophiliac patients (clinically-defined) can be successfully treated.
As to whether sending a priest to, for example, a “general practitioner” (correction supplied) was “often the case” requires a depth of knowledge that would have to be demonstrated clearly; and the commenter does not do so.Ditto the assertion that “more often than not their diagnosis of the abuser was something that was both completely inaccurate and silly”. For which assertion the commenter apparently relies on “the documents” – whatever they may be. A trained mind – and the actual Fr. Doyle has been well enough educated to possess one – would not toss off so sophomorically vague and general a reference to corroborative materials.
Followed by the not-quite-sensical claim that “the Boston Globe had their facts correct before they began publishing anything in 2002 about Boston”. And would a well-educated mind (especially one old enough to make assertions about the 1950s as “our era”) make the sophomoric grammatical mistake of attributing a plural adjective (“their”) to a singular subject (“the Boston Globe”)? This is a grammatical mistake characteristic of a much later generation. In any case, the relevance of the assertion to anything that has gone before is tenuous – which may be the result of the oddly unfocused nature of the comment generally (which may not be surprising in run-of-the-mill internet commentary, but certainly raises questions when a statement is coming ostensibly from a well-educated and legally-trained mind).
The comment then – again sophomorically – seeks to include a snarky zinger in its conclusion, although the well-trained and well-stocked professional mind would be looking to summarize its arguments rather than simply toss off a zinger in lieu of such summarization and arguments.
And overall, there are spelling errors one would not expect from someone of the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle’s training and accomplishments.
From the material in the comment itself (style, tone, structure, mentation, mental processing characteristics) I would say that either a) this comment is not by the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle (thus instead it’s the product of yet another Web whackjob getting jollies by impersonating a celebrity) or else b) the actual Fr. Doyle produces some strikingly sophomoric material.
In response to ‘Jim Goodness’ in the matter of the Fugee matter (the 24th, 106PM): I defer to the corrections and clarifications he proffers.
P, the alpha and omeaga of apologism. Rape's not rape unless proven in a courtroom? Everything I've said here about my abuse happened. Cardinal Mahony said it happened. The head of the Marianists said my abuse happened. The only one who "knows" it didn't happen was P who, "wait for it", wasn't there. (Save as a "pro-rated" spiritual and emotional support for my perpetrator and his enablers).
Omega, sorry.
Not too long ago, I happened to be perusing SNAP's press releases, and there in the comments was a rather scathing letter towards SNAP from one claiming to be Fr. Tom Doyle, about their false accusation of an entire monastic community somewhere in the northern midwest. In typical SNAP fashion, the comment was swiftly removed, but the press release also soon disappeared. Oh, if I had the presence of mind to take a screen shot……Fr. Tom, do you still have that comment? You'd restore a lot of credibility with -me- if you published it.
As for the crop from JR now before us:
On the 26that 1015AM – given all the material in comments here which might be addressed – we get a one-liner about what my material ‘reminds him of’. This neatly a) avoids addressing any actual points that are on the table and b) creates instead a subject (i.e. JR’s impression of the material) about which he might more congenially carry-on.
And what does that yield? A connection between my material and the 2003 Iraq War controversy about “water-boarding” and “enhanced interrogation”.
Apparently the effort is going-for the idea that I play with definitions, by euphemizing them.
JR is almost half-right: the issue about the definition of ‘rape’ is indeed one that involves playing with words (although not actually ‘euphemism’).
But the sleight-of-word involved here is not mine, but the Abuseniks’.
And the manner of it is on this wise:
The Rape of the Sabine Women, for example, was properly characterizable as rape in any era from ancient Rome to recent decades: penile penetration of an unwilling victim. Penile penetration of the unwilling is rape ‘classically defined’.
It is only in the past few decades, under the pressure of Victimist/Feminist agitprop needs to ‘keep up the numbers and the outrage’ (and of the mainstream media to expand the field for salacious stories), that the actual act of ‘rape’ (as classically-defined) was expanded, most obviously in i) a mid-00s politically-driven FBI protocol that requires local police to report all sexual-assault to the NCIC as ‘rape’ (in a clear indication of just how incoherent this gambit is, criminal-law charges still distinguish between actual penile-penetration-of -the-unwilling and a host of lesser sexually-assaultive or abusive charges); and in ii) a formal definition – in some forums – of any sexual type encounter between an adult and a child as ‘statutory rape’.
In regard to (ii): I have discussed at length on comments on this thread the misleading use of ‘rape’ here, since the usage manipulatively cashes-in on the shock-value of the term ‘rape’ without actually describing the elements of rape (i.e. penile penetration of the unwilling). In my opinion sexual encounters between adults and children (or those with essentially the mental capacities of children such as the mentally infirm) should certainly carry an additional criminal onus, but the use of the term ‘rape’ to describe such encounters can be nothing except misleading and manipulative if not also prejudicial to any accused.
In regard to (i): the word-playing that seeks to characterize all sexual encounters where one party decides – at some point during or after or even long-after – that s/he has been ‘raped’ is clearly designed to serve the purposes of manipulation, both of public opinion and of the legal system. We are seeing this gambit now played-out – with increasing public rejection – in the university arena, among others.
Among that “others” readers may wish to consider this article
http://www.unz.com/isteve/silicon-valley-adventuress-plays-the-rape-card-at-stanford-and-uva/
The article describes the current case of a young woman who was in a relationship with a wealthy young man until the young man at some point broke off their relationship; after which point she reflected back on a series of sexual encounters in luxury hotels on happy expensive romps in the US and Europe and decided that she had been, all along, ‘raped’. (As so often, the comments following the article are also revealing.)
Reading such articles, it becomes increasingly clear just how much of an opportunity such ‘rape reform’ changes have opened up for the venturesome and/or the vengeful (nor is this aspect lost on the commenters to the article). And just how difficult it is to defend oneself from such a claim given such ‘rape reform’ (which, readers of this thread will recall, Anne Fausto Sterling so triumphantly claims as a major feminist victory that had been in progress since the 1980s).
So the manipulative word-play does indeed exist, but on the part of the Abuseniks and the entire pandemonium from which they have sprung.
Then a few minutes later (the 26th at 1034AM) JR simply tosses at the screen the reductionist epithet that all I am doing is “apologism”. If you don’t buy the Abuseniks bits – doncha see? – then you can only be an ‘apologist’ against them and for all that pure Corporate Evil and so on and so forth.
Then the deployment – rather sly, and slyly structured as a plaintive question – of the idea that “rape’s not rape unless proven in a courtroom?”.
What we see in this question is precisely an effort to skate over the Spectral Evidence problem (which we have also seen Anne Fausto Sterling try to do in her article from an earlier comment on this thread): there is indeed a distinction – vital and fundamental – between a) information claimed to be the personal experience of some claim-er and b) information that can be rationally and clearly assessed by third-parties who did not themselves directly observe the claimed event.
There are many things in life that, conceptually speaking, may ‘be’ (i.e. that actually historically took place) but that cannot be proven and demonstrated to reasonable third-party observers. In informal venues such as personal interactions we might simply accept or ‘go-along’ with what somebody has said or claimed rather than point out that we are third-parties and can’t simply accept such postulations without corroboration or rational support.
But – at least as developed in the West in the past 500 years – in legal matters where the Sovereign Coercive Authority may be deployed against somebody’s property or liberty or even life, then such informal acquiescence is completely insufficient: if a claim is made against somebody, then that claim has to be proved by passing through an entire graduated filtering system of third-parties: police, district attorneys, a grand jury, and then a judge and/or petit jury, and it must also stand – at various points in this process – probing by opposition counsel (such as defense counsel for the accused). Also – and ideally – the public would be kept informed by a competent media committed to factual accuracy, careful reporting, and objectivity.
So let’s say we have the Informal forum and the Formal forum.
It has been the objective of Victimist/Feminist law ‘reform’ to collapse the distinction between say the Informal and the Formal forums: we are to ‘accept’ stories of rape as friends might in an Informal conversational klatsch-type setting or as acquiescent strangers might who don’t wish to become involved one way or the other and just nod or smile politely, rather than subject such stories and claims to that stringent filtering-system that was required (until the ‘reforms’ were pushed through) in the Formal legal forum.
Indeed, the ‘public’ forum was pushed toward operating more like the Informal than the Formal forum. We saw this start-up at least as early as those 1980s TV shows such as Geraldo and Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael – later refined to a nicety by Oprah – wherein issues involving all sorts of stories and claims were put before self-selected audiences that simply oohed and ahhhed and clucked and cheered sympathetically (and booed the target of the story on cue) in response to the designated story-teller’s story. Which is actually – and ominously – reminiscent of pre-Modern local ‘legal’ proceedings before the structuring and practice of Western law developed.
Whether readers wish to credit JR’s story as we have over time received its various forms is their own decision to make. Nobody, however, “said it happened” referring to JR’s claim and story – and since this is a matter that has already been discussed at length on prior threads then old readers are familiar with it and new readers can consult the archives here if they wish to do so.
About his claimed victimization, perhaps we can say it was ‘statutory rape’ (as discussed above here) or – if one wishes to keep all the facts in play – it was a ‘rape’ that did not involve penile penetration or perhaps even penile contact. How’s that? This characterization is the best that can be managed, I’d say, given the mushy swamp-like conceptual terrain created by Fausto Sterling’s vaunted ‘reforms’.
I myself have never said that I ‘knew’ one way or the other, but simply subjected the material to a modest form of the same type of rational assessment that it did not ever receive, thanks to the Anderson Strategies. Once again, we see Abuseniks creating material for their own purposes.
And in a concluding zinger – nicely revelatory – JR will then waltz off the stage while tossing this zinger: I am “pro-rated”, a term from the arena of persons who are paid. He ‘knows’ that, doncha see? He may not know much, but he knows what he knows. And when you’ve got nothing else, there’s nothing else like an epithetical zinger to get yourself off the stage.
Why do you always forget the words "statuatory rape"? Making sexual moves on a child is called rape. Penetration or no.
I'm not "waltzing off" anything. I'm still here. Still questioning your need to be here at all.
I'm so happy you are so happy in picking me, and all who claim abuse here, apart. Denying, with no evidence to back you up, our RAPES.
That makes you a scumbag. Posing as a person of reason while never being reasonable ever. Quite the avocation! (or in your case a vocation?)
You must have been thrilled dissecting frogs in biology classes at school before you went on to pontificate in your imaginary cafeteria; as to how juvenile your fellow classmates were.
Let's try not mentioning me in your posts at all. I know you worship the hem of my garment but obsess on something else. Maybe the eucharist?
Ah! But then that's not what you are here to do; is it? If you can't attack and dismiss your opposition; you've no reason to be here. Do you?
How do you know "I (sic) don't know much"? Or that I " knows" what I "knows"? Conjecture, per usual, by you.
Why does Fr. Tom Doyle refuse to answer this victim's questions? Don't you think a person, who says he cares for victims so much that he gave up his upwardly mobile career so honorably for "us", would answer a "survivor's" questions? No he never does. Instead he and SNAP, oh so very, very, very, like P, sneer and attempt to poison the opposition's reputations as decent honest sane truth telling people. And I'm a victim! This has happened over and over and over again in the so called "survivors' movement". Why? Why are the questioning victims attacked by the people who say they represent us out of "self sacrificing love"? Why we are attacked for simply asking questions?
Have you been attacked for asking questions of me or about my abuse here? No you have not.
I have told you exactly what hapened to me. Yet even with my compensation and church apologies, you snark on
You have been attacked by me in response to your slimey aspersions regarding what happened to me. Why do you do that to people? What prompts you to respond to people with so much snark and derision and condecention in your tone?Do you think the readership are fooled by your self deluded "superiority"? Some readers maybe; but not all. You are too obvious; too heavy handed; and consistantly way too boring. Why is that? I don't see a crowd gathering to support your rants. Do you?
We seem to be seeing a new style in the JR comments: a sort of direct-question format. I am happy to respond.
The first sentence (and paragraph) makes no sense since I was the one who specifically raised the issue of the term “statutory rape”; thus – it apparently has to be pointed out to JR – I did not nor do not “always forget the words”. “Making sexual moves on a child is called” – to be clear and accurate – “statutory rape” as I said before. Thus, if a DA were to indict for ‘rape’ a person who touched but did not penetrate a child then the charge would not be sustainable; the DA would have to charge for “statutory rape” (or some form of ‘sexual assault on a child’ – the language varies among various State and federal laws). We see here, yet again, the Abusenik effort to emphasize the catchy “rape” bit and “forget” the “statutory” element. Alas, “penetration” is a key element in “rape”; it is not a key element in “statutory rape” (which, of course, presumes that the victim is a child or minor). Who is playing with words and terms here?
Thus to the second paragraph: if JR doesn’t seen the need for my work here – pointing out the clear difficulties with some of the material proffered here in comments – then that’s a comprehension problem on his part that is not my problem. Where would we be if we actually accepted whole-hog some of the material that is consistently put up here?
Thus to the third paragraph: we see an epithet based on nothing I have said (nothing new there) to the effect that I am “happy” in “picking … apart” the Abusenik material proffered here. I never said I was happy about it and actually I find it distasteful and taxing to conduct such assessments; but it is clear that such assessments are necessary. Had such assessments been carried out in prior venues then it is quite probable that the Stampede would never have gotten as far as it did.
And further: it is the Abuseniks who have to provide proof; they are the accusers. I have simply pointed out the numerous problems with the material they have proffered and drawn my conclusions as to probability based on the assessments.
And further: it is precisely the claim of “our rapes” (shout-y caps omitted) that is at question. And remains so.
Thus to the fourth paragraph: scatological epithet – pitch perfect in its juvenility.
And further: let the readers decide whether my material indicates some effort and capacity to deploy “reason” or whether I am “posing” – or, for that matter, whether JR has just described himself instead.
And further: the effort at insinuation that I have a “vocation” to assess material (a not-quite strong effort to bring up again his effort to characterize me as a paid shill). I am not paid; and my avocation is to get to the reality of propaganda stampedes, and the Catholic Abuse Matter certainly seems to me to qualify as such.
Thus to the fifth paragraph: more epithet, and this time miffed at my characterization of the Abuseniks as demonstrating the mentality more suited to a high-school cafeteria. I consider that characterization of mine to be rather spot-on and I’ll keep using it.
Thus to the sixth paragraph: JR would like me to ‘not-mention’ him. I would certainly be happy not to have to wade into this material, but his material keeps popping up so there’s nothing for it.
And then there’s the rest of it in that paragraph – and it can stay right up where it was put for everybody to read.
Thus to the seventh paragraph: JR now starts riffing on his own bit in the prior paragraph – thus commenting on himself and his own material. If the Abusenik material were competent and rational and more credible, then that would save me a good deal of time and effort. But again, there’s nothing for it on that score either.
Thus to the eighth paragraph: the record of JR’s own submissions form the basis of my assessment of JR’s knowledge basis and he is welcome to proffer whatever he wishes to counter my assessment. But to characterize my assessment (with all of the explication accompanying it over time) as “conjecture” merely indicates that JR is not actually familiar with the meaning of the term.
Thus to the ninth paragraph: it appears that JR has chosen to presume that the ‘Thomas Doyle’ commenter on this thread is the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle. I clearly did not make that presumption and JR’s difficulties with not getting his questions to ‘Thomas Doyle’ answered are – in my opinion – not going to be credibly answered any time soon.
But then – again riffing on his own (dubious) material – JR tries to draw a connection between either the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle or the commenter ‘Thomas Doyle’ and me. This is a pillow fight of JR’s between some Doyle and SNAP on one side and himself on the other and it can go on without any input from me.
However, I can heartily join in the plaint: “Why are we attacked for simply asking questions?”. Oh my, yes.
Thus to the tenth paragraph: we are now informed that I have not been attacked for asking questions of the Abuseniks. Readers may consider the factuality of that assertion as they will, consulting the archived comments for support if they need to do so.
Thus to the eleventh paragraph: we are told yet again that JR has told “exactly what happened to” him. Well, that’s his story and he’s welcome to it. I have pointed out various problems with the material and made my assessments. Let the readers decide.
And further: his “compensation” and the “apology” that may have accompanied it – as I discussed at great length in prior comments on this site – were in all probability merely a formality resulting from that massive 500-plaintiff Anderson Strategies lawsuit in Los Angeles in 2006, almost a decade ago. I would imagine that all the allegants got such a letter or some such missive as part of the requirements of the settlement (the alternative to which, as we recall, would have been the defense of at least 500 separate plaintiff-allegations in a series of civil trials, as per the Anderson Strategies).
Thus to the twelfth and final paragraph: having asserted in the tenth paragraph that I have not been attacked here, JR now states that I “have been attacked by me” (i.e. JR). So much for coherence. But – waitttt for itttttt! – I have only been attacked because of my “slimy aspersions regarding what happened to” JR. And – of course – by “slimy aspersions” JR refers to my analyses and assessments … of material he himself proffered.
And further: “why do [I] do that to people?”. I do it to material when that material a) is proffered and b) is material that has played some part in the Stampede. I would do the same – and have done the same – with any material when it appears that there are difficulties with the material that are vital to the probable credibility or non-credibility of the material.
And further: we see the Wig of Victimization once again deployed here: the content of my assessments is carefully and utterly avoided, so that instead focus might be distracted toward my “tone”. Neat. If JR considers that his material merits a more serious “tone” then perhaps this is a problem of self-awareness on his part since the material rarely rises to such high levels, as I have often explained at length.
And further: as to who here is trying to ‘fool the readership’, I will simply say that such a gambit is not my intention and I think my material demonstrates that. But in any case it is a matter for the readership to consider individually.
And further: we are presented with ‘self-delusion’, “obvious”, and “heavy-handed” – oh, and “consistently way too boring”. In regard to the “boring” bit, words will do that to some minds, and concepts even more so. Clearly they have done so to JR’s mind. Not my problem. Although the descriptors do seem to be describing some comments by somebody on this site, certainly.
And lastly: we see a non-sensical appeal to ‘numbers’ (you can’t “see” on the internet) underlain by the presumption that assessment is a popularity contest (one thinks, in a curious parallelism, of those TV shows like Springer and Raphael and so on with the immediate antiphonal responses on cue by those self-selected audiences). And as far as who is producing “rants” here, that is a matter for the readership to consider.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The man proves my point. He's obssesed with me.
Julie or Josie will pop up now praising P's holy name. and even sadder; praising his lack of logic and compassion as being the very epitamy of logic and compassion!!!
I mean really! You can't make this stuff up.
Dave Pierre does see the numbers on the internet. He sees them every time he goes to manage this site. And so far no crowds have gathered. Not even crowds of catholics. The stampede won. :^) The horses have left the barn.
By the way
I hear the pope compared a person transitioning/ changing gender to a nuclear bomb.That would make Bruce Jenner and Chas Bono, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Really? Really! Two people struggeling about themselves for decades and Mr. Wonderful compares them to a weapon of mass murder!
That crazy Francis is living up to my name for him, Francis the talking mule.
"the catchy rape bit"! Calling a monstrous crime Rape "catchy" and a "bit". You are spectacularly stupid.
And now, in a pitch-perfect replay of the old government approach to Vietnam toward the end – try to declare victory and get out and go home – JR (the 27th, 749PM) will try to characterize the (unpleasant to both myself and – clearly – him) necessity of addressing his material as actually constituting my “obsession” with him. There’s that queasy sense to the gambit – but it does demonstrate both the self-centeredness and simultaneously the lack of self-awareness involved here.
Having gotten that one up on the screen, JR will then simply riff epithetically about ‘Josie’ and ‘Julie’.
Then, apparently being informed by his ever-handy tea-leaves, he implies that he knows “the numbers on the internet” (whatever that may mean; apparently the number of site visitors which DP would know as site manager). And from that number – however he has divined it – JR congenially and conveniently concludes that not many people visit the site.
I have no idea how many visit the site. It would seem to me not a matter of mere numbers; of what significance would – say – a thousand cafeteria-level visitors be? I would say it’s not a matter of the number of visitors (this isn’t a popularity contest or one of those 1980s TV shows) but of the quality of visitors.
But in any case the point is irrelevant to what’s on the table in this thread.
There were far more relevant issues JR might have tried to tackle, given all the material on the table. But, of course, the Playbook requires that the actual substantive material be ignored and some distractions provided instead.
And surely we have seen just how much “stuff” can be “made up” if an Abusenik really wants to try.
But the whole mushy bit is merely a constructed lead-in to – waittt for itttt! – yet another Abusenik pronunciamento: “the stampede won”. Followed charmingly by the non-sequitur about “the horses have left the barn”.
Having thus declared victory (at least to his own satisfaction) JR will then lard on a bit more distraction: something about the Pope and transgenders.
But this too is simply a constructed lead-in to – waittt for itttt! – another pronunciamento: the Wig of Outraged Decency bemoans the Pope’s comparing (in JR’s assessment) “people struggling with themselves” to “a weapon of mass murder”. The horror. Assuming one buys JR’s assessment.
But then that too is simply a constructed lead-in to yet another zinger while heading for the curtains: JR’s name for the Pope is – waittt for itttt! – “Francis the talking mule”. And back to the cafeteria we are taken.
Then , on the 27th at 753PM, apparently seeking to get his money’s worth out of the Wig of Outraged Decency, JR then issues – waittt for itttt! – a pronunciamento against me: in his reading of my position as explained above, he can only find that I am “calling a monstrous crime Rape ‘catchy’ and a ‘bit’” – which is not only nonsensical as written, but also avoids the actual gravamen of my comments and my position: I am saying that the deployment of the term ‘rape’ is “catchy” and “a bit”, not that the act of genuine rape is thus characterizable.
The problem here is that the Abuseniks and the pandemonium that spawned them are using the term ‘rape’ inaccurately for purposes not of information or elucidation but rather of obfuscation and manipulation. Because the salient difference between ‘rape’ and ‘statutory rape’ is – not to put too fine a point on it – the ‘statutory’ element: ‘statutory rape’ is, as should be grammatically obvious, characterized as ‘rape’ in this term not because of the sameness of the act (penile penetration of an unwilling victim) but rather because ‘statutory rape’ is created not by the act of actual rape but merely by the operation of a ‘statute’. That is to say: it is simply a statute that decrees that a wide variety of sexual activities (far beyond penile penetration) be classified as ‘rape’; it is the statute’s concern for the age of the victim, and not on the actual elements of the act, that creates the ‘rape’ in the term ‘statutory rape’.
And indeed, many acts classifiable as ‘statutory rape’ simply because they are perpetrated upon a child/minor would not be classifiable as ‘rape’ if the same acts were perpetrated upon an adult.
Thus: no penile penetration of an unwilling victim, no rape. Unless in the case of ‘statutory rape’, in which case, based solely and completely upon the age of the victim, a wide range of acts otherwise not characterizable as ‘rape’ are to be characterized simply by statute (and not by act) as ‘statutory rape’.
If statute-makers wished, they could add – by operation of statute – offering s’mores as an act that would be characterizable as ‘statutory rape’. Conceptually speaking, the possibilities here are almost endless, limited only by the will and imagination of the statute-makers.
All of which appears to have escaped JR’s analysis and comprehension – and the noise we hear now is the sound of his concluding epithet recoiling back on him.
Everything you and your church says only proves your dedication to your own fantasies. People don't matter. Your "beliefs" matter. Well not to most and not to me. Why don't you shut up and let someone else talk. Why must you hog these threads? You've been asked to cut to the point by many on this site but you refuse. Not because you bring insight, you don't. You just attack people. You are useless here save but to keep the arrogant ignorant and the ignorant arrogant.
And again fr Tom Doyle refuses to answer victims about why he's such a hero to victims.
More modestly noteworthy material on the 28th at 1152AM:
The gambit here is two-fold.
First, with utterly no explication or demonstration, the mere assertion that “everything” said by “you” and by “your church” simply “proves your dedication to your own fantasies”. What fantasies? What proof? What was said? (Well, on this last point: “everything” was said.)
And we must accept his personal set of tea-leaves to accept that my “beliefs don’t matter to most”. As for his own opinion of my beliefs … he’s welcome to that opinion.
Second, a self-serving set-up of a set-piece: JR, ya see, is concerned about “people” whereas – in this little bit he has constructed here – anybody concerned about ideas and “beliefs” is not concerned about “people” (in this cartoon, it has to be one or the other, ya see, otherwise things get too complicated for the cartoon). Thus the Wig of Upright Rightness may be donned with pizzazz.
Then – also as if there is an instance of mutual-exclusivity here – I have to stop commenting so that “someone else” will be allowed to “talk”. Neat. But unlike in some form of verbal conversation where two persons can’t talk at the same time, the internet commentary is visual and not quite in real-time; nobody’s commenting blocks any other person from commenting if s/he wishes to do so.
But this bit also raises the possibility that JR’s material isn’t really up to it because – waittt for itttt! – he just can’t get a word in edgewise, so to speak. But again: this is a visual medium and not in real-time, so the efforts that might succeed if this were a real-time and physical-presence verbal exchange don’t work. And JR certainly has gotten his words in; they are evident in the record here for everyone to examine.
Thus too: one can’t “hog” a thread. JR is welcome to put up as much material as he wishes. Has he not? Is there some amazing and substantive and utterly convincing material he possesses that hasn’t gone up because … what? The telephone lines are being ‘hogged’? The site-comment function goes down frequently because my material clogs it? As an excuse this epithet fails thoroughly.
I don’t recall being asked “by many on this site” to “cut to the point”; ‘Julie’ asked me once, and I explained that I have to give the material the full explication it deserves while doing my best to keep the point in view – and it is, I would say, precisely the points that I make which so confound the Abuseniks and elicit the assorted juvenilia we have so often seen. But this is another sly gambit: my material is ostensibly impugned not because the Abuseniks don’t want-to or can’t deal with it, but because it doesn’t come to the point (and the only “point” they acknowledge is that “everything” they say is all we need to know).
I rather think I do stay on point. In a recent comment on this thread I ticked off a dozen points in quick succession.
But JR has an excuse for that too: even if I do come to the point, I don’t “bring insight”. Perhaps not to certain types of minds, but then again I can’t say the Abusenik Playbook gambits and juvenilia “bring insight” either, except insight into the mentality of the Abuseniks who make them and the Stampede game they play. But then again: the Playbook is precisely designed not to “bring insight”; “insight” is precisely what the Playbook has been designed to prevent.
And then – yet again – a nicely clear enough example that if you question Abusenik material then you “attack” the Abuseniks who put up that material.
And then – have you been waitttttting for it? – the conclusory epithet: I am “useless here”. Since he has brought the subject up, then this seems as handy a time as any to remind readers why so much time and energy is spent on the various piles he proffers here: JR is rather useful indeed – how else to keep up with the current of Abusenik excitements (not to say ‘thoughts’) if not through JR, happily scavenging the bottom depths to bring us choice (and revealing) tidbits from – not to put too fine a point on it – a variety of sources. And thus, as well, I am not “obsessed” on any level; I am simply making best use of a resource that saves the irritations of having to trawl those subsurface depths of the Stampede and the Abusenik milieu.
And this bit of his is also graced with a remarkably unusual bit of diction: that antique usage “save” in the sense of “except”. One can wonder at its provenance here (recalling the style of another former commenter here). But it works as a rhetorical flourish, and it does go well with the Wig.
And the whole thing wrapped up with a cutesy bow of wordplay about the arrogant and the ignorant. Wheeee.
And a couple of minutes later(at 1154AM) JR keeps flogging ‘Thomas Doyle’ as if that commenter were the actual and noted Fr. Thomas Doyle, who – of course – is then guilty of not responding to JR’s many (though hardly unfamiliar) questions. I would say that we see here JR locked in mortal question-combat with an illusion. Does he realize it? Does he not realize it? Does it matter?
"Types of minds" as compares to your "whited seplucre"?
If you want to keep passing yourself off as a person of faith, P You might want to at least fake "imitate" Jesus.
Let he,who is without guilt… etc.
Tom Doyle could quite happily have posted here. After all TMR is just one of the committees he suggested the bishops create. TMR's probably the least fake of any. When compared to SNAP and VOTF. You all are up front against the victims. No subtrafuge here. :^)
Fantasies = The entire Apostles Creed.. Fantsies are based on belief. No facts needed. Facts in fact fk things up for ye of little faith. They get in the way of your imaginings. Never get between a believer and their beliefs. They'll gladly kill you for them. It's all that love they love to show.
The truth is if pedophile priests are reported, public school teachers that are pedophiles should be as well.
What I was wondering is if most families who volunteer their time–or their wifes's time,
or thier daughters time have any idea the degree of latittude the completion of a
CORI form gives the church. Do they????????????
Is it possible that investigating all of the good hearted volunteers, leaves little time to
investigate the priests? Perhaps, as a change of PACE…the New York Times can provide
its readers with more information on this subject.
Though christ,
Kathy
The ruse that the Catholic Church will become more "inclusive" means that I can
finally admit that when performing "Marriage" ceremonies, um……..
I am free to admit all I think about is F…….ing the groom?
Well it's nice to know you think about something besides posing as a gay priest. A gay priest obsessed with straight males. (The ultimate "anti" gay hetero male fantasy. "I'm so beautiful; gays adore me. Even if women don't".)
Tom Doyle appears more real than an "included" sic "gay" priest.
I smell Bill Donahue.
Just a quick observation about the comment from "An Honest Priest" on 3rd March. By hiding behind his anonymous name-tag he thinks he can say whatever he likes. The more he shocks then the more attention he hopes to get. Some people are gulllible and don't have time to think…so there is a good chance that his cartoon fantasy may be believed by some.
However as a former altar boy I know that priests, in general, are not stupid. Nor totally unworldly. What they hear in confession soon removes the rose-coloured glasses. So a real homosexual priest would never make the error of leaving evidence to harm himself. With governments around the world now gathering what is known as meta data, it means that they know where individual email comes from and where it is addressed to.
All priests must be aware today that some low-life opportunist, wanting a quick financial windfall, may accuse them of sexual abuse. So would the average priest be so stupid to leave proof of his homosexuality in cyberspace?. Internet data would be the first thing the cops would look for when trolling for evidence against the accused person.
Personally I have never met a priest who would be so incredibly stupid. So I conclude that "An Honest Priest" is neither a priest… nor honest.
Mr. Harris seems caught up in his own bigotry.
First, being a gay priest is no crime; neither is, if it were true, wanting to shtup a "bridegroom".
So why would the "great" government spy network be mentioned here?
Does Mr. Harris think the government's going to out gay priests? They barely out child molesting priests. Besides being a gay priest is not wrong.
The U.S. government knows when every person in America/the World clicks on a porn site; and what sites they enter. Oooooohhh scarey! There goes privacy and the neighborhood!
Once more we see (the 1st at 1044PM) that JR’s signature move is to simply resort to the epithetical.
And once more – in the second paragraph of that comment – we see the presumption that those who question the Abuseniks are (on top of everything else about ‘attacking’ and so on) failing to “imitate Jesus”. Since – we are apparently to presume – Jesus would not question the Abuseniks (or, for that matter, JR).
This manipulative bit of highly dubious theologizing is then supported by the Wig of Declamation perched on top of the Wig of Denunciation as JR doth pronounce a scriptural quotation. And that “etc.” is a fine example of just how little the Abusenik mind cares to follow through with ideas, even (such as they are) its own.
In regard to the point that “Tom Doyle could quite happily have posted here”: first, a commenter naming himself ‘Thomas Doyle’ has indeed posted here – that is not the point at issue. The question is whether that commenter is actually the Fr. Thomas Doyle of note.
Second – to repeat a point I have often made on this site – anybody can be anybody on the internet, choosing for themselves any screen-name they wish, and there is no way of establishing that the screen-name is connected to the particular personage. The only course open in the internet modality is to assess the content of the material put up by that screen-name, and try to establish the probability that such material might come from a particular known personage; thus in the ‘Thomas Doyle’ instance, the material proffered simply does not measure up – along several axes of assessment – to material coming from a mind as trained as we know the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle’s to be. That is not in and of itself conclusive, but it does establish a legitimate basis for assessing probability.
It is also possible that there is somebody out there actually named ‘Thomas Doyle’ but who is not the actual Fr. Thomas Doyle; in which case we have a screen-name that is accurate in and of itself, but is deployed in a context – this site – where the screen-name creates (intentionally or not) confusion.
But then JR’s choo-choo heads off – at the very best – on a twisty spur, if indeed it remains on any rails at all: TMR, we are now informed, “is just one of the committees he suggested the bishops create”.
Consider that bit for a moment: in addition to Doyle and SNAP and VOTF and Anderson and the tort-attorneys (and the Philly DA and perhaps judges) being tools and cats-paws of the Church, we are now to believe that TMR is also a strategized tool of the Church.
And the basis of JR’s assertion? I don’t recall any point in the text of Doyle’s 1985 proposal to the bishops that corroborates that. Can we have a reference, if it is supposed to have come from that proposal?
Or is this coming from JR’s own fever-visions? The ‘logic’ being: i) anybody who questions JR is against JR; ii) anyone who questions ‘victims’ is against victims; iii) the Church is by definition against ‘victims’; iv) JR is the most authentic if not indeed the only voice of ‘victims’; v) the actual Doyle and SNAP and VOTF and all the rest don’t pay attention to JR; vi) TMR doesn’t do enough to support JR (although it has let him continue to comment longer than some other sites); vi) therefore TMR is a tool of Doyle who is a tool of the Church and so TMR is a tool of the Church.
Readers so inclined are welcome to drive a truck through any one of the several wide openings in ‘logic’ such as this. And there’s no “subtrafuge” about it.
Then on the 1st at 1051PM we simply get yet again the contents of the 3×5 card about ‘belief’, while trying to move the reader toward the presumption that i) since ‘belief’ is opposed to ‘facts’ and ii) since JR is opposed to ‘belief’, then iii) JR is all about ‘facts’. Readers so inclined may also navigate their trucks as above.
Would Jesus call your rape victims, "Abuseniks"?
I've answered all your questions about my factual abuse yet you still call me an "Abusenik" representing "Abuseniks".
Did I ever say you couldn't ask me or other victims, questions?
Calling victims Abuseniks is not asking questions. Is it. It's calling names.
Sputnik was a satelite circling the earth. How does a "stampede" equate to a satelite and how did your too real victims become either?
How did reporting on the criminal behavior become a campaign against your religion? It's the news nothing else.No rapes; no cover ups; no news.
Your church leaders should be investigated by public hearings, governmental hearings about your attacks on innocent American citizens and our/their families. Your leaders should be in jail. Why are they being still treated like they are above the law? 99.9% have never even been arrested. Cardinal Law can't return to the states because he would still be arrested.Your side is on the whole criminal.Your leader offers sanctuary at the vatican for many abusors. Ive seen no in depth reportage on that enabling behavior by this stampede in the press against your innocent corporate church.
Look I'm a victim who was elected by victims to represent them in L.A. SNAP dismissed my election and the election of an elected SNAP leader before me. I and those who voted for me have a right to question such behavior. We also have a right to question SNAP's policies and who suggests such policies for victims with out our vote and input.
Tom Doyle wrote about, and more, secretly suggested, the creation of secretly funded "committees" that he suggested the American bishops create and control.
If Doyle and SNAP are the experts on victims ,why won't they answer victims' questions about their very odd behavior towards victims? This ain't brain surgery.
Why do I think, like all pulp fiction writers, you are paid by the word.
I presume that most catholics know the rest of Jesus' "don't throw stones at others" line. I presume that the readership here, isn't stupid or illiterate. You might wish to try that yourself Sheparding people to stupid conclusions regarding your illogical point of view only smacks of arrogance in the service of ignorance.
. Jesus was a lot of things but arrogant wasn't one of them. God wouldn't need to be arrogant would "he"? Only posturing "followers" like yourself need to behave like that.
The "longest" commentator here isn't me. It's you. The question is: Why does Dave Pierre let you go on; and on; and on; and on; and on; and on ;and on; and on; and on; and on; and on; and on etc. ad nauseum? It would appear this web site was created for you and your malefecent "work".
Jim–
Admit it: Publion beats you every time.
LOL!
On the 4th at 1151AM – yet again – we get a remarkably structured comment from a mind that usually proffers one-liners. A thought-provoking stylistic variance as to the overall comment.
But within the comment, we start off with a one-liner anyway – and such are the small excitements of assessing material.
First, we get the ‘what would Jesus do’ bit. When deployed, one can presume that the question is ‘loaded’ and that the person deploying it has some very specific answer in mind; which is easy to pull-off since there is no sure way to know which aspects of the proffered situation Jesus would focus-on.
Thus in this case here: since we don’t really know – yet again – who is and who is not genuinely “your rape victims” then it’s going to be an uphill job trying to determine WWJD. This is where ethical and moral analysis requires more than a simplistic cartoon approach.
Then in the second paragraph it’s on to JR’s apologia for his own (various) recountings of his “abuse” (not, this time, “rape”). And yet again – whether intentionally or through some limitation – JR fails to grasp the Third-Party Problem: we have no way of determining that his “abuse” is “factual”. (Nor – again – do his various proffers in this regard make the task any easier.)
Then in regard to his plaintive question in the third paragraph: my point was that one cannot ‘question’ without being ‘attacked’ for ‘attacking’ the self-claiming victim. The Abusenik response to questioning is to simply don the Wig of Victimhood and claim – plaintively or scatalogically and epithetically – that one is being ‘attacked’ by being questioned. Thus the gambit here is not to overtly deny anybody’s right to question; rather, it is to chill or squelch that right by claiming that such questioning constitutes an ‘attack’.
That is followed in the fourth paragraph by an attempt to reduce all of the analysis I have made over time here to simply “calling victims Abuseniks”. First, we really don’t know as Third-Party Observers if we are dealing with genuine victims or otherwise; second: an Abusenik – as I use the term – is somebody who defends the Stampede and deploys the Playbook and – of course – may not even be a victim at all. So the gambit here was to conflate ‘victim’ and ‘Abusenik’. And – seriously – are we to take JR’s plaint about his finger-pointing in regard to ‘name-calling’ seriously? (His short-answer: his own voluminous, scatological, epithetical name-calling doesn’t count – doncha see? – because he only does it after somebody does it to him – and back to the cafeteria or kiddies’ breakfast table we go.)
As to the fifth paragraph, I have no sure idea of the (presumably metaphorical) connection between Sputnik and the Stampede. The best I can do with it is this: as Third-Party Observers we had film and photos of Sputnik (as we did of the 1969 landing on the moon, for that matter); but in the claims of abuse or rape we have no such corroborating evidence to work with.
On to paragraph six: once again we see the effort to manipulatively slide-by us the “reporting on the criminal behavior”. But – yet again – we do not have here ‘reports’; we have ‘claims’ and ‘allegations’, which – yet again – are not the same thing as ‘reports’. Indeed, one can assert that it is precisely the task of a Third-Party Observer to determine, as best as can be done, whether s/he is confronted with a ‘report’ or a ‘claim’ or a ‘story’. The Stampede got as far as it did by conflating ‘report’ and ‘claim’, though the two terms are not at all the synonymous when it comes to determining factuality.
But in that same paragraph, JR does let a nice cat out of the bag: “No rapes; no cover-ups; no news”. And that is precisely the reason that so much of the mainstream media bought into the Stampede and into all the Victimist agitprop of the past several decades.
And in the seventh paragraph we see a fresh attempt to Keep The Ball Rolling: Church leaders “should be investigated by public hearings, governmental hearings” because of – note the effort here to tie the Stampede into 9/11 and terrorism and surf that current trend – “your attacks on innocent American citizens and” (even more slyly) on “our/their families”.
Who can be surprised? Court cases haven’t been going all that well, fresh allegations have fallen off precipitously, and actual terrorist problems are now making the Stampede a non-starter news-wise except in a couple of interesting hold-out venues where it is for one reason or another more robustly-driven (e.g. the Twin-Cities where Jeff Anderson has his home offices, Philadelphia where the political connections to the regnant powers-that-be are numerous and strong). The solution: spin and sell the Stampede as a – waittttttttttttttttt for ittttttttttttttttttttt! – ‘terrorism’ issue.
And perhaps the reason Church “leaders” aren’t in jail is because the evidence to convict them hasn’t really been there to support any of the available legal charges. (Perhaps if one made being-a-“church- leader” a criminal offense pure and simple, then one might have an easier time of it. It worked for Stalin in Poland and Russia and just about everywhere else he tried it.)
And the rest of this seventh paragraph – with its mimicry of circumspect language in order to declaim the cartoon declamation that “Your side is on the whole criminal” – can simply stay up there where it was put.
Then in the eighth paragraph the Wig of Reasonableness is donned as we told of JR’s being “elected by victims” to something or another. Whether that is true, or whether it once was true but then – ummmm – things happened and it isn’t true any longer … I have no idea. One would have to have a direct knowledge of SNAP’s inner workings at a specific point in time and – but of course – few if any of the readership here have such knowledge. Let his proffers-in-representation remain here in the record for anybody who wants to review them.
But for the purposes of discussion: let us presume for a moment that the “election” story we are given in the eighth paragraph is somewhat accurate, even if it dates back some years: why – do you suppose – would any organization try to prevent such a candidate from formally representing the organization in public? (Hint: there is more than one possible answer.)
In the ninth paragraph, rather than provide any corroborative information for an uncorroborated comment he made on this thread for which I asked corroboration, JR simply repeats his original assertion – waitttt for ittttt! – without any corroboration. And yet as well: even on the basis of what he has put up here in this paragraph, it takes a leap of almost cartoonish imagination to get from “secretly funded committees”(of Bishops and their staffs, if I recall the text of Doyle’s 1985 Proposal correctly) to the TMR website.
And in the tenth paragraph we get a plaintive question about why SNAP and (Fr. Thomas) Doyle don’t answer “victims’” (i.e. JR’s) queries. Who here could know the answer to that? Although there are several possible answers one might imagine.
And the whole misch ends – as always and yet again – with a snide innuendo about my being “paid”. The idea of thinking without getting paid for it, or coming up with a story without getting paid for it, is simply so very alien to the Abusenik mind (and perhaps character).
Then on the 4th a few minutes later at 1202PM, JR dons the Wig of Shocked Obviousness: he doth ‘presume’ – doncha see? – that “most Catholics” (correction supplied) already know the rest of the pericope about throwing stones. My point was that the Abusenik mind works in plop-tossy bits and isn’t really up to following ideas or explicating them, even when those ideas are its own. Ideas and explicating-ideas seem to be alien to them; certainly, ideas and explicating-ideas are anathema to the Playbook, because ideas and the engagement of people’s intelligence as those ideas are being assessed is gall and wormwood to the Playbook’s primary and fundamentally manipulative objective. And down in the high-school cafeteria, you’re going to get hit over the head with your own Roy Rogers lunchbox if you bring up ideas and the explication of ideas to the types that sit way back in the far corner.
Ditto in that paragraph the neat bit that JR apparently seeks to proffer as an excuse for his incomplete bits: he doth “presume” – doncha see? – “that the readership here, isn’t stupid or illiterate” (sic). Doth he, now? I generally make that presumption too, which is why I go to such length to provide readers with as much relevant and cogent material as possible, since in most cases I am confident that the readers can process the material and make their own assessments.
But to respect people’s capacity to think and to know would require more useful material for them, not less.
If – of course – one is capable of providing such material in the first place and if one’s Playbook actually also sought to inform rather than to manipulate. But those are two presumptions that I do not make here.
Readers may then consider for themselves just who is “Sheparding people to stupid conclusions regard your illogical point of view” (sic) which is then wrapped up with the bow of that recently-deployed arrogance-ignorance bit (and once again, JR sets himself up for a whomp from its recoil). Perhaps JR or his muse here can proffer some clear and accurately-quoted examples of “stupid” and “illogical” (in my material, not theirs, of course).
But the arrogance bit then serves as a lead-in for a sermon (the Wig of Declamation with the papal tiara perched on top of it) as to what Jesus was and wasn’t (according to the Stampede’s Book of Play, no doubt).
And a few minutes later (the 4th at 1212PM) JR returns to the boards to raise a point that not only a) wasn’t on the table but b) is conveniently raised to give him something to look like he’s talking about something: who is “the ‘longest’ commentator here”. And the relevance of the point would be … ?
But then we see its purpose: JR is deploying his signature cafeteria-style I’m Not/You Are comeback: it’s a wonder to him why DP lets me go on for the length he does (JR’s text here simply trails off).
And lastly – and pitch-perfectly – we are treated to that (yet again) misspelled Latin phase (i.e. ad nauseam) and the misspelled Latinate word “maleficent”, just to remind us (no doubt unintentionally) that Abuseniks don’t really have a working familiarity with a lot of the stuff that they pretend and claim to know.
The idea that a group of committees, think SNAP VOTF and TMR, couldn't or wouldn't be created by the church is nonsense.
Fr. Tom Doyle was THE canon lawyer for THE vatican embassy in THE United States of America; and he suggested in his report to the American bishops in 1985 that secret committees be formed and funded in secret by the bishops and that the said funding and creation must never get out or if it did " it would cause an even bigger scandal than what the church already had"..
That's how I and others found out about the Doyle scam from Doyle's own secret report that was "outed" by Fr. Tom Economus.
We, victims, knew SNAP's VOTF's etc. behaviors were very odd; but we never could imagine what they truely were, the church itself. (or at least a very evil segment of the church.)
The vast majority of catholics are very good people and would never have even thought of such behaviors but fr. Tom Doyle sure thought about them.
Even if the bishops "rejected" Doyles "Project", the creation of secret "committees". Why would a moral priest offer such a suggestion to American bishops, as a way of dealing with the abuse crisis?
Well a moral priest wouldn't The mere fact that Doyle did suggest the secretly funded committees be created to the American church leaders without blushing. Speaks volumnes as to what the leadership really is. A criminal enterprise that Doyle, who knew it well enough to recommend who should become a bishop as a part of his job at the embassy, felt would understand and implement and fund a criminal enterprise of false flagged opps.
The idea that the bishops rejection of the report without a condemnation of the fake committees even being thought of by Doyle. Says that your church is a criminal enterprise. Fraud is fraud after all.
A group of false flagged operations, committees, created to cross authenticate each other as virtueous and then to steer the debate to favor the church 's need over victims needs is a criminal enterprise and is exactly what has happened here.
One "revolutionary priest" worldwide; testifying "for" victims world wide. 3 leaders, SNAP, representing tens of millions of victims world wide for 25 years! Talk about shuck and jive! (More like Bush's "shock and awe") Murder wrapped as rescue..
On the 5th at 1143AM we get … what?
The first paragraph is merely an unsupported and epithetical assertion. And it is an assertion that also doesn’t actually address the point at issue: the point I made was to seek corroboration for JR’s assertion that TMR was somehow one of the ‘secret committees’ or such set up by the Church – but the point JR plays with is that it is “nonsense” to imagine that the Church “couldn’t or wouldn’t” do it, which is not at all the same thing. We are left with JR now trying to weasel out from his original assertion by substituting speculation for the original assertion (i.e. “TMR is just one of the committees”).
In the second paragraph we merely get a re-hash of what JR claims is in the text of the Doyle proposal of 1985. But the point at issue concerned JR’s clear assertion that “TMR is just one of the committees” and nothing he proffers here corroborates or supports that assertion.
And however JR claims to have “found out” about the proposal (we recall from prior consideration of the text on this site that it was formatted with classic proposal-type provisions and essentially sought to persuade the Bishops to fund Doyle’s team and project) the question still remains: did he actually read the entire text and comprehend it? Surely he offers no cites or references from that text here.
Just what precisely Doyle’s “scam” was we are not actually told.
Then a bit of story-telling by JR as to what “we, victims” were thinking and knowing. Who knows?
Then – in a most uncharacteristic bit of care in expressing an assertion – JR claims that “the vast majority of catholics are very good people” (but, as we see, not good enough to be capitalized).
And at this point the comment now goes after Doyle without actually having established any actual connection to the Church as having gone along with his proposal (it was rejected, we recall).
And then – in a characteristic failure to make sense at a critical juncture – we get an assertion that doesn’t grammatically make sense: “Even if the bishops ‘rejected Doyles ‘Project’, the creation of secret committees” (sic). While the two phrases are there, there is no connector – and it is precisely the explanation of just how the two phrases and realities are to be connected that is at issue here.
But perhaps the problem is primarily only one of JR’s grammatical incompetence. If we grant that, then the sentence that immediately follows that “Even if …” sentence is the intended conclusion.
And what then is that conclusion? Actually, it’s an innuendo-type question (so dear to the Playbook): why would “a moral priest” like Doyle suggest “secret committees”. If memory serves from when we went over that 1985 text at length in comments on this site, the term “secret committees” did not appear in the text so what we have – misleadingly – in JR’s “secret committees” is not a quote from the text at all, but simply a characterization the Abuseniks have chosen to make (congenially) for their own purposes.
But at any rate, JR’s issues with Doyle are not anything of relevance here; the JR-Doyle fight reminds me of nothing so much as the war between Iran and Iraq about which Henry Kissinger said that it’s a war you’d “like to see both sides lose”. But as always, there is no indication of how the Church is connected and actually would run such an undertaking as – see below – the Abusenik fever-visions wish to assert.
And we are then presented with the marvelously incoherent legal position that in rejecting what is characterized by JR (and his muse here) as “secret committees” the Bishops still demonstrate that they were running “a criminal enterprise” since – doncha see? – even if the rejected it they didn’t also make a “condemnation” of it. Thus, by rejecting-but-not-condemning a proposal that wasn’t actually made (i.e. the proposal for “secret committees”) the Bishops have – to the Abuseniks’ satisfaction – proven that they were running a “criminal enterprise” (and is this phrase just a plop-tossy characterization or is it intended to be taken to include the formal legal elements of running a “criminal enterprise”?).
So much for Abusenik legal chops and their capacity to think-through things; but then the Playbook isn’t at all interested in having anybody think-through anything.
Then a repetition of the old JR bit that everything he doesn’t like is part of “a group of false-flagged operations, committees created to cross-authenticate each other as virtuous”. We have been over and over this many times here: that is a pretty good description of the Anderson Strategies plan to create multi-purpose front-organizations (such as SNAP and Bishop-Accountability). And in the process it’s a pretty good self-description of the Abuseniks trying to pass themselves off as “virtuous” (using the old Victimist gambit that if you are a victim then you are virtuous pretty much by definition).
But it fails when the Abuseniks then try to shoe-horn the Church into their script. Because what they then wind up with is the Church running everything and everybody such that SNAP and the other front organizations and the torties and even the DA’s and the judges (and – what the hey? – the media) are all somehow nothing but tools of the Church. And thus the Abusenik train sails off the rails. And tries to sail fast enough so as to avoid the huge question: how was the Church in control of a ‘conspiracy’ (because that’s what it has to be in the Abusenik crack-dream here) that cost it almost 3 billion dollars?
And readers can savor over a cup of nice coffee the concluding trope about “tens of millions of victims worldwide” as the crack-dream rolls on in the following paragraph.
Ditto the final couple-three stabs at witty and acute characterization.
You are a sociopath for sure. The slaughter of Iraqis and Iranians so easily dismissed by Kissinger (a war criminal who can not go to Europe for fear of being arrested and tried for murder) and by you, serves what purpose as an analagy exactly?. Good company to keep since you use such slaughter as a flip refrence to do what? Discredit my analysis and me? Murder, slaughter as a comparison to my telling the truth? You take asshole to a whole new level.
Hey stupid (and I'm being kind calling you that)! So "catholics" not being capitalized by me is a terrible thing? Screw religion and it's exceptional privilages including capitalization. Your church is quite "capitalized" enough, thank you.:^)
Since everything publicly related to representing victims "positively" SNAP VOTF etc are Doyle's committees( and they are). Why would the opposition TMR , stupid as it is, be the exception to the church's well controlled "dialog" of victims' issues?
If you have the "good" guys under control, by created committees, why not create a group that underlines the church made, very real,flaws in the 'good" guys behaviors." i.e. Clohessy's brother. Blaine's letter in support of the convicted kiddie porn owning shrink, The fight against the Kansas city judge. The soon to come revelations in Phlly heralded by a private "reporter" Cipriano for a private law firm etc. etc To be underlined by Frankies September visit. Which is exactly what TMR does it underlines the church created false flagged contradictions.. Church made tempests in tea pots. All conversations on subject controlled and aimed for maxim church benefit and minimum victim benefit. Doyle's very intention in the first place.
What you, per usua,l so convieniently leave out of the argument is; Why THE top Canon lawyer at THE vatican embassy in the U.S. would ever even suggest the creation of secret committees in the first place? Why the need for such secrecy? Why the suggestion of such secrecy to be controlled and funded by American bishops; if your church is so honest and forthright?
Doyle wasn't some shmuck off the street trying to hustle America's catholic bishops into sinful behavior. He was in with the in crowd. He was their top canon lawyer.
Do you think he advanced to such a position by posing shocking propositions to catholic bishops on a regular basis? Are we to believe that the "rejected" propositions he made were an anomaly? Or were such propositions standard? If standard where's the much heralded "morality" you say your religion gives to mankind?
America is religion's "town". it's the biggest money earner aside from cars; movies; military weapons. It's a major business in the U.S. and as we know in the U.S. business rules.
The catholic vote still has a hugh effect on politics. Best not cross the church if you want a political future. Name one political career made by going against the church in this country. You can not. Name one political career to come from this sex abuse cover up scandal, aside from pope Frank, you can't.
If you think it's so hard to control things. Pretend that SNAP and Doyle are what they pose to be. If what they pose to be is true then 4 whole people have been fighting the good fight for 25+ years, world wide, and winning world wide. 4 people! If 4 people can be your winning opposition, that you see as a scam AGAINST your church,; then why is it so difficult to believe 4 people, more or less, can't be running a scam FOR your church?
Particularly when your victims, your real compensated and uncompensated victims tell you they aren't working for us. We aren't stupid. If they were working for us; we'd support them and we don't support them; because we know they don't work for us. Ever. They work for you.
How is a raped child not a victim? How is anyone raped not a victim? Did we wear please rape me t shirts? Oh that's right we were never raped in the first place. You best tell cardinal Law and cardinal Mahony that.
Doyle's suggested/created "committees" were to be kept "secret" in regards as to who bankrolled them; who created them;and who controlled them. Hence "secret committees". Moron!
Everytime you defend the players to be just who they say,they are. Why is that? It couldn't be part of the plan could it? Of course not.:^)
But then Doyle says in an interview "Every time I testify (about church sex abuse) I'm working for the church" No metaphor that. No metaphor about testifying for a "better future church"
There he's tells the truth. Still a priest. Still working for the corporation by limiting damages. And with an ego big enough to brag about his scam. Snark exactly like your very own.
You both are fucking ego maniacs!
Since JR (and his muse) are now producing such (uncharacteristically) extended comments, I will go down the comments from paragraph to paragraph.
Thus on the 7th at 1115AM we open the whole show with an epithet. And a psychiatric diagnosis as well. “The doctor is in” as used to be scrawled on the sign over Nancy’s crate-desk in the old Peanuts strip.
Then a chance to declaim (with the Wig of Indignation) about Henry Kissinger. But HK’s focus in my quotation was not on the nature of the war but rather on the fact that in that particular war neither side made for an appetizing ally or model. That was the point of the “analogy”. But all JR had on the Kissinger 3×5 was a bit about HK’s international legal status (whether accurate or not is another question) so JR tossed it up here although it is utterly irrelevant to the point I was making: in the fight between JR and the still-Father T.P. Doyle, I can see no ‘good guy’ and their fight can go on without any further intervention from anyone else.
But the various ‘evil’ bits about HK serve a purpose for JR here: he can connect me to HK – although not by the point I made but by the stuff on JR’s little 3×5 – and thus toss a bit at me by tossing it at HK. And good luck with that.
JR’s “analysis” is discredited not by my mention of HK but rather by its own numerous incoherencies and unsupported presumptions and assertions. It needs no other assistance to retain that unhappy status.
And that paragraph also concludes with an epithet (in case his reasoning – as JR may rightly have every reason to expect – can’t actually do the job here).
Then the second paragraph begins with an epithet (ditto). His not capitalizing “catholics” is not – in anything I said – “a terrible thing”. It’s just a simple giveaway that undermines the smarmy faux-compliment to Catholics.
The third paragraph’s first sentence is ungrammatically stated such that it makes no sense. It seems to be a tic of JR’s that when he is making a particularly dubious point he will often fail to state it coherently and grammatically (I exclude his spelling from this thought and focus on the grammar). Ditto the bit about TMR (against which another little dig is tossed in). And if the Church has all along been running a “well controlled ‘dialog’” then how has the Stampede gotten away from the Church’s ‘control’ and cost the Church 3 billion dollars or so? Why indeed has such a “well controlled ‘dialog’” not simply been squelched such that the Stampede never would have happened?
Then in the fourth paragraph – yet again – we simply have a description that makes a very good case for the various front organizations being synergized with the Anderson Strategies and the torties and such socio-political interests as lie behind them. But we get utterly nothing that can coherently connect the Church as the source of the ‘control’ rather than the Anderson Strategies and its various interests being the guiding force.
And thus then that paragraph trails off in a sort of stream-of-consciousness rant.
Then the fifth paragraph simply keeps up the assertion of the “secret committees” point without any corroboration from the 1985 text (which we examined at length here on this site a while back). So before JR asks “why” Doyle would have proposed “secret committees” he has to establish that Doyle actually did ask for “secret committees”. The further question as to why-the-secrecy fails for the same reason: we don’t know that Doyle actually did.
As for the sixth paragraph’s assertion that Doyle “was in with the in crowd”: I have said before when this 1985 text was considered: I don’t think Doyle was ever actually that “in”; I see him as always in it for himself; he then put forward a proposal that would have set him up with his own operation and team, funded by the Bishops, and when that proposal was not even considered then he went another route to get himself set-up in business (as it were) by hooking-up with SNAP.
On then to the seventh paragraph: I think Doyle saw an opening for himself to become a serious player in a remarkable new game (and opportunity) that was beginning to develop (i.e. the Stampede, under the aegis of the Anderson Strategies and the general Victimist and anti-corporate and anti-religious/secularist thrusts ascendant in the nation’s and the West’s culture at the time). He took a gamble, the Bishops didn’t play along, and so he took his marbles and found another way to get into the game.
Thus there is no need to consider whether – at least for him – his 1965 proposal was “an anomaly” or not.
As to the eighth paragraph’s assertion about the relationship between “America” and ‘religion’ – readers can consider it as they will. I can see no relevance for anything on the table here at this point.
Ditto the ninth paragraph’s assertion about “the catholic vote” and its “effect on politics”. If the Catholic vote were that vital back then, why would the political types have gone along with the Stampede? They would have worked to squelch it, would they not? (Although interestingly enough things may be changing politically: the Democrats may need to woo back the white working class (and religious) voters whom for decades they had kicked to the curb in the service of the various Identity-Politics groups and a generally secularizing agenda – we live in interesting times and we shall see.)
As for that paragraph’s bit of political assessment: in the past few decades it has been one of the hallmarks of politicians (especially Catholic ones such as Mario Cuomo and Teddy Kennedy) that they mouthed religious platitudes while pushing policies and laws and agendas that worked against “religion”. The July 1964 Hyannisport meeting at the Kennedy compound – discussed on prior threads here – helped create the path for that gambit.
And as far as any “political career” ‘coming from’ the Stampede, I doubt any politician would want to be overtly connected-to or defined-by a gambit that a savvy pol might well realize is both a) something of a constructed thing and b) on sufficiently shaky grounds that it may collapse under examination and bring his/her career down with it.
Whether the Pope plans to build his entire papacy around the Abuse Matter is also open to question. I think he may be inclined to give too much away to a fading phenomenon at some point, as I have said before here. But at any rate, I have read nothing in religious reporting that indicates he was elected to the Papacy simply or primarily because of his position on the Abuse Matter so his is not a “political career” to “come from” the Abuse Matter.
Then in the tenth paragraph we are to infer that it really isn’t such a big deal and isn’t really so hard “to control things”. Readers may judge that bit as they wish. But the logic of the rest of that paragraph apparently is that if SNAP and the still-Father “are what they pose to be” (i.e. independent and in opposition to the Church) then it would be incredible if those “4 people” could run the whole Stampede.
To which I respond: Absolutely right. Those “4 people” aren’t ‘running’ or ‘controlling’ anything. They are fronts for the Anderson Strategies and the interests behind those Strategies; when you have i) an ascendant political party pushing for secularism and against its greatest rival (i.e. the Church), and ii) Victimist interests looking to create their soap-operas wherever they can, and iii) a media that is eager to play by highlighting the classic (though simplistic) Pure Individual Good/bethumped by Pure Corporate Evil/and rescued by heroic Heroes old-timey movie scripting … then you can create a Stampede and keep it going for quite a while (but not forever).
Thus that paragraph’s last question fails since it is, I completely agree, impossible that a mere “4 people” could pull off and sustain the Stampede.
And in the eleventh and concluding paragraph we just get a repeat of the old memes about “real compensated and uncompensated victims” (with the evasion of the Genuineness Problem, as always). And who here has ever insisted that SNAP doth “work for” the assorted allegants and victims (genuine and/or otherwise)? This is a revenant from a pillow-fight JR has created with his own characterization of SNAP; and wherever he got it from it wasn’t from this site.
Thus SNAP doesn’t work primarily for ‘victims’; it works for the Stampede and the interests and forces behind the Stampede. And JR (and his muse here) have offered nothing to render credible let alone probable that the Church has run the whole Stampede from Day One.
Then, a few minutes later, on the 7th at 1121AM JR yet again tries to start the play on first or second. Because – yet again – we don’t know just how many, if any children, were actually “raped” (as opposed to ‘statutorily raped’) let alone whether the allegations are genuine or not. We do know that of the 12,000 or so allegations, very few allegated rape.
So once again JR’s word-play with “rape” is the only thing going on in this bit. (One might – if one were theatrically inclined – don one’s own Wig of Outrage and insist that JR’s manipulative playing-with so outrageous a reality as actual rape is itself outrageous … but the topic is too serious to start up a dueling-Wigs dynamic; only for the Abuseniks is this site a stage upon which they might display their vaudeville.)
Then, a bit later, on the 7th at 108P: in the first paragraph, we simply get further riffing on the yet-to-be-demonstrated “secret” bit. Nor do we – yet again – get any citation from the text of the 1985 document itself although the entire comment’s credibility hinges upon the assertions ostensibly made in regard to it. And that noise you hear is the sound of that first paragraph’s concluding epithet recoiling on JR.
In the second paragraph we get a nice example of the usual Abusenik self-serving conflation: to point out problems with their material is to “defend” … somebody else. Followed by a stab at innuendo, as so very usual.
In the third paragraph we then get what purports to be a quotation from the still-Father, but without any citation or reference. In addition to which rather glaring omission, we get word-play about “church” and “a ‘better future church’”. The point of all of which remains clearly unclear.
And in the fourth paragraph we simply get conclusory assertions from the original flawed assertions.
But it works – to a certain type of mentality, anyway – to ground a concluding epithet (again with the psychiatric or psychological for that extra – if faux – oomph to make up for its lack of sense).
And that’s about it for the Abuseniks’ matinee, folks.
Lucy is the Peanuts character, not "Nancy" genius! Shheeesh!
Over on the Crux website religious reporter John Allen has an article from March 6th giving his overview of Pope Francis so far.
For interested readers, the link is here
http://www.cruxnow.com/life/2015/03/06/the-francis-miracle-mercy-is-the-bedrock-of-this-papacy/
Since Allen mentions the Church’s handling of the sex-abuse matter then the article is relevant here. But he also makes a number of other observations that seem useful.
Allen’s basic gist is that the defining narrative of Francis, the lens through which he should best and first be viewed, is that of “mercy”; Pope Francis is all about mercy.
This sounds nice at first glance, but further analysis creates cause for further thought. A short time ago a Francis favorite, Cardinal Kasper, had gotten himself into some difficult water by claiming that mercy is of God’s “essence”. Dogmatic and systematic theologians took issue with that since God need not show “mercy” to the other members of the Trinity; thus while “mercy” can certainly be an attribute of God (joining thus a number of other attributes) yet “mercy” cannot be of God’s essence, since then God would by His very nature have to demonstrate “mercy” to the other Members of the Trinity and that conclusion doesn’t make sense at all.
I think what we saw in that dust-up was Cardinal Kasper eagerly (or over-eagerly) trying to provide some sort of imposing justification for the Francis-agenda by giving it the rank and status (so to speak) of being rooted in an essential element of God’s very being. This type of maneuver should not be unfamiliar to Americans: so often we have seen eager or over-eager supporters and advocates of this and that trying to guarantee status and authority for their preferences by claiming this or that ultimate and all-overriding necessity and urgency for those preferences to be actualized.
Thus then Allen works on the angle that what we are seeing in the Francine papacy is nothing less than “a battle for the soul of Catholicism”. Again, Americans especially should be familiar with this Urgent-Emergent-and-Grand trope: all “change” is a) vitally needed because b) things have been so very baaad and c) the “change” will also work out very well and things are going to be so very very much better once the “change” is implemented because d) there is never any downside to any “change” that is implemented.
Thus – to use a late-1960s trope – “the fierce urgency of now”. And it is precisely in that unconsidered but compelling (if not also manipulative) “fierce” that the basis of stampede-politics was laid half a century ago: the old situation is soooo baaaad and the new ‘change’ is soooo goooood … that we simply cannot allow anything to stand in the way of “now” – not social and cultural conventions, not tradition, not due process, not the Constitution, not the will and common sense of the majority, not anything. Because if we allow ourselves any time for deliberation we are simply obstructing all that gooooood, all that marvelous sunlit upland of betterness that is waiting just down the road a bit once these ‘changes’ are rammed through and rammed home.
That worked so well.
But what is the “soul of the Church”? Can that “soul” be reduced to merely the American secularist agenda? Such that if you support that agenda then you on the right side of both history and theology and if you have your doubts then you are merely ‘backlashing’ and bitter-clinging and you are nothing but a left-over lump awaiting your imminent disposal in the trash-bin of History … ?
And can it really be that anybody – lay or clerical – who has even the merest reservations about ‘changes’ is (we might infer) working against that “soul of the Church”?
And we also see Allen deploying the usual scripting geography: there are ‘old’ ‘conservative’ Vatican hold-outs (“traditionalists, unnerved by the new Pope”) and on the other side there are “progressives hoping to spur Francis on to even greater change”, starting with this Pope’s efforts to make the Church a ‘welcoming’ place for every last jot and tittle of that secularist agenda. (Even as that agenda – let alone the Stampede that it spawned – starts now to undeniably demonstrate its short-comings and downsides and clearly undesirable if not also lethal consequences.)
Because the stampede-politics of the last half century – grounded as they are in Gramsci’s astutely lethal strategy for undermining both the Metaplane and the West – have simply led to a synergy of the National Security State and the National Nanny State with the latter being even more fundamentally Monoplanar than the former and both now revealed to be – and to have been all along – “sisters under the skin”, working in tandem to undermine the Metaplane, the West and even the American vision of a genuine Republic.
It is here that my concern focuses: that in seeking to make “welcome” that agenda and its pomps and works (despite all its ostensibly goooood intentions) that Francis may wind up – precisely as Gramsci might have so achingly desired – dragging the Church into giving away her genuine “soul” for the sake of accommodating present (and temporary) excitements.
This is the very real ideological issue at the core of the matter here.
Of course, it is not presented to the public that way. It is, rather, presented as (and fronted-by) Victimism’s pushing an ever-fungible array of ‘victims’ (of patriarchy, of restrictions and limits, of abuse, of whatever) forward in front of the slap-happy soap-opera-greedy cameras: surely we must forthwith alleviate the (unexamined) plight of every ‘victim’ and force the Church to stop ‘victimizing’ everybody with – not to put too fine a point on it – God and the realities that flow from humans being created in His Image and the consequent responsibilities that flow from such creation in that Image as it exists within the Order (or Ordo) of creation and the tortured, torturous imperfections of humans and the history they make.
Francis wants people’s first “impression” of the Church to be one of “welcome”. That’s nice and it’s all well and good. But “impression” is a mighty thin gruel, utterly insufficient to sustain the human quest for Ultimate Meaning over and across the ages, and utterly hostile to the stability and consistency of (Metaplanar) belief that the Church – however imperfectly over the millennia – has always embodied and proclaimed.
And – revealingly – Allen even swings into an actual Gramscian buck-and-wing here: Francis will “lead” the Church simultaneously to “the political center” and to “the margins”. Beyond the mechanical impossibility of moving an entity simultaneously to the center and to the margin, we see (whether Allen knowingly or unintentionally omits his imagery’s clear provenance) precisely Gramsci’s vision of making “the marginalized” into the “center” of a new (and Communist) society and culture and governance.
Referring to the basic message of his new book, Allen says that Francis wants to be a “historic reformer”, bringing the Church “back” (!) to her “political and ecclesiastical center” after the ascendancy of all those “hard-line” bishops of John-Paul II’s “later years” and – zang! – all of Benedict XVI’s papacy.
In the first place, Allen is too clever by half here, making it seem as if JP2 was a good-guy in the beginning of his papacy, but then as he got older and doddering became a bad-guy (according, of course, to the checklist of a secularist agenda). But JP2 was a profoundly Metaplanar and Church-grounded and Christ-based human being from the very beginning and he always retained that Stance and he voluminously and unceasingly explained both his vision and his objections to various elements of the West’s intensifying Gramscian slide.
I would say that Allen – reflecting here the tactical secularist decision not to impugn directly the Pope who did so much to help bring about the end of Communism in the Soviet Union – is going-with the cartoonish implication that it is only some fantasized ‘later’ JP2 who is the target of secularist ire, because once JP2 got older he became just another old pointy-hat fuddy-duddy on the wrong side of history.
In the second place, Allen seems not to be aware of the profound consequences of his own “historic reformer” trope: the actual historic Reformers of the 16th century – whatever their good intentions and the accuracy of some of their objections to the Church’s earthly reality – reduced their assorted Christianities to structures and polities built on Monoplanar sand, unable to withstand the power of the engorging State (indeed, often indentured to that State in its various forms), and unable to avoid merely being carried along with varying degrees of helplessness along the tides and rip-tides of historical events. As is evidenced by the condition of just about every mainline Protestant polity today.
To use my own imagery: in doing away with a Conductor the Reformers were unable to maintain a genuine Melody among the suddenly leaderless players among the Christian symphony, and then things went from bad to worse as the post-modernist conceit insisted that there was not only no Conductor but no Score and no Melody, and thus no symphony was even possible or necessary. And – in consequence – that Ultimate Cacophony was natural and we might as well try to make the best of it.
Which yawning and abyssal gap – waitttt for itttttt – the secularist ‘progressive’ State, simultaneously National-Security and Nanny, would rapaciously fill … and today here we stand and – oy! – can do no other.
Or perhaps we can indeed still “do other”; perhaps the Church can continue to bear-witness and stand as a prophet of the Beyond, of God, to a world (and certainly to a West) rapidly sinking into that abyss of Ultimate Cacophony and Ultimate Meaninglessness.
Because before the Church can stand for ‘social justice’ she has to affirm the existence of the God from Whom the claim for ‘social justice’ ultimately derives. Otherwise there is no ‘social justice’ except that which the State deigns to grant and we are left regressed back to State Absolutism (it was a neat gambit of Communism that in recalling only the Monarchical form of State Absolutism it largely distracted people from the Soviet form of State Absolutism, i.e. a State regime more Absolute than any monarch ever achieved, but claiming that Absolutism in the name of ‘the people’ – who then were literally sacrificed in their millions and dozens of millions to the demands of that ‘peoples’ Absolutism’).
And then Allen seeks to note approvingly Francis’s appointment of a Cardinal who “opened lines of communication” in – waitttt for itttttt – “Berlin’s diverse cultural milieu”.
Some readers may recall the 1972 film Cabaret and its glittery portrayal of that “diverse cultural milieu” for which Berlin was known even ninety years ago. I think it fair to say that such a “diverse cultural milieu” is precisely the desiderandum of many ‘progressives’ today: an eternal anything-goes party, unimpeded by any concerns for the sober realities of conducting a human life and of sustaining a human culture and society; one big never-ending Saturday night at a night-club cabaret, with everybody having a blow-out time.
The film script artfully distracts from this stunning abyssal reality by arranging the story such that that night-club culture was actually the Good, bethumped by the Nazi Evil. But I would say that – like the Iran-Iraq war – the struggle between Cabaret ‘culture’ and Nazi ‘culture’ (such as either of them were) was a struggle with little Good on either side; although it has taken far longer to grasp the lack of Good in the Cabaret than in the Nazi.
Lastly, Allen refers to his apparent hope that Francis will rectify a long list of Vatican failures, including – waittttt for itttttttttttt! – “the bungled response to the sex abuse crisis”.
In the first place, I would say that there were and are two different aspects of the “crisis”: a) the crisis stemming from actual sexual abuse by clerics – which includes both episcopal oversight and seminary formation and even the general sense of professionalism (in the best sense of the term) among the clergy and the hierarchy; and b) the “crisis” presented to the Church by that congeries of elements in Western society and culture synergistically seeking by any means available or necessary to discredit the last (and first) great defender of the Metaplane against the voraciously reductionist secularist Monoplane.
Concerning (a) my position has always been that while there indubitably were individual instances of sexual abuse – including, I presume, some cases of rape, classically-defined – and individual instances of insufficient episcopal oversight in addressing this or that case, yet there are powerful grounds for the probability that the “numbers” of genuine cases do not even begin to approach the Stampede fever-visions created by Abuseniks fronting-for torties and all the rest of the pandemonium of interests behind the Stampede.
Concerning (b) I would say that the Church was artfully confronted with a very real “crisis” indeed: in a secularist milieu whose almost unassailable ‘front’ was Victimism and the image of the Pure-Good ‘Victim’, amplified ad infinitum by a soap-opera hungry media, there was no way to conduct or even propose a careful analysis of what was going on (or had been going on, according to the allegations). Once accused in such a milieu, no accused entity – individual or corporate – could speak-for effective assessment without appearing to be trying to dodge consequences of some feverishly-imagined actual guilt.
Most very neat indeed.
The Stampede is waning now (if we count actual allegations). But suddenly Francis comes along and may seek to essentially placate and appease the Stampede – which will simply infuse new life into the dying monstrosity.
That – as I see it – is where we stand at the moment. And how we got here. And perhaps now what must be done.
On the 10th at 401PM we may well empathize with JR’s irritation and frustration. I made a mistake in one of the very few areas in which he has much reliable familiarity: it was indeed “Lucy” and not “Nancy” in the Peanuts cartoon strip.
Consequently, in regard to anything else on the table here, we get nothing.
You give nothing; you get nothing. You can't even admit your own error with out an attack.
Such a gentleman!
Peanuts and it's characters, has, for about 40 years now, been considered art. Real art. Maybe not fine art but art non the less.
Original Schultz' Peanuts strips sell for around $15,000 each. FYI
You are a cultural desert with your "Cabaret" references. So people have sex with people and enjoy it whether they are married or not; whether they are monogamous or not; or whether they are gay or straight. And a big "SO WHAT? Who cares? People who, supposedly, have no sex lives?
Pornography is a 4 billion $ a year business. Are we to believe that they are less moral than the U.S.'s use of depleated nuclear waste in bombs dropped on families in Iraq? Bombs blessed by chaplains?
You whine about decadence when you are the most truely decadent person here. Representing the most truely decadent people here. The enablers of child rape.
What adults do to each other willingly; isn't decadence; it's life. Something you know nothing about, obviously.
Killing people as a solution to international non-problems is decadent.
Loving people is not decadent.
I am taken to task by the Wig of – waitttttt for itttttt! – Gentlemanliness. The Wig closet appears to be limitless; as is only proper for a well-stocked vaudeville show.
Then some bits about the Peanuts strip, which merely makes for some filler.
Then – however – we get into deeper water in regard to my take on Cabaret. In that regard, the core question underlying my material is whether a human culture and society can be sustained by such an approach to life. The fact that JR misses that and simply operates here on the level of sexual encounters speaks volumes.
And apparently, in best cafeteria fashion, life as an on-going Saturday night at the cabaret is pretty much the way things should be. And yet he asserts that it is I who don’t know much about “life”. I would say that what JR knows a lot about isn’t genuine “life” at all; it’s just an unripe’s sex-besotted miasm.
Nor did I mention “decadence” ; JR – most revealingly and helpfully – deploys the term. Let’s use it then: can a society and culture be sustained by “decadence”?
Thus his “So what?” (juvenile scare-caps omitted) simply injects the cafeteria mentality into the issue: it’s all about sex and who can or should care if sex is all it’s about? Perhaps: life is sex and then you die. That has a nice sassy adolescent oomph to it.
But that “decadence” then enables him to riff into the epithetical: I am “decadent” because I ‘represent’ “the most truly decadent people here: the enablers of child rape” (corrections supplied). And that’s all the Abuseniks have got: epithets and rather lame ones at that: in what way has anyone here ‘enabled’ “child rape” by questioning the Abuseniks? And by questioning the Abuseniks long after the alleged “child rape”? But the Abuseniks have their plop and they have to toss it if they are going to have anything to put up at all.
And at the end, the most pitch-perfect revelation of the level to which the Abusenik mind seeks to reduce all things: the equation of “loving” with “sex” (and, arguably, “pornography”). Such an unripe position will return us and regress us not simply back to the cafeteria but to the trees.
But since we’re on the matter of what the Pope thinks: the Pope has referred to the contemporary “throwaway culture”, which would include the “separation of the unitive and the procreative in sex”.
Readers can refer to this article
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/separating-unitive-from-procreative-is-root-of-culture-of-death/
The Cabaret culture is precisely built on such a “separation”.
We at least came honestly down from the trees; there is nothing honest about imagined after-lives and major portions of all religions .Nothing honest at all. It's all about supporting a Barhmin class and maintaing their power.
P, religion means nothing to you. If Christ's teachings did mean anything to you; you wouldn't be behaving in the uncharitable; immoral way you do here.
You are the antidote to Jesus. Which makes you what?
I've never compared pornography to love. You did. Smear, Smear, Smear! Your church has been obsessed with sexuality, absolutely obsessed. Freud would have a field day with you.