Our Founding Document

- Download Adobe Acrobat Version of this document

The Current, Misguided Strategy: Bureaucrats not Fathers

Most of the victims of the predator network are teenage males, but too many women have experienced a similar betrayal by “father”. These women are the unprotected victims of a seminary culture that has denigrated manly protection as “patronizing”. As clerics and theologians were kowtowing to the feminist crone, the cries and anguish of the woman used and the mother betrayed went unheeded. As always with the demise of patriarchs, the widows and fatherless have paid the price.

A tiny fraction of victims (most victims are teen age males and adult women-- not children) work their way through the civic legal system to receive financial settlements. Our own Judicial Tribunals are silent. Rather than calling the priesthood into order, our Vicar Generals smother the laity with mind numbing regulations and abuse policies. Presently we are granting abusers lifetime employment in the very judicial and record-keeping positions needed for clergy reform and diocesan justice. Putting these abusers in “administrative positions” is like the President appointing a rapist to the Supreme Court as a way to keep him out of the general population. These positions must be in the hands of a cop like Elliott Ness not a crook like Al Capone.

The present arrangement has reformed nothing. About halfway between the day that Ryan Erickson murdered the men of Hudson and the month he hung himself in Hurley, the diocese of Superior got an excellent rating in fulfilling the bureaucratic abuse reporting guidelines of the national bishop’s conference. The charade continues.

We fingerprint the Catholic laity while hiding other hands with spots of blood that will never wash. Innocent priests are accused and suspended while scores of guilty homosexuals have so intimidated their victims that they will never speak up. The priests of every diocese know the offenders far better than any legal system. Instead of naming and removing known predators, we set up a national “name that body part” program for Catholic grade school children. Instead of using our own church judicial structures to aggressively search out offenders, we park criminals in those positions and wait for the civil legal system to compensate a tiny fraction of the exploited. Instead of a priestly brotherhood fostering protective fathers, the priesthood has become a neutered bureaucracy. Any priest who stands against the cabal can be falsely accused and removed. Apparently if a layman gets too close, he will be shot. No wonder the fascination with paperwork; paternity has proven dangerous.

previous section | next section