The Vatican appointed two Archbishops to an Apostolic Visitation to begin an investigation into the leadership of Bishop Martin D. Holley.
The inquiry was led by Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta and Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul-Minneapolis.
Both Archbishops were in Memphis for "fact-finding" this past week, speinding three days interviewing an estimated 40 to 50 Clergy as well as a number of lay people.
This Visitation was organized by the Apostolic Nunciature, the Vatican's diplomatic representative in Washington, and focused on complaints related to Bishop Holley's decision last year to reassign a majority of priests in the Catholic Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee. The new assignments removed priests from communities where they had served, many of them for years, and led to upheaval and complaints.
The inquiry also focused on the Bishop’s decision to assign Reverend Monsignor Clement J. Machado, a Canadian priest, to the high-ranking position of Vicar General of the diocese, the sources said. Local clergy have raised questions about whether Monsignor Machado's incardination, or transfer, followed proper legal procedures.
At first glance, this seems to be a tempest in a teapot so the appointment to assign two Archbishops to investigate is curious indeed. After all, Apostolic Visitations are, or least used to be, very rare since they involve the Holy See supervising and critiquing decisions of Bishops.
Of course, I believe we shall see more of this kind of resistance to difficult decisions Bishops make in the governance of their Dioceses, especially in light of the fact that the Holy See caved into demands made by those in Nigeria against a Bishop they would not accept. Eventually, the Bishop was removed from office on account of the complaints.
This story may prove to be quite interesting in that regard. I shall keep attuned to it for further developments, if any.
One of Pope Francis’ most heartfelt concerns centers upon migration of people forced from their native lands.
Pope Francis is urging the nations of the world to take in as many refugees as possible.
The Pontiff told reporters that he believes it is incumbent on governments to “welcome, to accompany, to place, to integrate” as many refugees as their societies can reasonably accommodate.
“Each country must do this with the virtue of government, which is prudence, and take in as many refugees as it can, as many as it can integrate, educate, give jobs to,” Pope Francis said during the in-flight press conference on his way back from Geneva.
“We are living through a flood of refugees who are fleeing war and hunger,” the Pope said.
In an article I posted related to this story, I called the Holy Father to task for his constant criticism of nations seeking to protect their sovereign borders as well as the fact that he almost never seems to call the corrupt national leaders who cause so much death and suffering (and force their citizens to leave their native lands) to worldwide accountability and outrage.
This week, the entire Police Force of the town of Ocampo in the Western State of Mexico is under arrest, and is being questioned about the shooting death of a businessman who was candidate for Mayor.
Fernando Angeles Juarez was shot dead by a group of gunmen in the town of Ocampo. He's the third mayoral candidate to be murdered in the wild Western State of Michocan in just over a week.
Prosecutors accused the local Police Chief Oscar Gonzalez Garcia of involvement.
But when Federal Police went to arrest him, his Officers, who outnumbered them, prevented it.
So they went away and returned with re-inforcements arresting him and all his colleagues, numbering 28.
This coming Sunday is Presidential Election Day in Mexico.
There are also simultaneous Congressional and local Elections. More than 100 politicians have been murdered by organized crime.
Now, if the Holy Father is as concerned about migration issues and the suffering of so many, I would expect him to bring this story to the court of world opinion and solidly denounce the government of Mexico from the window of the Papal Palace with the same vehemence he musters in criticizing the United States for its policies aimed at securing the nation’s legitimate borders.
I shall be eager to see what the Vatican has to say about this and related stories of terror and corruption in the countries of Central and South America which continue to wash a wave of illegal immigration to the shores of the United States.
If the past is any indication of what to expect, then the Pope’s words concerning the real and underpinning causes of migration will be as misguided as they have always been.
As noted in previous postings on this blogsite, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been accused of sexually assaulting a 16 year-old altar boy in the sacristy of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1971. This same young man accuses then-Monsignor McCarrick of assaulting him in the sacristy restroom a year later.
On the basis of those allegations, Cardinal Timothy Dolan was appointed by Pope Francis (who alone judges penal cases involving Cardinals) to conduct a preliminary investigation. The Archdiocese of New York Review Board found the allegation against Cardinal McCarrick to be both “credible” and “substantiated.”
In response, Cardinal McCarrick issued a statement accepting the findings of the Review Board while maintaining his innocence.
Since the news of this scandal broke, several Priests have come forward and revealed the Cardinal’s widely-known undue attention and physical contact with seminarians. These same Priests reveal the nicknames used to refer to His Eminence: “Uncle Ted” and “Teddy Bear”.
Moreover, both the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen have confirmed that then-Bishop McCarrick faced previous allegations of sexual misconduct with adults, which ended in financial settlements to the victims.
These most recent revelations have already caused great scandal within each of these Dioceses and give little credence to the Cardinal’s claims of innocence.
It seems to me that some serious questions need answering.
How is that McCarrick was continually promoted from the rank of Priest to Monsignor to Bishop to Archbishop to Cardinal?
How is that McCarrick was allowed to exercise any semblance of public ministry, even after his retirement, when Church officials knew of the previous claims and financial settlements?
Who were the Diocesan officials holding positions of leadership and authority within their respective curias who turned a blind-eye to the abuse and the settlements and kept silent, all the while allowing McCarrick to rise in stature and power within the American Church?
Why did they remain silent? Was it fear of reprisal? A promise of advancement or protection?
And what about the Vatican?
Wasn’t McCarrick vetted before being promoted up the rungs of the ecclesiastical ladder?
Isn’t it interesting that a Preliminary Investigation by the local Review Board of the Archdiocese of New York could so quickly find that the allegations of the sexual abuse of the altar-boy were “credible and substantiated”. Did the Holy See never conduct a more rigorous vetting (which would have uncovered the same truths) before naming him to be a Bishop let along a member of the College of Cardinals?
Who else might have known or be expected to have known about the accusations and the settlements?
Who might have been aware of the rumors surrounding McCarrick’s penchant for the physical fondling of young boys and men preparing for the Priesthood and not brought such to the attention of Church authorities?
Certainly, questions arise about what Cardinals Dolan, Tobin and Wuerl knew about McCarrick’s past and whether they themselves raised questions or objections to the Holy See about his public ministry, even and especially after his retirement from office.
And who, at the level of the Holy See, was aware of these facts and speculations and did nothing but continue to allow McCarrick to move from promotion to promotion?
His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, abdicated the Papacy in part on account of what he called a “gay lobby”, a homosexual cabal within the halls of the Vatican which forcefully attempted to influence or thwart his decisions. The Pope simply couldn't stand the pressure any longer and retired.
In my opinion, the reality of Pope Benedict’s claim explains how McCarrick could have advanced in his career as he did.
Not only does McCarrick warrant investigation, but so do all those other Clerics associated with him throughout his career as well as those in the Vatican, especially within the Congregation for Bishops.
This is a sad and disgusting episode which need never be repeated.
I pray Pope Francis takes this opportunity to get to the bottom of this mess and throw all the scoundrels who permitted and enabled it out into the wilderness where there will be “weeping and the gnashing of teeth”.
Now that Cardinal McCarrick has been suspended from public ministry for allegedly having sexually abuse a minor decades ago, the question is what happens next?
Let me try to explain what may appear to be a complex legal process the Church employs in cases when a Bishop and in the extremely uncommon case when a Cardinal has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor or the sexual assault of an adult.
Canon Law mandates a specific legal process which is to be diligently observed. As the process runs its course, the accused is given every opportunity as well as the means to defend himself and assert his innocence.
Since His Eminence belongs to the College of Cardinals, Canon Law mandates that the Pope alone exercises the right to judge in matters related to penal law.
According to a statement from the Archdiocese of Washington, Pope Francis delegated Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York to conduct at least the initial stages of the investigation, which have now been concluded.
Given the fact that Cardinal McCarrick responded to that process by issuing a statement in which he maintains his innocence, but accepts the conclusions of the review board, it is possible and very likely that, at age 87, Cardinal McCarrick will not face a trial or an extrajudicial process.
Certainly, for Pope Francis, this scandal could not have come forward at a more challenging moment in his Pontificate.
Following the debacle of his bumbled handling of the scandals in Chile, the Holy Father must be aware that what he decides to do regarding Cardinal McCarrick will be under intense scrutiny and needs be beyond question or doubt.
In the only other case involving a Cardinal, that of Cardinal Keith O’Brien in Scotland, Pope Francis accepted the disgraced Prelate’s resignation of the rights, privileges and benefits of being a Cardinal.
Sadly, Cardinal O’Brien died having sullied his reputation as well as the dignity of the Church itself.
I presume the same fate awaits Cardinal McCarrick.
Soon, I think, the Cardinal will offer his resignation from the College of Cardinals. Pope Francis will attempt to quietly receive it. The Holy See will issue a terse bulletin announcing such and say nothing further in the hope that the matter will dissipate relatively quickly and any further crisis avoided.
The Church will suffer yet another serious blow to its dignity and the Body of Christ be wounded yet again.
And people of good faith will wonder about and question their allegiance to the Church whose moral authority and credibility has been so critically undermined.
Another sad chapter in the history of the Church in our time.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Doing the right thing isn’t hard! Knowing what the right thing is...that’s the hard part. Once you know what the right thing to do is, doing it comes relatively easily.
What a pearl of wisdom so succinctly put!
I found it in a quite engaging movie entitled, The Confession.
It is a remarkable film which I recommend for its story line and plot. Alec Baldwin plays the role of an attorney representing a Chief Financial Officer who kills the doctors and nursing staff who allowed his son to die because of their callous indifference. The role of the Chief Financial Officer is played by Ben Kingsley who wants to confess and take responsibility for his crime but who is thwarted by his boss who wants Baldwin to have Kingsley found incompetent to stand trial in order to protect some shady business practices.
Funny how a movie, an art form, can be the source of such inspiration and truth.
This came to my mind as I read of the most recent comments of the former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. who is proving how hostile to the Catholic Church she truly is and has been for such a long time in her life.
In a recent interview, McAleese spoke of her completed doctoral thesis, yet to be defended before a team of academics, in which she criticizes the Catholic practice of infant Baptism as enforced membership of the Church which is in breach of fundamental human rights.
Chief among those rights, according to McAleese, is the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking,” she said.
According to the former head of state, on the role of conscience, she stated: “I think it’s very simple. My human right to inform my own conscience, my human right to express my conscience even if it is the case that it contradicts the magisterium, that right to conscience is supreme.”
Another problem the church has yet to deal with was “that tension between a fully informed conscience that disagrees with the magisterium”.
And once again, we are treated to yet another dose of pseudo-appeals to conscience which stress that the dictates of conscience are always either morally obligatory or at least can never be morally wrong.
Such appeals are both fundamentally flawed and equally untenable. They result in an indefensible moral relativism. They should be called out for what they are: untruths which should be abandoned.
The universal imperative of human conscience is very simple: do good and avoid evil. The human conscience does not determine what is right or wrong, but once that determination has been made, the conscience impels the will to act in favor of what is right and good.
For the faculty of human conscience to work properly (in fact, to work at all) it must be informed. That is, the choices presented to it must have already been determined in their rightness or wrongness.
Conscience is not the determining faculty in that judgment.
Rather, judgments about what is good and compelling and what is evil to be avoided are made based upon sound moral principles which come to a person outside his subjective viewpoint and are informed by the Divine Mind and Will of the Creator Himself.
It is precisely the role of the Church to communicate the moral truths revealed to humanity by God through the ministry of the Word and the magisterial teachings of the Church.
McAleese knows this but her deeply-held animosity and bias against the Church will not allow her to assert that which she knows to be honest and true.
To assert the supremacy of conscience alone without reference of objective moral truths is to undermine society itself.
Law would have no meaning. Justice annihilated. Murder, warfare, sexual assault, in essence, every sort of depraved and errant behavior would be permissable and protected under the banner of the freedom of conscience.
The sadness is that the Bishops in Ireland (and the Church in general) do not take the pseudo-moralists like McAleese to immediate task for the dishonesty of their public remarks, leaving the impression that their statements are equivalent to traditional principles of morality.
McAleese is misguided at best or dishonest at worst.
She is wrong nonetheless and should be called out publicly for her error.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a stay of proceedings Wednesday, suspending the release of a grand jury investigation regarding sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Priests.
The report was expected to run hundreds of pages long, including interviews with victims, covering six dioceses.
The stay order provides no information as to who filed the appeal for the stay, nor does it state the reasons for suspending release of the report.
In a brief statement, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who spear-headed the investigation, said, I will continue fighting tirelessly to make sure the victims of this abuse are able to tell their stories and the findings of this investigation are made public to the people of Pennsylvania."
In May, Attorney General Shapiro stated that all Dioceses supported the release of the investigation's findings and results.
Something curious and strange is afoot here.
But the story is simply too big to hide the findings of a grand jury proceeding under the carpet.
Sentiments being what they are these days, people will not allow such goings on any longer.
I shall continue to follow developments and see where all this leads.
Two related massive lawsuits (one Federal and the other State) have been filed simultaneously in state and federal court by the receiver in the collapsed St. Joseph Hospital of the State of Rhode Island (SJHSRI) Pension Fund - the largest pension failure in Rhode Island history.
The suit alleges massive fraud in the case which has created a hole in pension assets estimated to be in excess of $115 million.
The Federal Court complaint is 136 pages and includes a 21 count complaint filed against 14 Defendants. Similarly, the State Court complaint is 101 pages and includes 16 count complaint against same defendants.
The defendants include the Diocese of Providence, CharterCare, CharterCare’s parent company Prospect, Angela Pension Group, and a range of other related healthcare and Diocesan entities tied to the sale of the St; Joseph Hospital first in 2009 by the Diocese to Roger Williams Medical Center which created CharterCare and then the sale of CharterCare to Prospect of California in 2014.
Noteworthy is the fact that both sales were approved by the Rhode Island Department of Health and, more importantly, the State Attorney General’s office.
The lawsuits assert that when the hospital was sold both in 2009 and in 2014, it affirmed the Pension Fund status as being a “church plan.” However, the pension fund should have then been thrust into a regulated ERISA plan -- a Federally regulated plan that then would required oversite, regulation, reporting, and mandated contributions.
Instead, the Pension Fund was jettisoned into a future that lead to its collapse just three years later. The fund when into receivership in August of 2017.
The suits further allege that the Diocese and the other healthcare organizations conspired to withhold information from the retirees, regulators and even the Vatican.
According to court documents, it is alleged that Bishop Thomas Tobin did not disclose (in his letter to the Vatican) that the proposed asset sale increased the probability of the Pension Fund failing. Instead, Bishop Tobin omitted that information and, in effect, said the opposite, that approval of the asset sale was actually necessary to secure the Pension Fund.”
The suit further alleges that, "On September 27, 2013, Bishop Tobin signed his letter as altered by counsel and sent it to the Vatican” in order to secure the necessary canonical approval for the sale.
Both the Federal and the State suits contend that the parties knew the implications: “These misrepresentations and omission concerning the Pension Fund in the Bishop’s letter to the Vatican…all understood that Vatican approval was required for the transaction to proceed..”
As a result, over 2,700 participants in the Pension Fund, consisting of nurses and other hospital workers, who, after many years of dedicated service to their patients and Saint Joseph Hospital, learned in August of 2017 that the Plan had not been adequately funded.
This was disclosed when the Plan was placed into receivership, with the request that the Rhode Island Superior Court approve a virtually immediate 40% across-the-board reduction in benefits.
The lawsuits claim that the harm to the Pension Fund participants is the product of (at least) four separate but related factual scenarios and schemes which attest to willful and fraudulent actions on the part of the defendants.
First, for nearly 50 years SJHSRI used the Pension Fund as a marketing tool to hire and retain employees, and promised employees and prospective employees it made of the necessary contributions, assuring them that they had no investment risk.
Second, for the past decade, SJHSRI stopped making necessary contributions with the result that the Pension Fund was grossly underfunded. Moreover, SJHSRI and other defendants conspired to conceal that from participants through fraudulent misrepresentations and material omissions.
Third, for many years SJHSRI and other defendants secretly sought a means to terminate the plan without exposing SJHSRI’s substantial operating assets and charitable funds to lawsuits by participants for benefits.
Records reveal that, in December of 2012, SJHSRI considered unilaterally terminating the Plan and paying benefits only to employees who were already retired. This would have deprived over 1,800 other Plan participants of any pension whatsoever. The scheme was reconsidered because SJHSRI feared the excluded plan participants would bring a successful class action that would end up costing SJHSRI more than it would save by terminating the Pension Fund.
Finally, in 2011, SJHSRI and other Defendants put into operation a scheme to transfer SJHSRI’s operating assets, cash and most of its expected future charitable income to entities controlled by SJHSRI’s parent company, intending that such assets thereby would be out of reach of a suit by Pension Fund participants and then terminate the Fund completely.
If the allegations are proven and the lawsuits successful, SJHSRI, the Prospect Entities, and other Defendants violated Federal and State pension mandates, committed fraud, breached their contractual obligations, violated their duty of good faith and fair dealing, and otherwise acted illegally. As a result, they will be required to compensate losses to the Plan and remedy such violations.
But defendants could also run afoul of Rhode Island laws prohibiting fraud.
Participants would be entitled to a judgment awarding them these all the assets of SJHSRI and its parent company, including but not to limited to New Fatima Hospital and New Roger Williams Hospital, or ordering that these properties and other assets be sold and awarding the Pension Fund participants the proceeds from the sale up to the amount necessary to fully compensate the Pension Fund on a termination basis and to ensure the pensions of all participants.
This is a shocking allegation of fraud and mismanagement in which the Diocese of Rhode Island, through the participation of Bishop Tobin and his associates, participated.
Thus far, these are only allegations which need to be subjected to the due process of law and trial.
However, if proven true, the scandal to the Church in Rhode Island would be enormous.
Certainly, this is something with which the Holy See must be concerned and be prepared to hold those responsible accountable for their misdeeds, if proven.
