Abandoned Altars

This summer, sixteen years ago, the clergy abuse crisis began for me, as well as for a lot of people. On June 2, 1992, ABC News PrimeTime broadcast the very first piece about serial child molester James Porter. I remember watching it, hugging myself and crying. I couldn’t believe that they were talking about the same kind of horror I had been dealing with for several months previous.

But it was indeed. Three weeks later, they broadcast an update. A young Diane Sawyer told the story about how it came about. The exposure of Porter was due to a brave survivor, Frank Fitzpatrick, who had been abused by Porter as a 12-year-old altar boy. Now grown, and a professional investigator, he tracked Porter down and actually confronted him on the phone.

The show even ran bits of the tape. Porter admitted he had abused Frank with an embarrassed chuckle, but that was the most remorse he would show. He claimed he had stopped molesting children in 1967, which of course, was a total lie.

For Diane Sawyer said that just during those three weeks some 60 victims came out. They even showed footage of her camera crew confronting the ex-priest, who reacted like a caged animal. It was electric, overwhelming, like nothing that had been on television before. (more…)

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With Pope Benedict’s arrival in the US just days away, interest is growing in his role in the clergy sex abuse scandals. A British documentary revives the charges that he led the cover-up.

That is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg, I’m afraid. Recent historical research for a book I’m writing has convinced me that Joseph Ratzinger is largely responsible for the scandals erupting in the first place. And he is directly responsible for their ending. Details can be found here.

That’s right. The scandals are over, folks. You just have not realized it yet.

Why is this important? First of all, they are over because the cover-up is in place even worse than before.

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I apologize for my long absence from this blog. This summer I protested a bishops’ meeting in town, argued with the local university over a Church-endowed chair, and went to Roswell for the 60th anniversary of the saucer crash (FUN!).

Most importantly, however, I’ve been writing. Can’t say much about that except stay tuned. The clergy sex abuse scandals are about to have the lid blown off.

Meanwhile, some of the research I’ve been doing has been needed to be mentioned. So in the meantime, there’s this:

Way back in 1880, an ex-priest named Charles Chiniquy published The Priest, the Woman, and the Confessional, one of the first exposes of solicitation in the confessional. It caused a sensation, with over 30 editions in less than 7 years.

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For years, I’ve ranted about how no clerical criminal, no matter how wicked, has ever been formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church for sexual abuse. (Or any other crime, for that matter.)

I knew what I wanted to see — for the fallen priest to be shamefully, publicly, and ceremonially stripped of his priesthood, losing all ecclesiastical powers and privileges, and be turned over to the tender mercies of law enforcement to be dealt with.

It would be an edifying spectacle, like something out of the Inquisition, only without the flames.

Turns out I was all confused.

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Yesterday was not “just” a Friday the 13th, but the anniversary of “the” Friday the 13th.

699 years ago yesterday at dawn all over France, the king’s men busted the “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon”, known more simply as the “Knights Templar“, for heresy.

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