Summertime is movie time. So if you’re bored with reruns and the same old stuff on cable, with no new ideas for Netflix, for your convenience, there’s the Fallen Priests Film Festival pages. I got ‘em all; ranging from funny priests to devil worshippers and outright nunsploitation, with dramas and historical epics in the middle. Even clergy abuse documentaries are now included.

Check the nearly 300 shows currently listed starting with Part I: Clerical Comedies.

I’ve left out all the pro-Church syrupy schmaltz that I can. No Sister Act or Going My Way here, folks. Most of this stuff would get you into trouble with the Legion of Decency, which is kinda the point here. ;->

I’ve listed a few new ones, updated several more. Along with the hilarious Father Ted, there’s the movie I saw last night, Goya’s Ghosts, an excellent period drama about the famous painter, a model (Natalie Portman, whose roles are getting even more curious), and Javier Bardem as the creepiest and most vile inquisitor I’ve seen in a long time. And it’s quite “on topic” too…

And as always, if you think of any I should know about that aren’t listed, please let me know. Thanks!

Stay cool and pass the “popecorn”….

Keys of Heaven, Gates of Hell

I’m bumming today, having ended four long years of research tracking down a clue to the ultimate smoking gun, what I’d hoped would be the crown jewel of all my digging into the Church’s dark and hidden history.

I’ve called this elusive Holy Grail, the “Master Key“. The idea that there could even be such a thing came to me after reading a 19th century academic History of Auricular Confession by an American scholar named Henry C. Lea. He wrote:

“…there was an even higher authority for the violation of the seal, for the confessor in this case was a cardinal, who, under dispensation from Eugenius IV, revealed a confession the knowledge of which was important to the papal policy of the moment.”

A small footnote cryptically referred to a work by a later pope’s very own personal theologian which justified the act. Certainly can’t get much more authoritative than that. But a papal dispensation of the seal of the confessional? That’s something that apologists have said is absolutely impossible! And for damned good reason.

Think about it for a moment. To start with, such an ability would have confirmed the Protestants’ worst suspicions. The Master Key could turn a supposed instrument for relieving guilt into a very powerful means of manipulating people. Because everything sacramentally confessed is automatically assumed to be true: they are admissions of crimes committed or contemplated given under oath.

Beyond any mere possibilities of crude blackmail, confessing such sins under such circumstances is like handing one’s jailer a full confession to obtain mercy. What secret price might be exacted for forgiveness? What deals in the dark must be agreed upon?

For instance, the principle is that a thief has only to pay 10% of his ill-gotten gains to the Church to be forgiven. How useful could it be then to know who the criminals are?

It would be even more valuable within the Church itself. Such a Master Key could determine exactly who would be “worthy” of appointment, or susceptible to pressure. This more than anything else would finally solve the great mystery of iniquity; why it is that the Church is so incapable of reforming itself. It is simply that such a tool would enable the perpetuation of tight-knit self-protective interest groups among the hierarchy which would be impossible to root out.

Well, if anyone could have used such a power it would have been Eugene IV. He came to the tiara shortly after the Great Schism ended, and spent most of his reign fighting uppity councils and an antipope for his throne. In my search for the actual historical basis of the incident, I counted no less than 8 cardinals as well as other prelates (including a future pope) who defected to one party or another and later returned to his obedience with tales to tell. There would have been plenty of opportunity as well as an urgent need to know the sins of the pope’s enemies.

The way the Vatican works, however, is that if the Pope claims he can do something once, he can do it any time he wants. Moreover, he can delegate that power and take it back any time, too. This means that from one small thoughtless incident, whole traditions can be invented.

Indeed, some did evolve; always to the benefit of the papacy. For instance, Charlemagne once kindly helped an elderly Pope mount his horse by holding his stirrup. Within a century there was a mural in the Vatican showing this as a pious act of self-humiliation. Within two centuries, on the basis of the picture, Rome claimed that holding the stirrup was a sacred duty that the Emperor owed the Pope to show the superiority of the spiritual office over the temporal. And thus, emperors found themselves holding the Pope’s stirrup like a stableboy each and every time they met, until emperors were no more and the pontiff cruised around in a popemobile instead.

With all this in mind, I spent two years tracking this one reference down, scouring the Internet, searching and downloading God knows how many books looking for evidence. I finally located the text itself at the University of Chicago and acquired a photocopy of the right section. The source is the Summa Summarum of Prierias, a dense, early 16th-century textbook of theology printed in tiny type with strange abbreviations and symbols replacing whole syllables, all in bad Late Ecclesiastical Latin. It took another two years off and on just cleaning it up so I could get it translated.

I had high hopes. Sylvestro Mazzolini, Prierias, was not only the Pope’s own theologian, the “Master of the Sacred Palace”, he was so famous in his own day that like Da Vinci, he was known mainly by his hometown. He vetted sermons preached before the Pope, and his chief claim to fame was that he wrote the first rebuttal to Martin Luther, whom he insulted so badly that the reformer left the Catholic Church in a rage. This, then, was no theological lightweight, but an expert. His book was printed over 48 times through several centuries. There is no question that whatever he said was officially blessed policy.

So with great excitement, I ultimately hired a gentleman from Cambridge who did a fantastic job turning it into English, and got it back the other day.

D’oh! You guessed it. Lea had it backwards. It was the pope’s own confession that the cardinal revealed — with the pope’s tacit permission, so he was not rebuked.

The text is extremely difficult even in translation. The section quotes yet another theologian, Panormitanus, also known as Cardinal Nicolo de’ Tudeschi, “the most famous jurist of the fifteenth century”, who might well have been the very cardinal involved in the actual incident.

According to the translator, “if so, the text suggests that he passed on a secret confessed to him, contrary to the seal, when he was in the presence of the Pope because, in the circumstances, the Pope could somehow aid the situation that the sin concerned.” Thus the cardinal was not rebuked, and another loophole in the seal confirmed. The seal is not violated, according to the text, if the information is told secretly to “someone who could be of use” — but it’s still not the Master Key.

And there I must leave it, at least for now. I’ve realized that though I’ve ascertained to my own satisfaction that the Church is mainly just a ginormous sheeple control mechanism, I’m probably not going to be able to prove it to anyone else.

My theory that the confessional can be and is used as a clandestine intelligence-gathering device, while obvious to any person not wearing Catholic blinders, lacks its final, clinching evidence.

I have no doubt I’m right. I’ve figured much about how the system could work— what information is actually exempt from the seal, ways to get around it otherwise, the Church’s methods of classification and passing it to Rome, even who the Vatican’s Director of Central Intelligence must be, but this Master Key, my friends, would have been the smoking gun for everything. But still it eludes me…

Or does it? Could the solution have been staring me in the face all the time?

The very image of the Holy See is the tiara of universal authority over a pair of crossed keys. This represents the so-called Power of the Keys claimed by the Pope:

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” — Matt. 16:17-19

Since Canon Law declares the seal “inviolable”, any direct violation of it incurs an automatic penalty of excommunication (Can. 983 §1). Yet all such offenses are strictly reserved to the Pope to forgive, which means they would be classified in effect as “Top Secret” and sped up the chain of command. Thus, even without any declared policy, a secret intelligence-gathering system could work.

The Master Key, it turns out, need be nothing more than the power the Pope has always claimed.

Father Ted

And now for something completely different… Father Ted.

I didn’t know much about this television series except that it was about 3 priests on some little Irish island. Since one of them’s a disgusting, demented alcoholic lech, I thought they had to be retired and the whole thing seemed like it might be a bit triggering, at best.

But, I knew I had to check it out sooner or later for my list of clerical comedies on my Fallen Priests Film Festival pages, and so last night, needing something to calm me down after LOST, I plopped the first disk in.

The first two episodes set the scene on the dismal patch called Craggy Island, and introduce the whacky trio of rectory mates (if that’s the term) — Father Ted, the most reasonable one; Father Jack, a drooling codger who mainly just shouts “Feck!” at everything; and Father Dougal, a young, amiable halfwit; the annoying housekeeper and assorted eccentric characters. OK, just a wee bit darker than The Vicar of Dilby, maybe. Hardly anything to get excited about, although their priest visitors seem to have a little more bite and probably will add more fun as it goes. [SPOILERS follow]

In the third episode, “The Passion of Saint Tibulus”, it finally becomes clear why the guys are there. Ted embezzelled church funds to run off to Las Vegas with “a child who should have been going to Lourdes”, Jack because of something he did at a wedding, and frankly, I was so busy gasping I totally missed Dougal’s offense. So the fire-breathing bishop (”that gobshite”) has sent them into exile to this godforsaken rock. By the end of the episode, because their protests have made a naughty French movie, The Passion of Saint Tibulus, a local blockbuster, this punishment isn’t enough. He threatens to send one to South America, another to the Philippines, and after Jack punches him out, to some hellhole to be determined. The boys save themselves by finding the bishop’s holiday tape in the bag, of him frolicking on the beach his mistress and their son.

Yes, it’s all good family fun. But really, pretty sharp material for broadcast in 1995, I’d reckon. Not that it could yet be shown in the USA to this day, except maybe on premium cable with the porn.

But the show is so accepting of all this business of fallen and filthy clergy being shuffled around it makes me wonder, yet again, how anyone — especially Europeans — could still be shocked by any of the stuff still coming out now.

And I’ve still got 22 episodes to go.

Who ya gonna call?

Frankly, I’m gobsmacked. Finally, unexpectedly, as it did in so many places, the scandals appear to be reaching flash point around none other than the pope. Questions have arisen about Pope Benedict’s role in dealing with perpetrators when Joseph Ratzinger was but a bishop, a scandal in the choir headed by his own brother, another scandal involving prostitution in the Vatican choir, and even the chief exorcist of the Vatican admitting to the presence of Satanists there (more on that later).

Bookies are even making odds on the pope’s possible resignation!

Yet, in the midst of all this, I have this incredible information and am being completely ignored. I feel like the kid bursting with the answer, waving his hand desperately to get recognized by the teacher to no avail.

Here is my latest attempt, with a new Press Release.

And here’s documentary proof, in PDF format, adapted from my book, Sons of Perdition:

Ratzinger’s Responsibility for the Sex Scandals

Read it and weep, people.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I’ve neglected this blog a lot. Believe it or not, I’ve wanted to turn my attention to topics other than clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church. As a gnostic, heretic, and long time sci-fi fan, the religious implications of UFOs, what the Church knows about Roswell, and even the possibility that Christ could be seen as an extraterrestrial have long intrigued me.

But the Church just won’t let me be. Every time I think, Okay, I can walk away now, they come up with something even more outrageous. I’ve stoically ignored the meltdown in the Irish Church, even failed to mention the choirboy scandals in Germany. But now…

Well, now there’s a new scandal brewing in Rome.  And thus the cause for the irony between the headline and the picture above.  Those are Irish cardinals who’ve been called in on the carpet for the sex scandals there.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Here’s the story from the Guardian, where the above headline and picture come from, too:

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict’s household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.

The explosive claims about Balducci’s private life have caused grave embarrassment to the Vatican, which has yet to publicly comment on the affair.

While Catholicism does not condemn homosexuality outright, its teaching is that homosexual acts “are intrinsically disordered”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states unequivocally: “Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Balducci was arrested on 10 February, suspected of involvement in widespread corruption. A senior Italian government official, he is alleged to have to steered public works contracts towards favoured bidders. He has not been charged.

It was during this investigation into corruption that wiretaps revealed his alleged sexual activity. In one conversation, Ehiem tells Balducci: “I saw your call when I was in the Vatican, because I was doing rehearsals … in the choir … in St Peter’s.” He then suggests Balducci meet a man who he describes is “two metres tall … 97 kilos … aged 33, completely active.”

Balducci is also a senior adviser to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the department that oversees the Roman Catholic church’s worldwide missionary activities.

Since 1995, he has been a member of one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities – the Gentlemen of His Holiness, or Papal Gentlemen, the ceremonial ushers of the papal household. In the words of a 1968 ordinance, they are expected to “distinguish themselves for the good of souls and the glory of the name of the Lord”.

According to a report by the Carabinieri for prosecutors in Florence investigating the corruption scandal, there was a hidden side to Balducci’s life. “In order to organise casual encounters of a sexual nature, he availed himself of the intercession of two individuals who, it is maintained, may form part of an organised network, especially active in [Rome], of exploiters or at least facilitators of male prostitution.”

It named one as Ehiem, a professional chorister born in Nigeria. According to Italian press reports, Ehiem, a member of the choir that sings in St Peters when the pope is not officiating, lost his job on Wednesday after details of the Florence investigation became known to the Vatican.

In an interview to be published tomorrow by the news magazine Panorama, Ehiem said he had been introduced to Balducci more than 10 years ago. He claims: “He asked me if I could procure other men for him. He told me he was married and that I had to do it in great secrecy.”

There were conflicting accounts of how the Vatican might respond. According to one source, there was no provision for the dismissal of a Gentleman of His Holiness. Another said: “We shall wait for the judiciary’s definitive verdict.”

(Emphasis added.) Original story here.

Let’s connect some dots:

• An usher, it seems to me, would be ideally placed to be a pimp to the Pope’s elite visitors: cardinals, archbishops, heads of religious orders dignitaries, ambassadors, etc., etc.
• This arrangement between the two may have gone on for a decade, and is part of a larger operation.
• Choirs — as is evidenced by the current scandal surrounding a school choir in Germany later run by the pope’s brother — have long been used as pools for predators.
• The timing — the Irish cardinals appearing in Rome for a private meeting with the pope.
• Finally, the procurer worked for the missionary arm of the Church! Imagine the possibilities there, for not only procuring victims, but placing predators.

Suddenly, the headline and the story seem to go together all too well!

More to come, almost certainly…

Sometimes the best gifts are those you never ask for, but are given anyway.

For instance, I would never, ever have thought of writing to Saint Nick,

“Dear Santa,

“This year, could you somehow have the pope tackled during a procession? I don’t want anybody really hurt, but it would sure brighten up my Christmas.”

But guess what? It happened anyway! Well, although an elderly cardinal broke his leg, the pope himself wasn’t hurt in the commotion, and that’s just fine with me. (Seriously, the last thing I’d want is Ratzi to become a martyr — and the incident wouldn’t have been at all funny, either.)

But having him taken down with a flying tackle by a woman in red? Priceless.

Note the symbolism. I’ve studied omens for years, and I can tell you, you don’t have to be an expert in the Book of Revelation to figure out this one. The Pope knocked down in a flying tackle by a woman clothed in red?

In Revelations 17, the “woman clothed in scarlet and purple” has written on her forehead:

MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (Rev. 17:3)

An angel explains that she represents the city of seven hills, “the great city that rules over the kings of the Earth.” (Rev. 17:18)
“Babylon the Great” (Rev. 18:2) which is to say the Eternal City, Rome, i.e., the Vatican.

The Protestant Reformers clearly saw the reference to the papacy, and delighted in the prophecies of her destruction.

Now the leaping woman wearing red, Susanna Maiolo, 25, of Swiss-Italian nationality, is described in news accounts as “mentally disturbed”. Well, duh.

Not that we’ll ever know why she did it or indeed, just what she was trying to accomplish — even though this was her second attempt, as she tried it last year during the pope’s way out. This time, she was more successful, and apparently, unrecognized by the screeners.

But the lack of news is so typical of Rome. The live feed from the Vatican slowly panned away from the incident up to the altar the moment security guards started converging, and nothing was mentioned of the incident. And try to find a good picture on the Net. Despite the hundreds of cellphones taking stills and movies, only a few have made it online, and they are poor quality.

Of course, we don’t know why she was wearing red both times she jumped at Benedict. But the meaning is very apparent.

1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2 With a mighty voice he shouted:
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
3 For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say:
“Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
5 for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.

…²¹ Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said:
“With such violence
the great city of Babylon will be thrown down,
never to be found again.

…By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
²⁴ In her was found the blood of prophets and of the saints,
and of all who have been killed on the earth.” (Rev. 18:1-5, 21, 23-24)

Now that will be a Christmas to look forward to! ;->

Behind the mask

I had a rather peculiar feeling when reading how shocked and dismayed Pope Benedict XVI said he was over the report on Irish abuse.  I was reminded in fact of a scene from the classic film Casablanca (1942). You know the one — the refugees in the bar beat the Germans in the “Battle of the Anthems” and so the head Nazi, the evil Maj. Strasser, orders the corrupt French cop Capt. Renault to shut the place down.

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Capt. Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Capt. Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Capt. Renault: Everybody out at once!

Yes, caught between admitting that abuse was due in large part to the Vatican’s culture of secrecy and cover-up which he himself has restored and having to do something about it, the Supreme Pontiff’s response of “outrage, betrayal, and shame” is predictable. Since, however, as the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , Ratzinger is more likely outraged by the revelations of abuse rather than its actual happening.

For if anybody knew what was going on it was him. And if the Grand Inquisitor didn’t know, that in itself is a major scandal!

But rather than confess any faults of God’s Holy Church, he places the blame squarely on the perpetrators and the bishops who enabled them. Like Capt. Renault, the Holy See profits from the cover-up and also by the abuse.

Let’s face it: Abuse, or even homosexual acting out with their peers keeps some of the remaining clergy — mainly men who cannot survive in the “real world”, content.  The cover-up is necessary to keep a lid on things and the papal hands as white and unblemished as his robes. And the corruption in the sacred premises is every bit as seedy and degenerate as that in a refugee hellhole.

Incorruptible

Being pretty much a hermit, it takes a lot to pry me out of my cave. Last night, I was dragged by my sister to see her husband in the opening night of a play, called “Incorruptible“, written by Michael Hollinger, put on by a local company. I went largely out of politeness, but they thought it was right up my alley, and yowie wowie, they could not have been more right.

Incorruptible is a comedy about a monastery in 13th Century France that’s about to go under. The bones of their patroness saint have stopped working miracles and so the pilgrims have stopped coming; desperate measures are called for. Very funny as well as surprisingly historically accurate about the trafficking of fraudulent holy relics.

I had a great time. I’d forgotten how much fun local live theatre can be; actually enjoyable to be with other humans for once! All the actors are excellent, and the dialog is fast-paced and witty. Scariest nun I’ve ever seen too, and that’s saying something! (And yet it was written by a Quaker.) For me, though, not a bad start to the holiday season. In any case, it sure beat the hell out of yet another production of The Nutcracker.

But the reason I mention it here, is that the theme is, of course, Church corruption, actual as well as moral. The term “incorruptible”, you see, also refers to saints so holy that their corpses do not decay. And the practice of “holy theft” — furtum sacrum in Latin — whereby it was perfectly acceptable to rip off relics if they’d get more veneration in a new location justified quite a bit of larceny back then, including to my own patron saint, Jerome. And back before the Reformation, counterfeiting sacred relics was indeed a minor but profitable industry. (That’s probably the least weird explanation, anyway, for why there’s at least 3 Holy Foreskins of Jesus claimed by different cathedrals, for example. ;-> )

So of course, there are numerous sly references throughout the play to the moral bankruptcy of the clergy, both financial and sexual. The audience, mainly well-educated adults, took it all in stride, and laughed almost as much as I did. In the guise of light entertainment, the show really managed to bring up questions of faith, morality, miracles, and religious power.

And it hit me that the scandals have in a way returned us to the Middle Ages, but for once, in a good way. Due to victims coming forward, clerical immorality is now part of the common discourse once again, as it was back then. No longer does the Roman Catholic Church tower like a monolithic pyramid, aloof, divine, and well, incorruptible.

In our own time, we’ve actually succeeded in bringing the faults of the men and women of the cloth out in the open more than all the muck-raking journalists and esteemed historians of the last several centuries. Clergy abuse in the public consciousness, and while still a serious concern, people are unafraid to laugh about it. And that is, in my view, a very healthy development.

So we may not have “won” — sure, the Roman Catholic Church still has immense power and millions of mindless adherents — but this, I think, may be a sign that the tide has turned. It’s the clergy who are ridiculed and shamed now, not victims. And their pious self-importance can’t take it.

Laughter, it seems, may be the most effective weapon of all. Hmmm, maybe I better dig out that medieval religious comedy of my own, Once Upon an Inquisition…

Blessing or curse?

Here they are, two headlines next to each other this morning on ZENIT, the official Vatican newsfeed.

Benedict XVI Defends Young Migrants
Encourages Christians to Aid Children and Youth

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is appealing to Christians to reach out to migrants and refugees, especially children and adolescents, and to raise awareness of their plight….

and this:

Irish Prelates Lament Report on Child Abuse
Say No Apology Is Sufficient

DUBLIN, Ireland, NOV. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In response to the publication of a report about sexual abuse of children by clergy, the archbishop of Dublin is stating that “no apology is sufficient.”..

The intellectual disconnect revealed here is astonishing in its audacity, truly overwhelming. It goes soars beyond denial, leaps past hypocrisy and lands squarely in the briarpatch of pathological, institutionalized schizophrenia. It would be funny if it were not so scary.

This is pure madness! The Roman Catholic hierarchy condemned by the Irish Government for covering up sex abuse for over 60 years is no different in Ireland than it is anywhere else — all the lying archbishops, deceiving bishops, and enabling monsignors fingered in the report were picked, evaluated, promoted and in short,  given their jobs by Rome, same as everywhere. These men are cut from the identical cloth as the rulers of the Church universal in every nation on the planet, and thus, acted no differently. Prelates in America, Canada, Austria, Australia and elsewhere have acted exactly the same.

This is a Church with no moral leg to stand on. And yet, its fearless leader, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself has done so much to reinstate the coverup, dares harangue the world about child abuse!

The Roman Church has absolutely no right lecturing anyone on how children should be treated. That the shame in doing so does not choke them as they speak is itself a sign of how completely insane the leadership must be.

Fr. Sanchez -- then and now

He’s back. They say criminals always return to the scene of the crime; bad pennies always show up again.

So perhaps it was inevitable that the person of Robert Fortune Sanchez, the former Archbishop of Santa Fe disgraced by his own admitted abuse of at least five women along with gross negligence in his incompetent handling of the clergy abuse scandals, has once again shown up in his New Mexican homeland.

Only now, he’s no longer a prelate, but a simple monk — a Franciscan friar, to be exact.

According to the website of the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the former archbishop has been a friar for two years now, and is celebrating his fiftieth anniversary as a Roman Catholic priest with his Franciscan brothers. (UPDATE: Link has been reset to Province’s homepage, as the page about the jubilee has been removed. Nice to know they’re paying attention!)

He has so much to celebrate, after all. What a record. During his nineteen years as archbishop, hundreds of New Mexico children were sexually abused by his priests, while he did virtually nothing to stop them. Nor did the chief shepherd of the community minister at all to victims and their families and parishes hurt by these monsters.

Instead, Robert Sanchez was busy chasing skirts himself. The damage he left behind is considerable, and even with the patient efforts of his successor, Abp. Michael Sheehan, the Church is still a long way from true recovery.

So Sanchez has some nerve coming back. Not that there is any sign that any further explanations of his inaction will be forthcoming, or that he will add anything to his feeble apologies. In fact, portions of his massive legal deposition are still kept secret, fifteen years later.

In fact, Sanchez becoming a Franciscan is truly ironic. The Order of Friars Minor accompanied the Conquistadors in the Spanish invasion. Until the Yankees took over in the middle of the 19th Century, the Franciscans were the backbone of the Catholic Church in New Mexico. Their missions were central to the Spanish colony, and their power was great enough to successfully defy more than one governor.

The friars thus had great freedom which many of them abused to the point where the Indians themselves revolted. The failure of the Franciscans brought disgrace upon themselves, and in the isolation of their mission churches, set the stage for not only the great Indian Revolt, but the corruption and the scandals of the 20th Century.

Perhaps it’s only fitting, then, that his former excellency returns to his ancestral homeland, as a dog returns to his vomit. Doubtless he will be greeted in fine Catholic tradition. But does his new humble rank demonstrate Christian humility and penitence or something else?

The brazen effrontery of this man who led his Church community into such an awful crisis to return here to celebrate his vocation, speaks only of arrogance and self-centeredness of the worst kind.

This is the Catholic Church, not offering a blessing, but throwing a finger at the people. So it is that once again, the former Archbishop Sanchez has managed to betray his flock while caring only for himself.