Colbert headlined a charity gala hosted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan in the Waldorf-Astoria on Thursday night. Brian Thomas Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, was the honoree at this Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner.
Colbert and Dolan displayed the same conviviality - trading jokes and gentle ribbing - as when the cardinal was the only guest on the Sept. 3 “The Colbert Report.” Dolan used that appearance to plug his new book and got to repeat the same joke he made when he and Colbert appeared together in September 2012: asked what name he would choose if elected pope, Dolan replied, “Stephen.” Yuk, yuk.
"I am proud to be America's most famous Catholic," Colbert declared at the Waldorf turning to Dolan who was sitting next to him on a dais.
While both Colbert and Dolan use their joint appearances to heap praise on Pope Francis, regardless of the pope’s “kinder, gentler” tone, nothing substantial has changed nor is it likely.
In 2002, Dolan and all the U.S. bishops promised in writing “to make prompt and effective responses to allegations of sex abuse, cooperate with civil authorities and discipline offenders.”
On Oct. 5, 2013, Jennifer Haselberger, former chancellor of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, told Minnesota Public Radio that she had resigned in April after five years of employment because her concerns about the handling of clergy sexual abuse made it “impossible for me to continue in that position given my personal ethics, religious convictions and sense of integrity.”
Haselberger recounted how her bosses knew about the sexual misconduct by Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer for nearly a decade and promoted him to pastor anyway where he eventually abused children. The priest was charged in Sept. 2012 with sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy within the past two years. He was later convicted of sexually abusing two boys and possessing child pornography.
Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt, best known for his massive campaign for a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, received a memo dated Jan. 27, 2013, from the head of his child safety program informing him that the computer of Fr. Jonathan Shelley had pornographic images which were “quite likely minors.” Unaware of this, Haselberger decided to examine Shelley’s file in February when he was being considered for promotion. “What she found shocked her: three discs containing thousands of pornographic images - including some that seemed to depict minors - and a 2004 report advising Nienstedt of the nature of the contents of the computer.”
Haselberger notified Nienstedt and then notified the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office. Upset when her superiors refused to take action, she resigned two months later.
Shelley, who lives in Minneapolis, said he didn't do anything illegal. “Washington County Attorney Pete Orput told The Citizen Monday the statute of limitations on possession of child pornography is three years. Because the computer hard drive hasn’t been in Washington County for the better part of a decade, he said, at this point his office only would be involved if other information led to ‘other avenues we could investigate.’”
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As reported Sept. 29, 2013, Fr. Matthew Riedlinger had “quizzed his texting partner [who he thought was a 16-year-old boy] about sex videos, pressed for details about intimate liaisons, described sexual acts and encouraged mutual masturbation. He also repeatedly asked to meet.” At the time, Riedlinger was the assistant pastor and sex-education teacher at the St. Aloysius parish school (pre-K through eighth grade) in Jackson, NJ.
Riedlinger was the target of an elaborate sting by Timothy Schmalz, 23, and his friend, Ryan (who didn’t want his last name known because his family had business dealings with the diocese and he feared the business would be harmed), who say the priest had sexually harassed them for years. Schmalz and Ryan, among five young men who provided The Star-Ledger with similar accounts of harassment and sexual obsession by the priest, said they set up the sting because Trenton Bishop David M. O’Connell gave the priest only a “slap on the wrist” after they had complained to him about Riedlinger in 2011. O’Connell sent Riedlinger to outpatient therapy, the diocese said, and gave him “a talking-to” but the priest soon returned to St. Aloysius teaching sex education to middle-schoolers.
That lasted until the next summer, in 2012, when Schmalz and Ryan - frustrated by O’Connell’s kid-gloves discipline - lured Riedlinger into a “sexting” sting with a fake 16-year-old boy. They collected 1,200 messages between Riedlinger and the “teen” and presented the evidence to O’Connell.
On Aug. 7, 2012, the bishop wrote back, thanking them for the documents and saying he had personally escorted Riedlinger to a hospital for in-patient treatment and that the priest was removed from the parish. O’Connell also reported Riedlinger to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. (The Star Ledger was informed that there were jurisdictional problems since Schmalz was not located in New Jersey when the sting took place and, although the authenticity of the texts are not in question, they were obtained by civilians.)
Schmalz and Ryan said they continued to press the bishop to notify the parishioners and parents at St. Aloysius saying they worried Riedlinger might have harassed other teens. But the diocese’s victim assistance coordinator, Maureen Fitzsimmons, flatly told Ryan in an e-mail that O’Connell would not do so. Rayeanne Bennett, the diocese’s spokeswoman, said the decision was reversed after The Star-Ledger made an inquiry in order “to prepare the community for the media coverage and to answer any questions parishioners might have as a result.”
But in Bishop O’Connell’s statement read at all masses on Sept. 21/22 he said Reidlinger had been removed because of “his participation in inappropriate cell phone text communication over a period of some years with adults,” refusing to tell parents that Riedlinger believed he was corresponding with a 16-year-old boy.
O’Connell suspended Riedlinger on Oct. 3, meaning he cannot present himself as a priest in public, and Reidlinger resigned from the priesthood shortly thereafter.
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On May 20, 2013, a Newark NJ priest, Fr. Michael Fugee, was arrested for violating a lifetime ban on ministry to children by working with a Monmouth County youth group. A jury had convicted him in 2003 of aggravated criminal sexual contact but three years later the verdict was overturned in appellate court. The panel said that the trial judge should not have allowed jurors to hear the part of Fugee’s confession in which he questioned his sexual identity.
To avoid a retrial, Fugee, 52, signed an agreement in July 2007 that he would avoid contact with children. The Newark archdiocese also signed the agreement, pledging to supervise the priest. But The Star-Ledger reported that Fugee went on numerous retreats with children over the years since the agreement and that the interactions were never hidden from the archdiocese.
Catholics petitioned Pope Francis to remove Newark Archbishop John J. Myers for allowing a priest who had been ordered by the court to stay away from children to continue to attend youth retreats and hear the confessions of minors. “At St. Mary's Catholic Church in Colts Neck, where the Fr. Michael Fugee had been spending time with a youth group, angry parishioners said they were never told about Fugee's background, and they questioned Myers' defense of the priest.”
For the first time in his many years as an advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse, Mark Crawford, state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called on the archbishop to resign, characterizing Fugee as the latest in a string of problem priests shielded by Myers.
Before his arrest, Fugee gave Myers a letter dated May 2 resigning from public ministry. However, he remains a priest and no further evaluation of his clerical status is expected.
No one has yet received a response from the pope.
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So why doesn’t Cardinal Dolan, as the prelate of Wall Street, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the most influential churchman in this country demand that U.S. bishops’ honor their commitment to American children and young people? Because he also has a poor record.
On Sept. 27, 2013, a letter by Dolan was read to the parishioners at a Croton-on-Hudson parish. According to Dolan, Deacon Al Mazza had “credible and substantiated allegations of the abuse of minors.” (Deacons are usually married men with outside jobs. They assist the priest/pastor in the parish.) Dolan said that he had received this information “several months ago” from the Westchester District Attorney’s Office which had investigated accusations, along with the Croton-on-Hudson police, that Mazza engaged in immoral and illegal conduct with minors before he was ordained in 1996. Mazza could not be charged, however, because the statute of limitations had expired. Dolan said he suspended Mazza.
Survivors of clerical sex abuse want to know why Dolan waited “several months” to inform the parishioners. Also, there was no evidence that Mazza had been suspended earlier since his name appeared in the parish bulletin three times in September and his name remained on the parish website. They questioned why Dolan had kept his information secret and why weren’t people instructed to contact the proper authority if they had any knowledge about possible Mazza criminal activities past or present.
Similarly, in September 2010, a letter from Dolan was read to the parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem announcing that their former pastor, Msgr. Wallace A. Harris, had resigned. “But Dolan said nothing about the fact that at least ten men had reported being molested as boys by Harris in the 1970s and 1980s,” and that he had taken no action against Harris for two years after becoming aware of the allegations against the pastor.
In June 2012, it was reported that Dolan was secretly paying off sex offenders to quietly leave the priesthood.
After five days of silence, in remarks to the media Cardinal Dolan, instead of explaining his actions while he was Archbishop of Milwaukee and then misleading the public about it in 2006, blasted the New York Times and the victim advocacy group SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
It is not victim/survivors of predator priests in Milwaukee or the New York Times who publically confirmed, based on the official minutes of a meeting Dolan attended while the Archbishop of Milwaukee, that Dolan had authorized payments to child sex offender priests in order to be officially "laicized" and leave the priesthood. It was the Archdiocese of Milwaukee itself, including Dolan's long time Milwaukee Chief of Staff, Jerry Topczewski. And it was confirmed several times, over several days. Presumably, Dolan does not consider that his former Archdiocese is making "groundless and scurrilous" charges about him? In fact, Dolan's spokesperson said last week that Dolan "agreed" with the statements being issued by the Milwaukee Archdiocese…..
What is most damning about Dolan's conduct [is] that he appears to have deliberately lied about it: to the public, to Catholics, and most egregiously of all, to victim/survivors of the very same predator priests he was paying off.
“[P]erhaps it would be a good idea to…admit that these failings were entirely the fault of
a culture that prized self-protection and secrecy above disclosure and, yes, justice,” noted Grant Gallicho, contributing blogger to
Commonweal Magazine. “And the only person who can act decisively to change this culture of denial lives in Rome,” Gallicho concluded.
Pope Francis, however, will give the matter of clerical sex abuse no more than lip-service since he recently concealed his removal of two prelates accused of abusing minors thereby allowing both men who are still in hiding to evade action by civil authorities.
Persecution of the LBGTQ Community
On September 17, 2013, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of Catholic Military Services, issued an order that Catholic chaplains, contract priests and deacons are forbidden to participate in retirement, changes of command, promotion ceremonies and funerals where they would be required to acknowledge a spouse of the same gender. Nor can they assist at marriage retreats or counsel parties in same-gendered relationships in addition to not witnessing or blessing the union of couples of the same gender.
All of the above pertain even when non-Catholics are involved and even when these situations take place at Veterans Administration Medical Centers or outside the border of the United States of America although Congress approved conscience protections for military members that allow them to express their personal beliefs without fear of punishment.
Since Pope Francis was elected, “At an accelerating rate, Catholic schools and churches around the country are firing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees who have decided that they can no longer deny who they are and whom they love,” noted Jim Smith.
• On Oct. 16, Tippi McCullough, an English teacher at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock for 15 years, was told she must resign or be fired for marrying her 14-year partner the same day as the wedding. She received a telephone call 45 minutes after the ceremony that the school had been informed by “the diocese” that she was planning to wed.
• On Sept. 11, Kristen Ostendorf, an English and religion teacher at Totino-Grace High School in Fridley, MN was fired after telling colleagues at a workshop: “I’m gay, I’m in a relationship with a woman, and I’m happy.”
• In August, William Hudson, the same school’s president, had resigned after a rumor about his sexuality prompted him to reveal that he was in a committed 18-year relationship with another man.
• In July, Ken Bencomo, head of the English department at St. Lucy's Priory High School in Glendora, CA, lost his job after 17 years after photos of his wedding appeared in a local newspaper.
• In April, Carla Hale, who taught physical education at an Ohio Catholic school for 18 years, was fired after her mother's obituary disclosed that Hale had a female partner.
Last year, Trish Cameron, a fifth-grade teacher at St. Joseph's Catholic School in Moorhead, MN for 11 years, was fired in June after she told school officials she supports gay marriage although she keeps her views out of the classroom. Al Fischer, who taught music at St. Ann Catholic School in St. Louis for four years, was dismissed in February after school officials learned of his plans to marry another man.
"[B]ishops in the U.S. have increasingly taken a high-profile role in informing gay folks that they're simply unwelcome in Catholic churches. They've done so by spending huge amounts of money to combat gay rights in state after state, by threatening to use social services to immigrants and people in need as political bargaining chips in battles against gay rights, by comparing gay pride parades to Klan marches, by identifying gay folks with the devil, by leaning on Catholic institutions to fire gay employees who come out of the closet or employees who support gay rights, etc.,” noted blogger William D. Lindsey on Oct. 12, 2013.
Again, we can expect no correction from Dolan on these travesties since, on May 5, 2013, he used the NYPD to bar entry to Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to a small group of Catholic protestors and threatened them with arrest unless they first washed their hands. “They were responding to Dolan’s April 25 blog post, ‘All Are Welcome!,’ which tells gay people who wish to participate in the Catholic faith, you must first ‘wash your hands!’ They labeled their actions today a ‘Dirty Hands Vigil.’”
In Jan. 2012, Reuters referred to Dolan as “one of the leading opponents of gay marriage in the United States” noting his battle the previous summer to prevent New York from legalizing same-sex marriage. After losing, Dolan complained that the New York bishops were deceived on the question of the protection of religious freedom in the final bill. “We said the next thing will be we'll be sued if we don't do marriage, we're going to be harassed if we don't do receptions, we're going to be penalized if we don't allow adoption, we're going to be booed if we don't hire these people,” Dolan stated.
Dolan just out and out lied noted Bil Browning. The cardinal knew that the bill contained a religious exemption that protected faiths from penalties if they refused to perform same-sex marriages or provide services for them. "While the Catholic Church has repeatedly threatened to close adoption agencies if they had to abide by non-discrimination laws, no state has threatened to ‘penalize’ them. The charities have all voluntarily closed their doors after refusing to provide homeless and parentless children loving homes if the parents are gay or lesbian,” wrote Browning.
Dolan was correct, however, that he was going to be “booed” (but not by Colbert) if he didn’t hire “these people.”
In Sept. 2011, Dolan sent a letter to Obama threatening that the president’s failure to support a federal ban on gay marriage could “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions.”
Worse yet, Dolan keeps his attack dog, Bill Donohue, in business. The Official Catholic Directory lists every group in the U.S. which is recognized by the (arch)bishop in every (arch)diocese as “officially” part of the Catholic Church and, therefore, automatically eligible for a 501(c)(3) tax exemption as a religious organization and immune to financial reporting requirements including donors and expenses. Donohue’s The Catholic League has such a listing under the protection of the Archdiocese of New York.
Donohue habitually mischaracterizes the sex abuse crisis as a “homosexual” problem by intentionally misquoting the John Jay Report on clergy sex abuse. According to Donohue, “nearly 80 percent of victims were post-pubescent and adolescent males,” or “three out of every four of the male victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests were post-pubescent, meaning that it’s homosexuality driven.”
What Dolan knows to be the truth is that the report - based entirely on information provided by the U.S. bishops themselves with no verification by the researchers - stated in Table 4.3.1 that 80.9 percent of the victims were male (naturally since priests have more access to boys than girls), but that only 39.9 percent of the victims, male and female combined, were ages fourteen through seventeen (Table 4.3.2). The report gave no breakdown of ages according to gender, meaning the percentage of teen-aged male victims would be substantially less than 40 percent. In fact, the average age of all victims, male and female, was 12.6 years of age. The report never mentioned the number or percentage of “post-pubescent or adolescent males,” nor tried to ascertain the sexual orientation of the perpetrators.
Yet Dolan has never corrected or distanced himself from Donohue’s vile statements about homosexuals or any other topic for that matter. Nor has the cardinal ever threatened Donohue with loss of his endorsement.
Nor can we expect Pope Francis to correct or chastise any of his gay-bashing prelates regardless of his statement that he doesn’t judge gays who are chaste and unmarried.
Twin Cities Archbishop Nienstedt spoke at an August 2013 conference stating that the “source” of “sodomy” and the “redefinition of marriage…is none other than the Father of Lies.”
In 2010, as Argentina debated a marriage equality bill, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote: “We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a move by the Father of Lies who aims to confuse and deceive the children of God.” He went on to say about gay adoption: “At stake are the lives of many children who'll be discriminated against in being deprived of the human growth that God wanted to be given through a father and a mother.”
In Feb. 2013, Argentine Fr. José Nicolás Alessio was defrocked because he favored same-sex marriage and no one expects the pontiff will rescind that order.
Women's Healthcare
“[T]he UCCSB tried to blackmail a president determined to protect the full faith and credit of the United States over birth control. Their price? ‘They urged that the policy of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (H. R. 940/S. 1204) be incorporated into must-pass legislation such as the Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling bill,’” Daily Kos diarist Jon Perr wrote on Friday.
From the beginning of the U.S. episcopate’s 2012 presidential election year campaign against coverage for birth control under the Affordable Care Act, Cardinal Dolan affirmed, “We have to be vigorous in insisting that this is not about contraception, it’s about religious freedom.”
He was half-honest.
The USCCB campaign isn’t about contraception, it’s about branding Pres. Obama as “anti-religion” just as the Church’s anti-abortion crusades aren’t about saving unborn children (an absurd assertion from an institution which systematically oversees the sexual torture of hundreds of thousands of children around the world) but rather garnering votes for the Republican Party.
Like other Republicans, Catholic bishops decided that denying women access to health care is an agreeable trade-off when weighed against the primary goal of rallying conservative voters and getting out the vote for GOP candidates.
“Seven months earlier” than the HHS mandate issued on Jan. 20, 2012, stating that religious-affiliated hospitals and universities (organizations for solely religious purposes are exempted) must include coverage for birth control in their health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, “the Roman Catholic bishops had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign” against birth control.
“This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights,” ranted Dolan. By Jan. 20, the bishops were already prepared with “similarly dire statements on their Web sites, and at Mass on the following Sundays, priests read the bishops’ letters from their pulpits and wove the religious freedom theme into their homilies, [their message] trickling down to Catholics through their local parish bulletins and diocesan newspapers.”
On Feb. 12 Dolan told the Associated Press “it’s getting harder and harder to believe” that Obama’s not anti-religion. Rick Santorum, a GOP presidential candidate, said Obama was “the most anti-religion president in history.” The Western Center for Journalism termed it “Obama’s Anti-Religious Implosion.”
Anti-religion? “As my contacts in the Obama administration have noted, grants from HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement to the USCCB increased from $27 million in fiscal year 2010 to some $32 million in fiscal year 2011. Funding to Catholic Relief Services increased from some $69 million in 2008 to $109 million in 2011. Catholic Charities USA received an increase of approximately $120 million in federal funds from 2009 to 2010. [In Oct. 2011] the White House welcomed 150 leaders from Catholic Charities USA to discuss innovative partnerships to reduce poverty,” according to John Gehring, Senior Writer and Catholic Outreach Coordinator, Faith in Public Life Action.
Also in February, Mitt Romney pledged to eliminate the mandate on “day one” of his presidency which he said takes “particular aim” at Catholics. “I stand with the Catholic bishops.”
It proved to be a major misstep for the GOP/Catholic Church. In the twenty-first century, many more persuasive reasons can be given for the morality of using contraceptives than not, not to mention the immorality of denying health care to poor women. So when the GOP’s “war against women” was polling as a liability, a Romney ad in October stated the candidate thinks “abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life” and “doesn’t oppose contraception at all” should end the discussion.
As if anyone needed any further proof that the U.S. Catholic bishops are adjuncts of the Republican Party, their collective silence to Romney’s restated position was deafening.
Nor will Pope Francis alter the Church’s position on birth control or women’s rights.
“Death flights” was one of the means used by the Catholic Church-supported military junta (1976-1983) in Argentina to dispose of accused enemies. People were thrown alive from airplanes and helicopters into the ocean. Former Marine Captain Adolfo Scilingo, who shoved 30 individuals to their deaths including a 65 year old man, a 16 year old boy and 2 pregnant women, said that the Catholic hierarchy approved this as a “Christian form of death.”
In 2005, a Catholic military chaplain said that the Minister of Health should be thrown into the sea because of his progressive views on contraception. “It doesn't take much effort at all to imagine what that must sound like to the ears of an Argentine with any sense of history,” said Ernesto Semán, historian at New York University and former reporter for an Argentine newspaper.
Cardinal Bergoglio refused to comply with the government’s demand for the chaplain’s resignation.
Pope Francis ordered the excommunication on May 31 of an Australian priest, Fr. Greg Reynolds, who thought women should be ordained.
Earlier in May, the pope “told nuns from around the world that they must be spiritual mothers and not ‘old maids.’”
On Oct. 12, Pope Francis addressed a group of women attending a meeting to discuss the “Dignity of Women.” He told them that the “’sort of emancipation’ that allows women to enter traditionally male domains may rob them of ‘the very femininity that characterizes them.’” Also, “Whatever cultural and social changes have occurred or may occur, ‘the fact remains that it is the woman who conceives, carries and brings into the world the children of men,’” the pontiff said.
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It was naïve to think that Pope Francis was “challenging” or “criticizing” the U.S. bishops’ emphasis on abortion, gay marriage and contraception in an interview published on Sept. 20. After all, the National Republican Committee had already reached the same conclusion when they developed a “plan for growth which calls for tolerant attitudes on…social issues such as abortion and gay marriage” as they “worked to rebuild after a painful 2012 election season.”
In fact, the prelate of Wall Street said his reaction to Pope Francis’ interview made him want “to sing out a loud Alleluia!” Worried about closing parishes, meeting his budget and “dwindling Mass attendance,” Dolan said he was “exhilarated” and that the other U.S. bishops “applauded the pope’s words.” “If the Church is perceived as crabby, nagging, hung-up on a few pet peeves, or judgmental…we can’t evangelize very well,” the cardinal explained.
Speaking of "dwindling Mass attendance," it is a mystery to me why Colbert is unable to do what the majority of Americans raised as Catholics have already done i.e. separate their religious faith and beliefs from the current homophobic, misogynistic hierarchy unwilling after decades of gut-wrenching stories and statistics of child sex abuse to stop aiding and abetting the perpetrators and then hiding it - not to mention their decades of supporting the obscenely immoral Republican Party.