Saturday, April 10, 2010

Another friend of Garabedian's who forgot to remember

Longtime readers of mine know that I do not swallow the hooey that persons who were raped forget that it happened only to "remember" in the office of a slimy lawyer looking for a handout beyond the statutes of limitations. 

People who are abused don't forget about it, just as they don't forget if they were burned in a fire or were involved in a tragic car accident.   They may not remember the events leading up to the trauma, or they may be foggy on some of the details - but they don't forget that it happened.

There is physical pain involved that makes it impossible to "forget".

I've repeatedly said this but I will say it again:   Nobody is denying the existence of a culture that swept child abuse under the carpet and there were children abused who were force-fed a code of silence who were afraid to come forward.   No words can do justice to pain and outrage caused by it.


But my God, people have gone mad. In every conceivable way.  They're making a cottage industry out of what happened 40 years ago.

Last week, another one of our priests (Fr. Charles Murphy) was taken out of commission when somebody, through all the hoopla of the last ten years, suddenly remembered that they too forgot to remember -- they were groped.  The accuser has been oh-so concerned about children for the last 40 years, you see, and now, he's finally very happy that children are safe.

At least I think that's the story.  Archdiocesan spokesperson Kelly Lynch referred to the accuser as a minor child.  

“The Archdiocese of Boston received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor,’’ said Kelly Lynch, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese. “Upon receiving the allegation, the archdiocese immediately notified civil authorities of the accusation. Further, the archdiocese initiated an investigation into this matter. As a result of the allegation made, Father Murphy has voluntarily agreed to refrain from public ministry.’’
I'm guessing it's like Forest Gump?

Boy, was Garabedian ever lucky Forest came along because the last client he tried to nail this priest with couldn't communicate the allegation credibly enough:
Garabedian said the alleged abuse occurred from 1970-71, when Murphy was at St. Agatha Parish in Milton. The victim said he was fondled in the bathroom of the church rectory as well as at an amusement park and on a ski trip, Garabedian said.
“My client feels as though children are now safer as a result of Father Murphy being removed from ministry,’’ Garabedian said in a phone interview yesterday.
Garabedian said he has been watching Murphy for the past five years, ever since another client brought similar allegations against him. Garabedian said he was not able to bring a formal case against Murphy because the victim, who was speech- and hearing-impaired, faced a significant communication barrier.
Presuming the attorneys, police, prosecutors had the werewithall to hand his client a pencil and a piece of paper or a laptop computer, one has to come to the conclusion the story just didn't gel.   It took Garabedian another ten years to scrounge up Forest - but oh happy day, the children are now safe.

Laity is just watching it all happen.  When they're done with Catholic priests, they'll come for lay ministers so good luck to everyone sitting silent and the Red Sox. 

Here's what every priest is now faced with:


Garabedian said the alleged abuse occurred from 1970-71, when Murphy was at St. Agatha Parish in Milton. The victim said he was fondled in the bathroom of the church rectory as well as at an amusement park and on a ski trip, Garabedian said.
“My client feels as though children are now safer as a result of Father Murphy being removed from ministry,’’ Garabedian said in a phone interview yesterday.
Forty years later, he's got to find witnesses who remember the day Forest went to the bathroom and every move he made on some amusement or ski trip.


Here in Boston, Barbara Thorpe and a group of wizards are sitting around the "pastoral center" at the edge of their seat just waiting for people who find their coffers empty to suddenly remember they were patted on on the fanny standing in line at the House of Mirrors by Father so and so. 

  Canonically, a priest is not supposed to be "removed" unless the allegation is "credible".  Yet, all anyone has to do is say so and the priest is whooshed out with his vocation ruined in perpetuity.   He isn't given ten cents to make a phone call to a lawyer, much less given any resources to defend himself or get even the bare bones minimum of due process.

After years of hoards of people examining records and exhausting the claim of every drunk, druggie and mentally imbalanced sociopath in town who came with a story in exchange for a fist full of cash , Thorpe and her crew found themselves tapping their pencils on their desks and playing tiddlywinks.  But lo and behold, just as their name was about to be added to the short list of lay-offs as the cash is drying up in the diocese, the announcement came that the diocese has hired Plymouth County prosecutor Mark Dumbledore to create a list of "credibly accused".

Since the names of accused has already been publish numerous times in the public square, certain questions have been asked about what they could possibly be doing hiring a prosecutor  and placing him inside of the Chancery.  Come to find out, the Chancellor, Jim McDonough, Fr. J. Bryan Hehir, and the Vicar General of the diocese has decided to set up a kangaroo court for dead priests and announce the guilt of the dead priest after their trial takes place in the Chancery.    Though the priest may have evidence to exonerate himself relative to being accused of riding in the Tea Cups 40 years ago and fondling a child and he'll not be there to furnish Dumbledore with that evidence, he will be convicted in these kangaroo proceedings and his reputation posthumous will be stamped pedophile.

Of course civil law prevents prosecutors from carrying out investigations and making announcements about guilt or innocence after the statue of limitations has run.   Laws set limitations on prosecutors because there is no way the accused can round up people to remember he wasn't there on that trip to the potty forty years ago.  Memories can't go back 40 years and remember seemingly uneventful details.

People who aren't priests could get a judge to stop a prosecutor from using his law license in the ways  described above.  Maybe even priests could get a judge to stop a prosecutor from using his license to practice law in the ways above.   A dead priest can't though, can he.   We'll be seeing in the American Bar Association will put the skids on it - so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, as some intellectually superior Person in the Flesh once said, priests would be wise to travel in pairs.


Imagine your employer hiring a prosecutor after you are dead to make an announcement in the public square that you were a pedophile?

Here's a story 2006 story on Fr. Murphy that ran in the National Catholic Register.  Read it and weep.   Get down on your knees tomorrow, the Catholic feast of Divine Mercy and beg for our priests and our world.

One more thing before I get off this soap box.  A reader sent me this piece from Inside Catholic written by Marjorie Campbell entitled "Is it time to rethink Confession for Minors"

Is it me or did rationally thinking people become an endangered species just about the time the H1N1 hysteria started coming out of every piehole?  Did I miss a Memo that hairbrained ideas are now contagious?


Maybe, just maybe, instead of thinking the priest was trying to give a boost to his libido, perhaps he was concerned she was being abused and was asking to make sure he didn't have a child abuse situation on his hands. 

Must we give a podium to the hysterical?  Don't we have enough on our plates with the secular press making every priest out to be a lurking pedophile and the Pope the pimp?

No.  No, it is not time to think about abolishing the Sacrament of Penance for minor children.  It's not time to hop on the bandwagon of interchanging the words Catholic priest and pedophile. 

It's time to get off that bus.









12 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're great Carol. It's 'faithful Catholics' like yourself that will continue to drive the bus right over the cliff. Keep believing that the sexual abuse crisis is nothing more than a 'vast-left wing conspiracy' created in the back room of some anti-catholic lawyer's office.

Pope Ratso is neckdeep in this mess now. The link from a 'few preverted priests' right up to Ratso is now complete. This isn't just a few renegagde priests who can't couldn't their zippers up...it's the cover-up and denial from up on high.

The fallacy and perversion of priestly celibacy has always been the 'house-of-cards' that will now continue to eat away at the church from within.

To pretend that a normal human being can simply choose to not partake in the healthy activity of sexual relations is like asking someone to refrain from eating or drinking.

SEX IS NORMAL AND HEALTHY.

CELIBACY IS NOT. But don't take my word for it. Read today's headlines. Look at the sad state of affiars that in the seminaries. How many young American men actually strive to be priests today? For decades the Church has attracted the social misfits and outcasts. Only men with sexual/social problems found their way into the priesthood.

Yoy reap what you sow.

TheLastCatholicinBoston said...

Dear Anonymous
Heterosexual Sex is normal, celibacy for the grace of God is extraordinary. Homosexual celibacy is a myth and unworkable. Homosexuality has far more in common with compulsive gambling, Alcoholism and other addictive deviant practices that man-woman intimacy. And that Sir is the reality of 'the crisis'.

I think the Pope will be quite cool with the current 'rage' against Rome. Been there done that.

Saint Joseph protect us.

TTC said...

Anonymous,

You sound like a busy guy but I can assure you that many of us are eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and daily intake of drinks as a separate function from our sexuality and are quite healthy.

Here's some points you may have missed in my post:

I made crystal clear the handfuls of pedophiles the Church continued to in our 2000 year history is indefensible.

The number of drunks, druggies and people who used the situation to get fistfuls of cash, imply that the Catholic Church is dirty and abnormal, and make the word Catholic priest synonymous with pedophile is also indefensible.

You have some reading to catch up on. The Church actually holds sexuality in pretty high esteem. Just like everything else, sexuality can be used selfishly in ways that hurt other people in all kinds of ways and in those cases, the Church draws boundaries.

In other words, the Church holds sexuality between Sacramentally married people as delightful. If you turn on the Masters, you'll see a fellow everyone is applauding who used economically and intellectually inept women and his sexuality in abnormal ways.

Celibacy is achievable - just ask any widow, widower,divorcee or single person who places God's desires and feelings above their own. There are many priests and in fact lay people who practice celibacy. They are not walking time bombs that will turn into pedophiles at any given moment.


Like it or lump it, and I'm guessing through your comments you lump it, the Church is not going to change Her teachings on human sexuality. There are multitudes of Catholics that are using Her guidance to shepherd their lives and spirituality as an offering to a God they adore and love - even more than the person they see looking back at them in the mirror. Frankly, that doesn't even take any effort for me!

TTC said...

p.s.

As Michal Voris said, the Church has been burying its enemies for 2000 years. Sit back and enjoy the show.

TTC said...

LCIB, excellent post.

Yesterday, I used my hands to trim up my rhododendrons and greenery in the front of my house. That's a normal use of my hands.

If I use my hands to steal something from somebody, that's an abnormal use of the gifts of my hands.

Though now that I see what I did to my plants in the light of day, I wish I refrained from doing it and left it to a professional. But I digress!

Using people to serve your own sexual needs is something Catholics can easily refrain from doing with practice and prayer and discipline. Always have, always will.

There's a teacher at my daughter's school who got caught having sex with a student about a decade ago in another town. A year or so later, his wife got caught having an orgy with teenagers. Nobody gives a rat's patoot about it. Likewise, I don't see anyone trying to exchange the word teachers for pedophiles. Yet, throughout history, there are many more teachers that abused students than priests.

Seminary numbers in orthodox seminaries are on their way up, not down. As are the numbers in orthodox convents. Many times throughout history the press has tried to circulate an obituary for the Catholic Church. Trying to persuade people whose God was executed and Rose from the dead that their end is at hand is an exercise in futility.

Christ is risen. Truly, He is Risen!

Anonymous said...

To quote a certain 'religious leader' that our President once followed in Chicago:
"The chickens are coming home to roost"

You blind church lovers just don't seem to get the issue here. It's not the small number of priests who can't keep it in their pants, it's the denials, cover-ups and shell-games played with these perverts by the leaders of the church...to include Pope Ratso.

No other institution on earth has a more sordid track record of coddling and protecting perverts while, at the same time, putting their young victim's through emotional and psychological hell than the almighty catholic church.

That's the issue. I, like many catholics, thought Ratso would be different. Maybe even a breath of fresh air. Maybe he'd work to 'throw the bums out' that have turned the priesthood into their own, private Caligula. Turns out that he's just as slimy as they are.

It's a 'good ole boys' club. Everyone protects each other's back and turns a blind eye when celibacy becomes too tough to achieve. The culture of debauchery within the church goes right to the top...and extends down to the parishes.

How can an institution self-police itself when its exhalted leader was right down in the mud and filth with the perverts that he's supposed to be weeding out?

Anonymous said...

And what all of you fail to realize...

One can be a true admirer and worshipper of Jesus and his words WITHOUT paying homage to slimeballs that have hijacked the Catholic Church for their own perverted, sexual agendas.

One does not need the Church to follow the words of Jesus.

TTC said...

Anonymous,

I presume you're new around here as I've written extensively as a woman who has seen the corruption and good old boy network in full force. In this diocese, we are in a place where this Cardinal will kill children for money and deliberately lie about it in the public square. Killing children is a lucrative business to the man and there is not a thing Rome has done to remove him where he is clearly in over his head and his spirituality. Sadly, people lie and flushing out lies when you have billions of people to care for is not an easy task.

The Pope is a man of good will just as you are a man of good will.

To say that you can love Christ but leave His Church where His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity resides is as foolish as saying you can love your lover but left her because her children turned out to be criminals. But you are madly in love you are. It's simply nonsensical.

Christ died to give us all the Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood and the Deposit of Faith. If you can't get there, find yourself a priest faithful to doctrine and ask for his help. There are scores of good, faithful priests. If you need a referral please drop me a line privately.

Cling with all your heart and soul and might to John 6:68

"Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Rob said...

I hope what I have to say will add to this robust discussion.

As a big fan and contributor of Crisis Magazine, I had great hopes for "Inside Catholic". Those hopes were dashed many years ago.

The suggestion by a contributor at Inside Catholic that the Church dilute the Sacraments is not a surprising one. The authors often post the offensive to start donnybrooks in their comments section. The "lively" discussion is pathetic. With the exception of one or two, serious Catholics left the comments section several years ago. It's filled now with HenryKarlsonesque ad nauseum.

Inside Catholic is another place we can now drop into to be demoralized.

Anonymous said...

It strikes me that so many of the same voices, or at least the same-sounding voices, who so fiercely criticize "the hierarchy" (somehow I always hear that word in the Baahstun accent "higherahhhchy" -- it's okay, I'm originally from the area); and who attack the Church for its "lack of moral authority" -- are the same voices who would deny the Church that same moral authority in any case -- not just in the case of priests who actually committed crimes. They are the same voices who screamed so loudly over the last 50 years to shout down and undermine the authority of the bishops and priests to lead according to what the teaching of the Church actually is. Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity is the answer as Fr. Neuhaus so often said. The gates of hell will not prevail, and as such one has to believe that history will remember this Long Lent as the penitential heir to a Mardi Gras that began decades ago.

Carol may God bless you for having the patience to answer some of the commenters point by point. Keep it up.

Tom

Anonymous said...

And, as an aside,

Can anyone cite any reference in the old or new testament that requires one to be obediant to the Catholic Church before being eligible for eternal salvation?

As I've said before...You can be loyal to the teachings of Jesus WITHOUT paying homage to the perverts in the white collars.

Millions of people around the world are true believers in the words of Jesus and have never set foot inside a Catholic church.

More and more people are starting to wake up to that fact each day.

With Ratso in charge, the trickle out of Church will soon be a flood. You can only dupe the people for so long. Churche/parishes are already closing around the US. The money spigot is being turned off by the faithful. Parishioners are voting with their feet and realizing that you can support worthwile causes, without having your money being used to pay attorney's fees for the bishops.

2,000 years is long enough. The Church is destroying itself from within. Those of you who cling to Ratso like a baby clinging to its blanket will only hasten the inevitable demise of a once proud institution.

Carol, when you're the last one standing in your parish, don't forget to turn off the lights.

TTC said...

Anonymous,


Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

Case closed.

Unless Christ was wrong and you are right, His One, Holy, Apostolic Church will be with us until the end of time and there'll be plenty of us Clinging to Her!

Joy and Love and Peace to you on this wonderful holy day!