The Unsafe Environment for Children in the Archdiocese of Boston

**UPDATE

I have added the link to Deacon Anthony Rizzutto's implementation of Talking about Touching with Voice of the Faithful (citation from the Voice of the Faithful "Vineyard").

*****************

Yesterday, Boston Catholic Insider posted a letter received from the Vicar General and a response to that letter HERE.

TO: The “Boston Catholic Insider” team

RE: “Open Letter”

In response to your “Open Letter” posted on your blog on August 23, and the specific questions you detail, I restate that Cardinal O’Malley and his staff are dedicated to building unity in Christ and Christian community within the Archdiocese. To that end, I reach out to you and your team, with the hope that you will accept my invitation to engage in respectful, fruitful and face-to face dialogue. I am not willing to engage in conversation or correspondence with emails or blog postings from anonymous individuals. If you would like to discuss your concerns in person, please contact my assistant, Mary Jo Kriz, at 617-746-5619 to schedule an appointment.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Very Rev. Richard Erikson, Ph.D. V.G

The fix is in.   The Cardinal and his staff are dedicated to building unity in Christ and a Christian community within the Archdiocese, you see.  To that end, they reach out and invite respectful, fruitful, face-to-face dialogue.

Implied in this of course, is that bloggers are not dedicated to building unity in Christ.  We disrupt their building of Christian community within the Archdiocese.

The response to the Vicar's letter, and the comments from Catholics is truly spectacular.

The Archdiocese avoids the core issues, publicly deceives and retaliates.  Each of us has experienced this dynamic numerous times.  The magnitude of the public deception and retaliation by the Archdiocese has left us with no reason to believe a face-to-face conversation will be any different than the face-to-face conversations we have all had with them since the day Cardinal O'Malley put his team into place.

Their public response, even in this conflict, has been typical.   When people stepped forward to demonstrate how their own employees are harming children, the faithful and unity to and with the Body of Christ and salvation, they say they are concerned about the harm the revelation is doing to the person doing harm to the people.

They accuse us of error.   When invited to show us where the substance of our complaints is in error, they rebuff us.  They make repeated calls to stop the public exposition of what is harming the people.  They want us t reveal our identities and to come and meet with them privately where they show us how we are gumming up unity and tell us to stop. When we don't, they threaten.  In this case, they put it  out there that they were willing to spend up to 200,000 dollars to hire retired detectives to find out the identities of bloggers.

They have never once expressed any concern over the incriminating evidence that their operation is rife with corruption.

The abuse of power was and continues to be Catholic Cardinals, Bishops and their staff's use of the concept of "obedience"  to cover up their own corruption.

Priests who speak the truth are threatened and abused internally so that  the environment protects those carrying out the victimization.

God is providing the tools to demonstrate that there has never been any meaningful reform to this dynamic.


The situation with Talking about Touching and Fr. Mullen is being held up into the light to show us the concrete example of the dangerous situation we actually still have within.

Yesterday, I talked about how the number one recruiting tool pedophiles use to recruit victims is finding places to open conversations about sexuality with children.

In yesterday's lesson posted, after sitting 7 year olds  to tell them detailed stories about sexual assault, the story ended with a leading question to open the conversation with the children.   "How do you think it feels [when somebody touches your vagina]?"

The children have no idea what sexuality is and the Cardinal has provided the teacher with the opportunity to tell them that sexuality is 'when people rub their private parts together' because it feels pleasant.   As I also told you yesterday, one of the early lessons actually instructs the teacher to tell them it is okay to touch each other's private parts so long as they don't do it on the premises of the school.

The Cardinal has set up the construction for 7 year olds to begin their sex lives.  So long as it is not on diocesan property, of course, because this is a  problem with the insurance.


That is only one objection parents, police, psychologists, priests, bishops have with the program.

The most material objection to the safety of children is how these conversations work when a pervert sees them going on in the community and 'volunteers' to teach the lesson.    Unless a pervert has been caught, none of us have any way of knowing which people 'volunteering' to teach children about sexuality is a pervert.

The Catholic Church has been hoodwinked into setting up the fruitful environment for perverts to trap children.

A pervert will watch for children who react with intrigue to these stories.  Children who ask curious questions are then cultivated privately.  They groom the child verbally first, then use pornography and then finally, they physically engage in sex with them to show them how "it feels".

This is how Paul Shanley and others worked.  They looked for opportunities to talk about sex and then followed the process i described above.

Yesterday, I also alluded to a situation where Anthony Rizzuto, who Cardinal O'Malley put into place to head up "Talking about Touching" met with members of "Voice of the Faithful" to  train them and help him implement the program.

Protecting Our Children

On Friday, December 19, 2003, three representatives (Pat Gomez, Elia Marnik and Kathy Mullaney) from the VOTF Protecting Our Children Working Group met with Archdiocese of Boston Deacon Anthony Rizzutto and his assistant, Bob Kelley, of the Child Advocacy, Implementation, and Oversight Ministry. This office was created two years ago in response to the abuse crisis. It is diocese-specific. This was an initial discussion between VOTF and the RCAB. We had a cordial, ninety minute meeting during which it became clear that this is a natural link between VOTF and the RCAB.

We identified several areas of mutual agreement, such as, the need for Parish Safety Committees or Parish Safe Environment Programs as well as lay involvement in the decision-making process regarding the implementation of the "Talking About Touching" program, which is the RCAB's excellent but controversial education program instituted in grades K-3 in diocesan parochial schools. The Program will be implemented in parish Religious Education classes as soon as possible. We discussed the almost impossible task of instituting something of this magnitude and divisiveness without sufficient support for parishes, especially directors of religious education and catechetical teachers. Success will depend on collaboration between parishes and diocese and ongoing dialogue. As reported after the first meeting with Bishop Sean O'Malley on November 19, 2003, VOTF will continue dialogue towards mutual collaboration with Deacon Rizzutto on the implementation and oversight of Child Safety Programs in parishes and schools.

This was objectionable, of course, because many of the members of Voice of the Faithful are not faithful to Catholic ethics and morals regarding sexuality.    One of the individuals who subsequently stepped forward to help Deacon Anthony Rizzuto with Talking about Touching is an individual named Larry Kessler.  

Larry Kessler is a well-known advocate of promiscuity in the gay community.   (He once went to an ordination of our priests and threw condoms at them.)   Kessler and his group were caught red-handed giving out a book called "The Little Black Book" at a local school fair that included middle school children.

I'll post the link - but for those of you who haven't read it, it is extremely disturbing.

If you can't stomach the disturbing content, at least read this link.

Lots of services for queer youth?

Beg pardon, but wasn't that the problem to begin with?

Larry has been teaching CCD in Newton for 14 years.

Got any thoughts about Larry and his group hooking up youth to these services and why Anthony Rizzutto would use them to implement the Cardinal's a safety program that is purportedly designed to keep youth away from people who want to provide a network of sexually charged services to youth?

Doesn't make a lot of sense does it.

Kessler ran training for teachers of Talking about Touching in his own parish and used the ethically and morally malformed Catholics attracted to Voice of the Faithful to "train" them to implement Talking about Touching  across the archdiocese.

As I also said yesterday, there was a very long line of well-respected and highly placed people who demonstrated the dangers to Cardinal O'Malley and showed him the people showing up to teach the children Talking about Touching.

Fr. Mullen was among these people.

The Cardinal had Fr. Mullen silenced.  Fr. Mullen was obedient.  He struggled with this obedience but the good priest that he is, he did so.  Lay people supported him in his obedience because at this point, we are not going to put a career of a good priest into jeopardy with the crowd that Cardinal O'Malley has in place.

Cardinal O'Malley was not ignorant of the harm done to children and the traps he was setting up for children to invite perverts into every classroom.  He chose to silence people publicly warning parents and those he could not silence, he maligned.

The dynamic of using obedience to cover corruption continues in Boston.

It is unwise to blame the people around the Cardinal.  I can tell you that the Cardinal was informed numerous times.   The Cardinal is the only person who makes the final decision. He did this to the children knowing that it was not only sexualizing them, but it  opens every classroom to every pervert in town to groom victims.

We have a problem in Boston with the Cardinal.   I do not make any judgements about the reasons.   It could simply be cowadice and fear of conflict.

However, there does not seem to be any fear of maligning and threatening whisleblowers.

Fr. Mullen's vocation is on the line and laity have got to rise up to the occasion.