Anatomy of Investigation of Theological and Liturgical Complaints at Your Local Chancery

This is something Boston Catholics have struggled with over the past few years. If you are reading TTC, I would imagine you've experienced similar struggles in your diocese.

When reporting concerns that our families, people we love and care about are being theologically misled by a program or person, we get the run around.

The run around here in Boston has been reduced to a receptionist asking a few question about the nature of your call and as soon as you disclose it, you are forwarded to a complaint line. Essentially, a voicemail message where you air the gripes on a recorded line.

Oh wait, this about one of our priests, employees or volunteers spiritually abusing and leading others into the abyss?

Talk to the hand baby. Talk to the hand.

This is unusual, even for Boston!

(n.b. Do not accept that outcome. When you call the Chancery, ask for the Vicar General's Office and tell anyone who asks questions before you get them on the phone that your call is of a personal and confidential nature.)

The usual and customary run around involves receiving a letter thanking you for your concerns and then the program goes on exploiting and scandalizing Catholics. (Boston does this too)

When Catholics return to the Chancery to again seek intervention, that's when the fur starts to fly.

In the followup phone calls, the lengths they go to protect the priest teaching immorality as virtue make your head spin.

Most often, it becomes clear that they didn't do the diligence before sending out the dismissive letter. It also becomes clear they have no intention of ever doing the diligence. If you persist in seeking relief for the victims of spiritual malpractice, you find yourself subjected to hostility, bullying, slander and threats - both at the Chancery level and on the level of the parish or school.


Close to fifteen years after the exposition of cronyism and clericalism in Chanceries that protected pedophiles, how could it be we are still experiencing the phenomenon?

What kind of people operate this way for decades on end? They see the damage to the Church and to souls - sometimes dying in that state, and they just keep on going with the foolish game of giving people who do care the run around.

Dealing with people honestly and in good faith, pursuing what is right and just, worthy of Christ and His Church. should be as natural to people who take positions in the Chancery as parents who do everything they can to protect their children from things that harm them.

A priest who brings in a sorcerer who claims to speak to dead relatives, a speaker or program or group that leads Catholics to reject Church teaching, invalid matter for transubstantiation, why wouldn't they pursue the truth and take appropriate actions to protect people from being demoralized?

It is a mystery I will never understand. And I do not understand how Pope Francis could caricature cronies and monsters as priests who teach moral theology. Cronies are the priests who obstruct the teaching of moral theology. He couldn't be ignorant of 30 years of immorality and sin being shoved down our throats.

The idea that the structure of the Roman Catholic Church will leave authority to free victims of cronies to the cronies themselves, is mind boggling.