The good news is, the Cardinal released a nastygram criticizing 'the Administration' for casting aside the First Amendment, denying Catholics fundamental freedom, etc.
He goes on to say, we cannot simply accept the 'unjust law now proposed at the federal level' and he encourages Catholic lay people to stand up and fight. He asks for prayer and fasting and recommends people get behind the lobbying efforts at the USCCB.
This very positive development is slightly mitigated by a the revelation of the surrender. On the one hand, they say they cannot just accept this mandate. On the other hand, they say they are preparing to. It's a bit anticlimatic.
There's a third option which appears to have been taken off the table: Saying they will not comply with the law - because they cannot comply with the law. Complying with the law is actually more than a violation of conscience protections, it is forcing the sin of omission upon the Bishop.
Let's see if we can expose the ethical problem with a little parable.
The White House is saying everyone has to provide their employees with free crack pipes. Preparations are underway to either violate their consciences and give out the free crack pipes or outsource giving their employees free crack pipes to a vendor.
The bishop actually doesn't get to wash his hands of accountability on the commission of outsourcing the free crack pipes to their employees.
There's a show down coming gentlemen. You can't do it. What you need to prepare for is jail and you have the duty to tell the man ahead of time, so he knows what he has on his hands and he can make his decisions accordingly.
Earlier this week, Cardinal O'Malley moved the body of Boston's first Cardinal and tore down his mausoleum to close the sale of the Chancery to Boston College. Boston College escrowed 2 million dollars pending the removal of Cardinal O'Connell's body since 2004.
Cardinal O'Malley made the deal to disinter O'Connell's body and demolish his mausoleum without permission or even a courtesy call from his relatives. Upon learning of the deal, they promptly took the Cardinal to court where the matter has been tied up since 2004.
They didn't have the decency to hire a hearse. The gravediggers dug him up and the body was thrown onto the back of their truck.
Our friends at BCI point out yet another stupid lie from the Archdiocese. The Cardinal sold all of the land to Boston College. Our Catholic seminary is literally leasing air space on the parcel formerly owned by the Archdiocese and those entitled to her inheritance, built up over the last 200 years.
Last October, we reported in “Seminary Squeezola: BC Brighton Campus Plans” that St. Johns Hall is all that remains of the former St. Johns Seminary property for the seminary, and even that building sits on land now owned by Boston College. The building itself is legally considered a “condominium.” You can verify that in the St. Johns Seminary 2010 annual report on page 9, where it says: “The Seminary retained an ownership of a condominium in St. John’s Hall.”
Bottom line: there are in reality no more ”grounds of St. John’s Seminary.” BC owns all the land. Thus, the remains of Cardinal O’Connell were moved from the former chapel and mauselium that was on land currently owned by BC, to another plot of land that is also owned by BC, which is very close to St. John’s Seminary. Cardinal O’Connell was re-buried in a gravesite which is today legally Boston College property, not the “grounds of St. John’s Seminary.”
How strange, peculiar and unnecessary it is to lie about the situation.
It is duly noted by Boston Catholics that though the Archbishop couldn't make the time to perform his duty to give the honor and respect Cardinal O'Connell deserved under these most grievous circumstances, he was able to make the time to be present and accounted for to cry like a banshee at Myra Kraft's funeral.
Back to addressing the problems in the Boston Chancery...
A petition has gone up at BryanHehirExposed regarding the dishonest subterfuge (and slander) that takes place in response to Catholics reporting concerns about Church teaching and spiritual abuse of souls.
I will update this post later, but I would appreciate your signing the petition and sending it to other Catholics of good will.
I hope all the excitement over the Stanley Cup didn't bury this little tidbit of news.
Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley is getting a new top aide: Monsignor Robert P. Deeley, a Massachusetts native, will return this fall from assignment in Rome to become the vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Boston Archdiocese, O’Malley announced yesterday.
The job is like a combination of lieutenant governor and chief of staff, carrying out O’Malley’s vision while dealing with religious and spiritual issues and the nuts and bolts of running a large organization, according to the Rev. Richard M. Erikson, who has held the job since 2006.
In case anyone swimming in the swill had reservations this is not all Cardinal O'Malley's 'vision', there you have it.
Curiously, check out the name of the article's url:
The beauty of underfunding your employees' pension is, a pile of money gets left on the table.
I digress.
On the long list of people trying to get out of Dodge, the Vicar General's departure has been rumored for quite some time. He was reportedly going back to a military assignment. Apparently being in the midst of bullets and bombs is more attractive than the Archdiocese of Boston.
However, as is duly noted in the story, Fr. Erikson is... unassigned.
Monsignor Deeley is orthodox. He tests positive for testosterone. A Roman with connections to the highest yahoos in the Roman Curia. Yahoos well informed on what is happening here in Boston.
Could be the beginning of the end.
Any way you slice it, it's good news.
A little like saying goodbye to Barney Fife and hello to Andy Taylor.
The trick will be loading up Opie's fishing pole with bait and sending him fishing. Way, way out.
Oh, I get it. They need another empty building on their hands.
Wasn't the hype about Catholic education all about opening new schools?
All they seem to be doing is closing schools.
Everything they touch seems to turn to poo.
Anyway, it's interesting that Donilon is quoted now like he is the Archbishop.
Where is the Archbishop?
Does he know?
We are not entertaining this , as there are very good options in the greater Lawrence area,"
The folks in the Chancery making three hundred grand each wouldn't get this, but Lawrence is a big place. Poor people don't have cars or means to get their children across town.
Here's my favorite quote:
Donilon said starting an independent school is an extensive process which requires canonical approval.
Yes folks, these are people who are interested in Canonical law.
Stop laughing.
Brace yourself because the best is yet to come:
This is not about one school versus another. Retaliation is not in our playbook. I reject it on right. We don't practice it, and we don't believe in retaliation," Donilon said.
I think there's a breaking story Daughters of St. Paul that will put this fib out of it's misery, won't it.
The truth is, retaliation is the operating system of the Archbishop's fiefdom and the Cardinal's hands have blood on them. Sadly, he is involved.
Boston bloggers have emails, phone calls that tell a sad and rather frightening story of corruption, bullying and retaliation. Anyone who has ever dealt with them about anything beyond the smoke and mirrors of their PR campaigns is painfully aware of it.
"
I feel so horrible, my heart breaks every time I think about it," said Ingrid Castillo, whose son, Jesus, 7 attends St. Mary.
"I feel they (archdiocesan officials) don't have a heart because they are taking away education from the poor and faith of children."
They've thrown Jesus and the education of our faith into the street. What more is there to say. She has said it all.
There was a big process where everyone could tell him what they thought. "Consultation" they called it, and he was going into the process with no predetermined decisions mind you.
There's a first for everything.
Considering he hasn't even been here, it certainly leaves a lot to be desired in the credibility department, but here's what the Vicar General said: "It is a very dramatic step and one that should and can only be taken with grave reason,"
But, the next thing you know, Holy Trinity was listed at Southeby's for sale and was being shown twice a week by real estate agents.
As readers and Boston Catholics are well aware, Holy Trinity Parishioners asked the Holy See to intervene in the sale, saying the Archdiocese had not completed the process to convert this magnificent jewel to profane use.
When the listing was yanked today, the spokesperpetrator said when the Archdiocese listed the property for sale with Southeby's, they were not going to sell it. Heaven's no.
They were simply testing the market and looking for a buyer.
On Friday, spokesman Terry Donilon said the listing meant to gauge the market or attract a buyer from a Catholic organization.
Do I have a red ball at the end of my nose?
Honesty at 66 Brooks Drive is like clams. Sometimes, you'll find a pearl but most of the time, it's just slime.
If you want to find a Catholic buyer, what in the world makes Terry Donilon, as spokesperson for Cardinal O’Malley, think anyone would believe that you would list the property for sale with Sothebys, a residential real estate broker, who has no reach whatsoever with a Catholic audience. Where is the listing in a Catholic newspaper, like, say our own Pilot, the “America’s oldest Catholic newspaper”? Did anyone place listings to find a Catholic buyer in Our Sunday Visitor or the National Catholic Register? Heck, even publications like America and the National Catholic Reporter call themselves “Catholic” too.
They were looking for Catholic buyers with Southeby's. If they found a Catholic buyer they did not mean to sow the confusion that it was their intention to sell Holy Trinity. I am sure came as a complete surprise to Southeby's who has spent money running advertisements and with whom they have signed a contract.
Another exploitative agreement entered into in bad faith?
My initial thoughts are here. An update has been posted at Bryan Hehir Exposed that you don't want to miss. MaryAnn Kreitzer has a post HERE. Janet Baker posts here thoughts HERE.
I'll have my update some time before the weekend is over!
The latest focus at Boston Catholic Insider has been the salvos from the Archdiocese of Boston (I no longer say the Archbishop because in practice, Boston does no longer has an Archbishop) the Chancellor's claim that there simply is no money to pay out in pensions. They're too broke. This of course conflicts with the mega-salaries offered to cronies of Jack Connors who, in place of the absence of the role of the archbishop, is building his own fiefdom (carrying out the plans of the Boston College National Roundtable of Leadership on Church Management).
There's more mismanagement of money where this came from, but our experts are estimating that 30 pastoral employees in the Connors fiefdom are draining 4 million dollars a year from the coffers of the Archdiocese - 1/4 of the Annual Appeal.
In our weekly conference call, I spoke about our de-funding the Appeal initiative that lay people will be launching in 2011. I am now convinced that in addition to de-funding the Cardinal's Appeal (since, among other things, it is more accurate to call it the Jack Connor's Appeal) we need to disconnect the 18% siphoning from our parishes. I realize the magnitude of accomplishing this, but if we can convince a large percentage of pastors that we have stopped giving at the parish level because we don't want to fund the Jack Connors regime at 66 Brooks Drive and that we will tithe at the parish level if they cut the 18% going to the Jack Connors regime loose, we'll all be much better off.
The question of what will they or what can they do about it if we can enlighten foot soldiers in strategic parishes about what is going on at 66 Brooks Drive and can convince a large number of parishes not to give the 18% has already been answered.
They will do the same thing they did when lay people took over parishes and have been squatting in them for close to ten years. They don't have the spinal fortitude to do anything about it. We need to start using the cowardice to our advantage.
Ray Neary is a gentleman, a man of integrity and valor. What he says in this article very much needs to be said in the public square. There is a problem with honesty in the regime at 66 Brooks Drive that is manifesting itself in many ways. The diocese is in the hands of the corrupt as the Cardinal is off taking pictures of himself to post on his blog in every corner of the earth.
There is much weakness at 66 Brooks Drive and there needs to be a coup of the coup. This is not the time to be faint of heart or weak in character.
Did you know that close to twenty percent of the annual Cardinal's Appeal goes to pay the annual salaries of 14 overcompensated cronies Jack Connors, Bryan Hehir, Jim McDonough and John Kaneb have stacked at the Chancery so their policies will be carried out without resistance?
Coming soon to The Tenth Crusade is an Advent update to the Sacred Heart situation, the governance crisis at 66 Brooks Drive and the 'non-discrimination" policy. And, we are hoping the crusade to put this out of its misery is going to be the largest campaign we have ginned up yet so stay tuned.
There really are not enough hours in the day to let everyone know what's happening under the radar but there are a lot of pans on the fire.
I know we had a little fun with politics in the past couple of weeks but the Boston Blogging Community is all plugging away at the nightmares at the Boston Chancery.
The top two on my short list are the structural changes made to the Roman Catholic Church that severs Rome from the teaching authority of Boston Catholics and one of the first policies to emerge from the counterfeit operation the 'non-discrimination policy'.
You will be seeing more of this in the upcoming week (and weeks) that should be pretty shattering to the trust of Boston Catholics. The 'presbyteral council' which is largely (though not completely) a group of weak priests who are chosen specifically because they are weak and will rubber stamp any policy no matter how scandalous and offensive it is to Christ, His Church or the souls they were ordained to lead to salvation.
The priests who rubber stamp this policy will be the first among the parishes targeted on the campaigns to defund in 2011. Everything is about the money. When they start to fail to be able to make their expenses, the Archdiocese pulls them from their posts. There will be more forthcoming regarding the priests and archdiocescan council who thus far is rubber stamping the dismantling of Catholic identity of our diocese and our schools and communication to the Nuncio and Holy See.
In the meantime, please continue to visit BHE and send out the fed up communications.
One other thing that is critical this week is the Bishops election duly noted in BCI.
This Bishop's judgment is as bad as it gets and the US Bishops have no business electing him as President. They're back to their old tricks because the RICO investigation and victims' advocates have been neutralized.
When you read how little (Jack Connors) Boston College paid for the assets of the seminary, be sure to carefully read this ten page response of the rector to the shady proposal and his ultimate the resignation letter of the former rector seminary Fr. Farren and then compare the situation to the Caritas giveaway.
The way in which a $65 million project was presented with no advance specific information that would allow study,evaluation, and consultation, and then be voted favorably is incomprehensible to me. The fact that no one in the Seminary was consulted, or even informed, about the proposal is incomprehensible to me. The fact that public events to announce the news were scheduled even before our meeting was held last night and are being carried out this morning is incomprehensible to me. Finally, the fact that announcements are being made to the public with no vote taken at all by the Corporate Members is not only incomprehensible to me, but is contrary to law. Last night’s meeting was a burlesque of the Board of Trustees and of the ways of proceeding of any serious board.
Even more distressing to me is the substance of last night’s “deliberations.“ Exaggerated statements about a projected budgetary deficit for FY08 served as the point of departure for the presentation, the explicit recommendations of the Congregation for Catholic Education were dismissed peremptorally, a proposal was made to remedy a problem that we do not have, the remedy proposed is that the seminary alienate assets that are needed to assure its future fiscal viability, and all this was done in the name of assuring our financial stability and viability. In my judgment, all of this is utterly preposterous.
For the second time in three years, RCAB plunders the assets of St. John’s Seminary. In 2004, the seminary conveyed to RCAB assets worth about $56 million and received in recompense $21 million and a promissory note for $4.8 million. If the seminary were in possession of even the cash represented by the note, our financial “problems” would be greatly eased. Instead the seminary is presented as “not able to make it financially.” Now, assets of the seminary will be taken and combined again with assets of RCAB, who will in turn sell them to BC. The Chancellor stated emphatically last night that the seminary will not be recompensed according to the value of the assets conveyed, but the $65 million to be derived from this sale will be applied “where it is needed.” Clearly, in this disposition the seminary is considered as not one of the “needs” of the archdiocese – even as a beneficiary of its own assets.
Sadly, with all of the exposing Boston Catholics have been doing, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of the corruption in the Archdiocese.
I was catching up a few days ago with a local defender of the faith and we were sharing information about the corruption at 66 Brooks Drive. When I gave him some inside information on the Connors/Hehir/Kaneb dictatorship, he said - ever so sincerely: "You can't keep up with it. You would need 100 full time people on staff just taking in and processing the information on the corruption"
Be sure to read some of the comments in the thread.
Boston adman Jack Connors said he is not part of the current bidding effort.
The 2100 Trust is still rounding up Investors. Doesn't mean Connors won't be part of the bidding effort tomorrow or the next day. We have our moles strategically placed and will let you know more when the pieces are put together.
If it's true that Connors isn't in the game, could Donilon lose his crony network at the Boston Globe?
Please see important updates to the governance and structural changes Cardinal O'Malley is implementing in Boston.
I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment of my friends and colleagues at Boston Catholic Insider.
Rumors are also flying again that these folks would work on combined fund-raising across a new entity, combining fund-raising across what are separate corporate entities, Catholic Foundation, Catholic Schools, Catholic Charities, and the Clergy Fund.....If this is true, then it suggests an even graver crisis of governance in Boston than we thought previously, and a surrender of fund-raising to Jack Connors’ cronies. Fr. Erikson, the Vicar General, to whom this position supposedly reports would be rendered even more mute and ineffective, and it makes Chancellor McDonough even more powerful. That surrender of all fund-raising to Connors and his cronies would put the Cardinal Archbishop in a position of being captive to Jack’s money, and effectively put the Cardinal’s and all archdiocesan decision-making under the control of Connors. Do the expressions “shadow archdiocese” or “shadow archbishop” come to mind for anyone? Connors had previously been referred to by the Boston Globe as the “pope of Catholic power brokers.”
It is true that the tone in the blogosphere is often angry – and sometimes not without cause. People have turned to blogs because they have not been heard, because their concerns are not being listened to or even taken seriously. If their criticism of local bishops is uncharitable, it is possibly because is a real rupture in the communion of the Church that needs to be addressed. I know of more than one case where Church authorities have attempted to shut down blogs that are critical, using arguably the same sort of aggressive tactics they accuse the bloggers of using.
Precisely.
The rupture needs to be addressed because a generation of Catholics has been robbed of their faith and we are going to put an end to it, the easy way or the hard way.
The easy way would be to set up a structure at the Chancery level where errors and omissions are disciplined and acted upon. When they are not acted upon, the Nuncio, which is the next level of the structure, acts upon it. If the Nuncio doesn't act upon it, the Holy See takes action.
Nobody rational expects the Nuncio or the Holy See to act on every letter and email.
But, when several thousand faxes cross your desk about a situation (in Boston) where the Cardinal has abandoned his See and the priest running the place has a 40-year history of working with the socialists and Marxists in the Democratic party and groups like Call to Action and Sr. Carol Keenan's crowd, and he is packing the place with his cronies to undermine the teachings of the Church -- our expectation is, there will be a structure to address it.
We brought the revitalization of the Church to blogosphere because the conflicts in our parishes and schools didn't get us anywhere but being slandered, maligned and driven out of our own parishes and schools.
The Bishops, who are responsible for the governance of the Church, have ignored these complaints until things deteriorated to the point where the conflicts in our parishes and schools don't get us anywhere but being slandered, maligned and driven out of our own parishes and schools. Things have escalated to the point where people who want the truth taught in schools and parishes are told they better not go out their back door without feeling terrified because of what is going to be done to them.
We have made it clear to the Bishops, the Nuncio and the Holy See, in writing, (for at least the last five years in Boston) that is not an acceptable. We do not and will not accept this situation.
Sadly, in the absence of their not taking us seriously, we must move on to the hard way.
1. A public crusade to expose what is going on at every parish, at every school and in every Chancery.
2. Leadership that takes the people from inertia to revitalization.
2. Escalating the communications to the Nuncio and Holy See.
4. Shutting off the flow of money to the Bishop (at the high-donor level and the widow's mite).
The governance structure of the Archdiocese of Boston no longer has a Bishop at Its head. The power has been handed over to a group of wealthy lay people and there is chaos and pandemonium.
Catholics, especially Catholics who have undergone a conversion and acquiesce to the Church's teachings, have the tendency not to want to air the dirty laundry. This era has come to an end and we are overturning the tables in the Temple.
It's the Wild Wild West. We've been getting out of Dodge.
But if you look yonder up the road, you'll see we are getting out from behind our computers.
We're baaaaaaaaaaaack.
***UPDATE -- ACTION ITEM ALERT
Boston Catholic Insider also has a Wild Wild West blogosphere post up today with the action item of writing to the Vicar General to not only express your concerns about the governance of the Archdiocese, but to ask him what the plan is to address those concerns.
The email is already drafted for you -- all you have to do is copy and paste it into and email, sign your name and hit send. It doesn't get any easier than that.
Many national Catholic leaders surprised by the turn of events here in Boston under Cardinal O'Malley will often ask me specifics about what we see going on at the ground level.
As I've said before, one of the reasons why Boston Catholics have decided to publicly air their concerns in a blogging community is to give people a few central locations where a more accurate picture of what's going on - who the Cardinal has appointed and what is happening under the power structure the Cardinal has erected - can be seen.
The mission of the "roundtable" was to get control of the money so that they could get control over the doctrine.
How this is playing out means various things to various people.
This focus on this blog has been and will continue to be about how the Deposit of Faith, and ultimately the salvation of souls, is going to be affected by the changes in Church structure now fully implemented by Cardinal O'Malley.
I'm not going to say too much more today because I want you to each take the time to review the short flick I have embedded featuring J. Bryan Hehir on how to effect Church Management nationally.
In a nutshell, the goal is to structure the power of the Church in America away from the structure of the Pope and the catechism and onto wealth controlling priests and bishops on the local level of the parishes and chanceries.
I have made some comments about responsive strategy over on Boston Catholic Insider on this thread that I believe will have efficacy in uprooting the regime. Controlling a Cardinal is about controlling the money. Jim Post was right about this and it certainly is in full swing in Boston.
While those of us focused on the sacraments and salvific mission of the Catholic Church don't really care about the money, I do believe that it is imperative that we round up the Shaughnesseys, McNeices, Flatleys, Opus Dei, Legatus and other people and apostolates who have wealth and interests in maintaining the structure of the Church headed by the Pope, pack up the resources we are assembling and give them a demonstration about the power structure Cardinal O'Malley has erected and the cost to Christendom. They want to play games with controlling the Archbishop with money? I am dealing myself a hand and am in the game. These efforts will be getting underway shortly. We have a few more critical revelations to archive so stay tuned.
We would all like to be edified by the personal prayer habits of the Cardinal and the Vicar General. I wish we could. But the reality is, the people in the parishes are being terrorized when they express concerns about invalid Sacraments or the eradication of Confession or our children demoralized with priests and lay people who reject the tenets of our faith or our liturgies being trampled and scandalized or being told Adoration and the Rosary scares people or our kindergartners sexualized by people who have them repeating "vagina" and "penis" in ccd classes thinking this absolves Corporation Sole from hiring and coddling pedophiles or children confirmed without knowing their prayers or what is happening at the Holy Mass, anything about Humana Vitae, Theology of the Body or people like Maureen Hancock coming in to perform the tricks of a sorcerer and the false 'god' "reiki" or the abortion contracts the Cardinal's administration is signing right under his nose or the marxists Bryan Hehir is bringing in to brainwash unsuspecting Catholics across the nation.
Frankly, I and many others are not edified by the article about the personal prayer habits of people who are keeping the deposit of faith unto themselves up there at the Pastoral Center.
While they are trying to save their own souls, they have set up an administration that is making it impossible for the flock to save their children's souls or have any access to the truths of our faith.
It really is a lovely article but please beg our pardon when we say this:
The Pastoral Center is supposed to be a place where the administrators have the duty to protect, defend and distribute the temporal goods of Christ Church to THE PEOPLE. It is not about the personal salvation and prayer habits of the Cardinal, Vicar General and their staff. The administrators at the Boston Archdiocese are holding the Catholic religion in bondage. And, they are terrorizing people who are demanding It's release for THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE out here in the parishes who are subject to the aforementioned lunacy. The structure of the Roman Catholic Church in Boston is being dismantled and preparations are underway to infect the rest of the Catholic Church across our nation with the false church erected in Boston.
The efforts under way are not going to happen under the radar while some of us are still breathing. All of the money, every last nickel, in the portfolios of the Boston College National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management is not going to stop the testimony of many Catholics who are standing ready to reveal what is going down.
And, here is what is going down:
Did you hear anything about the structure in our dioceses and parishes to the Roman Catholic Church in Rome headed by the Pope?
Teaching the flock the source and summit of our tenets outlined in the Catechism?
This priest has been defrauding Catholics for 40 years. He is tapped into those who hijacked Jack Kennedy's name to use the Kennedy School of Government to break down democracy in America.
He is positioned to break down democracy AND the Roman Catholic Church at the same time and he is getting away with it.
After more than ten years of being a Catholic activist in Boston, I can say without exaggeration that every Catholic I know has a large pile of letters filled with meaningless platitudes from the Cardinal's administrators in response to our letters outlining error and scandal.
Some of us have large filing cabinets in our basements filled with the evidence of errors and scandal, our correspondence, correspondence other Catholics have sent us.
Ten years of sending letters and having meetings with Chancery employees has been a complete waste of time. In fact, it has been worse than a complete waste of time. It has been detrimental to the vocations of many faithful priests and lay people. It is the same story all over the country.
There is no internal forum to stop the misuse and abuse of power, money the faith, the liturgy, our priests and our children.
As you know, here in Boston we are trying something new.
As the first part of a series of what should turn out to be a lively few months here in Boston, tune in to Boston Catholic Insider where an open letter to the presbyteral council (meeting tomorrow) has been posted.
Our driving purpose with the blog in putting certain topics out in the light of day is simply to expose verifiable facts and matters that most people objectively feel should be addressed or corrected so that we can build a stronger Catholic Church in Boston and continue the good works of the Church. We do not seek a “seat at the table” or “feel good” meetings to discuss these long-standing concerns with no commitment by the archdiocese to taking action. Our hope with the blog was to give a voice to laity, donors, and the many outstanding priests and people faithfully serving the Archdiocese who are frustrated and fed up with the corruption, cronyism, and general direction of the Archdiocese. We also hope to serve as a temporary stop-gap while the Archdiocese works on implementing a credible whistleblower policy.
Based on the overwhelming number of comments and suggestions we have received from lay people in the pews as well as people “inside” the Church (priests, archdiocesan employees, parish staff, and others close to the workings of the archdiocese), we feel these concerns should be addressed in an open, transparent way.
The observations, questions and answers sought in the open letter will blow you away.
Just as J. Bryan Hehir and his cronies believe they are setting up something new and exciting for the future of the Church in America - in response, so do the thousands of Catholics behind the efforts of Catholic Bloggers in Boston.
Do you think it would be in poor taste to ask to have links to our blogs inserted into the story?
A few things I'd like to mention.
I must say that the article is a fair one but we do take umbridge with the name:
"Archdiocese defends critical blog, seeks open dialogue"
It is important to note that while the diocese is trying to make this about their right as an employer to block a website, and they are people who seek open dialogue, this is PR spin.
The Boston Catholic Blogger Community is whistleblowing about concerns they have already tried to resolve internally and been ignored or retaliated against in one way or another. Eight years of trying to report concerns about conflicts of interest and the money, cronyism, and more importantly injustices to people and our faith have been met with obfuscation, harassment, threats and slander.
It is the response to having no systems in place to report injustices and corruption that will be taken seriously and acted upon. This should resonate with anybody who has been watching and have concerns about the internal flaws of the people in positions of power and responsibility inside of the Catholic Church.
The whistleblowing community is a place where the Archdiocese no longer has the darkness to keep their dirt under wraps by threatening or taking punitive action against the people reporting it.
Substantiated, verifiable situations are now seeing the light of day. We are protecting the victims and threats of chasing us down to destroy or punish us -- the tricks and treachery will also be very public so all will see and know what happens when you are a lover of justice.
What did the Archdiocese do when they saw their ability to sweep things under the carpet threatened in ways they would have no ability to control?
They tried to stifle our voices with threats of spending huge amounts of money to hire washed up and retired detectives to find out the identities of the people leaking their dirt, they limited people from access to the information and spin up the PR machine that try though they may to enter into Christ-centered talks with us, we have rebuffed them.
Talk is cheap.
We have talked to them for eight years. Nobody is listening and the situation is now out of control.
We have exhausted every internal forum. The heirarchy is probably so bogged down, and there are only 24 hours in a day, the system is simply too gummed up to sit back and wait to be rescued.
It us up to us.
We want civil and canonical rights of our priests restored. We want them to have access to health care when they are sick and a pension to live on.
We want people who are being treated unfairly or harmed by employees and agents of the Archdiocese to have a process that hears those complaints and resolves the situation to the satisfaction of the victim.
We want the Catechism taught to our children and we want people who are teaching our children to object to those Truths to be removed from their ministries or teaching and administrative positions. We want a system in place to report these concerns and resolves them to the satisfaction of those who want faithfulness taught to this generation and the next.
We want an end to cronyism, nepostism, conflicts of interest.
We want to keep our Catholic hospitals so that we can serve the poor and sick without leading them into temptation or violating our own consciences. Since Caritas is now turning a profit, and we can't seem put our hands on how the diocese is being compensated for all of the Caritas assets in the big sell off, since the deal is riddled with conflicts of interest, since our religious symbols are being ripped off the walls before the Attorney General publishes her findings on the sale, we want the sale to Cerebus to be halted unless or until the deal is structured to protect the rights of Catholics, the sick and the poor.
The truth to the people running the Archdiocese will always be 'unfounded' because they block all efforts to find it. They block other people from finding it. They use their money and their power to silence people who know it and ask them to be accountable for resolving it.
THIS is the story.
In the aftermath of the 'sexual abuse' fracas, the Archdiocese is re-building the foundation of our Church on sand. Truth is still the cornerstone that the builders are rejecting.
The Boston Catholic Blogger Community wants a stronger Church. We want training to be evangelists. We want ourselves, our children, family and friends to have the ability recognize sinfulness so we can all seek the refuge of the Sacraments.
We have more than a right to these precious gifts, we have a duty to make sure the next generation has access to Them.
The Globe did a very fair and balanced article on the efforts to index what's going down in Boston and the Machiavellian response of diocesan luminaries.
Of note, is the duplicity in what Terry Donilon claims is their excuse for banning the blog. In one breath, he says bloggers were 'spamming' employees with unwanted links to posts. In the next breath, he indicates that so many employees were glued to the blogs, it was a "distraction".
You can't have it both ways. Either employees were not interested and didnt want the links, or they wew clicking on the links and reading.
An Open Letter to the Cardinal is also posted on the link.
The Open Letter is a culmination of several concerns brought forward from Catholics (including volunteers, priests, employees of the diocese. Serious concerns (including a decent whistleblower policy) that have been obfuscated and dismissed in internal forums in the Catholic Church.
There are several people who are limiting their intellect to whether or not the archdiocese should block a website indexing conflicts of interest and cronyism. Yet the response of banning and blocking is appalling because they're doing it instead of taking corrective action.
The diocese would like to keep the focus on whether or not an employer should ban a website so there will be no focus on what they are NOT doing - creating a forum where corruption can be reported without having the administration retaliate.
Catholic laity want a forum where corruption can be reported to people of good will and have that corruption acted upon without fear they will be retaliated against. In Cardinal O'Malley's absence/abandonment there is thuggery when wrongdoings are reported.
How do you think that works in a post sexual abuse scandal caused by not having a forum where corruption can be reported to people of good faith who would act upon it?
This problem should resonate with everyone. Every Catholic on any side of anything should be deeply concerned. When one of their employees is hurting somebody else or Christ's Church, nobody should 'agree' that it is righteous to resort to banning bloggers who exhausted every effort internally to correct the problem.
The fact they are banning the website of people who have tried to hold them accountable to create the forum internally and have been rebuffed, is a distraction. They are avoiding the recognition that the flaw which enabled pedophiles is still in full swing. There is no forum to complain about an employee who is hurting somebody else. Instead, the Chancery in Boston goes into attack mode.
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