Supreme Court Opens Bridgeport Catholic Abuse Files: Putting Broken Hearts Back Together

The U.S. Supreme Court this week turned down the appeal of the Connecticut Catholic diocese of Bridgeport to keep its clergy personnel files dealing with priests who have abused minors sealed. As I have noted previously on this blog (and see postings linked to the “Connecticut” label), the Connecticut Supreme Court had already ruled that the files must be opened.

The diocese responded to that ruling by appealing to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. When she turned the appeal down, the diocese handed it to Justice Scalia, who presented it to the whole court.

The official statement of the Bridgeport diocese in response to the Supreme Court action is to claim that its first amendment rights are being violated. But the first amendment does not provide churches with the right to hide the identity of criminals, and to suppress information about churches’ complicity in shielding and promoting criminals.

The diocese also claims, “The content of the sealed documents soon to be released has already been extensively reported on.” But that’s obviously not true, and one wonders why a Catholic diocese would even seek to make such a false claim in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Why would the diocese have spent untold thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars over several years to fight a bitter, losing legal battle to keep files sealed, if the content of those files is already known to the public?

Several points strike me as I think about the Bridgeport situation. First, I remember John McNeill’s prophetic insight that the churches are passing through a moment of profound cultural crisis and transformation at this point in history. In McNeill’s view, that transformation has everything to do with patriarchy and the way in which the churches have cast their lot with that mutable social arrangement.

To the extent that the churches have inextricably bound up their fate with patriarchy and its top-down, hierarchical, male-dominant model of allocating power, the churches will become not centers of transformative energy in a process of global cultural transformation, but focal points for bitter resistance. They will defend outmoded, and increasingly toxic, patterns of social organization and of allocating power, in the face of necessary cultural developments that challenge those patterns.

There is great tragedy—and great evil—in the church’s rear-battle approach to a process of global cultural development that is all about the liberation of human beings from historic oppression. To say that the churches’ defense of patriarchy (and of misogyny and homophobia, as well as of the manifold forms of economic and social injustice interwoven with patriarchy) is short-sighted would be a ludicrous understatement. The choice of many churches to cast their lot with patriarchy at this moment in history is, frankly, a choice for death rather than life. This choice assures that the churches will increasingly have little effectively to do with the primary process of cultural transformation affecting global cultures—little, that is, except to resist. And to do everything in their power to abort necessary processes of cultural transformation pointing to human liberation.

This choice on the part of many churches confronts their adherents with a choice, in turn—and that’s the second thing that occurs to me as I think about the Bridgeport situation. John McNeill has argued (and a number of other openly gay theologians echo him here) that at this point in history, those of us who believe that the churches can and should respond to the demise of patriarchy creatively rather than mournfully need to distance ourselves from the power centers of the churches. We need to do so, McNeill thinks, because those power centers are involved in death throes that will pull us into those throes, if we do not find ways to move away from the power centers of the churches.

I am increasingly coming to think of this dynamic of center and margins in the churches as a dynamic that is more about energy than about power—or, perhaps more precisely, about the kind of power that is based in transformative spiritual energy rather than in domination. There is energy on the margins. The centers are bound up by moribund dominative power, and are incapable of generating spiritual energy—or even of permitting that spiritual energy inside the center in a way that transforms it.

At this point in history, the Catholic church is spending huge sums of money on two projects that are all about maintaining a dying dominative power at the center, rather than welcoming the transformative spiritual energy at the margins. In both cases, the church is concealing from the public the true amounts it is spending, as well as the sources of its funding.

Those two projects are the continued cover-up of the true history of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church, and the ongoing battle of the Catholic church against gay human beings and our human rights. These are interconnected projects. They are interconnected because neither has any legitimate foundation in the gospels. They are interconnected as well because both involve the abuse of huge sums of money—money that appears in many cases to be flowing into church coffers from the same sources—that an authentically spiritual religious organization would spend for other purposes.

And, finally, they are connected in that both battles are part of the overall rear-battle the Catholic church insists on fighting at this point in history to maintain its investment in patriarchy, with patriarchy’s top-down, hierarchical, male-exclusive, and dominative approach to allocating and using power. The Catholic church’s bitter fight to conceal the real history of the clerical sexual abuse of minors, its exceedingly ugly assault on gay human beings, and its attack on women’s rights and women religious, are perhaps the primary manifestations at this point in history of the institutional church’s investment in a model of power that must and will eventually change, in response to liberating global social transformations.

Meanwhile (my third point), as things fall apart and those on the margins distance themselves from the process of decay in order to fashion authentic spiritual lives, creative and transformative energy seems to be manifesting itself everywhere. I’m struck today by testimonies of spiritual transformation amidst struggle on a number of blogs: Jayden Cameron’s Gay Mystic, with its Emmaus Walk posting; Terry Weldon’s Queering the Church, with its statement on the abuse situation to which Jayden is responding; Colleen Kochivar-Baker’s Enlightened Catholicism, with its two recent discussions (here and here) of her experiences at native American holy places in New Mexico; and Geoff Farrow’s blog, with its recent painful but extraordinarily liberating meditation on all that has happened to him in the year after he spoke against prop 8 in California.

Following the story of the Bridgeport Catholic diocese and reading its mendacious statement about the recent Supreme Court decision tears my heart to pieces, as does the ongoing attack of the Portland, Maine, Catholic diocese on the gay citizens of Maine. Reading these powerful blog testimonies to the spiritual energy of lives lived on the margins, by contrast, puts my heart back together and gives me hope.

Burke Followed By Terry Followed by Scalia: Keeping Track of Current Right-Wing Catholic Attacks on Obama Administration

And speaking of synchronicity, isn’t it interesting that Archbishop Burke has popped back across the Atlantic just at this particular time—right after the 9.12 folderol took place, and right before Congress was expected to begin voting on the health care reform bill?

Just in that significant little window of time, it happens, his right-wing Catholic handlers bring him on the scene to whip up the faithful, lambast his brother bishops who dare to give communion or Christian burial to those who accept gay marriage and don’t kowtow to their version of the pro-life agenda, and pontificate about Senator Kennedy’s funeral.

Oh, and to inform us that the health care reform bill has a “mandate” for abortion and “provides for the provision” of abortion.

We’d be foolish, I think, if we didn’t read these recent utterances of the “de facto pope of the Republican Catholic Church” as purely political—purely politically driven—pontifications. They’re designed to call the faithful to battle—to battle against the Obama administration and against the health care reform bill.

And as an insightful posting of Colleen Kochivar Baker to which I’ve just linked notes (citing a recent piece by David Gibson at Politics Daily), in beating the war drum this past week, Archbishop Burke was beating it against some of his own brother bishops, including Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who chose to give Senator Kennedy a Christian burial.

Burke and his handlers are working very hard to divide the American Catholic church, and to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the pastoral leadership of bishops who do not toe their Republican hard line. Following the dust-up that ensued when Burke gave an interview to Randall Terry this past March—an interview Terry uploaded to his website as if his extremist anti-abortion activities have Burke’s direct support—Burke distanced himself from Terry. Somewhat.

But here’s the thing. Terry works hand in hand with his more sober right-wing Catholic confreres, including Burke’s handlers, who do not want to be out on the front line wheeling baby carriages full of blood-smeared dolls, but who completely endorse Terry’s ideology and its political goals. What drives this movement is its intent to identify being Catholic in the U.S. with being Republican, to silence voices which question that alliance, and to drive religious and political dissidents out of the church.

And so it’s fascinating to see now that, on the heels of Burke’s remarks once again calling into question the pastoral legitimacy of some of his brother bishops who will not endorse his Republican Catholicism in toto, Randall Terry has leapt into action immediately. As Right Wing Watch reports yesterday, his current target is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

On the heels of recent Burke’s performance in D.C., Terry and his groupies staged a demonstration at the headquarters of the USCCB. Their goal? To suggest that bishops who support health care reform support abortion.

Terry is continuing Burke’s recent work in D.C. This is not about abortion. It’s not about Catholic teaching that health care is a human right, and that moral societies need to provide access to basic quality health care to all citizens.

It’s about overturning the Obama administration, because only a Republican administration suits the wishes of those Catholics spearheading this attempt to split the American Catholic church. Even if said administration chooses to ignore the needs of millions of citizens for access to health care, leads us into war on the basis of lies, further enriches the rich and oppresses the poor, promotes capital punishment, etc. . . . .

Watch the video at the link I just provided reporting on Terry’s recent demonstration at the USCCB headquarters, and think of Burke lying about the “mandate” for abortion in the Baucus health care reform bill. And lambasting Cardinal O’Malley for giving Senator Kennedy a Christian burial.

It’s all of a piece. Synchronicity? I don't think so. Choreography, rather, with lots of money and lots of power determining each step in the process of this relentless attack on any political option for Catholics except the single one these right-wing activists promote.

P.S. Oh, and guess who else came out of the woodwork right on the heels of Burke's D.C. performance? Republican Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has just given an interview to the Orthodox Jewish publication Hamodia, arguing against the separation of church and state. Look for more and more of these carefully orchestrated right-wing Catholic moves against the current administration to unfold in the near future, and as you do so, keep in mind that it's on September 29 that the Supreme Court is supposed to hear the appeal of the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, that Scalia has handed to the court, to permit the diocese to keep its files about clerical sexual abuses cases sealed.

Archbishop Burke on Twin Evils of Gay Marriage and Abortion: The Lamb Continues to Be Only A Lion

Archbishop Raymond Burke is back in the news—the American news. As I’ve noted before, the former archbishop of St. Louis was sent to Rome last summer to head the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial office in the church beneath the pope himself. Many commentators have suggested that Burke was sent to Rome in accord with the ancient maxim, Promoveatur ut amoveatur: let him be promoted in order to remove him from the scene.

As it follows this maxim, the Catholic church has a history of handing out plum jobs to church officials who make a mess of their pastoral responsibilities. When court documents revealed the extent and longstanding duration of the sexual abuse crisis in American Catholicism in 2002, and when those documents showed the unsavory role that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston had played in hiding and moving around priests abusing children, Law was nudged out of his pastoral responsibilities in Boston. Only to be promoted to the cushy post of Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome . . . .

The maxim about promoting folks in order to remove them doesn’t apply, unfortunately, to women removed from positions of ministry in the Catholic church. When Ruth Kolpack lost her job as a catechist in Beloit, Wisconsin, earlier this year as a result of her views regarding women’s ordination, church authorities offered her no golden parachute, despite her many years of ministry. Nor has Sister Louise Akers landed a plush job in the Vatican following her recent dismissal by Archbishop Daniel Pilarcyzk from all positions of ministry in the Cincinnati diocese. Akers’s crime? Supporting women’s ordination.

The church is not in the habit of handing out plum jobs to silenced theologians, either—Roger Haight was not given a comfortable sinecure in Rome, with palatial quarters and a handsome salary (both of which Law receives), when the Vatican silenced him at the beginning of 2009. Nor do priests who come out publicly as gay usually receive anything but scorn from the institutional church, in response to their honesty. As Fr. Geoff Farrow reports on his blog, in contravention of canon law, his bishop gave him neither financial support nor health insurance when he came out as gay in 2008 and the bishop booted him. As he notes, a priest accused of pedophilia would have received those benefits.

Unlike what happens to women, lay ministers, and gay priests who have the courage to admit they are gay when they’re unjustly dismissed by Catholic officials, the Burkes and Laws of the Catholic church do well for themselves. The church stands by its men, even (or especially), it seems, when they woefully foul their pastoral nests and damage numerous folks in the process.

Though Cardinal Law has tended to stay in Rome following his promotion-removal, Archbishop Burke now spends his time hopping back and forth across the Atlantic, where he has an important, albeit unofficial, political position in the American Catholic church. He has become something of a darling of the Catholic right in the U.S., where he keeps his hand in by pontificating as frequently as possible about “the” Catholic position on American political matters.

Burke was in the U.S. back in March to attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an event sponsored by Republican political operatives that does all it can to suggest that the Republican party has the endorsement of the Catholic church. This was on the heels of an embarrassing interview Burke gave to American Catholic anti-abortion activist Randall Terry (and here), in which Burke appeared to give official sanction to Terry’s extremist antics, which include skits depicting President Obama ordering doctors to stab babies, and which continue unabated even as I post this piece.

Last November, Burke sought to influence Catholic voters to vote Republican by characterizing the Democratic party as “grievously anti-life” and unworthy of Catholic support. Burke has repeatedly sought to use the Eucharist as a political weapon to try to swing Catholic voters in a Republican direction, as he calls for communion bans on Catholic Democrats running for office. During the last election cycle, he pontificated from Rome about how the Democratic party is in the process of turning itself into the “party of death,” and continued his campaign to encourage bishops to deny communion to selected Democratic candidates like Joe Biden.

And now Burke is back in the U.S. again. Still pontificating. This time about truth and charity. Well, about truth, his version of the truth, the version of truth comfortable to the posh Republican businessfolks who hang onto his pronouncements.

Burke is in the U.S. now to be given an award, the “Service to the Church and Our Nation” award, by the Morley Institute’s InsideCatholic.com news site, headed by the former in-house guru for all things Catholic in the Bush administration, Deal W. Hudson. Predictably, the good archbishop, whom InsideCatholic banquet attendees describe variously as warm, kind, humble, gentle, simple, and quiet—a lion speaking with the voice and face of a lamb—used his platform at the D.C. awards banquet to make a wide range of political observations that play to his Catholic-right audience.

Deal Hudson’s summary of the banquet address (to which the next-to-last link points) says that Burke “returned again and again to the scandal of Catholic politicians who support abortion or same-sex marriage,” insisting that such politicians should be denied communion and Catholic burial—in what Hudson opines was “an obvious reference to the Kennedy funeral.” The lion with the voice and face of a lamb also used his InsideCatholic forum to take a swipe at Catholic supporters of health care reform, noting (Hudson’s summary) that endorsing universal health coverage because it achieves “some desirable outcomes” while it “includes abortion” is “false reasoning.”

The InsideCatholic banquet was not Archbishop Burke’s sole forum on this trip to the U.S. According to Michael Sean Winters at America magazine, he also gave an interview to FOX news, in which he stated that the health care reform bill prepared by Senator Baucus contains a “mandate” for abortion—a claim Winters flatly dismisses. Winters says that Burke told FOX that the Baucus bill “provides for the provision of abortion, so it’s simply not acceptable.”

As Winters notes, the only sense in which that statement might be parsed as true is that the health care reform bill does not outlaw abortion outright, something it cannot do with Roe v. Wade on the books. Winters goes on to discuss the “nettlesome policy issues” created by the interface of health care reform, abortion, and Catholic teaching. In a subsequent posting following up on Winters’s discussion of those issues, I want to discuss the abortion question and health care reform more closely.

For now, though, I want to return to Archbishop Burke’s claim that abortion and same-sex marriage are necessarily linked for Catholic voters, as a kind of diptych of non-negotiable truths on the basis of which “true” Catholics will cast their votes. When I hear the leonine archbishop with the voice and face of the lamb talking about abortion, I have to admit, I have a tendency to stop my ears—just as I do when I hear Mr. Hudson, with his history of sexually assaulting a co-ed student at Fordham University, talking about the sanctity of marriage.

To say that the Catholic church in the U.S. is developing an image problem for its anti-abortion politics—and this problem is growing because of the lamentably unwise, unjust, and uncharitable stance the church has chosen to take regarding gay people—would be an understatement. The church’s draconian anti-gay politics are undercutting its attempt to make a persuasive argument in the public square about the sanctity of life.

The image problem the Catholic church is creating for itself by its anti-gay money laundering in places like Maine and its use of gay people as political cannon fodder to distract attention from mishandling of clerical abuse cases in places like Connecticut, is becoming a substance problem. The homophobic image the church is building for itself in Maine and Connecticut and many other places in the U.S. evacuates its pro-life teachings of any compelling substance, for many Americans, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

And pushing the lion-like Republican archbishop with the voice and face of a lamb center-stage to babble to his rich constituents about the twin evils of gay marriage and abortion is not going to help matters. Not for many of us. I’m surprised, frankly, that my centrist Catholic brothers and sisters continue to listen. I long ago stopped doing so, when I realized that the lion was only a roaring lion seeking to devour. There never has been a lamb there.

Ask the good people of St. Louis who jubilated when the leonine lamb got sent packing to Rome after his pastoral shenanigans in their diocese.

Large Anonymous Gifts and Unrestricted Funds: Bishop Lori on Bridgeport Catholic Diocese's Battle to Keep Files Closed

Isn't it interesting that, even when dioceses like the diocese of Portland, Maine, are closing churches due to lack of funds, they can still find mysterious slush funds to foot the bill as they launch attacks on gay people?

Or that dioceses like the diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which have been fighting tooth and nail to keep their files about clerical sexual abuse of minors closed, and which also use gay people as political weapons in their cynical games to try to avoid transparency and accountability re: their financial records, seem always to find "unrestricted funds" to pursue such ends?

Recently Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport held a behind-closed-doors meeting with priests and deacons to discuss the possible media fallout if the Supreme Court chooses not to hear an appeal from the diocese to keep its abuse files closed. I have blogged about this story previously, noting that Justice Ginsburg has already refused to hear an appeal of the Connecticut court decision requiring the diocese to open its files.

The diocese subsequently appealed to Justice Antonin Scalia, who has passed the appeal on to the whole Supreme Court. Bishop Lori's meeting with local clergy was apparently a meeting to consider the fallout of the worst-case scenario in which the Supreme Court will refuse to hear the appeal, thus upholding the Connecticut court's order to the diocese to open its files.

I've also blogged about Bishop Lori's choice to play the gay-bashing card to rally local Catholics last spring, when it appeared the Connecticut legislature might entertain legislation to place parish finances under the control of lay finance committees and not parish priests. When word got out that such legislation might be brought to the legislature, Bishop Lori opined that the legislation, which had gone to a committee headed by two openly gay Catholic Connecticut legislators, was pay-back for the church's opposition to same-sex marriage.

He was seconded in this opinion by Archbishop Chaput of far-away Denver, who made the homophobic subtext of Bishop Lori's resistance to the legislation even more explicit.

And now, as Bishop Lori informs his priests and deacons that there will no doubt be very bad publicity for the diocese if the Supreme Court refuses to hear the diocese's appeal, sources who attended that meeting say that Lori spoke of "large anonymous gifts" given to the diocese to fight the legal battle to keep its files sealed, and of "unrestricted funds" the diocese has on hand to assist with the legal battle:

According to the source who attended today’s meeting, diocesan officials, anticipating a question, said that no money was used from the annual bishop’s appeal to pay legal costs in the attempt to keep the documents sealed. However, it was disclosed that the diocese had received large anonymous gifts specifically for that purpose and also that the diocese had used unspecified “unrestricted funds” for legal costs.

No amount was given for the unrestricted funds used.

Large anonymous gifts. Unrestricted funds. No amount given for the unrestricted funds.

This story sounds uncannily like the one that has emerged this summer in the diocese of Portland, Maine, as the diocese pours money into the battle to remove the right of marriage from gay citizens of Maine.

There, too, there seems to be an influx of "large anonymous gifts," with "unrestricted funds" on hand to attack gay people, while the diocese is crying poor mouth as it closes parishes and schools. And there, too, there seems to be great uncertainty on the part of diocesan officials about where the anti-gay money is coming from, who's donating it, and precisely how it's being used. Mysterious uncertainty about the sources of such large sums of money . . . .

What ties these stories together? Homophobia. Vicious, institutionally driven attacks on the rights and humanity of a targeted minority, by Catholic leaders. By shepherds of the Catholic flock, who speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd who seeks out every last sheep to bring into his fold.

What ties these stories together? Shady, unethical financial wheeling and dealing, in which a church pursues overt political goals while claiming tax-exempt status, and while it hides the identity of wealthy right-wing donors and shields its fiscal records behind the church-state separation line.

What ties these stories together? A total lack of financial transparency and accountability, which runs right through the heart of the clerical sexual abuse crisis. As well as through the Catholic church's current stepped-up assault on gay human beings.

It's perhaps no wonder that some folks have concluded that, in its operations surrounding the clerical sexual abuse scandal, the Catholic church has come to behave more like a crime syndicate than a redemptive faith-based organization modeling itself on Jesus and the gospels. And it's perhaps no accident that many gay people are hardly surprised to discover that church leaders are capable of criminal behavior as they hide priests abusing minors, transfer them from parish to parish without disclosing their identity, and play ruthless legal hardball with victims of such abuse.

We who are gay have long seen that face of the church in action. And it doesn't surprise us, though it saddens and pains some of us, to see it in action yet again in the dioceses of Portland, Maine, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Catholics, Mormons, and Money: Churches and Pastoral Priorities

In my posting yesterday about Californians Against Hate’s charge that the Catholic diocese of Portland, Maine, is engaging in money-laundering in its battle to roll back the right of same-sex marriage in Maine, I noted that the California group also names the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) as one of the groups laundering money in the Maine battle.

I also noted that Californians Against Hate has accused NOM of being a front-group for the Mormon Church, through which LDS church funds are funneled into the battle against gay marriage. What I didn’t mention in yesterday’s posting—and this deserves attention—is that NOM is doing everything in its power to keep its financial records from public scrutiny. Even to the extent of flaunting IRS regulations for non-profits about public disclosure of 990 records.

As Right Wing Watch reported several days ago, the Washington Blade has requested copies of NOM’s latest 990 filings, and has apparently not received those copies. Californians Against Hate has also sent staff to the NOM office in Princeton, NJ, to request NOM’s 990 forms. Those staff were sent away empty-handed.

The group then sent two certified letters to NOM on 18 March asking again for copies of NOM’s latest 990 returns. NOM has not provided copies. Californians Against Hate believes that NOM operates two non-profits, a 501(c)4 called the National Organization for Marriage and a 501(c)3 called the National Organization for Marriage Educational Fund.

On 15 May, NOM asked for a three-month extension to the IRS filing deadline this year, and it is believed that NOM filed its current 990 report on 14 August—and so, as a non-profit, NOM was legally required to provide copies when the Washington Blade asked for them after that date. NOM can be fined by IRS for skirting federal regulations governing disclosure of donor information to non-profits.

As Right Wing Watch concludes, “NOM's finances are a complete mystery, and the group seems intent on keeping it that way for as long as possible.”

The refusal to disclose funding streams supporting this national organization combating gay rights is interesting, to say the least—particularly as NOM mounts high-profile (and highly-funded) media campaigns in both Maine and Iowa this summer. On the reasons that Californians Against Hate believes the Mormons are a major NOM funding group whose identity NOM wishes to keep secret for as long as possible, see the posting from that group to which I link above.

And re: the story of the Maine Catholic diocese’s choice to help fund the battle to remove the right of marriage from gay citizens of that state, check out this posting at Pam’s House Blend. As Pam notes, the cartoon by Mike Ritter of Southern Voice about the strange pastoral responsibilities of the Maine diocese is brilliant.

And there’s more news in the unfolding story of another Catholic diocese of the Northeast in which gay persons have been targeted as money flows around behind the scenes to pay off cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors. This is the Bridgeport, Connecticut, diocese, about which I have posted a number of times in the past (see here and click the Connecticut label for previous postings).

As the posting to which I’ve just linked notes, on 19 July the Bridgeport diocese appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court as it continues to try to keep its files on clergy sex abuse cases sealed. On Tuesday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg denied (h/t Clerical Whispers) the diocese’s request.

The diocese wants to keep sealed more than 12,600 pages of depositions, exhibits, and legal arguments from 23 lawsuits against priests from the Bridgeport diocese. Most of these suits were filed in the mid-1990s, and were settled by the diocese in 2001 for undisclosed amounts of money.

The diocese’s preference is to keep these documents sealed forever, but several media outlets have filed suit to have the files opened. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that twice that the documents should be unsealed.

And so back to Mike Ritter's cartoon, which shows two bishops deliberating over a diocesan budget. As the cartoon notes, in hard economic times, we need to prioritize.

And so it shows us the bishops' list: keep churches open; feed the poor; attend to the needs of those sexually abused by clerics. All of those items are crossed out.

The priority item is to fund gay-bashing campaigns. And if that's Jesus's priority, and if churches that make this a priority while people go hungry (my aunt's church's food pantry is handing out record baskets of food these days) and without medical treatment, I'll eat my hat--or any miter a bishop wants to send me to chew on.

Homophobia and Churches' Dark Secrets: Making the Connections

An update to a story about which I last blogged at the end of May—the attempt of the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to keep files regarding clerical sexual abuse of minors sealed, in the face of demands from many quarters that the diocese disclose information about how it has been handling those cases. The Clerical Whispers blog is reporting today that the diocese has now appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to keep this information from the public.

If readers will follow the links in the Bilgrimage posting to which I link above back to previous postings about the Bridgeport diocese, they’ll find that this diocese’s attempt to seal its files re: clerical sexual abuse has gone in hand with some nasty gay-bashing, which has stirred up potential violence against openly gay Connecticut legislators targeted by Bishop Lori of Bridgeport. As the story of the diocese’s attempt to keep its personnel files sealed unfolds, the picture that is emerging is this: some Catholic bishops and some dioceses seem eager to play the gay-bashing card as a way of diverting attention from how they have mishandled money, in a period in which the common pattern in U.S. Catholic dioceses has been for diocesan authorities to pay off survivors of clerical sexual abuse under the table, to silence them and prevent embarrassing lawsuits.

In the period from 2002, when stories about the sexual abuse crisis in American Catholicism began to break, up to the present, it has become increasingly apparent that most dioceses have paid huge amounts, always off the books, to keep information about clerical sexual abuse out of the media and out of courts. Funds given by the laity to support the church, its ministries, its schools, and its buildings have been diverted to a cover-up of abuse cases, at a moment when many Catholic churches and schools, particularly in poor areas, are being closed due to lack of funds.

The story of the Bridgeport diocese’s appeal to the Supreme Court needs to be read in tandem with recent stories (see here and here and here) about the financial wheelings and dealings of the Diocese of Maine, a financially strapped diocese that has suddenly found major funds to try to overturn the state’s same-sex marriage law.

As John Aravosis’s Americablog and Pam Spaulding’s House Blend blog, to which I have just linked, are reporting, the drive to repeal the law permitting same-sex marriage in Maine has just revealed a contribution of $100,000 from the diocese of Maine—for which the diocese seems curiously unable to account. That is, the diocese is having difficulty explaining how it has come up with those funds when it has been closing churches due to lack of money to keep its churches open.

These stories from Connecticut and Maine raise lots of interesting questions. One has to do with the meaning of participatory democracy when religious groups can shift money around behind the scenes (sometimes from group to group: in the battle vs. prop 8 in California, the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco invited the Mormons to enter the fray, with a huge infusion of Mormon dollars to supplement those supplied by Catholic groups like the Knights of Columbus) in efforts to force state legislatures to adhere to the peculiar religious views of particular churches, even when legislatures have voted to implement social policies those churches find distasteful, and when courts have upheld the legislatures’ actions.

What can democracy mean, when churches can use their money—often in hidden and ethically dubious ways—to subvert democracy? What can it mean when a church group centered in, say, Utah, can try to subvert the will of the people in California or Maine or Massachusetts? What business do the churches have engaging in such imperious theocratic behavior in a pluralistic democratic society?

And how do churches that play homophobic games to divert attention from their own glaring ethical misbehavior in cases of sexual abuse of children expect to be taken seriously as moral agents? Of what worth is the anti-gay moral teaching of homophobic churches, when those same churches have dark secrets about sexual abuse of children and the misuse of funds to hide those secrets?

When it becomes apparent that the homophobic crusade of some churches—the crusade to target gay citizens and make them susceptible to violence—goes hand in hand with the attempt of those same churches to seal records that reveal the extent of clerical abuse of children and the misuse of church funds to conceal that abuse, shouldn’t we begin to reexamine why these churches are so intent on playing the gay-bashing card at this point in history? And doesn’t both the homophobia and the abuse of children, with its attendant fiscal corruption, point to the deep need of many churches to reform their own lives before they seek to reform the lives of others—and to establish theocratic control of the democratic process?

Just wondering, this July Sunday, anno Domini 2009 . . . .

Commentary in Light of Holocaust Shooting: Chip Berlet on Our Responsibility to Address Roots of Violence, Gabriel Voiles on Hal Turner Case

In the wake of today's shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Talk2Action has just put up some articles that provide significant information regarding themes on which I've touched in recent postings.

Chip Berlet notes, as I've done in my last two postings, that when something like the shooting today occurs, it's not enough to focus exclusively on the right-wing hate groups fostering this violence.

We have to look at ourselves, too, and our moral obligation to make this kind of violence less and less possible by challenging the ideological roots from which it grows:

We need to stand up as moral people and speak out against the spread of bigoted conspiracy theories. That's not a police problem, that's our problem as people responsible for defending a free society.

Berlet notes (as I've done in my postings on these themes) the intent of this violence to subvert democratic process, its tendency to target scapegoat Others (so that racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, etc., coalesce in these groups fomenting violence), and its frequent success at stopping progressive change in its tracks:

Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four "tools of fear." These are as 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression. The tools of fear are a connected constellation of frames, narratives, and processes used by demagogues to mobilize resentment and undermine the democratic process.

The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled. It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, angry allegations can quickly turn into apocalyptic aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups like Jews or immigrants.

And in the same edition of Talk2Action, note Frederick Clarkson's follow-up on Scott Roeder's assassination of Dr. George Tiller, which links to an article by Gabriel Voiles at the FAIR blog discussing the recent arrest of white supremacist Hal Turner in Connecticut.

As I noted this weekend, Turner was arrested after issuing threats against the same two openly gay Connecticut legislators targeted by Connecticut Bishop William J. Lori and Colorado Archbishop Charles J. Chaput earlier this year. Voiles reports that Turner has been closely associated with FOX news pundit Sean Hannity, though Hannity is trying to deny that connection.

And he points out that, on the same blog on which he issued threats of violence against Connecticut legislators Michael Lawlor and Andrew McDonald, Turner also states that Scott Roeder's murder of Dr. George Tiller was a "righteous act."

And so the circle of violence connecting one act of violence to another and one fomentor of violence to another circles back around to some of the bishops of the Catholic church in the U.S., and for that reason, I reissue the appeal with which I concluded my posting this weekend discussing Hal Turner's case:

Strange bedfellows, Bishop Lori and Archbishop Chaput—shameful bedfellows for Catholic bishops to climb into bed with. I continue to call on the U.S. Catholic bishops to challenge the noxious use of homophobia by some bishops to achieve political ends, and to exercise fraternal correction by calling to accountability their brother bishops who continue stooping to such low and dangerous tactics.

Otherwise, somebody’s going to get hurt—really hurt—and those who fomented the violence will have blood on their hands, as will those who stood by in silence and said or did nothing as the ugly words poured forth.

End-of-Week News Wrap-Up: Mainstream Media's Tilt to Right, Another Arrest Following Homphobic Frenzy Whipped Up by Bishop William Lori

An end-of-week wrap-up posting that ties together recent events and commentary with previous postings on this blog . . . .

In a posting earlier this week, I noted that, despite abundant evidence challenging this narrative, the mainstream media persist in speaking of the U.S. as a “center-right” nation. I noted that this mythic narrative, repeated ad nauseam in our media, assures that our political discourse is constantly skewed to the right, and provides right-wing thinkers who do not represent the center with gate-keeping and veto power in our political deliberations.

E.J. Dionne offers a similar analysis of the role of the media in our political culture in an op-ed piece this week in Washington Post. Dionne notes that the constant tilt of mainstream media to the right is “closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.”

Dionne notes that Rush has only to sneeze or Newt to tweet, and the media hurl their machines into motion to cover the story. By “regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left,” the mainstream media assure that figures like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich continue to have gate-keeping power in our important national political conversations, and veto power over all of our futures, though neither man holds office or reflects the views of a majority of Americans.

In postings about the shooting of Dr. George Tiller in Topeka last Sunday, I noted the thinness of mainstream media coverage of the ideological and religious background of Scott Roeder, the man charged with this murder. I pointed in particular to connections between white supremacist groups and “Christian” groups employing a dangerous, bloody apocalyptic theology that encourages violence against people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and those perceived as pro-abortion.

In light of those observations, I recommend an article at the Alternet site today—James Ridgeway’s “brief history of the radical violent right.” Ridgeway notes Roeder’s ties to the Freemen movement, whose theology is informed by an ideology known as Christian Identity, “which holds that Jews, blacks, and other minorities aren't actually people and therefore don't deserve constitutional rights.” Rights are for real people, those who aren’t three-fifth of a person, those created by God to rule and to define the humanity of “inferior” human beings: rights are for “white Sovereigns.”

As Ridgeway notes, it might seem curious that pro-life Christians have found themselves edging closer and closer to such far-right racists, whose theologies hardly reflect mainstream Christian views. But when it comes to abortion, evangelicals and Catholics increasingly find themselves connected to extremist groups like the Freeman, because of one important “bridge”: the connecting point joining mainline Christian pro-lifers and far-right groups like the Freemen is misogyny. The Freemen are attracted to the anti-abortion cause because

[t]he Sovereign crowd viewed women as chattel, and the prospect of an independent woman deciding to seek an abortion didn't sit well with them. I gained some insight into this line of thinking in another piece I once wrote about a young woman in Oklahoma who aspired to join the Christian Identity group, hoping that its followers would teach her to shoot and become a guerrilla. Instead, the men asked her for sex. When the woman replied that she wanted a relationship first, one of them replied, "Women are for breeding."

I’ve said it before and I have to say it again: the U.S. Catholic bishops have ended up in bed with some very strange bedfellows, in the “pro-life” cause. And that alliance—with racist, misogynist, homophobic thugs whose core values in many areas, including the economic sphere, are starkly at odds with Catholic values—is radically undermining the credibility of the pro-life movement. As long as the Catholic bishops are unwilling to address the violence their perfervid rhetoric about abortion is producing, and the ties to some of the most ungodly sectors of our culture with which the bishops seem willing to live as they preach the gospel of life, the bishops will not convince many of us to share their outlook on life.

And speaking of those ungodly ties and those unseemly bedfellows: there has been yet another arrest in Connecticut, following the choice of Bridgeport bishop William J. Lori (and Archbishop Charles Chaput in Denver) to whip up a homophobic frenzy this spring, as Lori and Chaput sought to torpedo legislation that proposed to place oversight of Catholic parish finances in the hands of layfolks rather than priests.

This week New Jersey police arrested radio host Hal Turner on a Connecticut warrant, after Turner posted a statement on his website threatening openly gay Connecticut legislators Michael Lawlor and Andrew McDonald. Turner stated,

It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die.

These are, of course, the very same two openly gay legislators that Bishops Lori and Chaput targeted in their spring crusade. The word “beastly” is codespeak for gay, in the work of violent right-wing homophobes from Michael Savage to Fred Phelps. Just as I predicted months ago, Lori and Chaput’s homophobic rhetoric links them to some of the most violent anti-gay people in our nation, and is continuing to elicit threats against the two gay legislators Lori and Chaput chose to target.

As Daniel Altimari notes in a Hartford Courant article yesterday,

The remarks on the blog [i.e., Hal Turner’s blog] were a reaction to the recent controversy over a bill before the legislature's judiciary committee that would have changed the way the Roman Catholic Church is governed, taking power away from church officials and turning it over to lay members.

Turner is enraged, it appears, because it has recently been announced that the Bridgeport diocese is under investigation by the Connecticut Office of State Ethics for possible violation of state lobbying laws, after Lori organized the rally at the state capitol challenging the potential legislation regarding parish finances.

The church’s response? The Bridgeport diocese has just filed suit against the state to seek an injunction against the Office of State Ethics.

And the diocese’s ally, Hal Turner, now facing charges for inciting violence against Michael Lawlor and Andrew McDonald, the same two openly gay legislators Bishops Lori and Chaput targeted back in March? He’s a well-known white nationalist and white supremacist, known for his outspoken anti-Semitic views, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized as a radio “host of hate.”

Strange bedfellows, Bishop Lori and Archbishop Chaput—shameful bedfellows for Catholic bishops to climb into bed with. I continue to call on the U.S. Catholic bishops to challenge the noxious use of homophobia by some bishops to achieve political ends, and to exercise fraternal correction by calling to accountability their brother bishops who continue stooping to such low and dangerous tactics.

Otherwise, somebody’s going to get hurt—really hurt—and those who fomented the violence will have blood on their hands, as will those who stood by in silence and said or did nothing as the ugly words poured forth.

The Seamy Bridgeport Diocese Story: A Time to Reconsider Homophobic Strategies of Diversion

I blogged a number of times (e.g., here and here and here and here) in March about what I saw as the attempt of Bishop William J. Lori of the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to play the anti-gay card as he sought to torpedo legislation that would have given layfolks oversight of finances in Bridgeport parishes.

In the postings to which I’ve just linked, I argued that Bishop Lori targeted two openly gay legislators in Connecticut to stir opposition to the proposed legislation. In an open letter, I appealed for Bishop Lori (and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who collaborated in this attempt though he has no authority in the Bridgeport diocese) to stop using homophobia as a weapon in political battles. My letter calls on the American Catholic bishops to exercise fraternal correction by encouraging their brother bishops to stop fanning the flames of prejudice against gay people, since violence often follows when authority figures use homophobia as a political weapon.

And, as the postings to which I have linked indicate, the son of a Catholic deacon did, in fact, email a threat of violence to the two legislators his bishop targeted in March . . . .

In light of what was happening in the Bridgeport diocese earlier in the year, it is interesting to read now that the Connecticut Supreme Court has ordered sealed files of the Bridgeport diocese re: priests accused of sexual abuse to be opened. Even after the court ruling, the diocese is fighting hard to keep these files sealed, and is claiming (not unlike our federal leaders who resist a truth commission on torture) that opening the files will only open wounds that have already healed. This claim runs against the insistence of victims of clerical sexual abuse that their healing process requires the full truth to be known.

As I read about this controversy in Connecticut, I cannot help thinking of the recent claim of Father John Owen, communications director for the diocese of Cardiff, Wales, that the clerical sexual abuse of minors is due to the presence of gays in the priesthood. Owen was responding to the horrific revelations a few days back of longstanding sexual, psychological, and physical abuse of children (of both sexes) by Irish priests, brothers, and nuns.

Now that I know more about what is going on in the Bridgeport diocese, Bishop Lori’s attack on two openly gay legislators earlier this year, as he tried to work up Catholic fervor to thwart legislation having to do with church finances, seems, well, downright seamier than it did when I first read about that attack. There is something extremely rotten in the Catholic church. The Bridgeport story demonstrates it. And anyone with eyes to see, can see it.

The persistent need to scapegoat gays, to work up hostility against gay people merely because they are gay, when the church itself is rotten with perversion as religious authority figures abuse children and are then protected at the highest levels of the church: that need is sick. In the extreme.

It has worked, for a long time, though. The church has managed for a long time to divert attention from its own structural and pastoral (and legal and financial) shortcomings by scapegoating gays.

But this tactic seems no longer to be working well. Look at the postings following newspaper articles about the recent Connecticut Supreme Court decision re: the diocese of Bridgeport’s files, and you’ll see that the majority of them condemn the church’s ugly game-playing with victims of sexual abuse. People are becoming aware that, while preaching the highest moral standards, the church has itself frequently cloven the psyches of children and assaulted their bodies through sexual abuse, and has then lied, bullied, and manipulated in every way it can to hide its moral shortcomings.

And as people become aware of this aspect of the life of the church, the strategy of targeting gays to divert attention from the abuse scandal is less and less effective. It is now becoming part of the seamy history of the abuse scandal itself, with its cover-ups and pay-offs and refusal of the highest pastoral authorities to do what pastors are supposed to do.

It would be more seemly, and surely more effective, if Catholic leaders reconsidered this strategy of homophobia and confronted their problems forthrightly, without anymore bashing of anyone. Or so it seems to me.

Update on Connecticut Story: Timothy Kane Arraigned for Anti-Gay Threats

An update on the story about Timothy J. Kane, a math teacher in a New Britain, Connecticut, middle school who was arrested after sending a threatening email to gay Connecticut legislators Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor on 10 March (here and here and here).

On 27 March, Kane was arraigned in Hartford Community Court (here). At the arraignment, police released an affidavit dated 11 March that contains the text of the email Kane sent to McDonald and Lawlor.

As my previous postings about this incident have noted, McDonald and Lawlor are openly gay, and found themselves under fire when Bridgeport Catholic Bishop William Lori and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput played the anti-gay card in a battle to turn back legislation that would have given lay parishioners oversight of the finances of Catholic parishes. Kane sent his email the night before a demonstration of 4,000 Catholics at the Connecticut state capitol in response to Lori’s encouragement of Catholics to protest the legislation.

According to the police affidavit (which is linked to a CT News Junkie article by Christine Stuart re: the arraignment here), Kane’s email states:

Hey McDonald and Lawlor, your bill has NO shot at passing tomorrow, and you’re cowards for canceling the public hearing. Gay marriage is a farce, as are your careers and your support of the twisted, despicable act that is homosexuality. The first amendment outlaws this bill, and if needed, the US Supreme court would overwhelmingly outlaw SB 1098. You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the Church. F--k off. God hates gay sex.

You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the Church: as Andrew McDonald has noted, Bishop Lori’s claim that McDonald and Lawlor were promoting the parish finance legislation as payback for the church’s opposition to gay marriage cannot be separated from the vile anti-gay rhetoric that spewed forth in many quarters after Bishop Lori made this claim. McDonald states: “[I]t [i.e., Bishop Lori’s charge] was dangerous, because it engendered deep feelings of hostility and stirred homophobic responses from many people that resulted in very serious threats” (here).

As I’ve also noted, this story has a curious twist: Timothy Kane’s father Joseph Kane is, it’s being reported, a Catholic deacon (see here). When this fact was made public, it was also reported that Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, indicated that Joseph Kane was a former deacon whom he had once known, but Culhane had no recollection of the parish in which Joseph Kane had served.

Attempts of reporters to locate the “former” deacon in the week of March 16 apparently led to dead ends. Yet, according to a reader of Bilgrimage, Joseph Kane is actually a practicing deacon rather than a former deacon. The reader tells me that Joseph Kane is a deacon in the Archdiocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, at St. Peter’s parish in Provincetown.

And, when I check the website of that parish, I do, indeed, find a Deacon Joseph Kane listed there as the parish’s Permanent Deacon (here). His name is right below the pastor’s name.

As I’ve stated before, it seems very strange to me that Deacon Joseph Kane has somehow been misplaced by officials of the Bridgeport Catholic diocese. If it’s being correctly reported that Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, believes Deacon Joseph Kane to be a “former” deacon when Deacon Kane is actually serving a parish in a nearby diocese, then the story seems curioser and curioser.

Surely, when Catholic bishops use homophobic tactics in political battles, and when threats of violence ensue, and when one of those threats of violence can be tracked to the son of a Catholic deacon, it’s important to locate that deacon. Especially when he paid bond for his son when his son was arrested (here).

The Curious Misplacing of Priests and Deacons: A Connectict Case

Funny thing about that story out of Connecticut which I noted yesterday. As my posting says, on Wednesday, Connecticut police announced that they had arrested Timothy Kane of New Britain for alleged threats of violence against lawmakers Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor (here). McDonald and Lawlor are openly gay. The two have been targeted by Bishop William Lori of the Diocese of Bridgeport and Archbishop Charles Chaput of the Archdiocese of Denver, in these two prelates’ battle against Connecticut legislation to provide lay oversight of finances of Catholic parishes (here and here).

And here’s the funny thing. Now that it has been discovered that the person who apparently emailed a death threat to the two openly gay legislators targeted by Bishop Lori and Archbishop Chaput was a Catholic deacon’s son, no one seems to know much about that deacon or where to find him. Brian Lockhart reports that Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, says he once knew Deacon Joseph Kane, but hasn’t been in touch with him for a few years, and has no recollection of the parish in which Kane served as deacon (here).

Lockhart notes that Culhane identifies Joseph Kane as a “former” deacon. He also indicates that Joseph Kane could not be reached for comment, and that a staff person at St. Jerome Catholic church in New Britain, where Kane had served as deacon, did not know how to get in touch with him.

Curious, isn’t it? A lost deacon. One of the patterns noted by those collecting data on clerical abuse of minors in the Catholic church is a pattern of extreme absentmindedness on the part of Catholic officials, when it comes to knowing where priests with a history of abuse have ended up. Those priests seem routinely to disappear, and church officials often have strangely little information about where they have ended up and what they are doing, once they have disappeared.

Please note: I am not suggesting that Deacon Kane has any history of abuse of minors. I know nothing about Joseph Kane, except what I have read in news stories recently.

What I am pointing to is the, well, slipshod way dioceses seem to have of misplacing the ordained who are or have been under their supervision. When trouble arises, dioceses seem often conveniently to have lost a priest or deacon whom the media wants to interview.

It’s mysterious that this appears to have happened in the case of Deacon Joseph Kane, since he is, after all, a deacon, an ordained member of the church. If Brian Lockhart is correct in noting that the executive director of Connecticut’s Catholic Conference, Michael Culhane, refers to Kane as a former deacon, then it appears Culhane’s sacramental theology is surprisingly off-key, for someone holding such a position of authority in a Catholic diocese.

Catholic sacramental theology has long maintained that those ordained priests and deacons are always priests and deacons. The old way of talking about ordination to the priesthood and diaconate spoke of ordination as placing an “indelible” mark on the soul of the one ordained. A mark that cannot be washed off . . . . Ever . . . .

Once a priest, always a priest. Once a deacon, always a deacon.

Joseph Kane cannot be a former deacon, according to Catholic theology. He may well be a retired deacon, but a deacon he remains, a member of the select rank of the ordained in the Catholic church, its ruling elite, from which one can never “resign,” in the sense that one may remove the indelible mark inked by the sacrament of ordination on his soul.

No, the church can never disown a priest or a deacon, such that a priest or deacon becomes a “former” priest or deacon. Which is one reason the curious ability of dioceses to lose priests or deacons when it appears convenient to do so has mystified those seeking to track priests who are reported to have abused minors.

It seems the church proudly claims its ordained members when something is to be gained by doing so, but quickly distances itself from the ordained when it serves the church’s interest to do so. In this case, one must lament the inability of Deacon Joseph Kane to be found and interviewed, because the discovery that the son of a Catholic deacon is the one who has allegedly made a death threat against two gay legislators underscores in the most dramatic way possible what I’ve been saying day after day recently about the dangerous firestorm two Catholic bishops have lit by fanning flames of anti-gay rhetoric.

Bishops rule over and set the tone for those next in command in the church: for priests and deacons. And priests and deacons set the tone for those under their command, the humble laity. That tone needs to be determined first and foremost by the gospel and the values of the gospel, if bishops hope to fulfill their pastoral charge and lead the flock in the direction they are called to take it, towards Christ rather than away from him.

Bishops Say, People Do: Arrest of Hate Emailer in Connecticut

My recent open letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops links anti-gay statements made lately by Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado, to violence against gay and lesbian persons. My letter states,

Such immoral use of people subject to stigmatization elicits further prejudice and often results in violence of various kinds, ranging from outright assault to increased social scorn, against those identified as despised objects by political or religious authorities (here).

As a follow-up to that discussion, I reported earlier this week that the two openly gay Connecticut lawmakers targeted by Lori and Chaput in their campaign to resist lay oversight of parish finances, Andrew McDonald and Mike Lawlor, received a flood of hate mail (emails and conventional letters) following Lori and Chaput’s statements (here).

My posting notes that police were investing one email, in particular, which they considered a death threat, and which used the word “kill” in relation to the two lawmakers.

Yesterday, police arrested the person who allegedly made this email death threat. He is one Timothy Kane of New Britain, Connecticut, 26 years old. (here)

Oh, and by the way, his father Joseph Kane is a Catholic deacon.

When bishops fan flames of hatred and violence, people act out hatred and violence. For which bishops are then responsible.

Open Season on Gays, Catholic Bishops Leading the Way: The Connecticut Debacle

In his marvelous new book Sex As God Intended that I plan to review for this blog and other publications, theologian John J. McNeill states,

The enormous anti-gay campaign going on today, fomented by the religious right with the full cooperation of the Vatican, is clear evidence that they are fearful that they are losing the battle. And with good reason; a whole world is disappearing and it necessarily has to disappear. We must be ready, however, for another moment of backlash. We must have a vision of where our movement of gay liberation is going and of what we can do both for ourselves and the rest of humanity, our brothers and sisters, for we are involved in a process of liberating all human beings to the fullness of life (John J. McNeill, Sex as God Intended [Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe Press, 2008], p. 122).

We must be ready, however, for another moment of backlash. Prophetic words. We are, in fact, in the midst of that moment of backlash right now, on the very cusp of it, in recent events in the American Catholic church. In the past several days, a number of American Catholic bishops have openly played the gay-bashing card in an ugly, gratuitous way, as they seek to defend episcopal control of parishes calling for lay oversight of parish finances.

The bishops in question are William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Charles J. Chaput of Denver. I’ll get to what they have said—and done: to their deliberate attack on gay human beings in a political game designed to consolidate their ecclesial power—in a moment. First I want to sketch the context of this attack.

Here’s how I understand what has been going on in Connecticut, from the news reports I have read. A lay Catholic, Tom Gallagher, who sometimes writes for the publication National Catholic Reporter, approached the co-chairs of the Connecticut legislative judiciary committee, Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, to promote legislation assuring stronger lay involvement in the oversight of finances in Catholic parishes (here and here and here).

Lawlor and McDonald are both Catholic. Gallagher was concerned about cases of stupendous fiscal impropriety in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, diocese in recent years. On 12 Sept. 2007, Father Michael Jude Fay of St. John’s parish in that diocese pled guilty to misappropriation of what appears to be some $1.4 million of parish funds (here).

Prior to this, in December 1996, Monsignor Charles Stubbs of St. Mary’s church in the same diocese resigned amid allegations that he had improperly spent at least a half million dollars—about which the diocese has apparently never provided fiscal details, though Stubbs was eventually defrocked for molesting a boy (here). Tom Gallager is directly tied to the Stubbs story in that he was appointed a trustee of St. Mary’s parish in the month following Stubbs’ resignation.

What Gallagher sought through the bill he tried to place before the Connecticut legislature was direct lay oversight and control of parish finances. Though there have been precedents for this arrangement in the American Catholic church in the past, for a long time now priests acting under the authority of bishops have directly controlled the finances of all parishes. Lay finance boards are recommended by church documents. They do not exist in all parishes. And in no parishes do they have direct control over church finances.

This produces a series of serious problems for Catholic parishes. Those problems are glaringly apparent in ongoing reports, one following on the heels of another in the media, of fiscal impropriety by priests in parishes. A study done by Villanova University in January 2007 shows that, of American Catholic dioceses responding to its survey, 85% reported embezzlement of church funds in the past five years (here). Embezzlement is a predictable result of any system of fiscal oversight that places all the control of and reporting about money in the hands of one person, who is not accountable to or in any way supervised by those providing the money.

There is nothing at all in Catholic governance rules that requires a parish or a diocese to release to the public or to parishioners detailed and accurate information about the amount of money it takes in and how it uses that money. The system is notoriously lacking in transparency and in accountability. The laity who foot the bill for that system have no right at all to say how their money is being used, and no right to ask for reports to that effect.

This is a problem. It is thickly intertwined with the problem of clerical abuse of minors, which depends for its existence on the absolute power of clerics to do anything they please without lay checks and balances on their power, and on the right of clerics to refuse to be accountable to or to behave with transparency towards the laity.

Tom Gallagher’s solution to the problem may not have been the wisest one possible. It may infringe on the line separating church and state (but every bit as much as, and perhaps far less than, the political websites set up by Archbishop Chaput’s archdiocese during the last election) (here).

Even so, there is a problem, clearly so, and it is not going to be resolved by bishops who put holding the reins of power above all other values—as far too many bishops do, in violation of the gospels. I can understand Tom Gallagher’s frustration and what caused him to try to seek a solution to his problem at the state legislative level, though I may not agree with the approach he has taken.

And the response of some American Catholic bishops to this legislation, which did not even come before the legislature? All-out warfare. With their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as cannon fodder in the bloody battle.

In a statement on his blog on 8 March, Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport whips up the troops with rhetoric about a direct attack on our church and our faith—as if a bishop’s control of church finances is integral to core Catholics beliefs, and as if questioning that mutable, historically developed financial arrangement is an attack on the church and orthodoxy (here).

And what bloody flag does the bishop wave in his blog posting, to incite the faithful to action? He states that the pending legislation is “a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Catholic church on the important issues of the day, such as same-sex marriage.” “It is time for us to defend our church!” he concludes.

For anyone following the story up to the point of that battle cry, the allusion to some (entirely bogus) attempt to silence the church on same-sex marriage must sound, well, curious—if not entirely off the wall. The ugly insinuation that Lori is too delicate to spell out here—but entirely willing to make and use, as he whips up the masses—is that the bill being put before the Connecticut legislature is being promoted by—gasp!—homosexual activists.

Count on Archbishop Chaput, however, to go where angels fear to tread—though the legislation in question is in Connecticut and Chaput would appear to have no vested interest at all in intervening in an issue before that state’s legislature. In a statement the day after Lori’s blog entry above was posted, Chaput concurs with his brother bishop’s statement that the church is under attack. Chaput’s angle is that “bigots” who “resent” the church are attacking it through Gallagher’s legislation (here).

And, lest we remain in doubt about precisely who those resentful bigots might be, Chaput’s archdiocesan website helpfully encourages readers of his statement to peruse the coverage of the statement at the Catholic News Agency website. The Catholic News Agency of Denver, Colorado which, for some years now, has functioned to all intents and purposes as an arm of the Archdiocese of Denver and as a means by which Archbishop Chaput’s views on matters of church and state can be represented to the international Catholic media as “the” American Catholic voice on those issues.

Head over to Catholic News Agency and what do you read in its article entitled “Archbishop of Denver Warns that Conn. Bill Threatens Catholics Everywhere” (here; and see Enlightened Catholicism’s commentary here)? You read the following astonishing claim, one to which a bishop who purports to be concerned primarily about the integrity of the church and its leaders would, one would think, not want to be linked:

The Senate Bill 1098 was introduced last Thursday by the chairs of the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut State Legislature: Senator Andrew McDonald of Stamford and Representative Michael Lawlor of East Haven.

Sen. McDonald and Rep. Lawlor are both homosexual activists, who have opposed the local Church’s efforts to defend marriage between a man and a woman.

There you have it, dear readers, in a nutshell. Bishop Lori of Bridgeport whips up the faithful, informing them that pending legislation that has nothing at all to do with gay issues or same-sex marriage is a “thinly veiled attempt to silence the church” about gay marriage. And in faraway Colorado, Archbishop Chaput, who shares Lori’s view that the church is under siege and that the faithful need to be up in arms, speaks of “resentful” “bigots” attacking the church, and links to a right-wing Catholic newspaper in his own city that informs us—in reporting about Chaput’s press release—that “homosexual activists” are behind the Connecticut legislation.

And it has worked. The media and blogs have been full, all week long, of gay-baiting of the vilest sort, gay bashing that can be laid right at the feet of two Catholic bishops, two men who claim to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who are called to seek out the wounded sheep and bind up their wounds—not to inflict wounds.

The day after Lori made his blog statement, and the same day that Chaput released his, one Kevin “Coach” Collins posts at the Free Republic website with a headline screaming, "Connecticut’s Homosexuals open a final push to destroy the Catholic Church” (here). In elegant prose and with impeccable logic, “Coach” Kevin nails the homosexual conspiracy lurking behind proposed legislation to add lay folks to financial oversight committees in Catholic parishes as follows:

Since this is a blatant violation of the doctrine of separation of Church and State, and clearly at odds with the 1st and 14th Amendments and is a bill of attainder, it begs the questions: Why would this bill be introduced and cui bono (who benefits)?

Research has provided some possible answers.

Why would anyone back this bill?

Connecticut based gay website, G.A.Y. (Good as You) said this about McDonald and Lawlor:

“The two co-sponsors of the bill, Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor, are both practicing homosexuals. While cloaked in the garment of demanding fiscal transparency, the real doctrinal intention of the bill is unmistakable.” Now WHAT could that mean?

These two have also joined forces to introduce and push the state’s Civil Unions law. There is every reason to believe one of the possible “improvements” to the way the Catholic Church in Connecticut conducts Her operations might softening the Church’s position on gay conduct.

What else could it be?

What else, indeed? When priests embezzle huge amounts of money, and lay folks call for financial oversight of such embezzlement, look for a homosexual to be hiding somewhere in the bushes.

Despite the cogency of “Coach” Kevin’s stunning argument here, there’s a wee problem, unfortunately: he seems to have invented—totally—the quote from the Good as You website, an internet site that is not centered in Connecticut as he claims. For GAY’s response, see (here).

If you have the stomach for it, scan the blogs of the Catholic and political right this week, and see what the two good shepherds of the flock have wrought, with their cynical, ugly political use of gay human beings, gay lives, gay bodies, as political footballs in their battle to keep at bay lay oversight of Catholic parish finances. Check out the Pro Ecclesia blog, for instance, and you’ll read a huge WEB ALERT stating,

Senate Bill 1098 was introduced by Lawlor and McDonald (both homosexual activists) as a political ploy and distraction in order to pass Senate Bill 899 with minimal opposition! SB 899 goes far beyond the codification of the Kerrigan decision imposing same –sex marriage in CT. The goal of SB 899 is to strip away important statutory protections in order to pave the way for the eventual state mandated infusion of ‘gay positive’ themes into the public school curriculum. STOP SECTION 17!! (here).

Head back over to Chaput’s Catholic News Agency site and look at the threads commenting on articles about the Connecticut situation and you’ll read one from one Ron Pichlik, “This is nothing short of an attempt by the liberal, homosexual and secular agenda to try to put the Church in its' [sic] place” (here). Homosexuals and liberals and secularists all working together to do in the poor, embattled church . . . .

Go to the website of the National Catholic Reporter and read the article to which I linked previously, discussing the Connecticut case, and you’ll see one CHAYNES linking the homosexual conspiracy to National Catholic Reporter itself: “The bill was provided to the homosexual activists by Gallagher, the NCR's writer” (here).

It’s open season on the gays right now. And Catholic bishops are leading the way. Though the bill that never even made it to the legislative floor in Connecticut had nothing at all to do with gay issues, Bishops Lori and Chaput have not hesitated to play the homosexual conspiracy card, in their zeal to keep lay noses out of parish and diocesan fiscal records.

John McNeill is right, prophetically so. The more we see the structures of the homophobic, patriarchal church and the homophobic, patriarchal culture on which it depends cracking under the weight of their own corruption, the more likely we are to see a new backlash against gay human beings. We will see new attempts of those structures to blame gay human beings for what the leaders of those structures have themselves wrought.

We will see renewed attempts to play the gay scapegoat card when anyone seeks to hold those leaders accountable for their mismanagement of institutions, for their corruption, for their lies. And we will see those attempts working: the hatred that Lori and Chaput whipped up had a strong effect on what happened to the bill in the Connecticut legislature. They succeeded in turning that bill back in its tracks.

And now liberals, National Catholic Reporter, Voice of the Faithful—all kinds of other innocent bystanders—are being linked to the dark homosexual conspiracy behind the bill. Rub shoulders with us who are gay, and expect to be tarred with a mighty big and mighty wicked brush.

And if you think that this hate mongering is inadvisable, unChristian, and destructive to our social fabric, then please get to work. Because we’re going to see it get worse before it gets better, and lots of people who do not deserve to be hurt are going to be seriously damaged, in the name of Christ, before we stop it.