The Once and Future Catholic Church

The following article was written by Father Gordon MacRae.  His article can be found here.
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The Book of Daniel and the Gospel of Mark warn of a great tribulation to come. Its early signs are already upon us and require invoking the Patron Saint of Justice.

A strange case has been simmering in the courts of the European Union for several years, and it came to an even stranger close at the end of October. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld a 2011 Austrian court verdict against a seminar presenter, a woman, for “disparaging religious doctrines.” In a 2009 seminar sponsored by the conservative Freedom Party in Austria, the woman recounted an event in the life of Muhammad ibn Abd Allah whose 7th Century proclamations of the Qur’an gave birth to Islam. The event is well documented.

In 620 AD, at the age of 56, soon after the death of his first wife, Muhammad married a young girl named A’isha. At the time of their marriage, A’isha was six years old. Muhammad described her as “very attractive and of a lively mind.” Many of the revelations resulting in the Quran occurred while he was in her company.

One day, when she was left behind during one of Muhammad’s expeditions, she returned to the group accompanied by a young man. This set off a monstrous scandal that threw the girl’s marital fidelity into doubt. Muhammad then dictated what he described as a divine revelation that assured him of her innocence. This story is recounted in the Qur’an (24:11-20).

In 2009, in an Austrian seminar entitled “Basic Information about Islam,” the seminar presenter described the story of the marriage of Muhammad and A’isha’concluding, “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it if not pedophilia?” In 2011, the Austrian court convicted the woman, imposing a fine for statements that constitute “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam.”

The woman appealed the verdict to the European Court of Human Rights. Last month, the verdict was unanimously upheld by an ECHR panel of seven judges including judges from Ireland, Germany, and France. The ECHR judges reasoned that the marriage between Muhammad and six-year-old Aisha lasted until Muhammad’s death when Aisha was 18-years-old. Thus, according to the court, “the marriage need not be motivated by pedophilia.”

The ECHR further reasoned that the convicted woman’s observations about the marriage could “stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace” and “could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship.” The ECHR arrived at this conclusion after having “carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.”

I could go into a long protracted analysis of a double standard in what constitutes “stirring up prejudice and threatening religious peace” – and how political correctness influences it – but I think you may already get the point. If you contrast the above story with the treatment the Catholic Church has been receiving in the news media and power centers of Western Culture, the duplicity is not at all subtle.

Sometimes you have to stand back a little from scandal in the Catholic Church to see a more panoramic view. The scandals feel less personal then, but also seem more ominous. A view from a little distance will leave you with a sense that there have been, and still are, some nefarious agendas behind the scenes of the Catholic abuse story.

The truth is that the world in which we live is retreating from all the institutions that once gave us meaning and purpose, and, most important of all, identity. “Losing my religion” is not just a 1991 pop culture hit by R.E.M. It is a cultural calamity.

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Without doubt, trust in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been strained in recent years. There is no denying it, and some of that distrust is justified by inconvenient truths that too many have tried to keep hidden. But look around you. Where DO you place your trust? Our politics are at the brink of civil war. Our news media once respected as the “Fourth Estate,” has hit rock bottom in public trust. Among polls of Americans, Congress is the second lowest source of trust among all institutions and the news media lower even than that.

Fatherhood has retreated into the forests. Families are falling apart. Gender has become confused, and a product of the will instead of the heart of one’s identity. In the Western world, the psyches of the young have become fragile. Universities pamper screaming mobs of students who block points of view that challenge them. Conservatives make them feel “unsafe.”

Colleges hire grief counselors to help 20-something year-old men and women cope with a C-level grade, or the trauma of being exposed to ideals, or of seeing a mouse in their dorm room. The resilience of young people – though still with some courageous exceptions – is under siege.

Politically, we are at each others’ throats in a game of one-upmanship and gotcha. It seemed to reach its most hurtful and horrifying peak in the public spectacle to which we were subjected in the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, guilty for being accused. That was the point at which I realized that we have reached a new low, and cannot descend much further without dissolving our union in hate.

In October this year, a middle-aged man in Florida mailed pipe bombs to a long list of political figures with whom he disagrees. Then a middle-aged man in Pittsburgh, a Holocaust denier on social media, killed eleven worshippers in a Synagogue after posting a rant about Jews and President Trump. Much of the news media played down the fact that the man despised Trump. Politics, that once honorable favorite pastime of America, has become dangerous.

OUR ONCE AND FUTURE FAITH

The same is true or is fast becoming true, in our Church. Canadian Catholic blogger, Michael Brandon wrote in response to a post on These Stone Walls awhile back: “The Catholic Church has become the safest place in the world for children, and the most dangerous place in the world for Catholic priests.” I wrote of the origin for that conclusion in a controversial post that was shared 25,000 times on social media: “Five Years of Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.”

The news media would have us all believing that the now forty-year-old sexual abuse scandal “could bring down the Catholic Church.” This is nonsense. The Church will survive this, but there is a far more pernicious threat that the news media makes it a point not to cover. I found a scary analysis of it in “The Catholic Crisis,” a fine article in Commentary (May 2018), by Sohrab Ahmari who also has a panoramic view of why Catholicism stands at a precipice and, surprise, the sexual abuse story is but a symptom of it, not the cause.

Sohrab Ahmari is a London editor for The Wall Street Journal and a senior writer at Commentary, a journal of thought and opinion established by the American Jewish Committee. He is completing a memoir on his journey to Catholicism, and, as such, a journey that forms his compelling panoramic view of the Church and its fate in the modern world. His article, “The Catholic Crisis” is a review of a new book by The New York Times’ columnist, Ross Douthat, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.

Both Ahmari and Douthat note that “the principle duty of a Catholic” is not to the pope, but to “the truth the papacy exists to preach, to preserve, and to defend.” Mr. Ahmari wrote:

“There is a reason to worry that lately a spirit of relativism has entered the Roman Church that threatens to undermine its unity and catholicity. That should concern Catholics and non-Catholics because the Church is the living bedrock of the West and one of the last bastions of the principal that moral truth is moral truth yesterday, today, a thousand years from now.”

In Pope Francis, both writers see a papacy that “thrives in ambiguity.” Their evidence is found among a list of perplexing notions including recent comments by Pope Francis calling into question the existence of hell. Defenders of the Pope excused the incident as a misreading of the Pope’s remarks by leftist, atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari. However, as Ahmari points out, this particular faux pas was the fifth interview Pope Francis has granted to this journalist.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has remained unresponsive to a request for dialogue and clarification on some controversial points in Amoris laetitia. American Cardinal Raymond Burke and other conservative cardinals posed a series of “Dubia” asking whether the prohibition on authorizing communion for those divorced and remarried in a civil, but not sacramental, union still stands. The pope, according to Ahmari, “first ignored, and then ridiculed them.”

Mr. Ahmari also reports on Ross Douthat’s “fascinating speculation” on the future of Catholicism, and it is one in which conservatives should find cause for hope. As I have written in previous posts, the Church and faith will survive this current age of doubt. In the meantime,
fidelity is our only effective response to it. But Ross Douthat offers a more sobering source of hope summarized by Ahmari:

“The liberals simply don’t have the numbers… theological liberalism is in demographic decline, and liberal orders struggle to attract vocations. Church coffers may be full, but the pews are empty. The leading lights of theological liberalism are octogenarians, and there are no successors in the wings.”

“Conservatives and traditionalists, meanwhile, have the numbers, the intellects, the energy. Orders that prize tradition and orthodoxy are thriving worldwide. In population terms, Africa is a beacon of hope for conservatives, a continent where weekly Mass attendance averages 70 percent (compared with just 20 percent in Europe) and where the Church wins nine million new believers each year.”

Quite by accident in the last few weeks, I came across a much more local summation of the state of the Church in North America, and it seems bleak. At least, it did for me until I got to the last few stunning paragraphs.

In a climate in which I thought the faithful had abandoned the notion of the Church as a mirror of justice, a faithful Catholic, a lawyer no less, concluded his stunning take on the state of the Church by profiling what the witch hunt has meant for one wrongly imprisoned priest. Don’t miss “Priests, Good and Bad” by Frank Friday published at American Thinker (October 27, 2018).

THE PATRON SAINT OF JUSTICE

Some extraordinary things can be found in Ordinary Time. It is by no human design that readings assigned long ago for the Sunday liturgy arose just weeks ago at a time of tribulation for the Catholic Church. The readings for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time were anything but ordinary. Their timing seems a divinely inspired gift.

But before I proceed down this path through the labyrinthine ways of Sacred Scripture, I want to share with you a message from a very good priest and a friend, Father Stuart MacDonald. Writing from Ontario, Father Stuart is a canon lawyer and author of the TSW guest post, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.”

Readers may recall from my posts in recent months that a new GTL tablet allows me to receive messages from those who establish a messaging account at GTL’s mainframe, (www.ConnectNetwork.com). At the time of his guest post, Father Stuart established a messaging connection and, along with a few other readers, has been helping to keep me up to date on matters affecting the Church at this critical time.

His messages have included entire missives from and about Archbishop Carlo Viganò and his challenge to Pope Francis centered on the controversy over former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. This is a time of great tribulation for faithful Catholics, and especially so for priests who feel their loyalties torn and their allegiance under clouds of doubt. I am not shielded behind These Stone Walls from the doubt and pain experienced by so many priests right now.

A few weeks ago, Father Stuart sent a series of messages to me containing Archbishop Viganò’s published response to Cardinal Ouellet. Archbishop Viganò has challenged Pope Francis for his handling of the Cardinal McCarrick affair and other matters. I wrote about this in a series of posts I will link at the end of this one.

Just days before sitting down to type this post, wondering what on earth I could write about without taking a side on the vortex of information and misinformation, Father Stuart sent me this message:

“I have been so shaken by all this that a few weeks ago, I informed my small congregation that henceforth all weekday masses would be ad orientem because the time has come to focus on Christ and not the cult of the priest and his performance. I pray the canon in Latin sotto voce now and we pray the Prayer to St. Michael at the end of every mass. Call me foolish if you want, but it is the only way I am going to survive.”

The world might call him foolish, but I could only call him faithful. And like me, he perhaps had no idea when he wrote that message that the Mass readings for the following Sunday, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, provided a solid basis in Scripture for what he has undertaken. The Book of Daniel (12:1-3) calls upon Michael, the Great Prince, and Guardian of your people,” while the Gospel of Mark (13:24-32) warns of a time of great tribulation. For many, that time has come. I can only add to Father Stuart’s resolve the words of Saint Peter, Bishop of Rome:

“Stay sober and alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.” (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Advent Announcement

We had our Advent Announcement last night.  Kudos to the 90 Guam NCW youth who traveled to Saipan.  Our Guam youth got together with the NCW youth of Saipan and helped clean up the chapel and other debris left by Super Typhoon Yutu.  They were also greeted by Bishop Ryan, and he was able to celebrate the Eucharist with them.  

We have also learned that the reason there were no organized effort of WYD Panama was due to the availability of the flights.  However, David said that they will try to attend the WYD in Panama, but only the youth who are 18 years old and up may attend due to the time constraints.  

We were also given instructions on how to prepare the coming Advent.  As usual, we will have our "Belen" (nativity) up, and we will be saying the novenas.  Advent is a reminder that Jesus Christ is coming.  We were also reminded that although Christ came the first time, He also told us that He will come a second time.  We don't know when that time will be; nevertheless, we need to prepare ourselves for His coming.

Kudos To The NCW Youth

Kudos to Guam's NCW youth who left to Saipan to help in the recovery effort, which was devastated by Super Typhoon Yutu.  God bless you!!  

And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!

Read This Before Leaving The Church Over An Abuse Scandal

The following article was written by Father Gordon MacRae and can be found here. 
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Most of what you know about Catholic scandal is from the news media, the one institution that polls lower in public trust than Congress. Is there more to this story?

While writing about the Senate Judiciary hearings over the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, I spent a lot of time with the whole sordid affair on the three major cable news stations. After we posted “Justice Brett Kavanaugh Is Guilty for Being Accused,” a media watchdog site published a report on average daily viewers. FOX News had a daily average viewership higher than CNN and MSNBC combined and more than twice that of the network news at ABC, CBS, or NBC.

This is not an advertisement for FOX News, at least not an intentional one. The good people at FOX have their infuriating moments too. But I have to admit that I spent longer on FOX News than the others, though I did make an effort to give each a fair shot at my news consumption. It was just that my own life experience has left “me painfully aware of how very much politics can influence our view of justice.” The panels and pundits of the left-leaning news media seemed to accept without question the “guilty-for-being-accused” dogma and spin it as justice.

But the FOX News panels and pundits did something only slightly less irritating. They treated as entirely new something that they claim to be aware of only now from the Judge Kavanaugh Senate hearings: the idea that some who are accused can be summarily condemned for reasons more connected to identity politics than evidence or corroboration.

Even as the FOX News pundits feigned being aghast at this during the Kavanaugh hearings, their news ticker at the bottom of my screen ran stories of the various state justice systems around the country demanding new investigations of Catholic priests going back decades, not because there is evidence, but because they are priests. I wrote of this in a comment when The Wall Street Journalpublished its lead editorial of Sep. 24, 2018:

“I hope the Journal editors are not just catching on to this. A precedent to what is happening to Judge Kavanaugh and other targets of the #MeToo movement can be found in the Catholic scandals of the last two decades. Beginning in the early 1990s, the news media aided and abetted a push by activists and tort lawyers to treat every claim of decades-old abuse as true until proven false. The bias that the media helped create was built on easily quoted but false mantras such as ‘children never lie about sexual abuse’ which entirely disregarded the fact that 70% of the accusing ‘children’ were adults in their forties and fifties. The Wall Street Journal once boldly exposed the moral panic when its targets were innocent daycare workers in the 1980s.” Gordon J. MacRae, WSJ Sep. 24, 2018

But even here at These Stone Walls, where the concept of due process has been front and center, one faithful reader abandoned it in a comment declaring Judge Kavanaugh to be “a rapist and a drunk.” We did not post it, but not because we are opposed to contrary points of view. We did not post it because it would be spreading a slander with no real evidence to support it.

THE RISKS OF A VICTIM CULTURE

During the Kavanaugh hearings, The Wall Street Journal ran a full page ad containing only two words in huge block letters “BELIEVE WOMEN.” Presumably other newspapers ran the same persuasive ad. Think about this, please. It suggests that corroboration can and should be replaced in identity politics as gender loyalty takes precedence over the discovery of facts and truth.

During the day care sex abuse scare of the 1980s, a similar mantra, “Believe the Children” replaced due process, and in the 1990s it was The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz whose Pulitzer prizewinning Journalism unmasked the panic and exposed it in the Journal and in her chilling bestseller, “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Time” (Wall Street Journal Books 2003).

I was most impressed during the Kavanaugh hearings by some of the Letters to the Editor in The Wall Street Journal written by women who see the great risk to justice posed by identity and gender politics. I’ll cite a few here:

“The Kavanaugh hearings painfully reminded me of the time I was drugged and assaulted during college in the 1970s. My disgust for my assaulter is equal to my abhorrence of the ‘believe survivors’ diktat of the left which dangerously seeks to negate due process.” Margaret Bowen, WSJ Oct. 10, 2018

“I don’t think Brett Kavanaugh owes anybody an apology for expressing emotion in a hearing where his good name… was at stake. The only ones owing anyone an apology are the particular senators who ambushed him to increase their own political power while not caring if they destroyed his or Prof. Ford’s lives in the process.” Heather Jones, WSJ Oct. 10, 2018

“Am I the only mother of a teenage son who is terrified by the Kavanaugh circus? I have taught my 17-year-old to be respectful of everyone… but what if in 10, 20, or 30 years some woman accuses my son of sexually assaulting her? Of course he will deny it, but will anyone believe him? Melanie Prieger, WSJ Oct 10, 2018

“I want to thank Senator Susan Collins as the mother of a son who I pray is never wrongly accused and considered guilty until proven innocent… and as a citizen who is scared for our nation after watching the Kavanaugh hearings Sen. Collins’ speech was a master class in how politics is supposed to work and why it didn’t in this case.” Carla Albers, WSJ Oct 10, 2018

“I have been both sexually assaulted and falsely accused. I am hard pressed today to say which was worse.” Name Withheld, WSJ Sep 24

“The letters of Sept 21 included one from the honest 81-year-old woman who told of the attempted sexual assault she so unfortunately endured when she was 11. She states, ‘It is as clear to me now as the night it happened.’ She makes the point that victims of such horrible, unwanted sexual advances have vivid, specific memories while, according to her attorney, Christine Blasey-Ford did not.” Mary DuCoin, WSJ Oct 3, 2018

In 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal wrote her first installment in a series of expository articles about my charges and trial. Her opening article in her series was published with a descriptive subheading: “Some claims of abuse in the Catholic Church turn out to be untrue.”

In 2013, Ms. Rabinowitz wrote a third installment about my trial entitled, “The Trials of Father MacRae” which was summarized in an often cited quote: “Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.”

Unlike the claims and charges themselves, these articles were well researched and heavily investigated. They also alarmed a number of people whose investment in the business of accusation and settlement was well known. The WSJ received hundreds of letters and comments from readers who were aghast at the story of fraud and greed masked as victimhood that Ms. Rabinowitz had uncovered.

“A RAPIST AND A DRUNK”

 

But one letter that was not published by the WSJ came from an angry New Hampshire woman who did not know me or anyone who was a party to the claims against me. Her two-page letter accused the WSJ editors of orchestrating a “right-wing conspiracy” to undermine “the cause of survivors.”

It felt almost surreal for me when a TSW reader tried to post a comment declaring Brett Kavanaugh, without evidence, to be “a rapist and a drunk.” The same phrase was applied to me. When I wrote “Justice Brett Kavanaugh Is Guilty for Being Accused” for These Stone Walls recently, I recalled a painful chapter in my own experience of being “guilty for being accused.”

I wrote of how the same activist mentioned above did a Google search of my name and came up with a false media report that I am an alcoholic. She then ran with that story, spreading it everywhere. It showed up on social media and in letters to the editor of local New Hampshire newspapers. And she got away with citing the fake story as “evidence” that I may have abused others but simply don’t remember it.

I always wondered where this woman had obtained her information, so, as I wrote in the above post, some friends who had known me for some time went in search of a source and found it. Then a real investigator a former and highly decorated FBI Special Agent, took up a real investigation of the story and also went in search of the evidence not only for that claim, but for others.

And he also found it. As I mentioned in my post about Justice Kavanaugh above, it was in a published interview with actress Meredith MacRae who wrote of her late father, the 1950s and 1960s Broadway and Hollywood star of Carousel, Oklahoma and other plays and films. “My father, Gordon MacRae, was an alcoholic,” she asserted in the interview. Intentionally or not, the line taken out of context easily fit the New Hampshire woman’s narrative in her SNAP-sponsored crusade.

Her persecution did a lot of damage to me, to my reputation and my efforts at self-defense, and to my family. Her purpose for spinning it was an attempt to halt the rising tide of people who had come to believe that I just might be innocent of the charges that put me in her state’s prison. Just like Brett Kavanaugh in the eyes of the left, there was no corroboration to justify the claims against me other than the conclusion now formally adopted for the #MeToo era.

It’s a new category of justice that has a precedent. Our bishops had already adopted it to apply to all priests accused since the bishops themselves began to be smeared in the news media. It is a category of justice called “guilty for being accused.” When the newly radicalized left tried to apply it to Judge Kavanaugh, however, the nation simply wasn’t having it.

Back to the New Hampshire crusader: For her efforts at persecution, she was given a “survivors support” award from SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and she was publicly honored by the Catholic reform group, Voice of the Faithful.

Just at the time that I recalled and wrote about the New Hampshire woman’s alcoholism claim, I learned that she had died on September 5, 2018, the same day I posted “That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests.” I learned of her death by accident, and in so doing I also learned that her son is a New Hampshire priest. It made me wonder about the woman who wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the Kavanaugh affair makes her fear for her 17-year-old son.

I have spent many days now praying for the New Hampshire woman, and have approached the altar at which I know I must forgive her. Thanks to the Amish, to Pornchai Moontri, and to Malcolm Farr who wrote “The Pain of Suffering and the Power of Forgiveness.” I had living daily reminders that I must forgive this women for her blind persecution. I am grateful that, in writing the above account, I have not identified her. I have a long-standing desire not to speak ill of the dead who are no longer here to defend themselves.

Think about that, too, please, as we peruse the long lists of long-dead priests thrown under the bus by accusers and contingency lawyers looking to score a windfall, by politically ambitious prosecutors on a career-building mission, and by bishops looking for relevance and hero status for their zero tolerance which is starting to sound far more Calvinist than Catholic.

ZERO TOLERANCE

The leaders of the Church are not brain dead. Of course there should be zero tolerance for sexual abuse. But to apply it to an 80-year-old priest accused from 50 years ago with zero evidence or corroboration is the stuff of witch hunts. When U.S. bishops settled on the term “credible” to settle claims, it means only that a claim “could have happened.” I profiled one such case in “When Night Befalls Your Father You Don’t Discard Him. You Just Don’t!” But we do discard them – by the hundreds – merely for being accused.

I am amazed and alarmed at the extent to which Catholics are willing to let others do their thinking for them on this issue. Not many of you reading this have any first hand experience of abuse by Catholic priests that so many now accept so blindly as having been rampant in the Church. Beyond the accusations themselves – most of which are decades old and subject to lucrative financial rewards – there is little evidence to support this.

But even when the claims are true – and sadly, some are true – why should we believe that the evil that has come into our world in the age of relativism should exempt Catholic priests from its affliction? On the contrary, we are its primary targets. Do you think that any priest ever woke up one day and said to himself, “I think I will sexually abuse someone today?” The very fact that such a thing is so contrary to priesthood is what makes them targets for the Satanic attack underway both against and within our Church.

And some of the self-proclaimed heroes of this war also need a second look. After igniting a whole new chapter in the moral panic about Catholic priests, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has declared it to be a strangely personal affair. A TSW reader in Indiana recently sent him “That Grand Jury Report on Abusive Catholic Priests. He wrote in response defending his crusade in very personal terms:

“My office works to protect children throughout Pennsylvania every single day. As Attorney General, I am dedicated to rooting out child predators no matter where they hide. Whether it’s a pediatrician in Johnstown, a deputy coroner in Schulkill County, a firefighter in Carbon County, a former National Guard officer in Dauphin County, or a predator priest in one of these dioceses, I will not tolerate anyone who victimizes Pennsylvania’s children.”

I read recently that there have been some 80,000 sexual abuse complaints lodged against public school personnel in America in the last decade, but they are curiously omitted from the list of people Attorney General Shapiro will not tolerate. Powerful teacher unions make that politically unfeasible for upwardly mobile prosecutors.

The Brett Kavanaugh story has emphasized the difference between being guilty and being merely accused. There is also a difference between actual cases and mere claims. The vast majority of claims in Pennsylvania and across the nation were not brought by children, but by adults with an expectation of virtually unquestioned settlement. The truth is that the Catholic Church in America is the sole institution to have virtually eradicated contemporary sexual abuse.

If you or someone you know is citing the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report as a cause for losing faith, it seems that Fred Thieman, former U.S. Attorney for Pennsylvania agrees with my assessment, not only of its value, but of its Constitutionality:

“The grand jury report focuses on what happened decades ago rather than in changes of practice that I have seen and been involved in over two decades. I question the wisdom of the entire process in Constitutional terms. I don’t think the grand jury report provides ample basis for anyone to draw conclusions from older evidence and state them as current fact until the evidence has been examined and tested.” (Former Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Fred Thieman).

Archdiocese Plans To File For Bankruptcy

Recently, the Archdiocese of Agana have stated that they will be filing for bankruptcy because mediation have failed.  The Archdiocese wanted a global settlement, which was rejected by some of the alleged victims.  Some of the alleged victims felt that not everyone should get the same settlement payment because some suffered more than others.  For example, Ramon de Plata filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Agana for 5 million dollars; however, he was never sexually abused or molested.  He claimed to be a WITNESS.  According to Pacific Daily News:

“During the night at the rectory, Ramon witnessed Cruz sexually molest and abuse an altar boy, together with a seminarian named Anthony Sablan Apuron, who would later become an ordained priest on Guam and ultimately serve as the archbishop of the Agana archdiocese,” the complaint states.

De Plata is represented by attorney David Lujan. Lujan filed the lawsuit at 4:56 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22. It's the 14th clergy sex abuse lawsuit that Lujan and Wolff has filed this year.

Therefore, it is not a surprise that some will complain about the global settlement in which everyone will be paid equally the same amount.  Also, the lawyers and many of the alleged victims who are in their 60s and 70s want to be paid as soon as possible.  As the Guam Daily Post pointed out (the bold is mine):

“If there’s one reason I didn’t hesitate going into the mediation, it’s because it allows for a quick resolution especially with a portion of my clients who want a resolution,” Lujan told The Guam Daily Post. 

With many clients in their 60s and 70s and several of them ill, Lujan said he believes his clients would want to get “something” for their families before they pass away.

Because mediation has failed, Archbishop Byrnes have decided to file for bankruptcy.  After filing for bankruptcy, the bankruptcy judge will set a "bar date period" for additional clergy claims abuse to be filed.  After the "bar date period" no lawsuits can be filed against the Archdiocese.  Nevertheless, more lawsuits are now coming in faster than before.  Archbishop Byrnes made known his plans to file for bankruptcy on November 7th.  See the story here.  

After the announcement of bankruptcy, two days later TWO lawsuits was filed against the Archdiocese.  On November 9th, a lawsuit was filed by M.C.A. against two dead priests: Monsignor Jose Ada Leon Guerrero and Raymond Techaira who both served as priests in the Asan parish.  M.C.A. is a client of Attorney David Lujan. See the story here dated November 9, 2018.  

On the same day, another news report came out about another lawsuit filed against the Archdiocese. E.F.G. filed a lawsuit against a former teacher of St. Anthony Catholic School and the Archdiocese. Her lawyer is also Attorney David Lujan.  The interesting thing about this last lawsuit was that the name of the accused was protected.  According to the Pacific Daily News (the bold is mine):

A former student at St. Anthony Catholic School in Tamuning filed on Friday a $5 million lawsuit accusing her former teacher of sexually abusing her for about a year when she was 13 around 2012 to 2013. 

The plaintiff is identified in Superior Court of Guam documents only as E.F.G. to protect her privacy. The lawsuit also identified the teacher only by his initials, H.J. 

E.F.G., represented by Attorney David Lujan, said in her lawsuit that H.J. was her teacher at the Catholic school between late 2012 through mid-2014.

2013 was only five years ago.  Why did she not report it to her parents and to the police?  Surely, one cannot claim that the parents would not believe her. The Boston sex scandal occurred in 2002 and SNAP was in Guam in 2011.  Therefore, after 2011 priests were no longer placed on pedestals, and people were already aware of the sex scandal among the clergy.  Another interesting thing is why hide the name of the accused?  All the people previously accused of child sexual abuse have been named. 

What do the Catholics of Guam expect to see after the filing of bankruptcy?  According to news report (the bold is mine):

Perez said just because the archdiocese is filing for bankruptcy does not mean it will go out of business.

“In my discussions with attorneys from my team with extensive experience in these types of bankruptcies, this filing will allow the archdiocese to reorganize and still be operational after the claims are paid and the bankruptcy is closed,” he said.

James said the archdiocese’s bankruptcy filing will automatically stop any further action in the lawsuits that have been filed, and it will create a deadline for all Guam clergy abuse victims to file claims.

“It will be important for those who have not come forward to do so and file their claim,” said James, who, along with Vernon, has extensive experience in Catholic church bankruptcies.

There are important deadlines in a bankruptcy that must be met. All claims against the archdiocese must be filed prior to the “claims bar date,” which will be set by the bankruptcy judge, the attorneys said.

Yes, the filing of bankruptcy will allow the Archdiocese to reorganize and still be operational.  How do you think it will be reorganize?  Just as we have learned from the Churches in the United States who filed for bankruptcy, parishes were closed down.  Guam is a small island with a parish in every village and not every parish is filled to capacity.  Any bankruptcy judge can see that parishes can be closed down while members join the other nearby parishes.  An example are the parishes of Yona, Chalan Pago, Barrigada, and Mangilao.  These parishes are within driving distance of each other.  Agana Heights and Sinajana can also be shut down and join the Masses held in the Cathedral. 

Once they start closing the parishes and selling it, you can start thanking the JungleWatch Nation for destroying our parishes. . As Archbishop Byrnes stated in the news media (the bold is mine):

Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes is calling on Catholics to embrace the planned bankruptcy filing, which he said is an opportunity to reorganize the Archdiocese of Agana and become a better church amid nearly 200 clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed since 2016........

"This is an opportunity to reorganize ourselves, to become a better church — the best we can be," Byrnes wrote.........

Yes, a better church.  Once they start closing down the parishes and selling it, you can start thanking the Junglewatch Nation for destroying our parishes.  Remember that it was the Junglewatch Nation, Silent No More, CCOG, and LFM who introduced, supported, and worked for the passage of a bill that lifted the statutes of limitations.....a bill that would eventually take away many Church assets and close down our parishes.....a bill that left no investigative measure of determining who are the real victims of abuse and who are the fake ones.  And if you think that people cannot come out, fabricating stories of child sexual abuse, see my last post on More on Judge Kavanaugh.  

More On Judge Kavanaugh

A Kavanaugh accuser came out and admitted that she lied about being raped by Judge Kavanaugh.  According to news report:

One of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers admitted this week that she made up her lurid tale of a backseat car rape, saying it “was a tactic” to try to derail the judge’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee revealed the fraud in a letter to the FBI and Justice Department Friday, asking them to prosecute Judy Munro-Leighton for lying to and obstructing Congress........

She admitted to the false allegation, and said she has actually never met Justice Kavanaugh.

Ms. Judy Munro-Leighton lied about being raped because she did not want Judge Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.  By bringing a false allegation of rape, she had hoped to derail his confirmation.  She had an agenda.  To bring a false accusation against a person is heinous for two reasons.: 1) it sought to destroy the person's name and reputation and 2) it undermines the REAL victims who were raped and abused.