Month: August 2018

Dallas, Texas, Aug 24, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Competitors in an Ironman race swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles, and then run a marathon to complete more than 10 hours of racing that tests athletes’ highest levels of endurance. For some Catholics… […]

San Diego, Calif., Aug 24, 2018 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The Bishop of San Diego has explained why he did not respond to a 2016 letter alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and other Catholic clerics.
 
The letter was sent to Bishop Robert McElroy by psychotherapist Richard Sipe.

McElroy has been reported as a frontrunner to succeed Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC. Calls in recent weeks for the cardinal’s resignation follow an Aug. 14 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clerical sexual abuse, which questions the cardinal’s handling of sexual abuse allegations during his tenure as Bishop of Pittsburgh.

The bishop now faces questions regarding accountability and transparency surrounding abuse reports.

A former Benedictine priest, Sipe left the priesthood in the 1970s and married a former nun. He then spent several decades studying clerical sex abuse and calling for reform, and was a source for the Boston Globe team of reporters who broke the story of the 2002 Church sex abuse scandal.

Sipe estimated that 50 percent of priests are living unchastely, and 6 percent of clergy are abusers, though those estimates have faced frequent challenges from other researchers, including a 2004 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the U.S. bishops’ conference.

Sipe wrote to Bishop McElroy in 2016, listing allegations against half a dozen bishops – including then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – and warning of a broader problem of chastity violations among clergy.
 
“Sooner or later it will become broadly obvious that there is a systemic connection between the sexual activity by, among and between clerics in positions of authority and control, and the abuse of children,” Sipe wrote in the letter.
 
“When men in authority – cardinals, bishops, rectors, abbots, confessors, professors –are having or have had an unacknowledged-secret-active-sex life under the guise of celibacy an atmosphere of tolerance of behaviors within the system is made operative.”
 
The letter, which was published on Sipe’s website, drew media attention following the psychotherapist’s death earlier this month.

On Aug. 17, McElroy issued a public statement on the matter, noting Sipe’s death on Aug. 8. He said that Sipe had requested to meet with him about clergy sex abuse in 2016.
 
Over the course of “two long, substantive, cordial and frank discussions about the history of clergy sexual abuse in the United States,” McElroy said, Sipe made allegations against several bishops – including some who were then in ministry – and said that he was planning to approach the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, about the issue.
 
McElroy said he raised concerns that some of the Sipe information may be inaccurate.
 
“In two instances we discussed, I had certain knowledge of individuals being investigated and cleared yet he still leveled accusations against them,” the bishop said.
 
“Dr. Sipe stated that he was making many of his allegations against existing bishops based on information that he had received from his work in legal cases on behalf of survivors of abuse,” McElroy said, but asked if he could share specific corroborating documents, Sipe said he was unable to do so.
 
After Sipe requested a third meeting but was told by the McElroy’s assistant that the bishop could not meet with him that month, he hired a process server who came to the office, posing as a donor wishing to hand-deliver a check, McElroy said. The process server delivered a letter from Sipe.

McElroy said he did not respond to that letter because Sipe’s use of a process server, and apparent dissemination of the letter, made him untrustworthy.

“After I read it, I wrote to Dr. Sipe and told him that his decision to engage a process server who operated under false pretenses, and his decision to copy his letter to me to a wide audience, made further conversations at a level of trust impossible.”
 
Sipe’s July 28, 2016 letter warned of a widespread culture of illicit sexual activity among clergy. Pointing to his time as a staff member at three major seminaries, he said that patterns of sexual behavior are often established “during seminary years or in early years after ordination when sexual experimentation is initiated or sustained.”

“A serious conflict arises when bishops who have had or are having sexually active lives with men or women defend their behavior with denial, cover up, and public pronouncements against those same behaviors in others,” he said. “Their own behavior threatens scandal of exposure when they try to curtail or discipline other clerics about their behavior even when it is criminal as in the case with rape and abuse of minors, rape, or power plays against the vulnerable.”
 
In the letter, Sipe listed allegations against several bishops, including reports of misconduct by Archbishop John Neinstedt and Bishop Robert Brom, abuse by Bishop Thomas Lyons and Bishop Raymond Boland, and cover-up by Cardinal Richard Mahoney.
 
He also said that he had interviewed 12 priests and seminarians who described sexual advances and activity on the part of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
 
Sipe referenced a settlement against McCarrick, which he said described the cardinal’s sexual behavior and included correspondence from him.
 
McCarrick’s sexual propositions and harassment were covered up by intimidation, Sipe said, with priests and seminarians unwilling to speak up about it, for fear of risking their reputation and facing retaliation.

In one case, he said, a priest was told by the chancery office, “if you speak with the press we will crush you.”

In a recent letter to diocesan clergy, responding to the Pennsylvania grand jury report, Bishop McElroy lamented “the complicity of the leadership of the Church, which magnified abuse in so many instances by placing fear of scandal and a clerical culture above the foundational need to protect minors at all costs.”

He added that “(e)very bishop in our land bears a collective debt of guilt for these acts of abuse,” and called for cooperation in creating “not only a new structure, but also a new culture within the life of the Church.”

Ordained a priest in 1980, McElroy became the secretary of San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn two years later. He continued in graduate studies and parish work until he was appointed vicar general under Quinn in 1995.
 
Quinn would resign the following year, at age 66, amid complaints over his plan to close some of the city’s historic churches, and accusations that the archdiocese had failed to act on allegations of sexual abuse by two priests.
 
In 2017, McElroy delivered the homily at Quinn’s vigil. He praised the late archbishop as “a man who combined continuity and transformation, and in that identity lay his greatness as a leader in the church in the United States.”
 
McElroy remembered Quinn for his work in nuclear deterrence and outreach to AIDS victims, as well as his collaboration with laity and women religious, and his call for “a rearticulation of Catholic teaching on responsible parenthood.”
 
McElroy would go on in 2010 to become an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco, and was named Bishop of San Diego in 2015. In that role, he has echoed Pope Francis’ emphasis on poverty and care for the environment.

Reports that McElroy might succeed Wuerl in Washington first surfaced in the fall of 2017. Wuerl, 77, submitted a letter of resignation to Pope Francis in 2015, at the customary age of 75, though it has not yet been accepted by the pope.

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Little Rock, Ark., Aug 24, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Northwest Arkansas has its first independent Catholic school with the Aug. 16 opening of Ozark Catholic Academy.

“Our goal has not been to just open the doors, but to open them well,” John Rocha, the academy’s head of school, told the Arkansas Catholic newspaper.

Ozark Catholic Academy has enrolled 24 students for ninth and tenth grade in its first academic year, with its first senior class set to graduate in 2021.

It is temporarily based at St. Joseph Church in Tontitown, Ark., about 200 miles northwest of Little Rock. It is drawing students from the area, including some as far as Subiaco, a small town about a two-hour drive away.

One student, Matthew Moix, said his three older brothers attended Catholic grade school and junior high.

“But, nobody in my family has been through Catholic high school so I was the first one, and obviously, my parents were very excited,” Moix told the Fort Smith CBS television affiliate KFSM.

He said Ozark Catholic Academy “integrates the Catholic faith into everything.”

Beth McClinton of Fayetteville said her son would leave another private school to attend the school.

“We had hoped and prayed for a Catholic high school in northwest Arkansas since we experienced the fruits of having our children attend Catholic school in their primary years,” she said. “It has been 80 years since a new Catholic high school has opened its doors in Arkansas and northwest Arkansas has the highest number of registered Catholics in the state.”

Four of the state’s five largest Catholic parishes are in northwest Arkansas.

Ozark Catholic Academy has a college preparatory program with an emphasis on service and Catholic identity.

Its vision “aims to implement the Catholic Church’s mission of sanctification and evangelization through the Catholic intellectual tradition,” according to its website. Its mission is to engage students in “a rigorous, integrated education that enables them to behold the fullness of reality through both faith and reason and to live the virtues that make one fully human and truly free.”

The school’s coat of arms includes, in Latin, four words: freedom, docility or openness, truth, and sanctification.

Rocha, the head of school, was a founding staff member of the independent Catholic liberal arts boys’ school Western Academy in Houston, Texas. He served the school as development director and as a member of its administrative council.

The school will run a student leadership trip to Auxier, Ky. Students there will work with Hand in Hand ministries, an immersion experience intended to teach them about real world needs and how to serve with compassion.

“This will provide a Catholic world view for those students in understanding social justice issues and the drug epidemic that plagues this part of the country,” said Rocha. “For teenagers it is easier to help others, but we will challenge them to come back and truly love those around them in small actions, as well.”

He also noted Ozark Catholic Academy’s advisory program, which is one-on-one mentoring between a faculty member and a student.

“Building this relationship will help build stronger relationships among staff and students,” he said. “We believe strong relationships both with faculty and other students will help build a strong culture for the school. We also want students to continue to build relationships at home.”

Rocha said the push to launch the school began four-and-a-half years ago through the work of two sisters, Ashley Menendez and Adriana Stacy. Community supporters worked about 20,000 volunteer hours to launch the school.

Norma Ascenscio of Rogers, Ark., the mother of a new student, told the Arkansas Catholic her daughter went to a Catholic elementary school, adding, “I want her to be sure of her faith.”

“In today’s world, so many things occupy first place in their lives, but I want my daughter to be a person who loves God and is loved by God,” Ascenscio said.

Mark Breden of Fayetteville, a retired Procter and Gamble employee who is acting president of the school’s board of governors, said the new school should help companies recruiting families to move to the area. He said the school would emphasize building wisdom and character through Catholic education.

While the school is not operated by a parish, religious order or diocese, its religious curriculum must be approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and it must follow the directives of the local bishop, Anthony Taylor of Little Rock.

[…]

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 23, 2018 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Robert J. Carlson has invited the Missouri attorney general’s office to conduct an inspection of its files related to allegations of sexual abuse and to produce an independent report.

In… […]

Atlanta, Ga., Aug 23, 2018 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An injunction blocking the enforcement of an Alabama law that would have banned a second-trimester abortion procedure was upheld by a federal appeals court on Wednesday.

The 2016 law in question would have criminalized dilation and evacuation abortions (D&Es), dubbed “dismemberment abortions” by the state Alabama, which are the most common type of abortion performed in the second trimester.

Dilation and evacuation abortions are only used by two abortion clinics in the state, West Alabama Women’s Center and Alabama Women’s Center, which challenged the law with representation from the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a 3-0 decision Aug. 22, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found the law to be unconstitutional. The law was similarly blocked last October by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who said it was unconstitutional because it would have effectively banned abortion in the state after the first trimester.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall told reporters that while he was disappointed with the court’s decision, he was encouraged that the court “recognized the state’s important and legitimate interests in ending barbaric abortion procedures – in this case, procedures that literally tear apart babies living inside their mothers’ wombs.”

In his decision, Chief Judge Ed Carnes wrote that “the State has an actual and substantial interest in lessening, as much as it can, the gruesomeness and brutality of dismemberment abortions. That interest is so obvious that the plaintiffs do not contest it.”

“But the fact that the Act furthers legitimate state interests does not end the constitutional inquiry. The legitimacy of the interest is necessary but not sufficient for a pre-viability abortion restriction to pass the undue burden test,” he said.

Carnes wrote that the Alabama law posed an “undue burden” on women seeking second trimester abortions because the alternatives were not considered “safe, effective or available.”

“In our judicial system, there is only one Supreme Court, and we are not it. As one of the ‘inferior Courts,’ we follow its decisions,” Carnes wrote.

U.S. District Judge Joel Dubina wrote separately to concur with Carnes, adding that he agreed with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ criticism of the Supreme Court’s “abortion jurisprudence”, which “has no basis in the Constitution.”

“The problem I have, as noted in the Chief Judge’s opinion, is that I am not on the Supreme Court, and as a federal appellate judge, I am bound by my oath to follow all of the Supreme Court’s precedents, whether I agree with them or not,” Dubina wrote. “Therefore, I concur.”

U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams wrote separately to note that she agreed with the court in its final decision only.

Marshall has said his office may appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Alabama has had mixed results in passing recent pro-life legislation. In August 2017, a federal judge struck down an Alabama law requiring more scrutiny for minors who seek an abortion without parental consent.

The state is still considered to be one of the most restrictive in terms of abortion law. Alabama law requires that women be given counseling and an ultrasound prior to having an abortion, though it is optional for the woman to view the ultrasound image. It also has restrictions on the health insurance coverage of elective abortions that are not performed for reasons of life endangerment, rape or incest.

[…]

Dallas, Texas, Aug 23, 2018 / 04:43 pm (CNA).- A Texas priest under investigation for sexual abuse has disappeared, the Diocese of Dallas announced this week. Officials believe he may have fled to his native country, the Philippines.

Father Edmundo Paredes was the pastor at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff, Texas, before he was investigated by the church last year for stealing from the parish. Paredes acknowledged financial irregularities and was suspended from ministry in June 2017, the diocese said in a statement.

Church leaders suspect the priest took an estimated $60,000 to $80,000 during his 27 years at the parish.

At the time of his suspension, the Church had no knowledge of abuse allegations, the diocese said.

In February 2018, the Diocese of Dallas was informed of allegations that Paredes had molested three teenage boys between 10 and 20 years ago. The diocese said that it “immediately filed a report with law enforcement agencies so that an investigation could be launched.”

The allegations have been deemed credible, and the Church has hired two private investigators to locate the missing priest, Dallas Bishop Edward Burns said. The Church has also been in contact with the Filipino authorities.

Bishop Burns informed parishioners at St. Cecelia of the allegations against Paredes at Mass over the weekend. He remained after Mass to meet with parishioners.

Father Paredes has been banned from functioning or representing himself as a priest, the bishop said.

In a statement, the diocese said it had not made the allegations public sooner because it “did not want to hinder the investigation by law enforcement.”

“Bishop Burns was prepared to announce this allegation in March, but there was concern for the victims who asked that he would be committed to his anonymity in the community,” the diocese said.

“Because [Paredes] had not been at St. Cecilia or any other parish since June 2017, Bishop Burns tried to be sensitive to the victims’ request. When the Pennsylvania report was made public the Bishop believed [he] needed to inform the community of the allegations against the now suspended priest.”   

During Mass, Bishop Burns vowed to be transparent, with respect to the victims’ privacy, and offered his prayers and sympathy to the victims and community.

“With the utmost sensitivity to victims, I have pledged to continue efforts of transparency and need to make you aware of this atrocious and sad event,” he said.

“I offer my heartfelt apologies that these crimes have happened in your parish and please know I am praying for all victims of sexual abuse and for all of you here in the St. Cecilia community.”
 

[…]