Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet atends the pope’s Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, 2022, at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. / Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images
Denver, Colo., Dec 13, 2022 / 16:50 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Marc Ouellet has filed a defamation lawsuit in Quebec courts contending that a woman wrongly accused him of sexual assault in a class-action sex abuse lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Quebec.
“I have never been guilty of these reprehensible behaviors, much less of those alleged against other members of the clergy cited in the class action,” the cardinal said in a Dec. 13 statement accompanying the lawsuit. “This inappropriate association, intentionally constructed and widely spread for improper purposes, must be denounced.”
“Having preliminarily made sure to protect the plaintiff’s anonymity by obtaining an order to that effect, today I am taking legal action for defamation before the courts of Québec in order to prove the falsity of the allegations made against me and to restore my reputation and honor,” Ouellet said.
The 78-year-old cardinal served as archbishop of Quebec from 2002 to 2010. He is currently prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, a key Vatican body that helps the pope evaluate prospective candidates to be named Catholic bishop.
Ouellet was accused of sexual assault by a woman identified pseudonymously as “F.” in an August class-action civil suit filed by multiple plaintiffs against the Archdiocese of Quebec.
The lawsuit against the archdiocese includes the testimony of 101 people who say they were sexually assaulted by clerics or Church staff from 1940 to the present. Eighty-eight clerics are accused in the suit.
Justin Wee, one of the lawyers who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told CBC News his client “F.” had heard about the defamation lawsuit online. He had not seen the motion to initiate the lawsuit.
The Vatican, for its part, conducted a preliminary investigation in August. Pope Francis determined that there was not sufficient evidence to begin a canonical investigation against Ouellet for sexual assault.
The woman “F.” says that the cardinal, then archbishop of Quebec, inappropriately kissed or touched her on multiple occasions while she worked as a pastoral intern for the Quebec Archdiocese between 2008 and 2010. She alleged that the misconduct included kissing her and sliding his hand down her back to her buttock.
Ouellet’s defamation lawsuit was filed in the civil division of the superior court in the District of Montreal. It alleges that the “false allegations” against him “have caused and continue to cause serious damage” to the cardinal’s personal and professional reputation. He has also suffered “significant psychological anguish.”
His lawsuit seeks 100,000 Canadian dollars in compensatory damages, about $74,000.
“Any financial compensation that I may receive as a part of these proceedings will be donated in its entirety in support of the fight against the sexual abuse of the Indigenous peoples of Canada,” Ouellet said Tuesday.
According to the cardinal’s defamation lawsuit, the alleged incidents occurred at four different public events: a Sisters of Charity event in Beauport in the fall of 2008; a pastoral appointment ceremony in November 2008; a meeting at an event in a church basement; and during a diaconal ordination at a church in February 2010.
The defamation lawsuit says the cardinal “has no recollection of ever having met Mrs. F. He does not know her.” It says her accounts are inconsistent with the nature of the cardinal’s interactions in public settings. At these events, his lawsuit says, he would make a customary greeting “either by shaking hands or by a kiss on the cheek and would attempt to personalize each interaction in a manner consistent with the behavior of any person in a public representation role.”
His lawsuit further contends that even if the alleged acts took place, which the cardinal denies, they did not constitute “touching of a sexual nature” or sexual assault. It claims the accuser’s comments are contradictory.
The defamation lawsuit alleges another legal fault in that the allegations came in the context of “other allegations involving serious acts against minors.” The allegations against the cardinal are not of a similar nature to the sexual assault of minors by other clergymen alleged in the suit against the archdiocese.
“Ms. F. could not allege her story in such a procedural context,” the lawsuit says. “One may wonder why Ms. F.’s story is included among reprehensible acts of pedophilia, except to include a member of the high clergy in the case.”
“To have associated Mr. Ouellet with individuals who would have committed acts of such a nature constitutes negligence,” the defamation lawsuit continues. “This is so, because the ordinary citizen will perceive that all the reproaches made against the ecclesiastics named in the application are of the same nature, as they are grouped under the same procedure.”
“I firmly denied these slanderous and defamatory accusations unfairly made against me,” he added, citing his previous statement of Aug. 19.
“In truth, I want to emphasize that I never committed the acts of which the plaintiff accuses me,” he said Tuesday.
Ouellet said that sexual abuse victims need justice.
“It is clear that the victims of sexual abuse are entitled to just compensation for the harm they have suffered. I am sensitive to their suffering and reiterate my sincere closeness to them,” he said. “Their right to justice is not questioned by my taking this stand, which is nevertheless painfully necessary to defend the truth, my reputation, and my honor.”
The class-action lawsuit against the Quebec Archdiocese, filed Aug. 16, says that F. wrote to Pope Francis about Ouellet in January 2021. She received an email Feb. 23, 2021, stating that the Vatican had appointed Jesuit Father Jacques Servais to investigate the cardinal. Her last communication with Servais was the following month, March 2021.
Less than a week after the lawsuit was filed, the Vatican said it would not hold a trial against Cardinal Ouellet over the sexual assault allegations.
Servais, the Vatican investigator, said in August that “there are no grounds” to open an investigation into sexual assault. “Neither in his written report sent to the Holy Father nor in the testimony via Zoom that I subsequently took in the presence of a member of the Diocesan Ad Hoc Committee, did this person make an accusation that would provide grounds for such an investigation.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni added that after relevant consultations, Pope Francis “declares that there are insufficient elements to open a canonical investigation for sexual assault.”
Ouellet was ordained a priest of Quebec’s Diocese of Amos in 1968, at age 23. He joined the Sulpicians in 1972. In 2001 he was appointed secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and consecrated a bishop.
He served as archbishop of Quebec from 2002 to 2010, when he was appointed prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Ouellet has been outspoken about the need to prevent sex abuse by clergy and the need for sound formation of priests. He has advocated for the increased inclusion of women in the formation of priests and has said that priests need to know how to relate to women well to have a balanced personality.
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Back when I was a kid, I knew the Church was partly to blame for overpopulation because they forbad birth control. And I eventually came to understand that the Christian prohibition of sex-before-marriage was really all about preventing illegitimate children. Now that we have contraceptives, the prohibition is out-dated.
Don’t get me started on abortion.
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Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
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Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?
WHAT are you talking about!! Christ said that out of wedlock sex was sin before there was a Church. This issue in nonnegotiable.
Exactly
The prohibition on sex before marriage has everything to do about immorality and abuse of God’s gifts and NOTHING to do with illegitimacy. And having birth control available has nothing to do with it. Sex with a person not your marriage partner is forbidden. Period.Scott and Kimberly Hahn are faithful converts to Catholicism . Their book Rome Sweet Home goes into some detail about their understanding of the Catholic concept of birth control. In short they dropped their Protestant belief of pro-contraception and accepted Catholic belief. I dont have any idea what you are referncing about them.
I think you are perhaps a bit caught up in the first paragraph and did not well read the second two:
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“Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
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Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?”
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There was a time the Church hierarchy defended the Church’s “family life teachings.” The Hahns, Kipple’s, Smith, Zimmerman (and others) learned them, and were able to effectively transmit and convert others–including me.
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Very sad the hierarchy doesn’t seem much interested in converting folks these days.
Surely, “not identical.” Not even consistent. But, how to contain the manifest contradictions (!), but without being lured into triggering a replay of the Reformation dismemberment?
“'[S]ynodality is…a spiritual event. That is, [the pope] invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,’” Koch explained.”
Such listening today entails, as well, listening to all that the Holy Spirit has said to us in the past. Yes? The Magisterium. So, the contradictions are not only about deconstruction of the Church “structure,” but also about the revealed unity of faith and morals (Veritatis Splendor, nn. 95, 115). And, moreover, the elementary, pre-theological and non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction.
The fly in the ointment (so to speak) is the strategic positioning rainbow exhibitionism by Cardinal Marx on the C-7 and Archbishop Hollerich as relator-general for the 2023 Synod on Synodality. Both already enlisting the media to help double-speak the contradictions (in the path of Hans Kung et al who earlier worked derail the real Vatican II–the actual documents–with the virtual spirit of Vatican II).
But, now, as for the German synodal wayward, perhaps the pope’s recent and very excellent remarks about “idols” serve especially, and yet obliquely, for whatever is left of the Church in Germany… https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2022/04/pope-urges-priests-to-avoid-idols-that-distract-from-god
You mean the Sin-nod on Sin-nod-ality, don’t you?
Indeed, and I humbly suspect that yours truly introduced that term back in May 6, 2021, as part of a comment that bears repeating today:
“On the ‘path’ with Alice in Wonderland: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’ Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.’
Or, as Martin Luther once said of the Bible, now with Bishop Batzing’s double-speak: ‘a synod has a wax nose; you can twist it whichever way you want!’
synod = sin nod.”
Kathryn above : Your first paragraph was confusing. I had to read the entirety of your comments several times in order to understand (I think) what you were getting at.
While I once a supporter of contraception/abortion, I am now vehemently opposed to those things–thanks to laymen (Father Zimmerman was a priest, obviously) like the Hahns, etc.
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I can count on one had the priests I know who uphold the truth on contraception publically (none of them in my own diocese).
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For nearly twenty years, I sat through homily after homily on social-justice- poor=good people, rich=bad people, and judging is a bad thing to do (very un-Christ like to call someone out on his sin).
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The homily I once heard that mentioned divorce promoted annullments. I think I heard a sermon on contraception only twice–once at a Rosary Triduum, and once at an NFP conference (so not the Sunday Mass).
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Since family breakdown is a large component of poverty and social ills (and Church decline), I don’t think it is much too ask for the hierarchy of the Church to actually promote those behaviors that protect against those very ills, especially since the hierarchy never misses a chance to support increased taxes and gov’t funding on services to support the poor trapped in the unhealthy social situations to lead to the poverty to begin with.
I’ve noticed the obsession with governmental solutions by many Catholic Social Teaching advocates. The problem with this approach is the amount of unelected, unaccountable power that this concentrates in the hands of government bureaucracies. This lack of checks and balances is an open invitation to the corruption of those wielding this power. Too little recognition of the effects of Original Sin that are still with us. It’s getting to the point that the government is being treated like an all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful god. No recognition of human weaknesses and limitations.
I write to wonder why so many “Catholic “ websites don’t want any comments from average people. I used to sometimes comment at America but the Jesuits cut me off from commenting because I didn’t take the radical progressive line. This site is the only Catholic site I’ve found that lets average people speak their mind.
Why are so many “Catholic” sites so fearful of hearing from people who aren’t “progressives?”
Perhaps you have answered your own question, that many progressives are deaf, and rigidly in a rut BECAUSE they’re progressive…
But the same is true of many “conservatives,” that many are rigid foot-draggers—but of a different color (and surely not lavender!). My very solid pastor of long ago sometimes barked that he was “orthodox”, not conservative. These two types of rigid bigotry (two, not only conservatives!) are allergic to each other, and the itchy scratching dominates the media run mostly by progressives. It’s all about subscriptions.
Meanwhile, a real conservative and a real progressive (probably the former more than the latter?) would be reassured by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Sermon VI for the 6th Sunday of Lent, which concludes:
“God grant that we may not attempt to deceive our consciences, and to reconcile together, by some artifice or other, the service of this world and of God! God grant that we may not pervert and dilute His holy Word, put upon it the false interpretations of men, reason ourselves out of its strictness, and reduce religion to an ordinary common-place matter–instead of thinking it what it IS, a mysterious and supernatural subject, as distinct from anything that lies on the surface of this world, as day is from night and heaven from earth!”
As for Jesuits, I have personally known three (three!) who were also unambiguously Catholic, partly because none worked in the media, none confused matters of prudential judgment with dogma, none still read much what has become of America magazine, and certainly none sipped at the tainted waters of the National Catholic Report (a self-banished “commentator” on things Catholic, but no longer recognized as a Catholic publication).
It’s quite simple, sadly enough. Those sites are focused on pushing a specific narrative in order to advance a left wing political and social agenda. Dissenting voices expose and challenge those false narratives, so they need to be silenced.
Bill, I would say you are correct to characterize America as “Catholic.”
Because I certainly wouldn’t call it Catholic.
Sending all at CWR, Easter Greeting.
I think Kathryn has a good tack. Her direction and concerns can be understood as charted through VATICAN II and Paul VI.
Please consider this word “tack”, in its varied senses.
The thing complained of has 2 external parts, what is preached and what is not preached; and the ones who are on the receiving end, are put into different kinds of apposition. If you have to go head-on against it -the preaching, say,- those in charge then want to be very gracious and can insist how accommodating everyone needs to be.
Also, the preaching on the 2 sides, is said to be “spiritual”. Consider: If you take it as an assignment to reflect in silence on what is offered and so “come to allow yourself to grow in wisdom quietly and humbly”, because, as some hold, “it is the way of Therese of Lisieux”, then, what borderland area would it be that you have entered into there?
Cardinal Koch had an interview with Vatican Radio January 17 2014 and it was reported in CWR a few days later -in the link. I have read CNA’s report here April 2022 and CWR’s report there January 2014. With both I am unable to decide what Cardinal Koch is leading, other than “seamless garment unity” of 2014 possibly being carried along through “dialogue” of 2022.
In the whole 8-year span, his propositions and arrangements are almost identical in opacity and if he were a prism the light would not refract! I apologize for this frankness. And if I try to apply Cardinal Newman’s exhortation, above, quoted by Peter D. Beaulieu, I find I don’t know how. Good thing because I likely would make a total mess of it for Newman, the way things are positioned.
Jesus’ tunic was never torn. The ones who were interested in it cast dice for it!
If you want to make allegory from Scripture, please try to be true to the scripts.
But I also would take Peter D. Beaulieu to task here. The touchstone on everything is surely NOT the state of the NC REPORTER nor the “3 Jesuits” known by Beaulieu!
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‘ Most people have a plane-like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume. ‘
Escriva, THE WAY 279
https://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/279
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/01/20/cardinal-koch-putting-christs-seamless-garment-back-together-interview-about-church-unity/
Kathryn above – Most people don’t see the link from abortion back to contraception. Persuading them of it is a very high hill to climb these days and I think that’s why most priests and bishops steer clear of the subject (and that is making the very unsure assumption that they are convinced themselves). So, yes, I agree that lay leaders like Janet E. Smith and the Hahns are courageous and prophetic. I’m not familiar with the Kippleys/CCL.
Instead of advancing a single link from “abortion back to contraception,” is there a THREAD…
…running from contraception through abortion, to open marriages, to cohabitation and a divorce culture, to a non-binary/homosexual subculture and gay “marriage,” and then to polygamy beginning already with acquiescence to Islamic practices across many parts of Europe (in France, between 150,000 to 400,000 residents in polygamous households (Philip Jenkins, “God’s Continent, 2007), to Western open-range gender theory and transgenderism?
In 1948 the defeated minority at the Anglican communion Lambeth Conference (earlier approving contraception) told it like this:
“It is, to say the least, suspicious that the age in which contraception has won its way is not one which has been conspicuously successful in managing its sexual life. Is it possible that, by claiming the right to manipulate his physical processes in this manner, man may, without knowing it, be stepping over the boundary between the world of Christian marriage and what one might call the world of APHRODITE, the world of sterile eroticism?” (Cited in Wright, “Reflections on the Third Anniversary of a Controverted Encyclical,” St. Louis: Central Bureau Press, 1971).
Pope Paul VI enlarged the warning, in his Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life, 1968), on the future of a morally unhinged world, the contraceptive mentality — and STATE POWER.
Dismissed at the time as an alarmist, he asked,
“Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious?” Today, from the Administrative State, in kindergartens a balanced diet soon of FDA-approved sugar-free cookies together with gender/transgender theory ideology.
Neither a single link nor a thread, but instead the real “seamless garment.” The hour is late…
Thank you Peter D. Beaulieu for deepening your thought here.
As for Cardinal Koch, I still am “not getting it”. Sorry. It could be one of my gears is stuck or something so. The EWTN interview is said to be scheduled for airing April 24 2022; but the article did not say which EWTN program will carry it or what time; and I can’t find it on the EWTN Schedule for that day.
For now, I just don’t get it -:
‘ “I don’t see these as identical. For the pope, synodality is … a spiritual event. That is, he invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,” Koch explained.
“In Germany, I have the impression that synodality consists in dealing with the structures, something that Pope Francis already urged very energetically in his “Letter to the People of God” in Germany, that it is first and foremost not about structures but spirituality. And secondly, that the synodality on the whole should serve evangelization, as the pope has now also established in the Apostolic Constitution for the Roman Curia.” ‘
John and Sheila Kippley were the founders of the Couple to Couple League. They went on to found another NFP organization called NFP and More.
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Contraception is “intrinsically disordered” by itself–it’s link to abortion, while not irrelevant, is not the reason the it is forbidden. And I agree, I think it is a “very unsure assumption” the hierarchy is convinced of it.
Ever warning given in early 1960 by originally Pope John 23 about what the contraceptive pill would do to marriage, to women, to men has come to fruition. Breakups, unfaithfulness, sex from young ages. abuse of women, poor self esteem for women who have become sex slaves, not liberated,
sexual deviations, males becoming the clowns to perform with women dominating. The list goes on and on and everyone is so unhappy, and cannot find any beauty in the gifts God has created. I have been teaching the Billings Ovulation Method since 1970 and have watched the rot set in with no support from our pulpits. Yes Janet Smith has spoken at our conferences together with many wonderful people, including Drs John and Lyn Billings, who dedicated their entire lives to God’s plan for marriage.
Ever since the Bismarck Kulturkampf «Germany» has been trying to domesticate the Catholic Church. Not satisfied with the various schisms and trends of the «Lutheran» and «Calvinist» variety the so called Old Catholics were encouraged in their anti-romanist trajectory.
All of these schismatics are struggling against the processes of secularism, indifferentism and a general European/Western cultural decline.
These neo «German Catholics» plainly do not read history, or arrogantly assume history never repeats.
Islam, biding its time off stage, certainly does. The slow capture of the once Christian Levant and Near East is tangible proof of that.
A divided house will ineluctably collapse.