Minneapolis, Minn., Aug 28, 2019 / 04:25 am (CNA).- Bishop Andrew Cozzens became a bishop in the middle of a crisis.
“There was this kind of fire that was burning on the front page of the paper everyday,” Cozzens told CNA, “and then I got this call.”
The call was his appointment as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Cozzens was appointed to that role just days after a whistleblower leveled charges of misconduct and cover-up against Archbishop John Nienstedt, who eventually resigned from his post amid scandal.
The archdiocese was in a state of chaos, and, Cozzens said, Catholics were in a great deal of pain.
“I was named a bishop at a very unique time, and it was so unique that it was clear to me God had planned it,” Cozzens told CNA.
He told CNA that he knew, from the time he was appointed, “that the Lord was calling me to be a part of healing. I didn’t have any idea what that meant when I heard that word in prayer.”
“Since the beginning,” he said, “I have felt like that’s why God made me a bishop and that’s what he wants me to do, and so I need to help do that.”
If God chose Bishop Cozzens to be a part of the Church’s healing ministry, meeting Gina Barthel was a big part of how that healing ministry would begin.
He remembers when she emailed him, in early 2014. It was just months after he’d become a bishop.
Barthel wrote to Cozzens that she had been a victim of clergy sexual abuse, and that she wanted to tell him her story. He accepted. They met in his office. Bishop Cozzens hadn’t met with many victims of abuse before. But when Gina told her story, he was disturbed. And he wanted to help her find the healing she sought.
“What was most disturbing about her story was the clear abuse of the office of spiritual direction. And since I’m a spiritual director, and have been a spiritual director, I understand how sacred that space is, and so the fact that it was clearly abused was for me the disturbing part,” Cozzens told CNA.
“Basically I knew that it would be very difficult for her to trust anyone, especially a priest or a bishop, so I was grateful that she was willing to share with me. And that was always the goal from the beginning, was to provide her an example of someone she could trust, and let her know that I was available to help her in any way that I could, to help her find healing, but obviously you can’t force those kinds of things.”
Gina Barthel told CNA that she’s found healing – and found Christ – through the Church, and with the help of Cozzens. But, she says, it wasn’t easy.
In 2005, nine years before she contacted Cozzens, Barthel was a novice in a religious community. She hoped to profess vows as a religious sister. In the course of spiritual direction, she told a priest, Fr. Jim Montanaro, OMV, that she had been sexually abused, and how that had impacted her spiritual and emotional life.
Armed with that knowledge, Barthel told CNA, Montanaro began to groom her, and eventually would sexually abuse her.
At first, the priest asked her to spend excessive time alone with him, and then discuss her body with him in sexual ways that made her uncomfortable. He told her, she remembers, that God could use that experience to heal her.
In the summer of 2005, Barthel decided to leave the religious community. She got an apartment in New York. Montanaro reached out to her, and said he wanted to remain her spiritual director.
“I was like, ‘Well that’s awesome because it’s impossible to find a spiritual director, so I don’t even have to look.’”
“So if you can imagine, a girl from Minnesota, who has no interest at all living in New York City, suddenly finding myself living in an apartment. I don’t know anyone except the sisters and what does that equal? I’m lonely. I’m isolated. It was a setup for disaster.”
Soon, she told CNA, she and Montanaro were talking every day.
“And then multiple times a day. And it turned into, at some point, a spiritual adoption. I don’t remember the timetable exactly, but he adopted me as his ‘Principessa’, like Italian for ‘princess’ and I called him ‘Papito.’ Like, ‘little father.’”
“And we would talk at night, and often the conversations at night would turn very sexual,” Barthel told CNA.
She said that over the phone, the priest would encourage her to imagine that the two of them were saints in heaven together. Then he would tell her that they should each strip naked, to be “naked without shame.”
“So it was just this weird, it feels awkward to tell you about it, because it’s creepy, right? So that was happening.”
In 2006, Barthel moved to her home state of Minnesota. She struggled with depression. She was hospitalized with major depressive episodes. And then a friend offered to send her on a pilgrimage, a group trip for which Montanaro would be the chaplain. The priest invited her to visit his home in Boston before the trip began.
“He invited me to come early and I stayed at their house in Boston, and I remember him putting a sign on the door saying: ‘Do not interrupt. Spiritual direction in session.’
“And he turned on music and he’s like, ‘I just want to hold my principessa.’ So there was a lot of holding and touching, but it was not sexual, yet.”
The priest was at least 20 years older than her. But Barthel, struggling with loneliness and depression, said she liked that he was holding her. Still, she said she knew that what was happening wasn’t right.
“I feel like in that circumstance, I was a vulnerable adult, she told CNA. “Because it was like he abused the child inside of me. He wasn’t abusing an equal, adult-adult relationship. Everything was very childlike.”
The next year, Montanaro took Barthel to stay with him at a retreat center in North Dakota and there, she alleges, began a sexual relationship with her.
Barthel told CNA how confused she was. She believed in the Church’s teaching about sexuality, but, she says, she also believed what the priest told her.
“The entire time, he was telling me what was happening was ‘miraculous graces,’” she told CNA. “Like, ‘Jesus is healing you.’ All of the things he was saying we should do were all part of God’s healing plan for me.”
“And the biggest thing I wanted in my entire adult life was to be healed of the sexual abuse that I experienced as a child. And he used that to catapult his agenda to hurt me,” she said.
“Everything was under the guise of healing, Barthel told CNA.
“And even, he was saying, ‘God’s using you to heal me,’” she said.
“So then I felt special like, ‘Well that’s kind of cool, like, it’s mutual. God’s not just using him to heal me, but He’s also using me to heal Papito.’ Like, that’s really special,” she said.
Looking back, Barthel says she can see that Montanaro was using her insecurities to manipulate her. But at the time, she says, she felt confused, and she trusted the priest.
“And I remember asking, ‘Well, do I need to go to confession? Maybe I should go to confession.’ And he always said no. ‘No, we don’t need to go to confession. This is part of God’s will. This isn’t just okay, and it’s not just good, and not just great, it’s holy.’”
The relationship continued until, after a few months, Barthel told Montanaro that it had to end.
She told CNA she realized things were wrong when the priest admitted he hadn’t told his own spiritual director about the sexual relationship.
“He said, ‘Some things are meant to be kept a secret between you and God.’ The minute he said that, my whole world started falling apart,” Barthel said.
She told a priest she trusted about the relationship. That priest called Montanaro and confronted him. Barthel said that Montanaro admitted the whole thing, but seemed to see nothing wrong with the relationship. The priest next called Montanaro’s superiors, and Montanaro was removed from ministry.
A spokesman for the St. Ignatius Province of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary told CNA that the province “first became aware of her allegations relating to Fr. Montanaro in November of 2007, when a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis notified the rector of the retreat house where Fr. Montanaro resided at the time.
“The then-Provincial of the St. Ignatius Province met with Fr. Montanaro on the day he heard of the allegations. Following that meeting, Fr. Montanaro was immediately removed from public ministry and was to cease all contact with that individual.”
“In January of 2008, the Provincial revoked Fr. Montanaro’s priestly faculties, and Montanaro subsequently sought, and obtained, dismissal from the Oblates, followed by laicization from sacred orders from Rome, which was granted in 2010. Montanaro has had no role or ministry with the St. Ignatius Province since then,” the spokesman added.
The spokesman said that at the time Montanaro was removed, the Oblates “began to provide support” for Barthel.
The Oblates, Barthel told CNA, “sent me a couple of checks to help pay my rent because the trauma hit me so hard that I couldn’t work initially. They also sent me a letter offering $15,000 and a year of therapy if I signed one of those letters stating I wouldn’t do anything further.”
“I don’t know what I was more upset about: the fact that they were trying to pay me off to keep me quiet or the fact that they thought I would only need a year of therapy to recover. It’s 12 years later and I’m still in therapy!”
Barthel said it took years of healing before she was prepared to report what had happened to police. When she did, it was too late.
“When I finally built up the courage to go to the police, I missed the statute of limitations by less than a month. That was devastating because it took so much from me to even go to the police. I finally went, I told my whole story, and then I get a call back and it’s the statute of limitation by less than 30 days”
But she was even more devastated, she says, because Montanaro’s community, the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary, have declined to name Montanaro as a sexual abuser.
“One of my big grievances has been why aren’t perpetrators of adults also being listed publicly?”
Barthel told CNA that she has been concerned that Montanaro might groom other women.
The laicized priest now works as a photographer in Massachusetts. He has not responded to multiple attempts by CNA to contact him.
Among the photographs posted on Facebook by the studio where Montanaro works is a series in which several women have posed nude for the camera. The photo captions read “You are ravishing,” and “Next time you think of something beautiful, don’t forget to count yourself in.”
On the website of the studio, Montanaro writes “My biggest satisfaction is capturing the unique beauty of each person who entrusts that privilege to my partners and to me. We love to help people discover (or rediscover) their God-given beauty in a photo session, and fall in love with themselves all over again.”
In March, Barthel wrote to the Oblates.
“I have concern that he could use his credentials of previous pastoral work and education to get a job in any helper position where he would have access to vulnerable adults. While he is no longer able to hurt people using his position of power as a Catholic priest, that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a threat if he has access to vulnerable adults,” she wrote.
“This is a hurdle in my healing journey. I keep thinking, hoping, praying and wishing that someday when I Google his name, it’ll show up that he is a self-admitted abuser of adult women. Yet, to date, I find nothing. It floods me with grief and also adds to my anger that waxes and wanes as I continue to heal. I feel that as long as the Church stays silent on these matters, there is danger the abuse may continue. Who are we trying to protect and why?”
She requested that Montanaro’s self-admission of sexual misconduct be publicly acknowledged by the order.
She told CNA she has yet to hear back from the Oblates about her request.
The Oblates declined to respond to questions from CNA about Barthel’s request.
While Barthel is discouraged, she told CNA that she has not lost her faith.
“I love Jesus, I love the Church. And it’s not easy and my relationship with Jesus and the Church are different now, but in some ways it’s more beautiful than it was before because I’m more dependent upon Him. And I don’t know how to explain it.”
“My deepest healing has all come through adoration,” she said.
Barthel emphasized the role that Cozzens has played in her life. They’ve met together regularly, and prayed together, for years.
“I needed a safe place to allow the rage and pain to unfold,” Barthel told CNA.
“Yes, I did a lot of that in therapy, but the injustice against my soul demanded someone in the Church hierarchy to listen to me, hear my voice, acknowledge my pain and empathize with me. Bishop Cozzens has been that person for me.”
The bishop, she said, “has been the conduit God has chosen to use to bring me back into a free and even deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.”
“Eucharistic adoration is where I have received the majority of my healing,” she told CNA.
“Bishop Cozzens helped get me to a place to be able to go there and ask Jesus the hard questions and to sit and wait and listen for the answers. That’s the awesome thing about Jesus, if we ask, if we wait, He will speak to us.”
Barthel explained that Cozzens’ role in her life has been invaluable.
“When I first started meeting with him, I was terrified of praying; especially using my imagination which had always been my greatest source of delight in prayer and way of connecting to Jesus through the stories in Scripture. He never pushed, but would give me little tidbits of spiritual encouragement/advice that I could bring with me to Eucharistic adoration. This is what I needed. Someone who could walk with me and understood the danger and risk I was taking to pursue a life of prayer again.”
Cozzens told CNA that he’s learned, through his pastoral relationship with Barthel, what pastoral ministry to victims of abuse requires.
“One of the things that victims of abuse struggle with is going to Church. It’s really hard for them to go to Church. But if you’re a Catholic, you might think that you’re committing a mortal sin, but you just can’t do it because it’s so emotionally difficult for them. So to be gentle and to let them know that God understands the pain they’re going through, and the Church understands that too,” Cozzens said.
“Just to help people walk through that and let them know it’s ok that it takes time, and that God understands what they’re going through. To do that you have to be willing to go through ups and downs with people, because they go through their good moments and their bad moments. But gradually – and it takes time – but gradually the good moments outweigh the bad moments,” he added.
Barthel said she appreciated that understanding.
“Particularly in the beginning, coming back to the sacramental life of the church and prayer was excruciatingly painful, adding the regular breaking news reports of clergy abuse and cover up, there were so many times I wanted to throw the towel in and leave the Catholic Church altogether. While he never encouraged me to leave, he also never tried to convince me to stay. This gave me so much freedom and reminded me that the choice was mine. I needed that freedom and I believe it had a big part in helping me choose to remain Catholic,” she told CNA.
“I just wanted to be heard. I am hurting and I need someone to listen to me, and it needed to be somebody in the Church that I felt like cared.” “And I needed therapy,” she added. “Obviously, like I still go to therapy. “
For his part, Cozzens told CNA that many bishops, in the midst of the Church’s current sexual abuse crisis, have built pastoral relationships with the victims of abuse. But he also acknowledged that some bishops and priests, apprehensive about litigation or negative publicity, have been nervous about their engagement with victims of clerical sexual abuse.
“For me, you just have to put the person ahead of the situation…working with someone who has been hurt…they could turn on me, or be angry with me, or say bad things about me, but that’s the risk we all take if we’re going to be part of Christ’s healing. So I think we all need to be willing to take that risk.”
The bishop said Church officials should be confident about openness to relationships with the victims of abuse, despite the fact that bishops have faced, and continue to face lawsuits, for the Church’s handling of abuse allegations.
“We can’t see these things simply as liability issues. Because you have to see the people who God puts in front of us.”
“Anyone who has been wounded by a priest needs to learn to separate, in their minds, the distinction between what priest did and who God is, and what God does, and how God works. And that’s a very difficult things, that’s why I think priest abuse is the worst kind of abuse, because it can separate a person from the source of healing, who is God,” Cozzens said.
“So we have to try and help them make that distinction. And that usually requires patience and trust.”
Cozzens knows there are many Catholics in pain over the sexual abuse scandals, and that healing does not come easy. That it comes one person at a time. And that bishops have to be willing to walk alongside those hoping to be healed.
Gina Barthel knows her healing journey is not complete. But, she says, she is grateful that Bishop Cozzens is walking alongside her.
[…]
Another broccoli haired boy who should not have had access to guns. Instead of addressing the actual problem everyone and their mother will wring their hands and say he was “such a nice boy if not a lone wolf and mental illness is to blame.” And the “male loneliness epidemic” Because America loves letting teenage white boys off the hook when they commit violent crimes. Nothing matters. Nothing will change. But thoughts and prayers will really, really be what fixes it this time I’m sure. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄x a million
Yup. Another “trans female”. Oh, wait, that’s not the narrative you want to advance, is it, Timmy?
But Robert Westman needs our prayers now, as do the two innocents he murdered.
So much hate, Timmy. You should seek help.
Part of the problem may be the effect on the brain of those sex change drugs that our “health” doctors give to “help” the young (not to make money of course…).
That’s an interesting idea, but I suspect we were dealing with a mentally ill individual even before the drugs.
There is a lot of profound sadness in many people who go down that path. I don’t mean depression; I mean something more akin to despair. The whole bit about such lifestyles being “gay” is a lie, sort of like whistling past a graveyard. At the very least, the gaity is a veneer, meant to distract the individual as much as to deceive others.
@Timothy Finn:
Rolling your eyes at the notion of prayers being efficacious?
Pray tell, what are your actual beliefs? (And why are you larping as a Catholic on a Catholic news site?)
Also, re: your racist statement–just what are you proposing?
I’m glad you are referring to the shooter as male, Timmy. We can agree on that.
Timmy: Name the occasion, just one, when any jurisdiction allowed a “white boy” off the hook for violent crimes. And name the occasion of a collective American response that praised the event.
Among the many sorrows, it is sad that the local mayor took the occasion to shout his beliefs about eliminating gun ownership. It requires active mental resistance to not reflect on the consequences of a national culture that treats objective morality with venomous contempt and the amoral responses of the depraved.
That has been the status quo for many years. Remember Bill Clinton trying to blame the NRA for the Oklahoma City Bombing?
I don’s remember that specifically but it sounds about right, considering.
I do remember the “it depends on what your definition of “is” is.
The left has been disassembling longstanding societal norms for generations, without any evidence whatsoever of the effects such wholesale rupturings might have on individuals or cultures.
Well, we’ve been living with those effects for decades now — destroyed lives, destroyed families, destroyed communities, destroyed cultures.
Recreational drugs, the celebration of gay, the acceptance of sex without commitment, a majority of children raised in single-parent families, abortion by the millions, “transing,” vilifying males — no previous human society has ever experienced such upheavals, so there is no way to predict their effects.
Well, now we’re seeing that individuals subjected to these failed societal experiments are driven to desperation and despair on a level humanity has never seen.
Unfortunately, thanks to the diabolical left, we are stuck with those effects until the insane progressive genie can somehow be coaxed back into its vile, dispiriting bottle.
Edward: Guns kill people, A bombs kill people. People use guns and bombs to kill people. Should people have guns and bombs so they can kill people? Is it wrong to try to limit access to weapons that can kill people? Why demonize those who are trying to prevent meaningless violence? You can work on other means to curb this violence, and this is good; but don’t knock those who are trying to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
James Connor: Just look at all the nitwits who have weighed in against augmenting the police in Washington DC with National Guardsmen. And then take note of all the hundreds of guns being confiscated. Then take note of all those woke cities run by the Democrats who made a campaign of defunding the police. Then take note of the nitwits in our culture who insist on normalizing very obviously deranged thinking such as “I am a woman in a man’s body”. Take away all the guns you want but when you conspire with insane thinking the results will always be predictable.
No, guns do not kill people anymore than hammers, wrenches, kitchen knives, motor vehicles, jumping off buildings, or intentional overdosing legitimate medications. Only people perform murder, including their own.
I do not “demonize those who are trying to prevent meaningless violence.” I try to avoid lowering myself to the lies they seek to live with, and I don’t judge people. I do judge evil behavior, as Jesus called us to do, and stupid thought that falsely identifies what is evil in the human condition.
Stupid things include willful acts of moral displacement, affecting a phony display of moral concern as a way of continuing to repress a conscience, individually and collectively, that ignores the realities and causes of evil. Have you never noticed how frequently the most fanatical pro-aborts display a need to thump their chest over their love of animals, a desperate sort of act that the repression of conscience requires. Murderers always contrive ways to identify themselves as blamelessly good. And it is doubly ironic that self-proclaimed “animal lovers” are frequently abusive of their pets.
I don’t “demonize” the purveyors of panaceas,I demolish their childish arguments.
People have been killed by planes, trains and automobiles, knives, clubs, bottles, saws and pitchforks, water, prescription and nonprescription drugs.
We can’t ban everything, because then we’re back to rocks and spears.
Yes, it’s a he. Not much of a man, but he was born XY. The media will soon be referring to him as Robin Westman and using female pronouns. After all, in today’s society it’s considered bad to shoot and kill kids in a church, but even worse to refuse to use the killer’s preferred pronouns.
Waiting to hear the identities of the murderers of the innocent.
This will happen again and again as long as we don’t identify mental illness as such and provide treatment. If the truth be known, the carriers of this mental illness is our culture at large.
Those who are sane and who should have been speaking out (especially Catholics) have remained silent. What’s needed in our society is people who seek to know the Truth and speak it aloud…unabashedly.
Cowards need to go find and hole and crawl in it.
Yes, and thank you. The mental health system has been a failure for much too long. Those who have tried to bring attention to this have been practically silenced by the media, certain professionals, and one small but vocal group of so-called democrats. This is one aspect of the problem, and the trans movement should have been stopped at the beginning by the medical, psychiatric and psychologial professions. Problems have escalated as a result. Whoever evaluated this young man ought to have their licenses revoked – at the least. I cannot at present recall the rationale for closing most of the state mental institutions during the 1970s, but that was another profound mistake. There is likely a national secular/atheistic undercurrent pushing for anything goes. This is one of the horrific things that happen when anything goes: two children are dead and others are bruised physically and/or mentally, all the families are traumatized and trying to find meaning, a young man who didn’t know who he was is also dead, and the mayor saw fit to share his useless ideology in his speech. Throughout the day he continued on cable programs – adding to this horrific tragedy instead of helping. He did the usual focus on guns only, so unwise and unhelpful! The Archbiship’s and the Pope’s messages offered some hope. I can’t wait to see how this gets played out in the secular world – not really! Prayers for everyone involved in this tragedy. I include the mayor who might need more prayers than anyone else!
Trans children are mentally abused children. They are being abused by adults who should be punished for abusibg children.
What is not included, or maybe unknown, when this was posted is that the man changed his name Robin, had created a manifesto that was pulled off the web. The media will be silent on this. The truth will be hushed up. Questions like was he or had taken drugs for transition from boy to girl and did these drugs in any way impact his brain. What therapy was he given, who gave it and should be know about his mental treatment etc. But the media will hype the fact that he had guns, so it, the media, will push gun control.
In the meantime 2 small children are dead, my heart breaks for the parents and family. This should not have happened, but it did. It did because essentially the trans movement, the meds given to support etc are immune from any real examination.
The individual was a trans woman, as the Wall Street Journal alone has reported in plain language. Watch carefully how this story is covered in mainstream media.
If the WSJ is calling Robert Westman a woman, it is not describing him honestly either. There is no such thing as a “trans woman.”
Remember, “trans” should be pronounced “not a”.
A “trans woman” is of course a construct and not an actual woman. The WSJ made it plain that the shooter was a natal man who had “transitioned.” (No indication if drugs or surgery were involved.) The Minneapolis police chief referred to the perp as a man. Mainstream feeds such as one from the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis ever so carefully avoids using any pronoun. The trans angle on this story will be conveniently buried lest it disturb the Narrative. But coverage of this ghastly tragedy is an important example of how news is distorted. I think that angle is worth studying.
“natal man”
Which is pronounced “man.”
I am pleased to note than the UK newspaper “The Telegraph” has not made a single error in this regard. The article on the front page today, titled “The transgender gunman who opened fire on praying children”, does not have even one instance of the word “she”.
Every single adult who practiced or promoted any “trans-sexual” psychological, pharmaceutical or medical services in this “man-pretending-to-be-a-woman” case should be brought to civil court and sued for every cent snd every piece if property they own, and the “medical” and “psychological” and “pharmaceutical” companies involved should be sued into bankruptcy, and the buildings bull-dozed.
And that goes for all of the attorneys and law firms making their trans-sexual-abuse possible.
And which political party is responsible for supporting these hideous “transing” procedures?
And for promoting “gender” dysphoria by inserting gay literature into primary school libraries and curricula?
And for spreading their intense hatred of the Catholic Church and Donald Trump?
The Democratic Party is a death cult. Democrats and the Catholics who vote for them are responsible for this monstrous act.
Can we take a break from singing doxologies to your favorite politicians for a bit? We’ve been through this before, and the politics isn’t going away, but no politician is actually trustworthy, and even if one were, he could not solve the spiritual problems of this country.
Trump was on one of the three firearms, I believe.
brineyman, time to start calling a spade a spade. It’s time for feckless woke Catholics to come to terms with truth. (But I have little hope we’ll see much truth emerging from the Church these days).
Do you know, of your specific knowledge, that his medical treatment caused his actions Wednesday morning? My speculation would be a lack of proper medical treatment was more likely the underlying factor that led to his spiral into such a state that he could commit such a heinous crime. How else could a person assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, small children (and the elderly) at Mass?
Do you follow the news? People kill all the time for reasons that could not be corrected with drugs or therapy. Just look at what is happening in Nigeria, among other places.
This tragedy is almost unbearable: two innocent children, slain at the very moment of the Mass, and a soul lost in suicide. We can only grieve with their families and commend them to the mercy of God. Yet we must also face what violence really is: the most despicable form of evil, irrational and opaque, that humiliates, enslaves, and even seeks to objectify the creature made in God’s image. Contemporary culture tries to substitute remorse with “complexes,” as if guilt itself were blindness; in truth it is the decision for evil that is blind. Only the Father remains when every human support collapses; we turn to Him last because we know He will still be there when all else fails. The Church is His ark in the shipwreck of existence, the guardian of hope, truth, and love. But she often appears harsh or lifeless to those coming from the wilderness of despair. And yet it is only in her house that the children of God find the arms of the Father waiting.
How very beautiful.
Thank you, Rebecca — I’m glad it touched you. I was in fact inspired by a work written at the age of 23 by the one who, years later, would become Cardinal Giacomo Biffi — the very man who was said to have received the solitary vote of Cardinal Ratzinger in the conclave that would instead elect himself.
The real problem is the evil that has infected our nation. Our churches are empty. Locked up tight after every Mass. When, as a nation we deny God,the Enemy prowls about seeking the ruin of souls. Lord, have mercy.
To Kathy Donnelly – AMEN!!!
I find myself in complete agreement with this author, so will not duplicate his commentary, but rather provide the link (below). Fr. Andrew.
https://hildifons.substack.com/p/repost-the-truth-about-transgenderism
Good post
Yes. The media’s reporting (or non-) will be revealing.
The manifesto of this he/she substantiated that he/she hated God, that the he/she hated his/her neighbors as he/.she hated herself/hissle in a complete and total rejecting of the Greatest Commandment which IMHO is the defintiaion of total depravity which is unfortunately the glide path of aberrant sexual behaviors the least of which is defined as an abomination for having rejected God’s gift of your sexuality.
Transgender imposition on the human body and psyche is a violation of their nature. A transgendered person is prone to react to this violation with violence. The UK, which previously supported transgender procedures, of late based on medical psychological findings now prohibits transgender transition as barbaric.
Every cell in your body has either XX or XY chromosomes. You cannot change this. Surgical removal of genitalia does not change this. You wonder why this “sexual reassignment surgery” ever took hold, but perhaps like so many other things in our for profit health care system, the motivation is financial.
I cannot imagine the pain and anguish that transgender people go through that would motivate them to subject themselves to sexual mutilation. Perhaps we should take the profit out of this by having insurance refuse to pay for it? The money wasted on this would be better spent providing basic health care for poor children.
Indeed.
We live in strange times. Today, many people will claim that they do not believe in the existence of the soul, yet those same people are apt to agree with someone claiming he is a female soul in a male body, or vice versa.
Somehow related to this, we live in an unprecedented period of hatred for our own bodies. Sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments are among the more extreme measures, but rampant tattooing seems to be a milder expression of the same self-loathing. For crying out loud, if you want to support a team or a cause or whatever, BUY A T-SHIRT. When you are inevitably disappointed that your team crashes or your cause betrays you — or you just outgrow the cartoon — you can throw away the shirt. Hats work, too. https://youtu.be/WCEZXJYsFVw?t=54
Seriously, look at our science fiction. It mocks the idea of God, angels, and demons, but it also has human souls “downloaded” into computers. There is something weirdly Gnostic going on — different than, but just as weird as, the Gnostics of old.
William: It is not about money. Don’t blame economic freedom for everything demonic. This is about a culture dedicated to self-worship, and this would include support from more compassionate than thou Christians, worshiping themselves for “heroic tolerance,” uncaring of the consequences. Trans ideology is simply a more grotesque expansion of homosexuality, which might have begun as a coping mechanism for shameful concessions when young, then habitualized to dulling the moral senses to become a way of life.
If health insurance companies refused to pay for transgender procedures, there would be less of them, so money does matter.
You don’t know that. You don’t know that if insurance companies refused such surgeries, that it would not result in provoking political and social forces compelling them to provide more.
Only moral responses can resolve moral problems, never politics. Liberals turn to government worship as their first and last line of refuge because they do not want to think of how the necessary demands of moral courage might impose sacrifice and discomfort in their own lives to address problems with personal involvement and commitment. It’s easier to sit on the couch and complain that the government is not doing enough to control the singular forces they project as the source for all evil. And governments can never put an end to moral evil. Sin can not be engineered.
I understand what you’re saying but the argument is valid; stop paying for birth control, abortion-on-demand and slice and dice and infuse our confused youth and a lot fewer mistakes and worse will be committed – mathematics.
No reply button to Knowall, so I make it here. No, it is not simple mathematics. As I implicitly said. a social ethos can not be engineered. You cannot affect a socil force to do what even God cannot do. You cannot alter collective evil human behavior. It people experience pressure to end one sort of evil, their evil corruptions of suul will simply be forced to find another sort of evil to replace the former evil. Social engineering cannot work. Are you really oblivious to how contraception indisputably leads to more abortions?
William writes: “I cannot imagine the pain and anguish that transgender people…”
William, there’s no such thing as a transgender person. Personhood is not defined by psychotic thinking.
Jesse waters states the facts (link to be posted next)…DEMO PARTY LEADERS DEMAND SILENCE…the cost of their “TRANS-PSYCHOSIS” must be paid by the normie children of the breeder class…because DEMO-TRANS-PSYCHOSIS = VIRTUE, and their “heroic” medical and legal TRANS-ABUSERS must be allowed to monetize their new TRANS-ABUSE enterprises, because…country club dues are high, and a vacation in St. Barts in on the line.
Jesse Watters on DEMO-KRAT-MEDIA TRANS-PHILIA to rage against school children:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/08/27/jesse_watters_the_trans_clan_has_a_militant_wing_fake_compassion_is_getting_people_killed.html
Oh, how cute. You’re pretending that the GOP is still the party of Reagan. Would that it were!
But no, ISLAM is more correct on this than your chosen party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t3OjuGqa9g
Islam is not the answer. Episcopalianism is not the answer. The GOP is not the answer. Unless … the god you truly worship is Ganesha, because “Elephants are always good”?
Let’s give up on that. YOU WILL NOT FIND THE TRUTH IN ANY OF THESE PARTIES, BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL WILLING TO TRADE TRUTH FOR POWER, however short-lived that might be, and however much a curse it might prove in the future.
You will not find a prophet in politics. Saying that the other party will be in a lower circle of hell than your own is not enough. Let’s try to miss hell altogether.
So your “answer” involves insulting sociological determinist categories, and rejecting the souls of individuals?
This man, Robert Westman, realized that his parents lied to him about his sexuality by not speaking the truth to his insane notions that he was woman and not a man. Once he realized he’d been let down, he became enraged and acted out.
This man, Robert Westman, realized his Catholic Church, his priests, his bishops lied to him by not telling him the truth about his deranged notions that he was a woman. Once he realized they’d let him down, he became enraged and acted out his rage.
This man, Robert Westman, realized his society, his culture, his government, the media he was exposed to, his friends they all lied to him by going along with his deranged notion that he was a woman. Once he realized that he’d been snookered by everyone, he felt a fool, became enraged and lashed out at anyone and everyone.
To everyone listening: Continue lying and not confronting what you see around you and know to be false. Continue your path of “going along to get along.” Continue placating the deranged notions that dominate our culture. If you continue to do these things, it just might be your own family members who get mowed down in the next massacre. And then we can all go about our merry way after we’ve complacently blamed it on “those guns.”
And this should include speaking out forcefully against high prelates, including the highest of prelates, who side with leftist nonsense and lie to us. Calumny is not speaking out.
In this tragedy, are their complicit parents, are ther complicit clergy who want to accompany rather than teach?
Fr Ratzinger wrote that the early Church opted for the God of the philosophers against the gods of the zeitgeist.
The Church Fathers opted for the truth of Being itself and nothing else.
How long must the faithful wait for our Church shepherds to teach tough love and recover the option for faith and reason and not milquetoast faith and mawkish empathy?
Sad, indeed. We may never overcome the gun violence mentality. The powerful NRA gun lobby sets the stage for continued violence. They argue that gun legislation will outlaw all weapons. Not true.
We just received an email from my sister, whose US Senator, John Barrasso is the Republican Whip. He said, “Trump’s BBB will remove restrictions on silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns.” He demonstrates the NRA gun ideology. He mentions nothing of the military style weapons like the AR-15 and the high magazine Glock that were touted as the killer’s rifle and pistol of choice.
Robin Westman was identified as the killer. He carried three weapons to the church where children were attending Mass. What must we do to detect this mentality early? Offering condolences and prayers has been discounted since it is reactionary. The Red Flag Law attempts to have some proactive protection.
Reuters: “Red Flag laws specifically address parents and other family members by giving them a legal way to intervene when a loved one is in crisis.” I ask, might the parents be held accountable if they ignore the Red Flag law? Is the age of the offspring a negating factor?
I prepared an email for Cindy to be forwarded to Barrasso detailing our serious objections to his stance. Maybe you should approach your elected officials.
More cut-and-paste NPR/DNC talking points. Par for the course for MorganD. The shooter was a deranged transgender progressive. Guns have nothing to do with it.
Athanasius, at least some of us are sane.
Guns had nothing to do with it? This twisted person could not do this much damage with a knife. He should not have been able to purchase firearms.
Mentally ill transgender progressives who want to do harm don’t need guns to hurt people. In the absence of guns, they’ll make use of something else. Access to guns isn’t the problem; that’s a lie and an NPR talking point. Being a disturbed transgender progressive is the issue.
Do you really think that this sick, twisted person should have been able to buy guns?
Should convicted felons and mental patients be able to buy guns? Should private citizens be able to buy automatic weapons?
By the way, the 2nd Amendment does not prohibit the States or Federal Government from enacting reasonable gun control.
Actually, in this case he could have effected as much tragedy with a knife. Regardless, your entrenched liberal reflexes appear to lead you to avoid appreciating that liberal “plumbing solutions” do not and can never resolve human problems. Ethics do. A social ethos is improved or weakened in accord with the character of its people, what they value and what they tolerate. You do not end abortion with birth control. You increase it. You do not protect children from predators by trying to indoctrinate them to adopt “tolerance” with “story hours” given by sexual deviants. You do not create more effective uses of energy by having ignorant and childishly spiteful bureaucrats penalize energy producers, conducting research to make energy usage more efficient, simply out of hatred for economic freedom.
As much damage with a knife? Really? Why then did the Marine Corps issue me an M-16 and not a switchblade? Your logic is flawed.
No reply button below yours William. Your logic is flawed. I clearly did say “in this case.” There wasn’t anyone strong enough to stop him if had done the same thing running wild with a knife. My opinion has no relation to your premise of noting obvious qualitative differences between knives and guns.
people are in love with what they can do with firearms; look at what that accountant did at that concert
“The powerful NRA gun lobby sets the stage for continued violence.”
Really MorganD? How? First, the most savagly and culturally insulted free association group is “powerful” only in the minds of those with an interest in distorting history.
With what little influence they have, they have supported mandatory gun safety and supported background checks. The second Ammendment was conceived to protect the God given right of self-defense, including defense from a tyrannical government, for which you’ve created the impression, over time, you would prefer.
It’s the guns…
It’s the guns…
It’s the guns…
It’s the guns…
It’s the guns…
No, it’s your stupid, woke, deranged, sick, lying, perverse, psychotic, evil thinking that’s to blame. Just keep blaming the guns. But let’s pray that the next victims aren’t our own families because as long as you keep on insisting that “It’s the guns”, you can rest assured that there WILL be another mass shooting. And, Satan loves it.
Got enough negative adjectives? So guns have nothing to do with it? Curious logic.
William: Guns don’t kill people. What kills people is evil, deranged, woke, psychotic, perverse, stupid, sick, liars.
William, over 65 MILLION human lives in the USA alone since the 1970s have been killed in abortion. The weapons used are suction machines, scalpels and forceps in the hands of doctors. I’m not hearing any calls from you and your friends to outlaw any of these instruments of death. Why not? They’re equally as lethal as any gun.
Why do you assume that I support abortion when I advocate for red flag laws to prevent psychotics from buying guns? A curious vector off the subject. I do not support abortion and I think we need to prevent psychotics from getting guns. I am sure that many people agree.
Wolliam, tou keep on deflecting and seemingly purposefully not get the point. The assumption you make is this: “Remove the guns and the killings will stop.” That’s utter nonsense.
By the way, William, possessing guns is against the law in NYC and elsewhere. I guess there are no gun murders in those places, huh?
I think our current medical privacy laws allow some of these very troubled souls to stay under the radar.
Red flag laws sound good objectively but they have a potential to become a political weapon.
Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis is correct. We shouldn’t exploit this tragedy as a rationale for hatred against Trans people. Likewise we are obliged to treat transgender as a serious disorder, rather than a liberal cause celebre.
Well, Father, we then need to speak out very clearly that it is a disorder every time the dominant culture wants to shove it down our throats as normative.
tell him that
I’m not sure that people are using this event as an opportunity to hate or as justification for hating people. Transgender people are deeply disturbed individuals, however, and that makes them dangerous. We need to stop coddling them.
And politicians shouldn’t politically grandstand by assuming that noting the distorted psychology of a transexual constitutes an act of hatred when there is no evidence for it.
Dear Father. We see the word HATE used in much of the dialogue here.
You say, “We shouldn’t exploit this tragedy as a rationale for HATRED against Trans people. Our Federal Government has taken the lead on that very word. I feel that HATRED leads to ISOLATION and despair, not enlightenment and hope. Brinyman spews just that hatred when he says, “The Democratic Party is a death cult. Democrats and the Catholics who vote for them are responsible for this monstrous act.”
PBS: Federal information about what Trump calls “gender ideology” was removed from federal government websites. Trump’s initial executive order called for transgender women in federal custody to be moved to men’s prisons.
The State Department promptly stopped granting requests for new or updated passports with gender markers that don’t conform with the new definition.
In the executive order, the president asserted that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
When any LGBTQ soldier was dismissed from our Platoon, the discharge was classified “UNDESIRABLE”.
My parents taught us never to hate. Some of the dialog here tests that edict.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/6-ways-trumps-executive-orders-are-targeting-transgender-people
“My parents taught us never to hate. Some of the dialog here tests that edict.”
Yet you consistently post your hateful comments about Trump here on a regular basis. I guess irony is lost on some people. A little self-awareness might go a long way.
There seems to be a rule that we should not ask any questions about the shooter’s parents and family life. We do know that his mother consented to his name change. Presumably, she also approved or accepted his make believe sex change. We should also know how matters related to sexual morality, particularly the trans lunacy, have been handled at Annunciation School. Is deviancy tolerated or promoted there as it has been at so many Catholic schools? These are important matters and neither his family nor the school have any right to have their “privacy respected.” What they taught, didn’t teach, celebrated and condemned may have played a very large role in what Robert Westman turned into.
Re Tony above (4:09 p.m.) – Good questions. The silence on family background is unusual. (I’d be cautious about assuming mother supported the so-called transition).
As the family goes, so goes society. John Paul II.
The Church understood this once.
Our lukewarm emasculated ecclesial communions fail to teach the fundamental importance of Christ based solidarity and subsidiarity.
Our pagan zeitgeist is a much more powerful teacher.
Now about another imposition upon us these days of confusion. That is the topic of security. As the local Bishop pointed out, you can read it on Catholic News Agency, the request for funding for security that is given to public schools, was denied by the governor and legislature of Minnesota to the Catholic Church. Then after this tragedy, the Governor Grandstands the scene. To me this is as disgusting as it gets. How do we get passed this? Praying, then work to undo this discrimination against religious freedom and the protections it deserves commensurate with the protection the public schools get. The mental health issue needs deep examination.
“If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you.”
We see this played out time and again. Whether our own children are poisoned against themselves & their anguish is eventually directed against the last bastion of Truth, or our African brethren are struck down as they gather for Pentecost—the Church will always be the center of the Enemy’s attacks. Did we not see it with the Eucharistic Pilgrimage this summer when Protestants came out specifically to taunt and mock the faithful?
Banning certain weapons won’t change this fact. The Enemy will always target the Church because his time is short. This attack was so evil, it’s almost unbearable…but we know how this story ultimately ends.
Let us not be afraid. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis.
It’s no longer a matter of hands on heart with chin held high demanding that “God love America”. Rather it should be hands clasped in prayer humbly pleading that “God save America”. The necessity for ownership of guns should have been abandoned over 100 years ago when the rest of the world grew up and realised that the days of Billy the Kid. Wyatt Earp and the Dalton brothers were over. But then I suppose it is difficult to remember that when so many are raised by the fantasies presented as essential fodder by the make believe world of Hollywood and Disney land!
More of the usual distractor, “It’s the guns!”
No, it’s the woke, evil, deranged, sick, lies that results in people’s deaths. And it’s those who continue to placate, conspire with, condone and/or remain silent in the face of woke, deranged, unnatural, psychotic and evil notions who are also to blame for the deaths of innocent victims.
If you call yourself a Christian, it means you’re a follower of Christ. Christ called Himself the Truth. If you are a follower of Christ you must of necessity be striving to live in Truth at all times and in all ways. If you consort with Lies, you are no follower of Christ. It’s all very binary: You are either striving to live in the Truth or you are living in Lies. The two are mutually exclusive. And, lastly, you cannot be striving to live in the Truth passively and silently. That, too, would be a lie.
So,if you want red flag laws regarding guns, you are evil, deranged, etc? Is that what you are saying?
Those more inclined to label others as evil are those liberals quick to identify themselves as persecuted, especially when their arguments are devoid of reality. In turn, they vilify anyone who simply disagrees with their premises as lacking what they imagine to be supreior concern.
“Red flag laws” already exist in every state and at the national level. Calling for things that already exist is more likely to be an exercise of more-compassionate-than-thou virtue signaling. Condemning those who point out the very real consequences of moral nihilism, the real problem, is not in any way virtuous.
Mr. Frawley: It is impossible for the world to “grow up.” Sin and continuous renewals of the self-delusions necessary to sustain sin, never slow down. There is no such thing as human “evolution.” Shifts in common perceptions of what is evil do not alter the reality of what is evil.
Engaging in historical caricatures to trivialize, reduce, and disparage the views of those who recognize that evil is personal, not instrumental, is not helpful.
And I sincerely hope you don’t consider exponential growth in the crimes against humanity through the mass murder of the unborn and exponential increases of willful submissions to tyranny examples of “growing up.”
I am not advocating banning guns for law abiding citizens. There should be red flag laws for criminals, psychotics,illegal aliens and people deemed dangerous by the courts. You seem to think that anyone should be able to legally buy guns. Is that correct? Why do you think this? Is it the idea that if the worst of us can buy guns, then we will all somehow be safer? Please explain your logic.
Those laws already exist.
Those laws need to be strengthened. The sicko in Minneapolis should not have been allowed to buy guns.
William: Don’t dare put words in my mouth. Ever. I never said I endorse guns for everyone who wants them. Besides the criminals, psychotics and illegals you mention, I’d add to that group progressives who should never own a gun.
What I said and what you are most obtuse in comprehending is that limiting gun sales will not end killing. If you can empirically demonstrate that it will, show the evidence. Theŕe are numerous places in the USA that ban ownership and carrying of guns that still have rampant murders. Can you cite for us here the laws governing the carrying of guns in LA, NY and Chicago? And after doing that, can you give us the number of gun murders in each of those cities.
Reasonable red flag laws will not end gun related homicides, but will likely reduce them.
So your logic is that unless something totally eliminates all gun homicides, it is not worth doing? What if the red flagl law reduces gun homicides by 50%? Would that be worth doing?
So I am obtuse because I cannot read your mind? I’ve noticed so many of the posters to this website resort to personal insult, which does not really help their case. But perhaps that’s all you’ve got?
WILLIAM: By your own worda you admit that more stringent laws against gun ownership and possession resulting in fewer murders is pure speculation. You have no evidence to back up your assertion – just more wishful thinking and pious platitudes.
Here’s one more hypothetical: Robert – the sexually deranged murderer- was denied the purchase of a gun. He had a mother or father who legally owned a gun. Robert took his parent’s gun and ammo and shot and killed two Catholic school children. Now tell me about your more stringent laws against the sexually deranged purchasing guns.
So, are you saying that the sexually deranged should be able to buy guns? How do you feel about the Federal ban on automatic weapons? Perhaps we should just let anybody buy anything?
Please define “sexually deranged”, William. What does that even mean in today’s society?
Transgender.
In days to come, which are nearly upon us, God will deliver to Himself martyrs from our time, to counter and make atonement for the perverted, emasculated clergy and unfaithful fathers and mothers who have brought so much death, devastation and destruction to our families, communities, parishes, states, countries and humanity as a whole.
The punishment will be as painful as it is just.
satn is the enemy. Recognize the foul fool as such. Stop blaming each other, but, let us take responsibility for each of our own actions and failures to act, our sins and offenses before Almighty God and before each other. Only then can we hope to be reconciled with the Lord of all.