This 96-year-old man ‘ruined many lives’ and used his position in society to cover up his secret… and he got away with it for decades
He was described in court as ‘a predatory paedophile’ who used his position as a Catholic priest to groom and subsequently abuse children for some 27 year
By Lynda Roughley and Helen Johnson Manchester Evening News 29 JUL 2020
Father John Kevin Murphy has been jailed again for child sex offences (Image: Lynda Roughley)
A 96-year-old former Catholic priest was jailed today for sexually abusing six boys more than 30 years ago. All but one of Father John Kevin Murphy’s victims came forward to police after seeing media reports about him being imprisoned in 2017 for molesting other boys.
Liverpool Crown Court heard he had been ordained as a priest in 1962 and served in a number of parishes in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire until he retired.
He was described in court as ‘a predatory paedophile’ who used his position as a Catholic priest to groom and subsequently abuse children for some 27 years
The six victims, who were aged between eight and 16 at the times of the offences, were molested while he took them on swimming lessons and also while visiting the homes of their devout Catholic parents.
Some felt unable to speak out because they knew it would devastate their parents.
One victim, who broke down while reading his impact statement, told the judge how he has a deep-seated anger towards his parents because “their devotion to their religion blinded them in the face of a monster using his job as a priest to abuse me and other children.”
Frail Murphy, who sat in the dock wearing a face mask and with his head bowed throughout the hour and a half long hearing, was jailed for five years. Murphy, of Hillside Crescent, Horwich, Bolton, had pleaded guilty to 32 offences involving indecent assault and indecency. Judge Anil Murray, who had jailed him for three years in December 2017 for the previous offences, told the defendant today, “Your offending has had a devastating impact on your victims for decades and they are still really seriously affected by what you did.”
He said examples of this included loss of confidence, nightmares, loss of faith in the Catholic church and feelings of shame.
“It is no exaggeration to say you ruined many lives.”
The judge said: “You were a priest at the time and you used your position of standing in society to commit these offences and cover them up. “Because of your position in the church you were greatly trusted and respected, possibly revered, and you abused that trust.”
He said that Murphy claimed in his pre-sentence report not being able to recall committing the offences or having an attraction to males.
The disgraced, perverted ex-mayor who couldn’t help but try for a return to politics – being on the sex offender register ruined his plan
Judge Murray added: “You say you have no memory of these offences. I’m afraid I cannot accept that especially in the light of the evidence of a psychologist who said you do not present with any significant neurological impairment.
“I cannot therefore accept your expression of remorse as genuine.
“You were effectively living a lie and using your good character and standing in society to commit these offences and got away with it for so long.
Murphy, who formerly served in the Army and RAF, was given an extended licence for 12 months and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life.
Arthur Gibson, for the prosecution, had told the court that one of the victims involved in the earlier case appeared on television after Murphy was jailed and the interview and newspaper reports were seen by the others who then came forward.
By coincidence the sixth victim, who had “wrestled with the effect of the abuse throughout his life” had also decided to speak to the police.
The abuse of the victims, some of them altar boys, occurred at swimming baths in Liverpool and Leigh, on camping trips and at the homes of the victims in Liverpool, Whiston and Ashton-in-Makerfield.
One told how he had been horrified when years later Murphy helped at his mother’s funeral mass and he consequently felt unable to visit her grave for ten years.
Lee Bonner, defending, said: “He is deeply sorry for the pain, harm and distress which his past conduct has caused.”
He said that Murphy, formerly of Maghull, Merseyside, is frail and has various health problems including diabetes and a heart condition.
“Now as a very elderly man he will pay quite properly the price for his actions as a much younger man.”
He has had the prospect of a jail sentence hanging over him since January when he entered his guilty pleas and has been largely housebound and isolated in the intervening period.
PAT SAYS
What an awful story.
A 96 year old priest being sent to prison for the sexual abuse of at least 16 victims.
Our first thoughts, as always, must be with the victims / survivors.
We wish them whatever healing they can, with the help of God, and others they can achieve.
Sexual abuse affects different people differently – but it is ALWAYS a wound.
I was sexually abused by a young neighbour at the age of 6.
It certainly overshadowed the first part of my life.
But it was greatly helped and even transformed by the counselling and therapy I engaged in.
I have ministered to a lot of victims and survivors.
I have also ministered to a small number of abusers.
In this Aug. 26, 2018 file photo, People gather to protest at the site of the former Tuam home for unmarried mothers in County Galway, Ireland. The Vatican has indicated its support for a campaign to exhume the bodies of hundreds of babies who were buried on the grounds of a Catholic-run Irish home for unwed mothers to give them a proper Christian burial. The Vatican’s ambassador to Ireland,
Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo, said in a July 15, 2020 letter to the amateur Irish historian behind the campaign that he shared the views of the archbishop of Tuam, Ireland, Michael Neary, who has said it was a “priority” for him to re-inter the bodies in consecrated ground. (Credit: Niall Carson/PA via AP.)
ROME — The Vatican has indicated its support for a campaign to provide a proper Christian burial for hundreds of babies and toddlers by first exhuming their bodies from the grounds of a Catholic-run Irish home for unwed mothers.
The Vatican’s ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo, said in a July 15 letter to the amateur Irish historian behind the campaign that he shared the views of the archbishop of Tuam, Ireland, Michael Neary.
Neary has said it was a “priority” for him to re-inter the babies’ bodies in consecrated ground. If the Irish government refuses to authorize the exhumations, Neary promised to bless the ground where they were originally buried.
Historian Catherine Corless has been campaigning since 2014 to give the babies a dignified burial after she tracked down the death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in the town of Tuam, north of Galway, but couldn’t find corresponding burial records.
Excavations of the site in 2017 showed “significant quantities of human remains” in a 20-chamber underground structure near a decommissioned sewage tank. DNA analysis confirmed the ages of the dead children ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years and were buried chiefly in the 1950s. The Tuam home, which was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours order of Catholic nuns, closed in 1961. Based on Corless’ research, the Irish government instituted a commission of inquiry in 2015 into the Tuam facility and several other mother and baby homes where unwed mothers, orphans and children whose parents couldn’t care for them were housed.
This June 4, 2014 file photo shows the site of a mass grave for children who died in the Tuam mother and baby home, in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. The Vatican has indicated its support for a campaign to exhume the bodies of hundreds of babies who were buried on the grounds of a Catholic-run Irish home for unwed mothers to give them a proper Christian burial.
The Vatican’s ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo, said in a July 15, 2020 letter to the amateur Irish historian behind the campaign that he shared the views of the archbishop of Tuam, Ireland, Michael Neary, who has said it was a “priority” for him to re-inter the bodies in consecrated ground.(Credit: Niall Carson/PA via AP.)
It was part of a process of reckoning in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland to come to terms with a history of abuses in Catholic-run institutions, including the shunning and shaming of unwed mothers, many of whom were pressured into giving up babies for adoption.
The commission is only looking into burial arrangements at the homes. It said in its most recent interim report more than a year ago that it still couldn’t understand why the babies and young children buried outside the one in Tuam were handled in such an “inappropriate manner.” The commission said local Galway authorities bore “particular responsibility” since they owned the home.
Seeking to nudge the government to finally honor the Tuam children and bring closure to their relatives, Corless wrote last month to the Vatican ambassador asking his views. She had been heartened by Pope Francis’ horror when he learned about the Tuam burials during his 2018 visit to Ireland.
“My query to you is, as papal nuncio, do you think it proper in the name of Jesus to allow these little souls (they are all baptized) to be left in a sewage tank, or do you agree that they be exhumed and given a Christian burial?” Corless wrote Okolo on July 13.
Okolo noted in his reply letter two days later, which Corless provided to The Associated Press, that the final report of the government’s commission of inquiry is pending.
But he quoted Neary, who previously said “it remains a priority for me, in cooperation with the families of the deceased, to seek to obtain a dignified re-internment of the remains of the children in consecrated grounds in Tuam.” Neary reaffirmed that position as recently as last month, but has also said that if the government chooses to leave the bodies where they are, he would bless the ground.
“I share his views,” Okolo wrote Corless. “It is my conviction that through sincere love, a calm mind, clear-sightedness and mutual understanding, everyone concerned can cooperate to rectify the mistakes of the past.”
Pope Francis himself has urged the church in Ireland to do whatever it can to make reparations for the Tuam burials, which he learned about first-hand from the country’s then-minister for children, Katherine Zappone, with whom he met during his 2018 visit.
In a letter to the pope that she hand-delivered Aug. 27, 2018, Zappone said the Tuam babies were owed the “dignity and respect” that had been denied them in death, and noted the option of exhuming their remains and performing DNA tests on them. She urged the church to “contribute substantially” to whatever decision is taken by the government.
Francis was clearly moved by her appeal, and told Irish Jesuits later that day that he wanted the Irish church to “put an end to this.” “I don’t mean simply turn the page, but seek out a cure, reparation, all that is necessary to heal the wounds and give life back to so many people,” he told the priests.
Francis later wrote to Zappone assuring her of his concern and praying “in particular that efforts made by the government and by the local churches and religious congregations will help face responsibly this tragic chapter in Ireland’s history.”
While Zappone announced later in 2018 that the site would indeed be exhumed, the commission’s final report has been delayed, Zappone is no longer minister and to date the burial site remains intact. The Irish government has estimated that the cost of exhuming the site would cost between 6 million and 13 million euros; the Bon Secours Sisters have offered to pay 2.5 million euros, Irish news reports have said, quoting Zappone.
PAT SAYS
Fuck the Vatican!
This “Vatican support” fills me with just anger.
The Irish people and the Irish government dont need the Vatican’s support, approval or permission to rescue the bodies of the 600 + children that were buried in a septic tank by the Vatican’s vicious vestal virgins.
And may God forgive us for ever allowing them to imprison those babies in their concentration camps in the first place.
What the Irish Government should do is to make the Irish branch of the RCC pay all the expenses associated with all the forensic work done, the decent rebuttals and the fitting memorials.
I was delighted when Enda Kenny sent the papal noncio packing.
That should have stayed permanent.
These people tortured generations of Irish people with their dominance.
Our Brit colonisers were bad. They plundered our land our language and our freedom.
But our Roman colonisers stole and destroyed our souls and even threatened to steal our eternities.
And all the while they were raping our women, children and even our young men.
In very different ways, the Roman’s were the Irish Nazis, the Irish Facists etc.
Why they are tolerated in anyway in modern Ireland I cannot understand.
But it is comforting, and just, to see them shrivveling into a rump of what they once were.
There is justice !
There is Karma !
There is a God in Heaven !
I hope those creeps Neary and Okolo will have sufficient decency to stay away from the reburials.
But knowing how they work the Irish bishops will try and have their dirty paws all over it 🤮
I have never met Paul Tighe. Nor do I crave meeting with him 🙂
My opinions about him come from watching him on the media talking – like the short piece above.
He appears to me to be an upper middle class Dublin Catholic.
I suspect that he is ambitious.
I get the feeling that he wants to climb the Vatican greasy pole.
For that to happen I suspect that he does not want to replace Diarmuid Martin in Dublin.
Why would the likes of Tighe want to swap his prestigious desk job in Rome to inherit all the problems DM is leaving behind in Dublin – a disillusioned clergy, disappearing vocations, dwindling congregations, an increasingly secular Ireland and God knows how much debt and other troubles.
It’s much nicer to have a plush and posh life in Rome being a Vatican mouthpiece, living in a comfortable city apartment, wining and dining in the best hosteleries, being an international guest speaker travelling business class and being an expert in how the RCC can use modern tech to promote its propaganda.
One might have high hopes of being an archbishop and cardinal?
Why do people like Paul Tighe wabt to be priests?
They are not pastors.
Tighe reminds me of the quip I once heard a retreat master give:
“He went out to do good – and he did well”. 😄
A COMMENT ON YESTERDAY’S BLOG
Diarmuid has no time for priests. He is a pure careerist whose ambitions lay elsewhere,. Dublin was never something he wanted – he said so so many times. He feigns warmth while with someone but behind the smile is a cold calculating heart interested only in himself. He’s leaving Dublin in a mess. He has surrounded himself with spineless men incapable of speaking up to him – the sooner he goes the better.
Tighe in Rome is too much in the mould of his patron he should stay there. He is devoid of personality and has no pastoral qualities. He would be the kiss of death for Dublin.
TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE
JUST STARTED DIGITALISING MY OLD VHS TAPES.
HERE IS THE RTE DOCUMENTARY FROM 1985 REGARDING MY DISPUTE WITH CALY DALY.
The above 1959 interview with the famous psychologist and psychiatrist is fascinating.
I firmly believe that EVERYONE would be a better, happier and more balanced person if they engaged in counselling and psychotherapy.
And I can say this based on personal experience of having voluntarily placed myself in psychotherapy over a 5 year period in my late 30s and early 40s.
The therapist I chose was/ is from the psychological school called psychosynthesis
( PSYCHOSYNTHESIS is an approach to psychology that expands the boundaries of the field by identifying that a deeper center of identity, which is the postulate of the Self.
It considers each individual unique in terms of purpose in life and places value on the exploration of human potential.
The approach combines spiritual development with psychological healing by including the life journey of an individual or his unique path to self-realization.
The integrative framework of psychosynthesis is based on Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious and addresses psychological distress and intra-psychic and interpersonal conflicts. )
During the above interview Jung talks about becoming aware of his own individual consciousness at the age of 11. He describes it as coming out of a mist and stepping into clarity.
The difference between the self I was before therapy and after therapy was the same. I stepped out of a mist into the clear light of day.
It also gave me a total new freedom that I had never experienced before. After therapy I really knew what it felt like to have the freedom of a son of God.
Henry David Thoreau famously stated in Walden that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
If that is true, what a horrible truth it is!
But it is true, that at various times of our lives we all have painful “issues”.
Sometimes we can resolve those issues on our own.
At other times, we need some help with our issues
The secret is to be wise enough to know when we need help and practical and courageous enough to ask for it.
As psychosynthesis combines psychological healing and spiritual development my time in therapy was also a time of spiritual growth.
I also engaged in Primal Therapy with Dr Frank Lake.
DR FRANK LAKE
Frank Lake (6 June 1914 – 10 May 1982) was one of the pioneers of pastoral counselling in the United Kingdom.
In 1962, he founded the Clinical Theology Association with the primary aim to make clergy more effective in understanding and accepting the psychological origins of their parishioners’ personal difficulties.
However, the training seminars in pastoral counselling, which he began in 1958, eventually enlisted professional and lay people in various fields from various denominations. Many thousands of people attended the seminars.
A PRAYER PLEASE
Mr Kyle McDonald
Please remember a prayer and a thought for Belfast trauma and orthopaedic surgeon Kyle McDonald (38) who passed away suddenly in his sleep the other day leaving a young wife and two babies. (Not Covid related.) RIP.
Guo Wengui accused Beijing of silencing the Vatican on religious matters
The exiled billionaire alleged China started to pay the Holy See from 2014
The dissident said countries including Italy and Australia were also muzzled
He made the bombshell claims on a US show hosted by an ex-Trump adviser
An exiled billionaire has accused the Chinese government of giving the Vatican £1.6billion every year in bribes to prevent it from criticising Beijing’s sweeping clampdown on religions.
Fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui claimed in a podcast that the Communist Party had been paying the Holy See generously since 2014 because Beijing ‘wanted the Vatican to shut up about China’s religion policies.’
US-based Guo, 52, said in the interview that the Communist country had also spent large sums to muzzle other countries – including Italy and Australia – from voicing concerns.
STEVE BANNON
Steve Bannon (pictured), a former Trump strategist, spoke to the Chinese fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui in an interview on Bannon’s self-launched radio show ‘The War Room’ on June 20.
The billionaire’s comment comes after China faced widespread criticism over its crackdown on the country’s religious groups, particularly the ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.
Guo, who is known for his criticism against the Communist Party, made his bombshell claims on June 20 during an interview with The War Room, an American podcast hosted by an ex-Trump adviser, Steve Bannon.
The highly wanted dissident said that the Chinese Communist Party had been allocating £1.6billion each year to gain influence over the Vatican in the past six years.
‘[They] want Vatican to shut up and follow the CCP about the religion polices,’ Guo said on the radio show. ‘That is disaster.’
The Chinese dissident also claimed that the Chinese government was paying the Holy See with $100million (£80million) before 2014, without specifying when those payments initially started. ‘CCP knows, if the Vatican tells the truth about Chinese Christians and Catholics, CCP is die,’ Guo said.
‘CCP is so worried, so they give two billion [dollars] to the Vatican, 1.5 billion [dollars] to Australia, 100million [dollars] to Italy,’ he added.
Guo has developed a relationship with Bannon – who has also been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party.
The two announced their plans to set up a $100million investigation into Chinese corruption in November, the New York Times reported.
Guo’s interview comes as China has been heavily criticised by other countries and humanitarian groups over its policy against Muslims and other religious groups.
UN experts and activists have claimed that at least one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in the detention centres in the region. Former detainees claimed that Muslims were forced to eat pork and speak Mandarin in those internment camps.
After initially denying their existence, China acknowledged that it had opened ‘vocational education centres’ in Xinjiang aimed at preventing extremism by teaching Mandarin and job skills.
Who are the Chinese Muslims?
Muslims are not a new presence in China. Most of China’s Muslim communities, including the Hui, Uighurs and Kazakhs, have lived in China for more than 1,000 years, according to fact tank Pew Research Center.
The largest concentrations of Muslims today are in the western provinces of Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai and Gansu.
A substantial number of Muslims live in the cities of Beijing, Xi’an, Tianjin and Shanghai.
Chinese Muslim men take part in gathering for the celebration of the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, or the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, at the Niu Jie mosque in Beijing, China
They make up about two per cent of the 1.4 billion population in China. However, as the country is so populous, its Muslim population is expected to be the 19th largest in the world in 2030.
The Muslim population in China is projected to increase from 23.3 million in 2010 to nearly 30 million in 2030.
Those who grow up and live in places dominated by the Han Chinese have little knowledge about Islam – or religions in general – thus view it as a threat.
Beijing’s policymakers are predominately Han.
At the same time, radical Muslim Uighurs have killed hundreds in recent years, causing China to implement even more extreme measures to quash potential separatist movements.
Uighurs in particular have long been used to heavy-handed curbs on dress, religious practice and travel after a series of deadly riots in 2009 in Urumqi, according to the Financial Times.
Schoolchildren were banned from fasting during Ramadan and attending religious events while parents were banned from giving newborns Muslim names such as ‘Mohammed’ and ‘Jihad’.
Certain symbols of Islam, such as beards and the veil, were also forbidden. Women with face-covering veils are sometimes not allowed on buses. Unauthorised pilgrimages to Mecca were also restricted.
PAT SAYS
Judas got his 30 pieces of silver.
Here is the Vatican getting £ 1.6 billion a year for letting the Chinese Government choose bishops and keeping stum about the Chinese Government’s murderous human rights record with regard to it’s own citizens, the people of Hong Kong, Catholics, Christian’s and Muslims.
Of course Francis himself colluded with the junta in his native Argentina, including in the killing of two Jesuits, and God knows how many others?
This is not just playing horrible politics with horrible people.
Staying silent in front of the torture and mass killing is nothing short of EVIL and SATANIC.
Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong is a voice crying in the wilderness and has also been betrayed by the Vatican and the 200 cardinals he wrote to about Chinese atrocities.
I terms of evil, there is no real difference between the likes of Islamic terrorists and the Vatican.
The Vatican too, is a centre of religion based terrorism.
There has to be a HELL. And it.must be full of religious murders and their enablers?
Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is charged in a new lawsuit of sexually abusing teenagers in his New Jersey beach house decades ago.AP
By Ted Sherman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
He is known only as “Doe 14.”
Raised in a devout Catholic family, he attended St. Francis Xavier in Newark and Essex Catholic in East Orange in the Archdiocese of Newark, participating in church and youth activities.
And by the time he was a teenager, his lawyers say he was being groomed for a role in what they called a “sex ring” involving then-Bishop Theodore McCarrick, the 90-year-old now defrocked and disgraced former cardinal who was cast out of the ministry last year over decades-old sexual abuse allegations.
In a lawsuit, they charged other priests served as “procurers” to bring victims to McCarrick at his beach house on the Jersey Shore, where he “assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys, seminarians and clerics present at the beach house,” and that they were paired with adult clerics.
The lawsuit does not say if McCarrick asked the other priests to bring boys to the beach house.
In a press conference on Wednesday, attorneys for the now 53-year-old victim serving as the plaintiff in the lawsuit detailed a sordid, predatory scheme of sexual abuse involving McCarrick and other members of the clergy involving at least seven children, including Doe 14, that they said played out over dozens of years.
Jeff Anderson, who represents Doe 14, said priests and others under the control of McCarrick engaged in “open and obvious criminal sexual conduct” that was kept cloaked by the church.
“That continued for 50 years until McCarrick, having been publicly exposed, was ultimately defrocked,” declared Anderson.
In their court papers filed Tuesday night in New Jersey Superior Court in Middlesex County, the unnamed victim filed suit against the Diocese of Metuchen, where McCarrick served as bishop, the Archdiocese of Newark, where he was the archbishop, and the schools, high schools and parish schools Doe 14 had attended while growing up in New Jersey.
According to the lawsuit, much of what allegedly transpired occurred at a Sea Girt beach house that has been the focus of other complaints involving charges of abuse by McCarrick of seminarian students, who he allegedly would bring down to the Jersey Shore.
“McCarrick would creep into this kid’s bed and engage in criminal sexual behavior and whisper, ‘It’s okay,’” said Anderson.
Asked about the charges, attorney Barry Coburn, who represents McCarrick, said only, “no comment at this time.”
The Newark Archdiocese also declined comment.
“It would be inappropriate to discuss or comment on matters in litigation,” said spokeswoman Maria Margiotta. “The Archdiocese of Newark remains fully committed to transparency and to our long-standing programs to protect the faithful and will continue to work with victims, their legal representatives and law enforcement authorities in an ongoing effort to resolve allegations and bring closure to victims.”
The Doe 14 complaint charged that boys were also selected and abused not only by McCarrick, but by other priests and clergy at the beach house, who were named in the court papers.
Gerald Ruane, Michael Walters and John Laferrera, allegedly abused Doe 14, the lawsuit claimed. All three were listed last year by the Newark Archdiocese as having credible accusations of sex abuse made against them. Ruane was listed as deceased, and the others had previously removed from ministry.
Brother Andrew Thomas Hewitt, the former Essex Catholic principal, was also accused of abusing the boy from 1981 to 1983, and named as well in a list of those accused of sexual abuse. He is now dead as well.
Also accused of “unpermitted sexual contact” when the plaintiff was 11 years old was a former priest named Anthony Nardino. He had not been publicly accused before, but was said to have left the ministry as well. Church officials did not respond to questions about him.
McCarrick, once the most recognized Catholic leader in New Jersey and a major voice on national issues for the church, has already been repeatedly accused of sexual abuse in earlier court filings.
Last year, James Grein stepped forward with a lawsuit under a new law that gives people more time to sue their alleged abusers and the institutions that protected them. He charged McCarrick sexually abused him for 20 years, even after he told Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Vatican about the abuse.
In a separate lawsuit, John Bellocchio, a former Catholic schoolteacher and principal, alleged in a lawsuit that McCarrick sexually assaulted him when he was the archbishop of Newark.
Even before any of those allegations came to light, church officials in New Jersey later revealed that McCarrick had previously been accused of sexual misconduct with three adults during his time in the state. Two of those cases resulted in secret legal settlements, according to the Archdiocese of Newark.
The settlements included $80,000 paid to a former priest turned lawyer from New Jersey who said McCarrick, known as “Uncle Ted,” would invite young seminarians and priests to the house in Sea Girt, where they would be expected to share a bed with McCarrick.
All that time, McCarrick continued his ascendancy in the church hierarchy, picked by Pope John Paul II as Washington’s archbishop in late 2000. A year later, he was made a cardinal.
The cardinal’s downfall began after a former altar server went to the Archdiocese of New York after hearing that a panel was considering settlements for alleged victims, to report how he had been abused as a teenager while being measured by McCarrick for a special cassock for Christmas Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
He told them that McCarrick, then a monsignor, unzipped the teenager’s pants while measuring him for the garment and was later cornered in a bathroom.
The allegation led to McCarrick being removed from public ministry and later forced to resign from the College of Cardinals. A subsequent Vatican investigation ended with his being laicized, or dismissed from the clerical state — considered one the harshest forms of punishment that can be issued by the church.
McCarrick has never admitted to any wrongdoing.
PAT SAYS
The more we hear about McCarrick the more disturbing the story gets.
McCarrick wanted younger men, even youths who had not reached the age of consent.
He seems to have had a number of people, including priests, who supplied him with victims.
Mc Carrick was a :chicken hawk”.
And he appears to have had, in his circle, clerical and lay “feeders” who supplied him with “fresh meat”.
This is not the story if a man who was a lover of some kind, but a man looking boys and younger men who had a voracious appetite for young male flesh.
The fact that Pope Francis is still sitting on the Vatican report into McCarrick is a clear sign that the Vatican’s priority is not the victims but the church’s reputation and wealth.
MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER IN IRISH CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Fr Stephen Farragher PP Ballyhaunis had Muslim call to prayer at Mass
What was this priest hoping to achieve by having a Muslim making a Muslim call to prayer in a rural Irish Catholic church?
It smacks to me of unthinking clerical gimmerickery?
It seems to me like clerical
Why doesn’t Fr Farragher just sell the church to the Muslims to make into a mosque?
One culture within the Catholic Church needing major reform is that surrounding the practice of the Latin Mass.
In a previous era, the Latin Mass was merely a uniform and standard way of celebrating the liturgy in the United States. In the wake of much needed reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Mass has become a rallying point for change-resistant sects within the church.
The ultra-conservatism practiced by these Latin Mass groups is radical and narrow-minded. They utilize the Latin Mass structure to wield control over believers — particularly women, who are reduced to a state of discriminatory subjugation in Latin rites.
The stubbornly resistant, anti-modern practices of these Latin Mass adherents border on cultism.
The Latin Mass fosters clericalist structures in the church. The liturgy — spoken in an ancient language no longer in modern vernacular usage — places all power in the hands of the priest. The priest keeps his back turned to the people for most of the ceremony. Aside from making occasional responses, the congregation plays no active part in worship. All people inside the church are expected to kneel on cue at various points. The priest is at the center of the spectacle. He is separated from the people he is supposed to serve by an altar rail — a barrier that gives him privileges. To receive the Eucharist, people must kneel at his feet.
Instead of a unifying form of worship, the Latin Mass has become an instrument of oppression and a gathering point for Catholic fundamentalists.
Meanwhile, the Latin tradition oppresses women. Women are expected — indeed, in some cases commanded — to wear skirts instead of trousers, cover themselves with long clothing and wear veils over their heads. No such rules exist for the men. It is discrimination, and therefore the Latin Mass actively endorses sexism. Instead of a unifying form of worship, the Latin Mass has become an instrument of oppression and a gathering point for Catholic fundamentalists.
In most cases, it is useless to politely disagree with people in the Latin Mass sect. Their attitude creates blindness — not only to true faith, but to their own behavior. They treat others with pride and animosity, but their conscience fails to kick in because they are convinced their way is holy and other ways are not.
Anyone who may accuse me of not knowing what I’m talking about — a favorite indictment of the Latin Mass ideologues — would be wrong. My opinion is based on facts and personal experiences.
Related: Your thoughts on a traditional Mass, presidential elections, humility and more
I grew up in a household of challenged but growing faith, which grew stronger over time. My parents were divorced. My mother was a fallen-away Catholic who hadn’t been to church in over 30 years. In the branches of my family tree were relatives who might best be described as atheists, and others of a more traditional Christian type. My mother decided to return to the Catholic Church when I was young. From an early age, I believed in Christ and considered myself a Catholic — other relatives tried in vain to convert me to atheism while I was still in elementary school.
Maybe this sounds like the beginning of a happy story of faith and discovery. It was not. My family’s journey into the Catholic Church was a long, tumultuous and unpleasant road punctuated by a series of awful mistreatments by Catholic clergy, religious, schools and parishioners. (It’s a miracle that I’m still Catholic and became a Catholic journalist.)
The Latin Mass rears its veiled head in this unholy history at several points. The last Masses my mother remembered attending took place before the Second Vatican Council, so naturally she started going to Latin Masses when she returned to the church because they were familiar. The church was going to welcome us, she thought. The treatment we got was slightly shy of the Spanish Inquisition.
Needless to say, anything in the church looking remotely female was completely veiled. The people had the humor of a gallows crowd and the pastor, arrayed in lavish vestments, was more like a Renaissance baron. After over an hour spent every Sunday drowning in incense smoke and getting sneered at, we did not feel any closer to God.
“You should come to the Latin Mass instead and wear a veil. Women look the most beautiful in church when they are veiled,” he tried to persuade.
Rules, also, were a strange issue. For example, the color red was forbidden to be worn in the church. A confessor there hit one of my family members with a “permanent daily penance”— a rosary every day, forever, to atone for an alleged life of iniquity. After some while of this torture, my mother spoke with a different priest about the unbearable situation. He advised her that genuine Catholic faith did not forbid wearing certain colors or allow priests to inflict a “lifetime penance” for sins. Immediately we stopped going to Mass at that parish.
But it wasn’t the last time I would run into Latin Masses — or the Latin Mass sectarians, present today in many Catholic organizations.
After almost leaving the church as a teenager, I chose to stay Catholic by practicing my faith as a free agent — belonging to no parish, attending different churches for Sunday Mass. On one instance, a priest noticed I was showing up semi-regularly and approached me with a persuasive speech to convert me to the Latin Mass faction — disguising discrimination as encouragement. “You should come to the Latin Mass instead and wear a veil. Women look the most beautiful in church when they are veiled,” he tried to persuade. “The long veils are the best kind — the really long ones, past the shoulders. I recommend that for you — you have such pretty red hair, but it would even look nicer if you wore a veil over it. I think the long kind would be best for you.” Most disturbing about this conversation was his effort to make repression sound positive. Of course it made no sense that my hair would somehow look better if people couldn’t see it. Indignant, I asked him to explain why he thought I should consider covering my head.
“Because it’s respectful,” he replied solemnly.
When asked why it was disrespectful to show the hair that God gave me — and why men in church did not have to cover their hair — he was not able to answer. He reacted badly because I challenged his authority. Anyway, I had no intention of listening. I knew I was free to take my belief in God elsewhere. I never returned to that church afterwards.
The priest’s attitude towards veiling women is typical of Latin Mass cultists. They seem to believe that women look better in church when people can’t see them. They try to sell the veil to girls as a symbol of feminine piety. They hold that covering up and hiding yourself is beautiful although such a practice is the very opposite of natural beauty. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how pretty, lacy or colorful the veils may seem to potential wearers — the veils are meant to conceal female beauty and prevent people from noticing women. By promoting the veil, Latin Mass fundamentalists rob women of freedom, while trying to make it seem like a liberating choice. Their attitude is not much different from religious extremists in the Middle East and Asia.
Given such practices, it should come as no surprise that a contingent of men active within the sectarian Latin Mass environment have sexist worldviews. These types believe they are superior to women simply because they are male.
I cite two examples to support my view. One occasion that remains burned into my memory was when I attended Mass at a Catholic university. It was a busy Sunday and my schedule demanded I attend Mass at a particular time. I did not know it was a Latin Mass until I stumbled over the doorstep. The atmosphere was typically medieval. I was surprised to recognize some people there. One of them was a professor who was known to be a chauvinistic person. When I saw his wife, I was shocked — and suddenly realized the ugly extent of his prejudices. His wife was a mere ghost of a woman. She was covered from head to foot. Her dress was so long that it dragged on the floor. Even her entire neck and her hands were covered. She kept her head bowed and always walked behind her husband. She carried a rosary and looked physically weak — almost ill.
The professor, by contrast, looked swaggering and hearty. He strutted around and chatted with others in church as she followed him like a pale shadow. Seeing this, I believed I had witnessed a very dark side to the professor’s spirituality. His religion was a mechanism of abusive control.
My second example concerns a younger Catholic age group — many of whom are apparently falling victim to the ultra-traditional Latin Mass ideology promoted in Catholic activity groups and on college campuses. A female acquaintance of mine, about my age, decided to brave the Catholic dating scene — a recipe for disaster, in my personal opinion. Among the stories I heard from her were of traditional Catholic males shopping for wives, asking her and other girls, “Are you willing to be veiled?” before agreeing to date them. These men did not want to associate with women whom they couldn’t religiously dominate.
Men she met in this traditional Catholic peer group would interview girls about theology before deciding to spend time with them — they were arrogant and believed they were somehow morally superior to the women. Instead of standing up for her own dignity, she decided to cave into the pressure — go to traditional services and start wearing veils. I still don’t understand why she wanted to associate with that group, or why she decided to give in to oppression.
It is very unfortunate that younger generations of Catholics seeking to deepen their faith are getting sucked into this vortex of toxic, traditional radicalism. I saw many young families at a Latin Mass recently when I was invited to attend a speaking engagement at a traditional church. I happened to arrive before Mass was quite over — having nowhere else to go before the event, and wishing to receive Communion, I decided to sit in on the Mass. Unsurprisingly I found myself surrounded by veiled women who entertained themselves in between kneeling bouts by casting disapproving glances at my leggings and earrings.
Looking around, I was astonished to see many college-aged men and women among the crowd. The priests seemed to be in their 30s. Clearly these people were too young to remember times before Vatican II. Yet something had drawn them here. Parental influence? Doubtful. It seemed to be a shared spirit of ultra-conservatism. I found it frightening to reflect on how the closed, Latin Mass mindset had managed to replicate itself over time and spread like a virus.
Unsurprisingly, while there I had another memorably bad experience. I asked to receive Communion in the hands. Most traditional-type priests I’d encountered in my lifetime would give me the Eucharist in the hands. Not this pastor. He literally made a scene at the altar and jerked the Eucharist away from me when I reached out to receive it — as if my hands would contaminate the very Jesus who, according to the Catholic faith, seeks Communion with my soul. I seriously considered walking out of the church at that point, but decided to receive the Eucharist instead since I wanted to pray. After Mass I gave the priests a piece of my mind.
I reminded him that, as a priest, he was supposed to be of service and value my feedback as a believer.
Clericalism defined the response I received. When I informed an assisting priest that the pastor had been very rude to me at the altar and asked that my views be relayed, he replied: “I won’t throw our pastor under the bus. He’s the pastor. I refuse to tell him to correct his behavior,” the priest said. I reminded him that, as a priest, he was supposed to be of service and value my feedback as a believer. The priest took a step back and looked at me in astonishment, as if the notion of service had never occurred to him. “Very well. I’ll tell the pastor what you said,” he said condescendingly. “But I don’t think he did anything wrong.”
His attitude was a trademark example of the culture within the Catholic Church that encourages abuse. His first reaction was to default to absolute loyalty to his pastor, then dismiss my views. When pressed further, he flat-out denied all wrongdoing. To clericalists, complainers are always the problem — not those who belong to the herd, and certainly not clergy.
With feudalistic rigidity, the priest argued in defense of his pastor against the traditions of the “novus ordo”—a derogatory term used by Latin Mass cultists to denote regular English-language Masses. He said the Masses I regularly attended were invented “only 40 years ago” — as if that devalued them somehow —and insisted they were only “allowed to exist, but not standardly recommended.” He claimed the church only allowed Communion in the hands “in extreme cases.” Of course, I know this is not true. He capped his radical fundamentalist arguments by saying the Latin Mass is a solemn rite equal to Byzantine and Coptic rites and that rules cannot be changed for anyone. He accused me of being “rude” by expecting them “to change their rites.”
I feel it necessary to point out — lest readers be confused by his illogicality — that the Byzantine and Coptic rites originate in the traditions of distinct Catholic churches in foreign countries. The Latin Mass, by contrast, is merely an extinct model of tradition practiced in the United States and other countries, and was never a separate church nor imported from a foreign country. Therefore the Latin Mass can be compared to Coptic and Byzantine churches as much as apples can be compared to oranges. No ancient Romans or native Latin speakers will be disenfranchised by changes made to the Latin Mass — just hardliners unable to let go of their particular ideology.
What I gained from this experience was a deeper recognition of how the Latin Mass foments the clericalist culture within the Catholic Church that Pope Francis is actively working to change. In his homily earlier last month, Pope Francis warned Catholics against hypocrisy. He described hypocrisy as “appearing one way, but acting in another,” and said that a hypocritical attitude “always kills.”
Jesus did not tolerate hypocrisy, according to Pope Francis, but enjoyed unmasking it. “A Christian who does not know how to accuse himself is not a good Christian,” the pope said.
The intolerant atmosphere of the Latin Mass stands in stark contrast to Pope Francis’s description of what the Catholic Church is supposed to be. “The church is not a fortress, but a tent capable of expanding and offering access to everyone,” said Pope Francis. “The church is ‘going out’ or it is not church, either it is walking, always widening its room so that all may enter or else it is not church.” Compassion defines true Catholicism. Radical traditionalists who cling to the pomp, ceremony and narrow-minded rituals of outdated Latin practices would do well to follow the advice of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ “ [Zita Ballinger Fletcher has reported extensively on Germany’s Catholic Church for Catholic News Service.]
PATS SAYS
This is a hard hitting article.
But we must think about the points Ms Fletcher is making and ask if she is right or wrong.
Personally, I believe, the Extraordinary Form is NOT in keeping with the thinking and theology of Vatican 11.
And, that is bad for the church as a whole.
The Novus Ordo Mass has much, much more in common with the Breaking of the Bread conducted by Jesus Himself and later by the early church.
When the English Jesuit George Tyrrell was branded a “modernist” by Cardinal Mercier in 1908 he responded by writing a book called MEDIEVALISM.
He was making the point that Catholic Christianity cannot be reduced to the thinking or practices of the Medieval period in the church.
And that’s where the Latin Mass people have gone wrong – in that they are equating the whole theology of the Eucharist for what passed in medieval times – the time when ordinary people were poor and ignorant and the world especially the church, was under the feudal system.
Fletcher makes her point well that the Latin Mass movement smacks of cultism, sexism and clericalism.
Personally, I think Benedict made a grave error by making the Extraordinary Form so prevalent.
I would not ask for the Extraordinary Form to be banned – but it should be restricted.
The Novus Ordo Mass in the Mass of the Vatican 11 era.
And it best expresses the theology of the Vatican 11 period.
Is clinging to the Latin Mass not a little like the Amish insisting on horse and carriages instead of motor cars?
Could the Latin Mass folk be worshipping the idol of Medievalism and not God Himself?
A retired Vatican diplomat accused of sexual assault while in office is due to appear before the Paris criminal court in November.
Archbishop Luigi Ventura resigned as nuncio to France in December 2019 at the age of 75. He had served in the post 10 years.
Ventura was accused of inappropriately touching a young male staffer of Paris City Hall in January 2019.
It was confirmed to CNA on July 23 by Vincent Plumas, deputy prosecutor and press manager of the office of the public prosecutor of Paris, that Ventura “should appear before the Paris Criminal Court for acts of sexual assault on November 10.” The Vatican revoked Ventura’s diplomatic immunity in July 2019, paving the way for a trial in French courts.
Ventura has been living in Rome since September last year, according to French news agency I. Media.
He was first accused in early 2019 of inappropriately touching a staffer at a January 17, 2019, reception for the New Year address of Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. The accusation was then investigated by Parisian authorities for several months.
After the initial allegation was made against Ventura, he faced a second accusation of sexual misconduct against an adult male relating to his time in Canada in 2008. He has denied the allegations.
Ventura was apostolic nuncio to Canada from 2001 to 2009.
Christian Vachon, who was 32 at the time of the alleged incident, claims Ventura touched his buttocks at least twice during a banquet held at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec.
Ventura was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Brescia in 1969. He entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1978 and was stationed in Brazil, Bolivia, and the UK. From 1984 to 1995 he was appointed to serve at the Secretariat of State in the Section for Relations with States.
After his episcopal consecration in 1995, Ventura served as nuncio to Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chile, and Canada. He was appointed apostolic nuncio to France in September 2009.
PAT SAYS
Ventura is a very foolish man.
After being caught in Canada 12 years ago you would think he would have learned to keep his hands to himself?
The problem, of course, was that he regarded himself as untouchable, with his diplomatic immunity.
If he has touched up young men twice, you’ll find he has done it 22 + times.
The good thing is that France, once “The Eldest Daughter of the Church” is no longer under the influence of the RCC and are charging him.
And Francis, has wisely removed his diplomatic immunity from him – so that the French can have him.
All the old Catholic countries are now willing to tackle crime and wrong doing by senior RCC figures.
Ventura is obviously a gay man who never came to terms with his homosexuality.
None of us have the right to impose unwanted touching on others.
This report is my Church Militant. Ignore the interviewer and listen to the facts
This interview is very important for the following reasobs:
1. It announces that McCarrick will be held liable in the civil courts for his actions.
2. He will be deposed this month, hopefully in public.
3. He my have to use up his vast off shore savings to pay his victim.
It shows Feancis in a very bad light – for sitting on The Vatican McCarrick report.
THE INTRODUCTION OF SAME SEX RELIGIOUS MARRIAGES IN NORTHERN IRELAND.
Yesterday I as the nominating person of The Oratory Society received a letter from the Northern Ireland Registrar General asking if The Oratory wished to celebrate government recognised religious same sex marriages in Northern Ireland.
Of course, I replied saying that indeed we did.
So, from September, The Oratory priests will be able to celebrate same sex marriages that are fully legal in Northern Ireland.
I doubt if very many churches in Northern Ireland will be agreeing to celebrate same sex marriages.
The RCC will not do them.
I cant see the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians or the Methodists doing them.
We will certainly not see them happening in the Paisleyite Free Presbyteruan Church.
I cant see the Baptists and the other free churches doing them.
I know that some of the Unitarians aka The Non Subscribing Presbyterian Churches will do them – especially All Souls Belfast where the very gay friendly minister Chris Hudson is minister will do them.
I have been doing Same Sex Blessings for 34 years now.
It will be good that those ceremonies will now be legal in Northern Ireland.
Obviously, no church or priest / minister will be forced to perform same sex weddings.
What do readers think of the introduction of same sex religious marriage in Northern Ireland?
Concerned Catholics in Scotland spent years writing to priests and bishops with concerns following the introduction of the new Mass in 1969, asking for action to be taken to end the various liturgical abuses which were featuring in parishes despite the Vatican documents purportedly seeking to correct them. Repeatedly, the Vatican refused to enforce its own rules. Eventually, the penny dropped and we realised that, humanly speaking, we were wasting our time. Letters sent to the Vatican might bring a polite acknowledgement, but the Bishops either ignored or insulted us, exhorting us to charity while defending dissenters.
Similarly, churches (including the cathedrals in Glasgow and Edinburgh – and no doubt other cities) were selling publications openly attacking or undermining Catholic teaching and morals. Dissenting speakers were being brought into churches and other Catholic premises to address priests and teachers and so, over the years following the Second Vatican Council to the present day, the traditional Faith has all but disappeared in Scotland (and indeed the wider UK and Ireland, if not worldwide).
Two Edinburgh priests in particular were a major cause of scandal in Scotland. Fr Steve Gilhooley and Fr (now Monsignor) Andy Monaghan were using the media to undermine and even openly attack the Church. Gilhooley did this through his column in the Edinburgh Evening News where, among many disgraceful statements, he informed his largely Protestant and secular readership that he’d like to see all dogma kicked out of the pews/Church, and Monaghan achieved the same end through his “Agony Uncle” phone-in radio show, Open Line on Radio Forth 2, where his advice to callers was about as Catholic as Ramadan. Our letters expressing concern to the now deceased Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien brought responses from him chiding us for our lack of charity and telling us that the writings of Fr Gilhooley helped many people and that Fr Monaghan was “doing God’s work…” (by encouraging abortions, adultery, cohabitation, and providing telephone numbers for “gay” helplines.)Our right and duty as lay people to engage in such [unpleasant] work is enshrined in Canon Law (Canon 212 # 3). In our newsletter we commented more than once on the strangeness, to put it mildly, of the Cardinal’s defence of these dissenters. I openly remarked that such defence of blatant attacks on Catholic teaching and morals could surely only mean that there was something in the Cardinal’s own personal life that blinded him to the spiritual dangers posed by these priests. Some wondered why we weren’t last seen in civil court! Thus, when his own scandal broke, we were almost alone in Scotland at being shocked but not surprised. An American commentator, however, had beat me to it some years previously when he said that where we witness liturgical abuse, we will find sexual sin.
Well-known local historian and scientist, convert to the Faith, Charles Smith, RIP, was keen to organise some kind of fightback. He hosted a small meeting of like-minded friends in Edinburgh, where we discussed the possibility of producing a simple newsletter to alert our fellow Catholics to the dangers posed by the modernism, the dissent, the anti-Catholic beliefs infecting the Church, by then very evident in liturgy, sermons, publications disseminated in parishes, schools etc.
Thus, in 1999 we published a single page newsletter which was well received. We now publish a 16 page newsletter, distributed to our postal and email list, and available to read in full on our website, bi-monthly. At one time, we sent a copy to every priest and bishop in Scotland; as we approached publication of our 100th anniversary copy, however, we decided to shake the dust, and remove all priests except those who opted to remain on our mailing list. No use casting pearls before swine…
In highlighting the above mentioned scandals of liturgical abuse (now normalised) we came to understand that the essence of the problem in the Church was, in fact, the new Mass itself, which had been created specifically to make it pleasing to Protestants. We began to quote those priests (e.g. Bugnini), and developed our apostolate from seeking to “reform the reform” to promoting the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and Faith. In addition to the foregoing activities, our concerns included challenging the rise in the number of dissenting speakers and publications promoted by the Bishops, and we also responded to requests from priests to follow up public scandals, such as one Glasgow priest who was living with his “boyfriend” in the church house and others who were known to visit a “gay” bar in Glasgow. We were also approached by the broken-hearted husband of a woman who was involved in an affair with a priest – this in the Archdiocese of St Andrew’s & Edinburgh. None of the scandals which we published were news to the Bishops. Not one. Yet no action was forthcoming from them. We felt compelled, therefore, to bring such hypocritical double-living to the attention of the wider Church community.We considered (perhaps wrongly, as it turns out) that no Catholic would want their hard-earned contributions to their parishes to be used to fund a double-life of sexual activity or support for the so-called “gay culture”.
The majority of our reports, however, are religion-related scandals. The utterances and behaviour of Pope Francis, who just cannot conceal his Marxism, and other examples of what Pope John Paul II once described as “a silent apostasy” but which is now screaming from the rooftops, are typical of the reports which we bring to our readership. In short, the nature and purpose of our apostolate mirrors the nature and purpose of the Church itself – to spread the truths of the Faith, that is, the truths required for salvation, in obedience to Christ’s Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) and to correct those errors, heresies and immoralities which are obstructing the Church’s mission and obscuring its purpose.
Our stated aim is to keep the faithful informed of the dire state of the Church at this time of crisis, a crisis easily the worst ever to hit the Church. We seek to make a contribution to the restoration of the traditional Catholic Faith, and take as our inspiration, Scotland’s only canonised martyr – St John Ogilvie – who, when asked why he had returned from the Continent of Europe, said “I have come to Scotland to unteach heresy and to save souls.” Saving souls is the only reason the Church exists. It doesn’t exist to make life better or more comfortable for people, and it certainly doesn’t exist to afford any of us the means to justify living at variance with God’s natural and moral law. This truth has been forgotten as modernism and secularism have tightened their grip on Catholic churchmen, from the top down. Catholic Truth is little more than a very small contribution to ending that grip; a small contribution to the restoration, in Scotland, of all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).
PATS RESPONSE
WARNING
I will not publish comments personally attacking the author of the above. She has given us ample material to discuss.
Dear Patricia,
I fully accept your point about the liturgical abuses after the New Mass was introduced. Instead of celebrating Mass, many priests regarded the Mass as their own private show that they were presenting and the result was thoroughly embarrassing. Here is an example of what I talk about, from the Redemptorists.
For men like this Redemptorist Mass is a pantomime and they are Cinderella! Maybe they did not get enough parental attention or long enough on the breast?
As for them allowing dissenting publications and speakers? That should have been a matter for the bishop.
Here I must confess that I am and have been a Liberation Theology and a Kung man. And I celebrated a funeral Mass over the Great Modernist George Tyrrell SJ.
But there have been theological differences in the church for 2,000 years. I suppose it’s only heresy we should worry about.
Patricia, I totally respect your point of view and your right to express it.
In Scotland the bishops and priests should be in dialogue with you. That’s the Christian and rational way.
I am very much a Vatican 11 man and far prefer the Novus Ordo to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Having said that I would have no problem attending a Latin Mass.
The laity have every right to challenge what they see as liturgical abuse, corruption and clergy living double lives.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 