Jesuit guilty
Rev. Donald McGuire was found guilty in Wisconsin of molesting two Loyola Academy-Wilmette students in the 60s. "I feel like yelling hallelujah," said one of the accusers, Victor Bender, 53. A Cook County-Ill. civil suit vs. the Jesuits has been on hold while the criminal prosecution took its course. Presumably, it will be resumed. During closing arguments Thursday, defense attorney Gerald Boyle tried to paint the two accusers as opportunists who were trying to cash in on a civil lawsuit filed in Illinois against the Jesuits.
"They want money," Boyle said repeatedly. The state's case is "full of holes," Boyle said.
Walworth County District Atty. Phil Koss, whose rebuttal of Boyle's closing argument gave him the last word before the jury began deliberating, denied that a civil lawsuit pending in Illinois was the motive for the criminal case.
One of the accusers first informed a parish priest of the allegations in 1969 or 1970, making a conspiracy unlikely, and neither man appeared to have financial problems, Koss said.
"So [they] are going to pick the most humiliating, embarrassing way they can to make money?" he said.
Jesuits in the dock
A judge in Alaska threw out a civil suit against the Fairbanks Catholic diocese and the Oregon province of the Jesuits on grounds of statute of limitations, saying the woman should have made her claim earlier. She had sued Rev. James Poole, SJ, for abusing and getting her pregnant when she was 14. Two other women have settled for $1 million in one case, an undisclosed sum in another against Poole. Two more claims are to be decided.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin the criminal trial of Rev. Donald McGuire finished its second day with one of his two accusers vigorously cross-examined by defense lawyer Gerald Boyle, who declared himself "very satisfied with where I'm at" at day's end. He had gotten the accuser, 52, who said McGuire fondled him when he was 14, to say he stayed with McGuire on the 3rd floor, not the 2nd, of Loyola Academy, Wilmette, in the late 60s; that McGuire may or not have been circumcised when he was not, as Boyle showed in a projected photo of McGuire's circumcised penis; and that McGuire had no distinguishing marks on his body when he had bright red splotches on McGuire's neck and back, as Boyle also showed in pictures.
The accuser's sister, however, told of a 2 1/2-hour telephone call on Memorial Day weekend about 10 years ago in which he tearfully recounted and discussed his being abused by McGuire.
Reaching out
Would Cardinal George like this comment back, as in Chi Trib, talking up the Festival of Faith in Rosemont this past weekend? "People are isolated in their parishes at times . . . The people have come in, and in greater numbers than last time. They feel very encouraged."
Isolated in parishes? Us huddled masses? As opposed to living on State Parkway in a ten-chimney brick house?
Let him have it back. Even cardinals have bad say-days.
Jesuit on trial
Fr. Donald McGuire, SJ, 75, goes on trial today in Elkhorn, WI on sexual-abuse charges about events that happened in the late 60s, when McGuire was a teacher at Loyola Academy, Wilmette, IL, and the accusers were students. Two men, now ages 53 and 52, testified at a preliminary hearing in April that McGuire touched their genitals at a Fontana residence between spring of 1967 and Christmas 1968.
The men would have been between 14 and 15 years old at the time of the alleged assaults. McGuire would have been between 36 and 38 years old.
"He'd reach over and grab me in my groin, on my genitals," one man testified at the preliminary hearing. "He'd squeeze, at that point, or rub his hand across my genitals and laugh."
Both victims testified McGuire inappropriately touched them numerous times.
The men say McGuire also indecently touched them at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Ill., where both boys were once students and McGuire was a teacher. The men said they did not know each other at the time.
This is from the Janesville (WI) Gazette, which links to a MissionFides.com bio of McGuire which defines Mission Fides as Chicago-based, "a non-profit, Catholic, lay missionary organization founded to promulgate and disseminate the True Faith of Jesus Christ throughout the world, particularly through the use of directed spiritual retreats based on The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola," with whom McGuire was affiliated since its founding in 1994. Mission Fides offers McGuire on audio tapes and video giving talks and retreats.
About "Get him to a monk-ery"
Unbelievable/believable.
You can see in [Joliet Bishop Imesch's] testimony it's a mindset. There is no sense of sin. It doesn't exist for this guy, er, bishop. Not even in a secular sense -- an abuse of power -- a priest and a 14-year old little girl. Doesn't give the bishop a queasy feeling. Immune to a sense of sin. Chilling. And of course, the priest-perps -- no sense of sin, just self-indulgence. The perps and the bishop share a common morality, the bishop just didn't have the appetite. Scandal of the Mystical Body.
-- D.
Right, right, right. When columnist Bob Greene was found out as an abuser of reportorial access for sake of women partners, the Trib bounced him forthwith, caring more for the Trib than for Greene. Bishops show no such sentiment. They do not care more for the church than for this or that priest.
-- Me
Lutheran troubles
Egad, the pastor arrested for trespassing in what presumably is his own pulpit is of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, whose secondary founder (after Jesus) had his own problems with legally constituted authority, as we know from our study of the Protestant Reformation. It's a turf dispute of the first order, but he was arrested on a charge that may not stick. The synod is connectional, not congregational, that is. Pulpits do not belong directly to the people of a given congregation but to the church, in this case the synod's Northern Illinois District. You don't just fire your pastor in that church, no more than you fire the priest at a Roman Catholic or Episcopal or Methodist parish; you go through headquarters.
The congregation's board violated the church's constitution, which requires the board to go to the synod to resolve a dispute over a pastor, Rev. William H. Ameiss, president of the Northern Illinois District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, told Sun-Times. "They have removed a pastor inappropriately." Ameiss was scheduled to meet with both factions next Saturday. We Christians and Christian sympathizers wish him luck.
Get him to a monk-ery
During a deposition in August, Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch said a priest skinny-dipping and playing poker in the nude with young boys was "inappropriate," but because Imesch did not consider it to be sexual abuse, he moved the priest to another parish, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
Now. How many people think that priest should have been sent to a monastery for complete makeover as a shepherd of souls?
And what are the standards for Joliet priests?
George troubled
Again, what gives with Cardinal George, beleaguered CEO of the multi-million-dollar-budgeted, thousands-of-employees Chicago archdiocese, who tells reporters his personal problems as if in therapy or the confessional?
He’s “troubled” he didn’t act sooner, says Sun-Times head. "I'm saddened by my own failure,” he said
-- very much so. I pray that there will be nobody who has been abused by Father McCormack who would not have been had I taken him out. That's a constant worry."
Sad, worried. We are asked to feel his pain.
"I get very troubled," George said, clearing his throat as his voice caught momentarily. "Remorseful. There is no point in getting upset; you do your work, and you don't let that paralyze you.
"But I can't imagine what must be in the hearts of many people again," he said. "We thought this was done, or at least contained, and it doesn't seem to have been. I can only apologize for that."
OK, contrition. Now firm purpose of amendment?
George admitted he didn't react more hastily to the McCormack case because the priest had an excellent reputation.
"I think that maybe lulled me into thinking maybe it wasn't true," the cardinal said. "I should have thought just the opposite: Assume it is true, and what do you do? I was looking for a pattern, and it wasn't there, and I said, well, wait until it is there, wait until they come forward.
"And that was a mistake."
Yes. The therapeutic admission that covers a mountain of ineptitude.
Sickened
Another horror story from the rectory:
Therese says she was 7 years old when she met "Father Ben."
It was the late 1960s, and the Rev. Joseph Bennett was a young, good-looking, "cool" priest fresh out of seminary and assigned to St. John de la Salle Roman Catholic Church at 102nd and King Drive, where he helped teach catechism to public school kids such as Therese once a week, she says.
Bennett heard Therese's first confession, gave her first communion, confirmed her, presided at her older sister's wedding and visited for family dinners, she says.
And when Therese was 8, she claims Bennett began having sexual intercourse with her in the lower level of the parish school, after religious education classes, before her mother picked her up to go home, a routine she says continued for three years until her family moved away when she was 11.
This from Sun-Times. Chi Trib declines to name the priest because he has not been charged. It’s good to have two newspapers. Sometimes you win with one, sometimes with another.
Meanwhile, Rev. Daniel McCormack was charged again, accused of molesting an 11-year-old Chicago boy last month inside the St. Agatha rectory, “according to a law enforcement source,” says Sun-Times.
This was since the August decision by Cardinal George, protective of McCormack’s reputation, to leave him in that rectory even though police had wanted to charge him.
The complainer about Bennett, “Therese,” had gone to George — the archdiocese, but there’s no practical difference here — in 2003 and kept coming back. She
“. . . called every three weeks or so, to [the] Office of Professional Responsibility, saying, 'What's going on? Is he [Bennett] still [in the rectory]?' And they said, 'We're waiting for the cardinal to make a decision, we're waiting for the cardinal to make a decision.' . . .”
He got off the dime yesterday, removing Bennett.
So:
* What gives with the cardinal — so quick on his feet, hearing nuances of questions, alert — that he is so clumsy in these matters? What made him appealing to the pope that appointed him in view of his apparent tin ear in matters of government, or for that matter, management?
* What about the aura of respect for clergy that makes it so shocking when their clay feet are exposed? Is there too much nonsense said about the glories of priesthood and heroism of ministry?
“Clergy discount” was standard at John F. Denvir clothier in the Loop 50 years ago, and others too, probably. It meant a break in price of a black suit. It’s a sign of the way things used to be and as such was good for no one concerned, including the clergy.
A non-churchgoing neighbor, hearing that I was entering the Jesuits in 1950, said respectfully, “It’s a good profession.” We chuckled privately at that. We knew better; we knew it was far more than that, namely a divine calling. That attitude may saddle both priest and parishioner with unfair burden, making it hard for the one even to breathe, for the other to see him as no better, no worse than most of us.
"When you're brought up Catholic, you're taught to look at the nuns and the priests like God. And I looked at the priest like God, and whatever he said was OK. As a result, I've lost my faith. And that's the biggest loss," Therese said. "I'm disgusted and I'm scared because I don't know if the priest I'm going to go to communion or confession to, who is handling the holy eucharist, I don't know what he's done with those hands. I don't know if he's abused a little girl or a little boy, and that sickens me."
The premier clergy-abuse lawyer, Jeff Anderson, said
the cardinal acted to oust Bennett only after [he] threatened to sue earlier this week,
said Sun-Times. This guy seems to have his eye on victim-accusers. George seems to have his on the accused, clergy like himself.
