Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Yes… No.. Big Deal…
Maybe even an oddity…
Deliberately cruel.
Are we sure Rupnik is being tried? We’ve heard judges have been appointed but their names have not been released. How do we know this is true? When does it start? Who is the prosecutor? Will it be public? Who is defending Rupnik? Will he be present? Will the victims give testimony? None of these things are known. Is there really going to be a trial?
Well said JFK. Also innocent until proven guilty tends to be an Anglo-Saxon concept, and has little relevance in religious matters. Technically Canon Law does hold to the principle, but popes have routinely put their thumbs on the scales of justice at the Vatican when they wish to, and which they have the authority and right to do so. If the Pope wanted Rupnik gone, he would be gone.
At the risk of being skeptical, nothing will happen to him. It’s sad that the church is not a moral lighthouse but a broken spinning compass exactly like the political sphere. Nothing will happen to any of the wrong doers this side of the grave in Washington or Rome. And curated news both in Washington and Rome assure that it will always be true until the Alpha and Omega returns.
It took them over a year to manage to find a handful of canon lawyers in Rome? … I’m told they (finally) picked 5 instead of the standard 3, and a couple of them are women. I suppose the upcoming acquittal will seem more believable with this lot.
Holiness, when will your solicitude for “the rights of all people” be applied to the faithful who are being prohibited from hearing the Mass of the Ages?
Crickets.
🦗🦗🦗
Funny how patient and understanding they are to one of their own, but demand action when it’s someone else.
Perhaps if we could find evidence that Rupnik was involved in deportations things would move more swiftly…🤔
“Funny how patient and understanding they are to one of their own, but demand action when it’s someone else.”
A recurrent problem with the contemporary Church. Constant scolds on the Leftist issues of the day, and constant attempts to protect predator members of the clergy with powerful friends. You don’t need an advanced degree in Theology to see that this flies in the face of what the Church should be.
Now Rupnik’s art will be removed and Rupnik is the victim, not the perpetrator.
I seem to recall Pope Sixtus V executed clergy who violated their vows of chastity. Some had their heads stuck on pikes on the wall. Just sayin’.
Tom Byrne: You might’ve just stumbled on the reason why capital punishment became ‘inadmissible’.
What he said was bloodless. I’m not seeing its objectionable per se.
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In re complaints about clergy, the evidence apart from the complainers testimony is often zero and the accusation is typically made decades after the fact. Assessing a lot of those cases is an impossible task. Leon Podles and Rod Dreher pretended it was no problem through the avenue of assuming that any accused clergyman is guilty of something. Dreher took the accusations against Bp. Hubbard in Albany at face value, though less emphatically than usual.
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That having been said, it’s not hard to locate discrete examples of irresponsible behavior by bishops. What documents have been released have demonstrated that the Boston chancery knew by 1980 that John Geoghan was a pederast, but they put him back in parish ministry four additional times over a period of 12 years. These weren’t instances of fondling; one of his victims was forcibly buggered. (The criminal case brought against Geoghan was humbug because they had no cases for which prosecution was not time-barred).
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OTOH I knew a priest in Utica (impressive fellow) who at the age of 85 (14 years after his retirement) received a letter from the chancery informing him he was barred from ministry as there were ‘credible’ accusations from two people against him. The midpoint of his time as a working priest was around 1978. How are we supposed to assess that?
Art’s last point is something that really enrages me about all this. Even if we accept that Rupnik is innocent (right now) until proven guilty, even if we forget that he was already found guilty and excommunicated for his crimes, even if we ignore the reality that the complaints of 20+ nuns were ignored for decades and the victims treated like garbage (will they even be willing to offer testimony yet again?), the fact is that according to every Church law, protocol, guideline, and promise of transparency, Rupnik should have been removed from public ministry at the onset of this investigation. The fact that he hasn’t been provides all the proof we need of the disdain the Vatican crowd has for the faithful.
Can’t wait for the next conclave. Weak bench makes for poor choices.
Yeah the Church isn’t afflicted w innocent until proven guilty. The Church is guilty of dragging her feet so long that witnesses die or the accused is to senile to testify/defend self