Where Your Heart Is…

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Archbishop Chaput in Philadelphia knows he faces some very bad publicity in the spring when a trial for the archdiocese’s  failure to protect children commences.

Chaput in a letter that is to be read this weekend in all churches in Philadelphia is announcing his strategy: to protect the treasures of the Church, not, as was said in apostolic times, the poor, but cash and other liquid assets. Chaput concludes his letter he concludes:

Finally, the resources of the Church do not belong to the bishops or the clergy; they belong to the entire Catholic people, including the faithful generations who came before us. The Church is a community of faith alive in the present but also connected across the years through time. The Church holds her resources in stewardship for the whole Catholic community, to carry out our shared apostolic mission as believers in Jesus Christ. This means that as archbishop, I have the duty not just to defend those limited resources, but also to ensure that the Church uses them with maximum care and prudence; to maximum effect; and with proper reporting and accountability.

But the bishops and the clergy have always behaved as if the resources of the Church belonged to them. The bishops have absolute control and no accountability; the laity have no say in the finances of the church. Their only duty is to cough up.

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The Freedom to Dance

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When the Spanish entered New Mexico the Franciscans tried to stop dancing at the Pueblos. This was one cause of the Pueblo revolt in 1680. After the Spanish returned, the Franciscans adopted a live and let live attitude toward the dances.  The Indians accepted Catholicism as their Religión and regarded the other rites as their costumbres.

After the U.S. conquered New Mexico, the Bureau of Indians Affairs was largely controlled by Protestants who decided the dances were pagan and should be suppressed by the government so that Indians could become individualistic, enlightened, modern Protestants. This campaign reached a peak I the 1920s (along with other anti-dance agitation among Anglos).

But New Mexico and especially Taos had attracted modernist artists who liked the dances. They helped the Pueblos defend the dances on the grounds of religious freedom.

The concept of religion in the First Amendment is a product of an Enlightenment and Protestant milieu and does not describe how other cultures think about themselves. But the Pueblos were forced into defining their customs as “religious” in order to defend them.

The Pueblo Indians used the First Amendment to defend their dances against a Protestant/ BIA attempt to outlaw them. But for the Pueblo Indians, dances and other rituals were as much a part of community work and responsibilities as clearing irrigation ditches. Christian Indians who rejected the dances as pagan therefore claimed the right not to participate in them based on their freedom of religion –  and not to suffer any penalties for their refusal. So religious freedom was a two edged sword.

In her book We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom, Tisa Wegner of Yale Divinity School examines the complex politics surrounding the dance controversy. Here is her summary:

“By defining themselves as the defenders of Pueblo religion, using the tools of the American legal system if necessary, Pueblo leaders of the 1920s had shaped a new traditionalism based partly on American categories of religion and religious freedom. In concert with modernist reformers, Pueblo traditionalists recognized that naming their practices “religion” could provide a valuable tool for self-defense. They understood that constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion wee a foundational element of American civil discourse. Successfully defining any aspect of Pueblo life as part of an authentic religion, then, could help defend it from government suppression. The Pueblos and their modernist defenders had managed to successfully label the dance ceremonies as “religion, within the public discourse, and thereby to defeat attempts by Christian assimilationists and the BIA to directly forbid them. When BIA polices threatened to further eared tribal sovereignty, Pueblo leaders responded by insisting that their traditions of governance were also religion and therefore equally defensible in terms of religious freedom. Pueblo leaders insisted in liberal democratic religious freedoms and protections as a way to protect their claims to tribal identity. Despite the individualism built into the liberal system, their survival today demonstrates that they were largely successful. Their appeal to religion should not be understood as an imposition of a Western ideology but as an indigenous strategy of resistance, contributing to the ongoing adaptation of Pueblo traditions.”

Wegner is seeking to examine the concept of religion, which, as it appears in the First Amendment, is the product of an Enlightenment and Protestant milieu that identifies religion primarily as a matter of interior sentiments and beliefs. This does not mesh with how other cultures conceive of themselves.

Wegner doesn’t discuss Judaism, but clearly observant and Orthodox Judaism would have many of the same problems as the Pueblos did, and there have been legal attacks on kosher butchering and circumcision. Islam too would have serious problems with the First Amendment conception of religion. The courts want to know whether a practice, such as female circumcision is religious or a only a custom and whether it is a central practice of a religion. But these questions are meaningless outside a specifically Enlightenment conception of religion.

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Anasazi America

in Politics, Southwest 1 Comment Tags: ,

I just finished reading David Stuart’s book Anasazi America. The societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were stratified and polarized between the elites of the Great Houses who lived well and had low infant mortality and the small farmers who suffered hunger and had high infant mortality.

These stratified societies ended, possibly in violence, and were replaced by the pueblos, intensely communal and egalitarian societies, in which sharing of food and resources guaranteed social stability and gave their inhabitants a level of health achieved only by the elites in the previous societies.

Stuart sees a parallel to modern America. Even in 2000 he saw the enormous increase in wealth at the top of the population and the economic stagnation of the lower reaches of the population. He would like to see a more egalitarian society.

That theme has been taken up by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many people feel that the top 1% is unfairly benefitting while the rest of society is stagnating. Higher taxes for public health, education, and infrastructure are the usual solution.

But taxing the very top of society won’t produce the massive amounts of money needed; the middle class still has the vast amount of money, and would have to be more heavily taxed.

Homogenous societies like Sweden have a far greater sense of communal responsibility than highly diverse societies like America. They can run welfare states because everyone feels like family. The degree of conformity imposed by intensely communal societies, like the Pueblo, would not be tolerated by Euro-Americans, whose motto is Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

Also, many Americans suspect that some (many? most?) people’s economic difficulties are caused by their self-destructive behavior: not getting married and not staying married, obesity, alcohol, drugs, crime, dropping out of school, and taking on speculative mortgages in hopes of flipping  a property and making a killing. The sympathy for people who create their own problems is limited. They are, in the Victorian phrase, the undeserving poor. But even the Victorians knew that such people needed help in the form of social discipline. But who in our society has the moral authority to exercise such social discipline? And Americans also dislike discipline on principle, as George III learned. We have always been an adolescent nation.

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The Dudes of the Beatitudes

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Croissant
Madre
Albert
The background story for the history of abuse in the Community of the Beatitudes might give us some sympathy for the church and police investigators who are trying to entangle what really happened. Religion en Libertad summarized it.

Gerard Croissant (Aka Ephraim) was the founder of the Community. He was born in 1949 of a Protestant family. He was immersed in the generation of 1968, the soizante-huitards, as the French call them, and sought a utopian community life. He entered one ecumenical community inspired by Gandhi, where he met Jo, his wife. He then discovered the Charismatic Renewal.

In 1974 he, his wife, and another couple decided to live in a community. In 1975 Gerard converted to Catholicism and in 1978 became a permanent deacon and took the name Brother Efraim. The bishop of Albi took the new community under his protection.

The new Community of the Beatitudes had clerical, religious, and lay members both married and single, all living together. It currently has 100 priests, 40 seminarians, 350 consecrated women, and hundreds of lay members. It has houses in 30 countries.

At some point Gerard went astray. He had the useful ability to multiply bread, chocolate yogurt, and banknotes.  Using “supposedly mystical language” he seduced women in the community.My guess is that be combined Quietism (the perfect can do no wrong) with bridal mysticism. One woman, Gisele.  described his modus operandi: she

spoke of “mystical nights” put into practice by Ephraim. he had “developed a ceremony” to “possess the body of certain religious women.” He maintained that “consecrated women are called to place their libido in the kingdom of God.” Questioned about this, a former women community member completed the information about these mystical unions which, according to Ephraim, were at the same time unions of prayer and sexual unions, practiced “in the Church by St. Clair with St. Francis of Assisi and by Pope John Paul Ii with Sister Faustina Kowalska!!”

The process may have been assisted by the psychotropic drugs which he liked to distribute to the community.

He committed adultery, but no crime. He was removed from all government in the community in 1996 and in 2008 he was reduced to the lay state and the Community expelled him. He moved to Rwanda and was taken in by the White Fathers. Rwanda did not want him, so he has returned to France and is associated with a group called Kinor. He practices psychotherapy. He has resumed preaching and giving talks without any authorization from the Church.

Philippe Madre is Gerard’s brother-in-law. He was one of the first members of the Community and was Gerard’s obvious successor.  He is a psychiatrist and was a permanent deacon, and is well-known for his healing prayers and his retreats. In 2005 he was accused of “sexual abuse by  a person having authority.” In 2010 the ecclesiastical tribunal of Toulouse declared him guilty of “abusive behavior in the exercise of his spiritual functions.” That is, he used cultic methods of manipulation. Madre was reduced to the lay state in 2011 and expelled from the Community. He has returned to general practice.

Pierre-Etienne Albert was the musician of the Community; he sent to music the biblical songs composed by Gerard. In 2003 a court found that he had abused minors between 1980 and 1990,but the statute of limitations (prescription in the Roman law) prevented a conviction and punishment. In 2008 he went on television and confessed that he had 57 victims, and this upcoming November 30 his trial will begin. Seems cut and dried.

BUT – here commences a nightmare for the police and the judiciary –

The Community was convinced he had abused minors and that he suffered from a “psychological debility.” It kept him away for minors and closely supervised him. He was living in the abbey of Bonnecombe with other adults. In 2008 the Community wanted to live Bonnecombe but a disagreement ensued. Muriel Gauthier, although not a member of the Community, agitated against the move, “She seemed to be un iluminada, an enlightened one, in the bad and charismatic sense of the word, convinced that God was leading her against legitimate authority” sources in the Community said. And they suspect that she, in her war against the community, persuaded Albert to self-incriminate himself of things that he did not certainly do. The court has to sort it out – but if Albert confesses to abuse which he did not do and possibly could not have done, his confession to acts of abuse that he in fact did is undermined.

Ecclesiastical authorities have to deal not only with psychopathic manipulative abusers but also people who claim special powers and messages from God, powers and messages received outside the regular channels of authority. There are few people more skeptical than clerics about claims of private revelations and supernatural powers – although as believers clerics have to admit that these can exist and that God is free to act outside the ordinary structures of the Church (e.g., Francis of Assisi).

Efraim’s enemies initially seem to have been in the traditionalist wing of the Church and they detected (correctly) that he was full of himself.

But their medieval equivalents would probably have said the same thing about Francis.

One commentator on the Religion en Libertad article represents this view (for which there is much to be said):

There in an excessive cult of personality, instead of giving glory to God, each “iluminado” founds a movement in which government and spiritual direction are mixed. Almost all of the new movements are putting themselves in question by the conduct of leaders who seem more to seek and to prepare for their self-canonization rather than the good of the Church…. They fall into pride, believing themselves directly enlightened by the Holy Spirit. But there is only one Church founded by Christ and it is a hierarchy in which the charisms are at the service fo the Church and its mission and not for the construction of particular sects.

Can’t we recognize that the Holy Spirit is showing himself clearly in allowing the revelation of the distorted structures of the new movements, in order to return us to the bosom of the Church and to avoid sectarianism?  Aren’t there proven established religious orders? Why should there be more charisms?

But sometimes a Francis, an Ignatius, a Wesley are necessary for the health of the Church.

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French Victim Speaks Out

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Solweig Ély

French law makes “cults” illegal. The behavior of some members of the Community of the Beatitudes helps explain why the French have such a law.  Marie-Claudine Chaupitre interviewed a woman who had grown up in the community:

A Victim of Abuse, Forced to be Silent

The sexual abuse experienced at the age of 9 years in the charismatic community where she lived with her parents, then the rejection by her family for 20 years: Solweig Ély tells her terrifying story.

On November 30, at the correctional tribunal of Rodez (Aveyron), the Breton Solweig Ély will not lower her eyes in the presence of the one who, during several months, defiled her childhood.

Pierre-Étienne Albert appeared on the televised newscast of France 2 on an evening of February 2008. In the presence of his face, Solweig was overcome with nausea. This religious man, an esteemed member of the community of the Beatitudes, a Catholic charismatic movement, there made his complete confession. He was going to send the police a list of 57 names of children who were victims of his abuse.

Solweig was part of it. “Although a large number of us tried for a long time to forget, he imposed himself another time, brutally, on our privacy,” she testified in a book that appeared today. “It had on me the effect of a new act of abuse.”

Everything for the Community

Every evening, between October 1989 and Easter 1990, this religious man visited the bedroom of the terrorized child. She was 9 years old and lived with her parents and her sisters at the White Abbey, at Moryan (Manche), one of the houses of the Community the Beatitudes.

Families lived there side by side with religious. Solweig’s father, a tax collector in Côtes-d’Armor, and his wife, had sold their possessions, given them to the Community of the Beatitudes, and dedicated their life to prayer.

“The authority of the head of the family was transferred to an official of the community. Despite my love for them, I reject that my parents put up with it.”

In the strict and isolated  context of the life of the community, the child could not confide. One evening, her father surprised Pierre-Étienne in the bedroom. He shut the door without saying anything. “My parents demanded that I smother my sorrow. In addition to the traumas inflicted by my abuser, their rejection afterwards constituted the most sorrowful trial.”

Suring more than 20 years, the young women was forced to be silent –  treated as a liar, sent to boarding school with host families. “You are the rotten fruit, the door through which the devil threatens to enter into our family,” her father hurled at her one day. Then the young woman started a long wandering, discolored by black ideas.

Pierre-Étienne Albert’ s confession  in the media did not give her peace. In the meanwhile she had started a family which helped her rebuild herself. She awaits two things from the hearing on November 30: “To hear that we are not at fault, but are victims. And that this man will never be allowed to harm again.”

Pierre-Étienne Albert

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More on the Good People of Pennsylvania

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On the field and before the television  Penn State fans and team behaved themselves.

On Saturday, as the clock struck noon at Beaver Stadium, both the good and the bad sides of Penn State were on display. Inside the towering football cathedral—where more than 100,000 Nittany Lions worshippers gathered for the first game of the post-Paterno era—a row of shirtless guys with letters painted on their chests spelled out the words “For the Kids.” At midfield prior to kickoff, Penn State and Nebraska players converged for a moment of silence and prayer for the young boys former PSU defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is accused of raping and molesting over the course of a decade, perhaps much longer. Tears flowed from the crowd and the TV cameras transmitted what seemed like genuine sadness and compassion, even remorse, to the rest of the country.

But outside, away from the TV cameras:

Thirty-four-year-old John Matko, a 2000 Penn State graduate, stood in the middle of the closed-off street as thousands of PSU fans—many clad in some version of a “We Love Joe” T-shirt—milled around, many gawking at him. Matko held two hand-scrawled signs. One bore the Albert Einstein quote, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil but because of those who look on and do nothing.” The other demanded PSU “honor the abused kids by canceling this game and the season NOW.”

Students, alumni and others—and not just a handful of “rotten eggs” but literally several hundred people over the course of half an hour—spit on Matko, dumped beer on him, shoved middle fingers in his face, called him a “fucking pussy,” “faggot,” and a “piece of shit,” and yelled at him to “get the fuck out of here.” They slapped and punched his signs, occasionally knocking them to the ground. Each time, Matko slowly bent down and picked them up. One guy got inches from Matko’s face and barked “We Are!” as his buddies laughed. It was like a public flogging, and through it all Matko remained silent and just took it. “I knew I was gonna be outnumbered today, but I didn’t know quite how much,” Matko said. “I was part of this community and I know how narrow-minded everybody is around here, and they still don’t get it.”

And people who it s so hard for sexual abuse victims to come forward.

Paterno wasn’t the one who got screwed: it was the victims.

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The Mystery of Iniquity

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Vatican 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

John Paul Receiving Members of the Community of the Beatitudes

Jesus said, “By your fruits you shall know them,” but sometimes very bad men can bear seemingly good fruit.

Many Catholics dislike the Legion of Christ, and do not see it as a good fruit of the psychopathic con artist incestuous abuser Maciel. But I have always wondered how such a many could found an organization. If an ordinary, decent Catholic tried to found a religious order, he or she would get nowhere. But a moral monster tries and succeeds.

Another community, far less controversial, has had a similar experience. The Community of the Beatitudes is France is a one of the new ecclesial movements:

Situated in the charismatic renewal movement, the Community gathered priests, nuns and singles (consecrated or not) as well as married couples into local groups. Its spirituality is Eucharistic and Marian, inspired by the Carmelite tradition and living out the spirit of the Beatitudes (Matt: 5). It gathers together the faithful of all states of life (families, single people, priests and consecrated brothers and sisters), who share, in common, a vocation of prayer and fraternal communion, combining a marked contemplative dimension (adoration of the Blessed Sacrament) with numerous apostolic and missionary activities (parishes, hospital and health care, Marian sanctuaries, retreat centers, taking care of the poor, contemplative houses, etc.)

Few would object to such a community. But alas

In February 2008, one of the brothers of the community, accused himself of sexual abuse on 50 children aged from five to fourteen years. According to an article by Le Nouvel Observateur, some testimonies confirmed the absence of reaction of the leadership towards this case of pedophilia. Four members of the community who revealed the case were evicted, and, in a press release in July 2008, asked the bishops to intervene. This case is currently examined by a court. Since October 2008, searches and police custody were held within the community. The Direction centrale de la police judiciaire investigated after complaints of brainwashing, sexual abuses and suicides by teenagers. In 2008 Gérard Croissant was relieved from the exercise of diaconal ministry and forced to leave the community in 2008. At that time he was asked to withdraw in silence to prayer and penance. In October 2010 the Holy See sent Father Henry Donneaud as Pontifical Commissioner to replace the existing government of the community. In November 2011 Father Donneaud confirmed sexual abuse allegations against both the community’s founder, Gérard Croissant, and his brother, Pierre-Etienne Albert.

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Gérard Croissant

And now the community must deal with the fact that abusers were at the foundation and core of the community.

The French charismatic movement, the Community of the Beatitudes, has admitted that its founder Gerard Croissant – also known by his religious name, Brother Ephraim – was a sexual abuser.

“The Community is deeply ashamed of Ephraim’s behavior and expresses its sympathy with all the people who have been abused by him,” read a statement on the movement’s website Nov. 16.

It explained how Croissant had committed “crimes against the morality of the Church” involving a number of “sisters” that lived in the community. The statement added that “his prestige as a charismatic founder, combined with the seduction of his words, led most of his victims to let themselves be abused.”

The document is signed by the man sent in by the Vatican in 2010 to head up the reform of the community, Father Henry Donneaud O.P., as well as by the community’s board.

It explains that the community “has been committed for years, and at the request of the Catholic authorities, in a process that is not just a process of explanation and purification but also a process of deep restructuring and rebirth.”

The Community of the Beatitudes was founded in France in 1973 by Croissant and his wife Jo along with another couple. At the time Croissant was not Catholic but converted in 1975 and was ordained a deacon in 1978. In 2008 he was expelled from the community and ordered to live a life of silence and penance by the Church.

The movement gathers together priests, nuns, married couples and single people – some consecrated and others not – into local groups who then share a common prayer and community life. It has a presence in 60 dioceses across the globe.

The statement comes just ahead of the trial of one of its senior members – Pierre-Etienne Albert – who stands accused of sexually abusing more than 50 children, aged between 5 and 13 years old, from 1985 to 2000. His trial begins in the French town of Rodez on Nov. 30.

It also claims that abuse was committed by Philippe Madre, Croissant’s brother-in-law, who was also expelled from the community in May 2010.

“The Community intends to acknowledge, with humbleness, lucidity and repentance, these serious crimes committed within it by a narrow circle of people,” it says.

“However, they should not result in the disavowal of the value of its identity, as recognized by the Church, nor of the quality of its spiritual, apostolic and humanitarian work, appreciated by all the bishops who host it in their dioceses.”

The community was officially recognized by the Vatican in 2002 but following its internal problems, Rome began to intervene in 2007. A pontifical commissioner, Fr. Donneaud, was appointed last year to head up the order and oversee the reform of its statutes.

The statement said the community still “confidently submits to the hands of the Catholic Church.”

Note that the Vatican seems to have acted properly. Also, without ultimate oversight from the Vatican it might have been impossible to set the community on the way to reform. The universal pastorate of the pope has serious practical advantages (and also disadvantages).

As a fancier of heresies, I also suspect that in many sectors of the Church Quietism is still influential in a quiet and destructive way: The perfect can do no wrong; therefore anything the perfect do cannot be wrong.

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If McQueary Had Been a Babushka

in Masculinity, sexual abuse 6 Comments Tags: ,

Part of the outrage over McQueary’s failure to stop the child rape he was witnessing is caused by the sense that he violated the canons of masculinity. A male’s strength is given to him to protect the weak. If he fails to do that, even if he did not technically violate a law, he has violated a code of honor to which most men subscribe.

If a 60-year-old cleaning woman had seen Sandusky raping a child, we would not have been angry at her if she had fled and called her husband asking him what to do. Many women would have acted more forthrightly than McQueary did (at least according to the version he told the grand jury). We would not expect an older woman physically to challenge a male associated with the football team, and we might be disappointed if she did immediately call the police, but we would not scorn her the way we scorn McQueary – a scorn that has begun to sting him and has caused him to rethink his story.

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McQueary’s Defense

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McQueary claims he in fact did not act like an utter wimp:

A grand jury report said McQueary witnessed seeing Sandusky, the team’s former defensive coordinator, sexually assaulting the boy in a shower on campus, then reported it only to his father and head coach Joe Paterno. According to the report, McQueary did not notify law enforcement or do anything to halt the attack.

Did McQueary tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the grand jury? It looks like he either lied to the grand jury or he is lying to his teammates. He will have to explain the discrepancy on the witness stand. If he says he lied to the grand jury, he may face perjury charges.

UPDATE

In the email, McQueary said:

“I did stop it, not physically … but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room … I did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police …. no one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds … trust me.

“I am getting hammered for handling this the right way … or what I thought at the time was right … I had to make tough, impacting quick decisions.”

In the email, McQueary states that he also told Penn State University police about what he saw that night.

“The graduate assistant was never questioned by University police and no other entity conducted an investigation,” according to the presentment.

Public outrage followed McQueary’s implied inaction, and he was placed on paid administrative leave Friday after receiving threats. The school did not provide details on who threatened McQueary.

His email would explain his involvement in what he allegedly witnessed.

“I did the right thing … you guys know me … the truth is not out there fully … I didn’t just turn and run … I made sure it stopped … I had to make quick tough decisions,” McQueary wrote, according to NBC News.

So what really happened? And what did McQueary tell the grand jury?

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Grandiose Narcissists

in Narcissism, sexual abuse 1 Comment

The editor of America, Father James Martin, discusses the grandiosity of narcissists who are abusers. But his words also apply to their enablers:

In my experience, after the conviction or removal from office or ministry, those two qualities merge in the person with terrible consequences. And these consequences make it far more difficult for the institution to address such cases. The grandiose narcissist now focuses almost exclusively on his own suffering. His removal from office, or from ministry, he believes, is the worst thing that has happened to anyone, and he (or she) laments this fate loudly and frequently. Because of his narcissism he focuses almost entirely on his own troubles; because of his grandiosity he inflates them to ridiculous proportions. He suffers the most. This is the “Poor Me” Syndrome.

Even more dangerous: he draws others into his net, and the suffering of the real victims, those whose lives have been shattered, is overlooked-even by otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people. The focus of those within the institution is shifted onto the person they know, rather than the victims that they may not know. “Poor Father,” some parishioners may say, “how he suffers.” It is difficult for a diocese, a religious order, a school, or indeed members of any institution to resist the powerful pull of the grandiose narcissist. Indeed, people often seem unaware that they are being deluded into an overblown sympathy for the wrong “victim.”

Poor Joe Paterno.

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A Priest Who Was a Man

in Catholic Church, Masculinity 2 Comments Tags: ,

After the disgusting displays of pusillanimity in the football program at Penn State, it is refreshing to turn to a real man, the Austrian priest Carl Lampert.

The German Resistance Memorial Center gives this biography:

Born in Vorarlberg in Austria, Carl Lampert was ordained as a priest in Brixen in 1918. After studying canonical law in Rome, in 1935 he was appointed director of the ecclesiastical court in the Apostolic Administration of Feldkirch. In 1939 he became provicar of Innsbruck. Carl Lampert was arrested several times for his protests against National Socialist church policy and finally imprisoned in Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. After his release in August 1941, the Gestapo compelled Lampert to take up residence in Mecklenburg-Pomerania. He found accommodation in Stettin and assisted in the ministry in the vicinity of the city. Even in exile, Lampert retained his critical attitude to the regime, unaware that he was under Gestapo observation. His discussions, telephone calls and correspondence were under surveillance. In February 1943 Carl Lampert was arrested again and severely maltreated during interrogation. The Gestapo accused him not only of expressing his opinions on the deportation of Jews and the murder of patients from psychiatric clinics but also of listening to foreign radio stations and “giving aid and comfort” to forced laborers. Carl Lampert was sentenced to death by the Reich Court Martial on September 8, 1944 and murdered with Friedrich Lorenz and Herbert Simoleit on November 13, 1944 in Halle/Saale.

Lampert was decapitated along with two other priests, Herbert Simoleit and Friedrich Lorenz, and died with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips.

This is the wire altar cross that Lampert made in prison.

Sunday

Benedict XVI recognized the priest’s martyrdom and reminded his audience that “during an interrogation that could have led to his freedom, Lampert had said: I love my Church. I remain faithful to my Church and to the priesthood. I am on Christ’s side and I love His Church.”

Lampert has been declared Blessed, as indeed he was, to die for defying the forces of evil.

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The Gentle Fans of Penn State

in sexual abuse 4 Comments

From The Washington Times

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — In the middle of Curtin Road, John Matko held one handwritten sign in his right hand and rested another against his jeans. Two inches of black tape obscured Penn State’s logo on the 34-year-old father’s hat, as he tried to ignore the jeers, slaps and beer hurled at him.

“Put abused kids first,” one of Matko’s signs read. “Don’t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.”

Penn State’s Beaver Stadium loomed 30 yards away, rumbling with the first roars of Saturday’s game with Nebraska. The sea of blue-clad supporters wearing gray fedoras and camouflage hunting jackets and “This is JoePa’s house” T-shirts parted around Matko.

“That is such bull–-!” one young woman screamed at him after glancing at the signs. “Who the f– do you think you are?”

Eyes hidden by blue aviator sunglasses, Matko didn’t respond.

A beer showered Matko. One man slapped his stomach. Another called him a “p–-.”

“I understand the culture,” said Matko, who graduated from Penn State in 2000 with a degree in nutrition. “I was part of it. It doesn’t surprise me what I’m getting from them.”

Matko drove three hours from his home in Pittsburgh on Saturday morning. He was tired of reading about what university officials didn’t do in the wake of Sandusky’s charges. The father of a 4-year-old boy, he couldn’t stop thinking about the 23 pages of horror in the grand jury’s indicA passer-by kicked it.

“You’re going to get your a— kicked, man,” a man bellowed.

“That’s bull–-, guy,” another said.

Abuse flew at Matko from young and old, students and alumni, men and women. No one intervened. No one spoke out against the abuse. Over the course of an hour, a lone man stopped, read the sign and said, “I agree.” Those two words were swallowed by the profanity and threats by dozens of others during the hour.

As I said, Ambrose Bierce had too optimistic a view of human nature.

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Conspiracy at Penn State?

in sexual abuse, Uncategorized 3 Comments

The university administration certainly conspired to cover up Sandusky’s abuse, but was he also pimping kids to rich pedophile donors?

Probably not, but there is a possibility it could be true.

There are rings and networks of pedophiles. How they network is a great mystery to the agents of the law, but they definitely network and have done so for decades, well before computers, much less the internet, came into being. How do they recognize one another? It is dangerous to reveal to an honest person that you are engaged in sexual activity with children. He might just go to the police – although pedophiles may have an accurate opinion about the general lack of courage in the human species.

Sandusky would be in the ideal position to feed victims to other pedophiles, all the while pretending he was helping the kids associated with his charity. As a psychopath, he would have no qualms about doing it. There are certainly other pedophiles out there. The Rev. Gordon McRae in New Hampshire was sending boys to other pederasts and the Rev. Paul Shanley passed his victims around to other priests in Boston – and mysterious envelopes taped to victims’ bodies contained, I assume, either cash or drugs. There were well-documented rings of abusers in the dioceses of Davenport, Iowa, and El Paso, Texas. The Casa Pia orphanages in Portugal provided victims for pedophiles among the elite.

But did Sandusky do this at Penn State or Second Mile? Did the pedophiles in turn make donations to Penn State or to Second Mile? If this happened, did the university or the charity administration have any inkling of it? The administration has clearly demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice children to maintain the reputation of the football program. How far did this willingness go?

The victims would be the best source of information; I trust that they have been interviewed and the police are following all leads; the governor seems to be wholly behind the investigation even if it leads to the highest places.

Although such a conspiracy would help to explain the events at Penn State, one should not assume in the absence of positive evidence that it exists.  It is simply a working hypothesis, because pedophiles tend to network and use charities as fronts. But Sandusky may well  be a lone criminal.

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Calls for Testicular Transplants for Penn State Football Administrators

in Masculinity, sexual abuse 1 Comment

We are supposed to be living in a heterosexualist culture which leads men to “patrol sexual boundaries” involving sexual contact between males. This was lacking at Penn State.

Alfred Doblin of The Record asks:

For starters, what the hell was wrong with Mike McQueary? A 28-year-old man allegedly sees a 10-year-old boy being sexually assaulted and walks away and calls his father? He should have called his father after he pulled Sandusky off the boy, after he made sure the boy was not in need of immediate medical attention, after he called the police, and, from my perspective, after he washed away the alleged sexual predator’s blood from his hands because he had thrown Sandusky violently across the locker room when he pulled him off the boy. Calling Daddy is not a priority for a grown man.

And there we have the heart of this sad, pathetic tale occurring in a sea of testosterone: a lack of men. Penn State’s football program, revered because it supposedly molds men, is nothing but a sham. Men do not watch children being sexually abused. Men do not wait or fail to report allegations of sexual abuse regardless of the consequences to their beloved institution.

It sounds strangely familiar if you switch out helmets and pads for white collars and black vestments. Many have likened what allegedly happened at Penn State to the sex abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Church. The timeline of events is equally disturbing. The church scandals were at their height in the winter of 2002, the same time that Sandusky allegedly abused a 10-year-old boy in a locker room shower. That makes it even harder to imagine grown men failing to recognize the dangers of not bringing in police to investigate the possibility of a predator on the loose with unfettered access to sports facilities.

There is a good chance more alleged victims may come forward as this scandal continues. It will take more than a few high-placed firings to clean house. It also will take more than firings to right priorities at Penn State.

In an interview in USA Today, McQueary’s father said his son “did what he was supposed to do and all of this has been very hard on him.” Somehow, I don’t think this has been as hard on Mike McQueary as it must have been for the 10-year-old boy who allegedly was being sexually assaulted by Sandusky and left with him after McQueary walked away to call Daddy.

For all the bravado over a football dynasty, for all the sights of large, muscular frames pounding at each other on stadium turf, and for all the closed male ranks of failed leadership at Penn State, when it mattered most, there was a singular absence of men.

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