By Cliff Kincaid
In a column examining a state-sanctioned French report on clergy abuse, Catholic League president Bill Donohue was defensive and commented, “…there is no institution in France, or anywhere else, that has asked the government to probe sexual misconduct among its employees. None.” Why is this relevant to the failure by men of God and their employees to protect children? Is this a defense of immorality in the Catholic Church?
I thought men of God were supposed to have higher standards of morality. Isn’t that why they call it a church?
Donohue acknowledges that the French report, which used information provided by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, found that over a 70-year period, 1950-2020, approximately 3,000 molesters allegedly abused an estimated 216,000 minors.
In Maryland, my home state, the Maryland Catholic Conference is trying to stop a physician-assisted suicide bill. But it looks like the church is on suicide watch.
Fortunately, morality is not dead, and the NFL could be an example for the Roman Catholic Church.
My attention has been drawn to a statement by the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan over the “inexcusable” behavior by his coach, Urban Meyer, when he was recorded sitting in a bar with a young woman dancing in front of his crotch. This moral perversion is called lap dancing, designed to get Meyer, a married man, into a state of sexual excitement.He has been married to his wife for 35 five years and has three children.
Moral standards have sunk so low that observers are debating whether this behavior constitutes cheating on his wife.
The football team owner Shad Khan said, “I have addressed this matter with Urban. Specifics of our conversation will be held in confidence. What I will say is his conduct last weekend was inexcusable. I appreciate Urban’s remorse, which I believe is sincere. Now, he must regain our trust and respect. That will require a personal commitment from Urban to everyone who supports, represents or plays for our team. I am confident he will deliver.”
I didn’t know anything about Shad Khan before this incident. I thank him for showing a sense of morality and asking his employees to live up to high moral standards. He didn’t make any excuses for Urban Meyer.
The treatment of the French clergy report is a different matter. Donohue summarizes the nature of the abuse but then he adds these caveats:
- Not all were priests: one-third of the offenses were committed by those who worked in Catholic schools, youth programs, and other agencies.
- French bishops asked the French government to conduct the probe.
- Some aspects of the methodology are sound, but not all are.
Donohue has written some great books over the years, especially on the ACLU, but his treatment of Catholic sexual abuse is seriously deficient. He should be morally outraged over yet another sex scandal involving the church and not make excuses for why the numbers and abuse are so horrific and whether such treatment of children should somehow be compared to other sectors of society to diminish its significance.
In this area, I thank some in the major media. The Boston Globe won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the American branch of the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priests who sexually abused children. Director Amy Berg exposed the cover-up of pedophilia in the Catholic Church in her 2006 Oscar-nominated documentary, “Deliver Us from Evil.”
I will take the sandal one step further, however. Even limited research will reveal that the Catholic Church bureaucracy in the United States has surrendered to the forces of Cultural Marxism. The Archbishop of Washington, Wilton Gregory, has decided that Joe Biden is a Catholic in good standing and deserves Holy communion, even though Biden cited his faith as a Catholic in supporting transgender rights, quoting Christ as saying, “What you’re doing to the least of my children, you’re doing to me.”
Wilton Gregory’s predecessor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, resigned from his leadership of the archdiocese in 2018 after he was accused of covering up sexual abuse. His predecessor as archbishop of Washington was the disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic leader ever to be removed for sexually abusing a minor. He has since been charged with sexually abusing a teenager.
As a prosecutor and Attorney General in California, Vice-President Kamala Harris refused to take on sexual abuse by priests. I interviewed a victim of such abuse, noting that Harris appears to have a two-faced approach to the Catholic Church – one of scorn toward ordinary Catholics who follow traditional church teachings, such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality, and the other of deference to officials of the hierarchy who get caught in cover-ups of sexual abuse of children.
Raise the possibility of a high-level sex ring operating in the world today and you are immediately attacked as a QAnon conspiracy theorist. But look at what’s happening in the Roman Catholic Church and the desperate efforts at cover-up. In France, the report was conducted by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church. A summary of the report, “Sexual Violence in the Catholic Church: France 1950 – 2020,” is available here.
It declared, “Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse.”
According to some reports, the abuse included nuns raping girls with crucifixes, a practice suggesting Satanism.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan has addressed serous immorality, but clearly not on the same level as that of top Catholic officials, in the case of his own football team and its coach. There is apparently a “morals clause” in Urban Meyer’s contract. Our religious leaders are themselves supposed to be moral.
Perhaps this NFL owner can set an example for the rest of society, including the Roman Catholic Church.
But the church has its own playbook, with Cardinal Peter Turkson — a close adviser to Pope Francis —telling “Axios on HBO” the Catholic Church “plans to be increasingly active on climate, refugees and racial equity.” In other words, change the subject.
Concerned Catholics will change the subject by not going to church. Instead, they will look to Shad Khan for moral guidance and enjoy NFL football on Sunday.
© 2021 Cliff Kincaid – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net
*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
