Father Markey Extradicted to Ireland

The Chicago Sun Times is reporting on the extradition of Father Markey, and Irish priest who had been hiding out in south Bend, Indiana.This is the staff story:

"An 82-year-old Catholic priest living in South Bend, Ind., has been extradited to Ireland to face allegations that he molested a teenage boy, once shortly after the boy's father's funeral in 1968.  Federal officials confirmed Tuesday that the Rev. Francis Markey (pic) was taken from St. Joseph County Jail in South Bend over the weekend and sent back to Ireland.

The Irish charges against Markey allege he raped a 15-year-old boy during a religious pilgrimage in County Donegal and again after his father's funeral in County Galway. In the first incident, Markey allegedly followed the boy into a public bathroom at the pilgrimage site. Moments before the alleged assault, Markey said, 'You are a lovely wee fellow,' according to an arrest warrant filed in U.S. District Court in South Bend in November 2009.

In the second incident, Markey took the boy for a drive after his father's funeral. Markey told the boy's mother he wanted to help the teen take his mind off his father's death. Markey stopped the car near a stable and allegedly assaulted the boy. The victim told his wife and then a counselor about the assaults in 2005 and then went to police.

In February, a U.S. District Court magistrate in South Bend threw out Markey's appeal to avoid extradition."
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Does this need to be said: child molesting priests cause profound injury to the soul of the Church?  Child molesting priests cause soul murder:  theirs, their victims, the Church. 

Father Gilbert Gauthe--How It All Began

I came across a story at the Beaumont, Tx Enterprise reporting on the release of the guy in the pic after a two year jail term in Galveston for not registering as the sex offender, that he is.  Why should we care?

The guy in the picture is Gilbert Gauthe, a former Louisiana priest and one of the first priests in US history to be prosecuted as a pedophile priest.  In 1985 following a lenghty scandal, investigation, and attempted cover-up by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Gilbert Guather was convicted of 34 counts of child molestation.  This is from the Enterprise article on the Guathe's release:

"Former Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe, 64, who in 1985 was convicted on 34 counts of child molestation and possession of child pornography in a Louisiana case, was arrested by La Marque police in April, 2008. Gauthe was living in his recreational vehicle at Galveston State Park when police arrested him for failing to register. Before then, he was living in La Marque and driving for a limousine service."
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The Gauthe scandal was investigated by Jason Berry.   Jason Berry detailed the heroic efforts of Father Tom Doyle, who fully faced down the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and their hit man, Auxilliary Bishop A. James Quinn.  Bishop Quinn, a civil and canon lawyer, was an architect of the cover up of priest sex abuse scandals in the US.  Quinn was capable of any every loathsome act in his crusade to protect the Magisterium of the Church.  Quinn attempted to slime Doyle and Berry and really anyone critical of the Church.  If you're interested at all in how the Church finds itself where the Church  finds itself, read Berry's books!

When I practiced law in my prior life, I deposed Bishop Quinn and subsequently discussed evidence developed in connection with that discovery with Jason Berry, producers for 60 Minutes, and the investigators at  Boston Globe.  Yeah, OK that's a little bit of pride oozing out from under my hat.

The real heroes of the effort to reform the Church are people like Fr. Tom Doyle, Barbara Blaine of SNAP, David Clohessy of SNAP, Jeff Anderson, victims like Frank Fitzpatrick who came forward in the Father James Porter case, and so many nameless victims and others who had the courage to withstand the hatred of parishoners egged on by the likes of Bishop Quinn and the Red Mass militia.

The "Father Gilbert Gauthe case" is significant because it was the subject of the first 60 Minutes stories on priestly-child sex abuse in America.

So look closely at the picture of Father Gilbert Gauthe, his crimes are the crimes that toppled the very first dominoes.  In his way, Gauthe's crimes still resonate, louder and louder.

Arrest the Pope, Try Him in the Hague?

At the end of March Bad Lawyer asked whether Pope Bendict XVI should be arrested and prosecuted at the International Criminal Court of Justice.  Since that time (certainly not in response to anything said on this blawg), a chorus of voices have risen seriously arguing for and against just such a process.  The Sunday New York Times featured another brilliant column by Maureen Dowd on the subject. Separately, Geoffrey Robertson, QC at the International Court of Criminal Justice writing at the Daily Beast has penned a powerful polemic making this case and dismissing the Pope's apologists and their arguments that as head of state of the Vatican the Pope is "immune," from international justice.

Almost from the beginning of the Father Porter era circa 1992, in Boston--I have argued that if the leadership of your public schools (or your hospitals, corporations, Boy Scouts) had been caught molesting and covering up sex crimes against children, heads would roll, perpetrators would be prosecuted and administrators at the top would be in jail.   That is what we have worldwide with the Catholic Church, and we now have striking evidence that Pope John Paul II's own "rottweiler" the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who was so obsessed with doctrinal purity that no deviation from orthodoxy went unprosecuted--recklessly and foolishly enabled priest sex abuse in Germany and throughout the Church worldwide.

The most repulsive defender of the Church in the face of every wave of the scandal is William Donohue of the Catholic League.  Donohue is one of these flacks like Wayne LaPierre of the NRA (who in the face of every school massacre is trotted out to defend the 2d amendment right to bear arms;--Saddam Hussein had a guy like this too, who was all over Cable News proclaiming the glorious triumphs of Saddam's forces, literally as US tanks were rolling into Baghdad, these are the type of people) who will say ANYTHING logical or not.  Donohue is the Church's media barking dog sent out to defend the Pope and the Vatican leadership.

Ever since Judge Murphy's commission in Ireland, Donohue who is a sociology professor and a Heritage Foundation member, has been on all the cable channels.  Donohue's spurious defense advanced on Larry King Live is that seductive "post-pubescent" homosexuals are the cause of the Church's miseries (watch Sinead O'Connor humiliate this ass--with an honest question.)  Leaving aside the absurdity of this claim, and Donohue's fuzzy notion of what is a "post-pubescent," this argument was advanced fifteen years ago when Church leaders were saying the permissive and homosexuals in the US were the reason behind the spate of revelations that were then coming to light. Yeah, here, in America we have kinky swinging homosexual priests and altar boys unlike the conservative and pious parishes all over the rest of Christendom.

The new argument which is as offensive as this "horny post pubescent homosexual"-rant, is that Catholics are being treated like jews during the years leading up to the holocaust!  Dowd disposes of this dissimulation, I don't need to.

If Benedict XVI truly wanted to change the Church, he could.  He could confess its crimes against children and families, he could throw open the secret archival files maintained on molesting priests and he could begin the Church anew.  This would require a paradigm shift in the Church's relationship with the faithful, and a genuine transcendence and a TRANSFORMATION.  Like Jesus Christ, a crucifixion and a resurrection--there is precedent.

Faith

The Bad Lawyer is a Roman Catholic, as I've said previously.  I am a believer.  I am a practicing Catholic which is not to say that I see my church and it's leadership as temporally infallible

When I learned in the 1980s, that priests abused children (even here in OurTown) I was shocked and horrified.  My career, to the extent it meant anything has been a cry of outrage over these crimes.  When I discovered that my church systematically obstructed justice, covered-up the crimes, and lied about it--I was furious.  The problem is, the situation has not improved and the news from Ireland and Germany means that the claims made by church apologists back in the late 1990s and early 2000s to the effect that the child sex abuse was uniquely an American problem is a big lie.  Just one of many that Chruch leadership have advanced in the wake of wave after wave of discovery. 

The current claim is that the Church's tradition of Celibacy plays no role in the abuse of children--this is patently ridiculous.  While Celibacy does not cause child abuse, men who seek the vocation of priest and who are willing to become celebate are often deeply sexually and emotionally immature individuals who are repressing natural sexual impulses that manifest in destructive and harmful behaviors that undermine the priestly vows.  It's crazy--and while it may make sense to have Orders devoted to maintaining the tradition of celebacy, the Church is kidding itself when it continues to insist that the requirement of celebate priests plays no role in the continuing scandals of priest and ses.

Now the child sex abuse scandal is closing in on the former-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, also known as the pope.  Here's one of the major problems as a public relations matter, the Pope is the successor, by tradition, to Peter the apostle of Christ.  In turn each of the Bishops and each priest is speaking to the congregation of the faithful as a representative of Christ on earth.  The Church intends for us, in fact we are taught in our catechism, and by Canon law to listen to the directions of our priests and understand that they are speaking for our Lord, Jesus Christ.  The great irony, is that this understanding, this mandate underlies the very cover-up.  The perception that the crimes of priests undermine their authority to consecrate the host, motivated the heirarchy of your diocesan authorities and Orders in concealing the transgressions by priests.  This corruption is what continues to haunt the Church and now our papacy. 

Here at Bad Lawyer, I personally am grateful to the Church for the sacrament of confession and the absolution granted me as a sacrament of my faith.   It's is time fro the Church to give up the lies, dodges, and corruption.  Whatever steps are necessary to clean the "filth" as Pope Benedict called it, are the steps the Church must take to turn itself inside out and be redeemed in this temporal world.  

The great English writer, Graham Greene was a convert to Catholicism and one of his most powerful novels, The Power and the Glory (1940) dealth with a corrupted and alcoholic priest in the 1930s when the revolutionary government of Mexico was rounding up and killing Roman Catholic priests.  The point of the novel was that faith transcends the temporal corruption of any given priest, and even in that evil time there was hope, good, and faith that animates and lights the dark.  I believe my Church can change, it's time for it to abandon its snail's pace. 

That's my faith.  I still believe, because the Church can still imbue the world with good and hope.