Another Catholic diocese faces bankrkuptcy. Should Catholics give a damn?

I don't know whether Rhett Butler was a Catholic, but Catholics should adopt Rhett's attitude about the rising tide of bankruptcies among America's Catholic dioceses.  Frankly, my dears, we should not give a damn.

Nineteen Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy in recent years, due to payouts forced on the Church by child-abuse victims, almost all of whom were raped or sexually abused by Catholic priests. The National Catholic Reporter compiled a list of 131 financial settlements between the Catholic Church and child abuse victims--most of them for a million dollars or more.

According to the Buffalo News, the Diocese of Buffalo, New York may be the twentieth American diocese to file for bankruptcy.  NCR's Carolyn Thompson reported a few days ago that the Buffalo Diocese has already paid out about $18 million to 100 child abuse victims and has 220 lawsuits pending against it.

Not surprisingly, the sexual abuse scandal has demoralized Catholic laypeople all over the United States. No one knows how many Catholics have left the Church due to this moral catastrophe, but it is clear that Catholic laypeople have drastically cut back on their financial contributions to the Church.

The Buffalo Diocese provides an example. Jay Tokasz, writing for the Buffalo News, reported that the diocese suffered a $5 million budget deficit last year even though it cut its budget by $1.9 million.

Donations to the diocese had dropped by a whopping one third in just one year.  In 2018, the Buffalo Diocese received approximately $18 million in donations. In 2019, donations fell to about $13 million.  That's a huge vote of no confidence in the Buffalo hierarchy's leadership. 

Catholics are frustrated and enraged by the Church’s sexual abuse scandal. How, we ask ourselves, can a church that calls itself the Bride of Christ allow men to rape and sodomize children—both boys and girls?  How could the Church allow rapists to continue in their ministry and how could it have resorted to sleazy legal maneuvers to hide the scandal?

The arrogance and indifference of the American Catholic bishops are destroying the Church’s financial viability—which is a good thing. Lay Catholics have simply stopped giving money to the son-of –a-bitches who have countenanced human trafficking in parish rectories for more than half a century. In fact, it is not too much to say that many Catholic bishops are themselves human traffickers who moved pedophiles around from parish to parish.

I stopped giving money to the Catholic Church about three years ago. My wife and I now make regular monthly contributions to Casa Juan Diego, the Catholic Worker hospitality house in Houston, Texas. We know that every dollar we send to Casa Juan Diego will go to help the poor.

I urge other disappointed Catholics to join me. Stop funding the creeps who run the Catholic Church and give it to people who are doing Christ’s work—whether or not they are Catholics. 

*****

·        According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Catholic Church has paid out more than $3 billion in settlements and court awards to child abuse victims.  The following is a list of 131 settlements and the number of victims in each case (as reported by NCR).

·        2000-03-15 — Santa Rosa, California — $1.6 million — 4

·        2000-12-04 — Los Angeles, California — $5.2 million — 1

·        2001-03-08 — Bridgeport, Connecticut — $15 million — 26

·        2001-12 — Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — $5 million — 1

·        2002-01-30 — Tucson, Arizona — $14 million — 11

·        2002-04-01 — Orange and LA, California — $1.2million — 1

·        2002-06 — Los Angeles, California — $1.5 million — 1

·        2002-06-14 — Omaha, Nebraska — $800.000 — 1

·        2002-08-23 — Orange, California — $400.000 — 1

·        2002-09-04 — Los Gatos, California – Jesuits — $7.5 million — 2

·        2002-09-09 — Providence, Rhode Island — $13.5 million — 36

·        2002-09-18 — Boston, Massachusetts — $10 million — 86

·        2002-10-10 — Manchester, New Hampshire — $950.000 — 16

·        2002-11-26 — Manchester, New Hampshire — $5.1 million — 62

·        2003-01-09 — Boston, Massachusetts (Jesuits) — $5.8 million — 15

·        2003-01-29 — Metuchen, New Jersey — $800,000 — 10

·        2003-03-13 — Camden, New Jersey — $880,000 — 23

·        2003-05-08 — Manchester, New Hampshire — $815.000 — 4

·        2003-05-22 — Manchester, New Hampshire — $6.5 million — 61

·        2003-05-22 — Manchester, New Hampshire — $2.1 million — 33

·        2003-06-10 — Louisville, Kentucky — $25.7 million — 243

·        2003-06-30 — San Bernardino, California — $4.2 million — 2

·        2003-07-01 — Chicago, Illinois — $1.9 million — 1

·        2003-07-10 — Chicago, Illinois — $4 million — 4

·        2003-08-14 — Tucson, Arizona — $1.8 million — 5

·        2003-09-09 — Boston, Massachusetts — $84.2 million — 552

·        2003-09-11 — Seattle, Washington — $7.9 million — 15

·        2003-10-02 — Chicago, Illinois — $8 million — 15

·        2003-10-11 — Covington, Kentucky — $5.2 million — 27

·        2003-10-16 — Bridgeport, Connecticut — $21million — 40

·        2003-11-24 — Oakland, California — $1 million — 1

·        2003-12-04 — Covington, Kentucky — $1million — 5

·        2004 — Bridgeport, Connecticut — $40,000 — 2

·        2004-01-23 — Oakland, California — $3 million — 1

·        2004-01-28 — Covington, Kentucky — $2 million — 7

·        2004-04-15 — St. Petersburg, Florida — $1.1 million — 12

·        2004-04-21 — St. Louis, Missouri — $1.7 million — 1

·        2004-05-27 — Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania — $3.7 million — 21

·        2004-07-03 — Toledo, Ohio — $500,000 — 2

·        2004-08-17 — Springfield, Massachusetts — $7.8 million — 46

·        2004-08-20 — Toledo, Ohio — $1.2 million — 23

·        2004-08-26 — St. Louis, Missouri  — $2 million — 18

·        2004-09-22 — Miami, Florida — $3.4 million — 23

·        2004-10-08 — Newark, New Jersey — $1 million — 10

·        2004-10-28 — Davenport, Iowa — $9 million — 37

·        2004-12-02 — Orange, California — $100 million — 91

·        2004-12-17 — Seattle, Washington — $1.8 million — 12

·        2004-12-23 — Oakland, California — $6.3 million — 3

·        2005-02-15 — Paterson, New Jersey — $5 million — 27

·        2005-03-08 — Cincinnati, Ohio — $3.2 million — 120

·        2005-03-24 — Oakland, California — $437,000 — 1

·        2005-03-31 — Fort Worth, Texas — $1.4 million — 1

·        2005-04-07 — Fairbanks, Alaska-Jesuits — $1 million — 1

·        2005-04-09 — Fort Worth, Texas — $2.7 million — 1

·        2005-04-15 — Oakland, California — $1.9 million — 2

·        2005-04-20 — San Francisco, California — $5.8 million — 4

·        2005-04-22 — Santa Rosa, California — $3.3 million — 1

·        2005-05 — Orlando & St. Augustine, Florida — $1.5 million — 3

·        2005-05-09 — Davenport, Iowa — $1.9 million — 1

·        2005-05-19 — Stockton, California — $3 million — 1

·        2005-06-10 — San Francisco, California — $21.2 million — 15

·        2005-06-10 — Seattle, Washington — $1.7 million — 4

·        2005-06-29 — Sacramento, California — $35million — 33

·        2005-06-30 — Boston, Massachusetts — $33.1 million — 257

·        2005-07-01 — Santa Rosa, California — $7.3million — 8

·        2005-07-08 — San Francisco, California — $16.0 million — 12

·        2005-08-05 — Oakland, California — $56 million — 56

·        2005-08-27 — Seattle, Washington – Benedictines — $2.6 million — 7

·        2005-09-02 — San Francisco, California — $4 million — 4

·        2005-10-11 — San Francisco, California — $2.6million — 2

·        2005-11-01 — Hartford, Connecticut — $22million — 43

·        2006-01-09 — Covington, Kentucky — $2.5 million — 19

·        2006-01-09 — Covington, Kentucky — $79 million — 243

·        2006-02-21 — Dubuque, Iowa — $5 million — 20

·        2006-03-13 — Los Angeles, California – Franciscans — $28 million — 25

·        2006-03-16 — Jackson, Mississippi — $5.1 million — 19

·        2006-04-01 — Seattle, Washington — $1 million — 2

·        2006-06-30 — Boston, Massachusetts — $6.3 million — 86

·        2006-08-04 — Anchorage, Alaska and Boston, Massachusetts — $1.4 million — 5

·        2006-09-01 — Milwaukee, Wisconsin — $16.7 million — 10

·        2006-10-27 — Los Angeles, California – Carmelites — $10 million — 7

·        2006-11-30 — Norwich, Connecticut — $1.1 million — 1

·        2006-12-01 — Los Angeles, California — $60 million — 45

·        2006-12-16 — Washington, D.C. — $1.3 million — 16

·        2007-01-05 — Denver, Colorado — $1.5 million — 15

·        2007-03-27 — Dubuque, Iowa — $2.6 million — 9

·        2007-03-29 — Fairbanks, Alaska and Oregon Province of Jesuits — $1.9 million — 4

·        2007-05-10 — Rockford, Illinois — $2.2 million — 2

·        2007-05-16 — Portland, Oregon — $1.3 million — 2

·        2007-05-18 — Rockville Centre, New York — $11.4 million — 2

·        2007-05-29 — Chicago, Illinois — $6.6 million — 15

·        2007-06-30 — Boston, Massachusetts — $2.1 million — 34

·        2007-07-14 — Los Angeles, California — $660 million — 508

·        2007-07-30 — Charleston, South Carolina — $10.3 million — 80

·        2007-08-30 — Charleston, South Carolina — $1.375 million — 11

·        2007-09-07 — San Bernardino, California — $15.1 million — 11

·        2007-09-13 — Santa Rosa, California — $5 million — 10

·        2007-10-05 — Orange, California — $6.6 million — 4

·        2007-10-19 — St. Louis, Missouri – Marianists — $160,000 — 1

·        2007-11-16 — Fairbanks, Alaska – Jesuits — $50 million — 110

·        2008-01-04 — Spokane, Washington – Jesuits — $4.8 million — 16

·        2008-01-18 — Wilmington, Delaware — $450,000 — 1

·        2008-04-10 — Dubuque, Iowa — $4.7 million — 18

·        2008-05-13 — Burlington, Vermont — $784,000 — 1

·        2008-05-14 — Los Angeles, California – Salesians — $19.5 million — 17

·        2008-06-30 — Boston, Massachusetts — $5.4 million — 55

·        2008-07-01 — Denver, Colorado — $5.5 million — 18

·        2008-08-12 — Chicago, Illinois — $12.6 million — 16

·        2008-08-19 — Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri — $10 million — 47

·        2008-08-27 — Belleville, Illinois — $5 million — 1

·        2008-08-29 — Providence, Rhode Island — $1.3 million — 4

·        2008-09-11 — Chicago, Illinois — $2.5 million — 1

·        2008-09-18 — Chicago, Illinois — $1.7 million — 1

·        2008-10-30 — Pueblo, Colorado – Marianists — $4.2 million — 23

·        2008-11 — Seattle, Washington - Christian Bros — $7.2 million — 11

·        2008-12-03 — Springfield, Massachusetts — $4.5 million — 59

·        2008-12-17 — Burlington, Vermont — $784,000 — 1

·        2009-01-29 — Seattle, Washington - Christian Brothers — $7million — 13

·        2009-02-28 — Memphis, Tennessee — $2 million — 1

·        2009-04-08 — Wilmington, Delaware — $1.5 million — 1

·        2009-06-03 — Monterey, California — $1.2 million — 1

·        2009-06-30 — Boston, Massachusetts — $3.6 million — 27

·        2009-07-21 — Chicago, Illinois — $3.9 million — 6

·        2009-10-09 — Burlington, Vermont — $784,000 — 1

·        2009-10-22 — Belleville, Illinois — $1.2 million — 1

·        2009-10-28 — Savannah, Georgia — $4.2 million — 1

·        2009-11-05 — Portland, Maine — $200,000 — 1

·        2010-05-03 — Indianapolis, Indiana — $199,000 — 1

·        2010-05-13 — Burlington, Vermont — $17.6 million — 26

·        2010-06-10 — Charlotte, North Carolina and Capuchins — $1.2 million —

·        2010-08-11 — Lansing, Michigan — $250,000 — 1

As the Feast of the Holy Innocents approaches, Cardinal Bernard Law is laid to rest in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

Cardinal Bernard Law, the criminally negligent prelate of the Boston Archdiocese, died this week.  Pope Francis gave the creep his papal blessing, and he will be laid to rest in a chapel of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Law was forced from his bishop's throne after the Boston Globe published a series of searing stories on sexual abuse by priests--abuse Law knew about and covered up. Law should have gone to jail, but the Vatican spirited him away to Rome where he was made archpriest of one Rome's major basilicas. 

Law's funeral took place on December 21. I don't know when he will be buried, but wouldn't it be appropriate if the burial ceremony took place on December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents?

Since 1950,over 6,000 American priests have been accused of sexually abusing children, and several dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy by victims who sued the Catholic Church.  Most of this abuse was covered up by the Catholic hierarchy, yet not a single bishop went to jail.

So on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, let us say a prayer for all the children who were raped and sodomized by Catholic priests--children whose lives will never be repaired, even by the prayers of Pope Francis. Let us say a special prayer for the victims who committed suicide, for the victims who were further humiliated by the Church's lawyers, and for the families who were hushed up by parish priests who cared more about protecting their brother clerics than about protecting the safety of Catholic children.

Nihilistic old white men who commit mass murder: We will see more of them

Old and in the way, that's what I heard them say

They used to heed the words he said, but that was yesterday

Gold will turn to gray and youth will fade away

They'll never care about you, call you old and in the way.

Old and in the Way

lyrics by David Grisman

Sung by the Grateful Dead

Americans are accustomed to serial killers. According to the New York Times, mass shootings have occurred in the United States at the rate of more than one a day over the last 477 days.

We can sort these killers into discrete categories. Some are religious extremists--the Boston Marathon bombers, the Orlando shooter, the San Bernardino murderers. Some are disaffected young men: the killers at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and the Charleston, SC church.

And there is at least one more category: disaffected, older white men. Stephen Paddock,an affluent  64-year-old man, who killed or wounded more than 500 people in Las Vegas a few days ago, is the latest old white guy to commit mass murder. Before Paddock, there was James Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old geezer from Illinois who shot a group of Republican congressmen while they were practicing for a charity baseball game. And don't forget John Russell Houser.  Houser, a 59-year-old loner, opened fire in a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, killing two people and injuring nine others before shooting himself.

What did these men have in common? All were older white men, all killed complete strangers, and all committed suicide (or allowed themselves to be killed by the police). And I think it is fair to say that these three men had lost all sense of purpose as they entered old age.

Let's face it. Growing old is no fun.  As we grow older, we realize that we did not achieve all our dreams and that our time on earth is drawing to a close. We feel our strength and vigor ebb away as we hunker down for the last stage of life.  Our regrets and mistakes loom larger and larger in our minds while our meager triumphs and happy times grow dim in our memories.

And as death approaches, we find we are not afraid. At times we almost long for death. This movie lasted too long; we want to see "The End" appear on our movie screens. And we don't give a damn who shows up at our funerals.

In a healthy culture, old people derive meaning and purpose from their families--especially their grandchildren. If they are fortunate, they are respected for their wisdom and are sought out for wise counsel.  Some of us belong to civic organizations or take comfort from religious faith.

But in postmodern America, a lot of old white guys don't have any of that. They lost the families they started when they were young. Their jobs, which were obsessions when they were in their twenties and thirties, now reveal themselves to be meaningless and boring. They've lost all interest in religion and find religious people excruciatingly tedious.

And some of these old guys turn to nihilism; and some of them have guns.

I wish I believed the Stephen Paddocks of the world are the rarest of aberrations, that we will not see the likes of him again in our lifetime.

But I know differently. Our culture does not honor the old; it offers no solace to the elderly. The indignity of our approaching death reveals itself, the meaninglessness of existence becomes apparent; and some old men express their disappointment in murder.

Stephen Paddock, mass murderer

References

477 Days. 521 Mass Shootings. Zero Action From Congress. New York Times, October 3, 2017.

Dorothy Day, a Broken Family, and Sexual Abuse at Maryfarm: Some in the world will not be saved by beauty

Dorothy Day was a journalist, and she left an enormous written record that can help us understand her life and her work. She wrote articles for The Catholic Worker newspaper and Commonweal Magazine. She wrote novels, one of which was published under the title of The Eleventh Virgin. She wrote two memoirs: The Long Loneliness and From Union Square to Rome; and she published On Pilgrimage and Loaves and Fishes, which are collections of brief essays. And she kept a diary. Her diaries, edited by and published by Robert Ellsberg, total more than a thousand pages.

Yet a student of Dorothy Day could read all that Dorothy had written and all that has been written about her and still be shocked and astonished by The World Will Be Saved By Beauty, the story of Dorothy Day's life written by Kate Hennessy, Dorothy's youngest grandchild.

One knows, after reading just a few pages of Hennessy's book, that Kate inherited Dorothy's gift for language and for storytelling. Hennessy's narrative about Dorothy's search for meaning as a young woman is as gripping as any novel.

Second, much of the book is an examination of Dorothy's relationship with the two most important people in her life: Forster Batterham, the father of Dorothy's only child; and Tamar, Dorothy's daughter. People who are generally familiar with Dorothy's biography know that Dorothy loved Forster deeply, but her relationship with him ended after Dorothy baptized Tamar as a Catholic and then became a Catholic as well.

But Hennessy tells us that Dorothy's relationship with Batterham continued for several years after the couple ceased to live together. In fact, at one point Dorothy believed she might be pregnant with Forster's second child. Hennessy gives us deeper insight into the kind of man Forster was--a man of deep conviction but no fortitude--a man Malcolm Cowley described as a person who would not let anything interfere with his whims.

Tamar's life, as told by her daughter, impressed me as deeply tragic. She was wooed by Dave Hennessy, a man loosely attached to the Catholic Worker movement and 13 years Tamar's senior. Dorothy did not want Tamar to marry Dave. As Dave's daughter Kate Hennessy wrote, everyone knew he was trouble. But Dorothy fumbled in her effort to break the bond that Dave had managed to patiently construct with Tamar as he waited patiently for her to reach the marriageable age of 18.

Tamar had nine children with Dave Hennessy, who was never able to support his huge family. Like Forster Batterham, Dave was a dabbler who rarely held a steady job. He was an alcoholic and verbally abusive to his young wife. Long before Tamar gave birth to her ninth child, she had lost interest in her husband.

And now here is the shocking revelation slipped into the middle of Kate Hennessy's book. All students of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement know that the Catholic Worker farms were the brainchild of Dorothy's collaborator, Peter Maurin. Maurin saw communal farms as the way to get people out of the city and into the countryside, where families could support themselves and lead a Christian life.

Dorothy, however, saw the farms as places where food could be raised to support the Catholic Worker's food lines, as  well as quiet, sheltered places for retreats. In fact, Maryfarm, the Catholic Worker's largest experience with rural living, attracted an assortment of misfits, and it was impossible to get all of Maryfarm's residents to work cooperatively and productively.

Of course, we already knew that the Maryfarm was a failure, even before Kate Hennessy's account of the farm was published. What we did not know, however, was that a faction of the Maryfarm residents came under the spell of Guy Tobler, a French attorney, who manipulated the lives of some of the Maryfarm residents, a group made up of a few married couples and single men.

Hennessy reveals that the Tobler perverted the Christian environment Dorothy and Peter Maurin were trying to nurture at Maryfarm and created a culture of manipulation, subjugation of women and children, and even sexual abuse.

Just before Christmas 1946, Dorothy walked away from Maryfarm permanently. In February 1947, she informed the archbishop that Maryfarm was no longer affiliated with the Catholic Worker. How could it be, once it had been perverted by a force of primordial evil?

I was drawn to Dorothy Day many years ago; I felt a kinship with her because we both misspent our youth (although my youth was much more misspent than Dorothy's). But learning these new details about Maryfarm caused me to admire Dorothy Day even more. Surely by the witness of her life, she helps us realize that God calls us to be faithful, not successful. And as Dorothy's life shows us, the Christian life can be a hard and bitter life; it is indeed, to borrow a phrase from Dorothy--The Long Loneliness.