Tuesday, November 23, 2004
MATT C. ABBOTT WRITES...
"Persecuted Priest Lashes Out at Fellow Clergy"
In an e-mail I received, Father Haley laments:
."All of this, so far, is about me. Bishop Loverde is not on trial, Father Rippy is not on trial, Father Mealey is not on trial, and the Church is not on trial. Their faculties have not been removed, their permission to preach has not been denied, and their financial pay has not been discontinued while they wait — I have been waiting three years, one month and counting — for some recourse to some sort of Church 'justice.'
"And yet, I am not the one hiding homosexual priests and bishops, or homosexual misconduct and abuse, or homosexual pornography. I am not the one stealing large sums of money from parish collections. I am not the one using money, donated by the people of the diocese to further the Gospel proclamation of the truth, to pay for canon lawyers, civil lawyers, public relation firms and the salaries of diocesan spokespersons in order to intimidate, control, and hide the truth about the real moral crisis.
"I am not the one using public media, diocesan newspaper and pulpit announcements, to falsely malign and defame a priest of the diocese with knowingly false information about not being under a legal subpoena to testify, or of purposely publicizing information about homosexual priests in the diocese.
"That information was part of the deposition questions asked in the Lambert lawsuit tying to show a trend, or history, of not addressing priest problems and of protecting guilty priests from exposure, correction or removal from ministry — although this 'protection' seems to highly favor homosexual abuse problems. I am not the one who has promoted homosexual men to positions of authority and power — chancellors, vicar generals, vocation directors, seminary rectors, even to the office of Bishop and Cardinal.
Why is this priest being persecuted?
Why is Arlington exempt from Dallas News and Boston Globe investigations?
What could be worse than the scandals that have already come out?
And with a little stretch I also ask...Does it have anything to do with Dignity's group The Defenders?
UPDATE
The Washington Times is reporting this persecution of the whistleblower:
But it's far from over, says a local Catholic priest who says the true source of the crisis is a priesthood that is "honeycombed" with homosexual clerics, especially in the Diocese of Arlington.
However, attempts by the Rev. James Haley, 48, to persuade his bishop of the problem have backfired. After hearing from the priest about numerous instances of homosexual activity among diocesan clergy, Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde ordered the priest silenced Oct. 23, 2001. This "precept of silence" — usually only employed during church trial proceedings — is rarely used to silence a whistleblower.
What is Loverde covering up? Catholic minds want to know!
