The Worthy Adversary

Category: Clergy Abuse Crisis

“Baby-buying” seminarian rejected by 45 dioceses, orders

Joel A.Wright, second from left, was arrested at the San Diego airport on Friday. Credit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Associated Press

What made the Stubenville diocese take a potential seminarian that 45 other dioceses and religious orders had previously rejected?

Joel Wright is the 23-year-old Catholic seminarian who has been charged with attempting to adopt or purchase (for cash) a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old. He didn’t want to be a father. He wanted them for the purpose of molesting.

Yeah, that’s repugnant. But the larger story is far more pernicious.

When interviewed, Wright’s mother gave away a bombshell.

From Columbus Ohio’s Channel 10:

[Wright’s mother] said life for her son as one of roughly 15 pre-theology students at Pontifical College Josephenum wasn’t easy. She claims his path to priesthood was a bumpy road filled with dozens of rejections because of his cataracts and glaucoma.

“I stopped counting after 45 rejections of how many diocese and religions orders that declined him for his physical disability, for his vision, for his orthopedic for his health impairment.”

If the Catholic Church in the United States refused to accept men into the priesthood due to visual impairments, they would have a big ADA complaint on their hands.

In fact, who better to help and minister to the visually impaired than someone who shares the same struggles?

The 45 rejections had nothing to do with his eyesight.

My guess? He failed the psych exams. And Wright kept applying and applying and applying until he found a place desperate (and negligent) enough to take him.

Stubenville (with its history of abuse and the destruction of secret documents) fit the bill perfectly.

February 2, 2016
Catholics who stopped “sitting back and taking it”

Disgraced former St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt – Out of (another) job

There are two very amazing and interesting aspects of today’s news about disgraced Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt. After national media attention and huge (and righteous) push back from Michigan Catholics, Nienstedt has been forced to leave a temporary position in a Michigan parish.

If you’re just catching up to the story, Kalamazoo Catholic officials didn’t think it would be a big deal for Nienstedt to work in a Battle Creek parish, even though, according to MLive:

Nienstedt and his high-ranking clergy in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St Paul are accused of repeatedly ignoring warnings that went on for years about sexually abusive priests, and of failing to contact law enforcement to report possible criminal acts they knew about. He resigned from his post after the archdiocese was charged with civil and criminal complaints last summer.

There are also five allegations that Nienstedt made sexual advances to seminarians.

But the real news in this story is this: Catholics pushed back. They made it perfectly clear that they didn’t want a priest who covered up sexual abuse (and may not be able to keep his hands to himself) in their parish, period.

Good for them. It’s THEIR church, funded by THEIR donations. It’s THEIR children’s safety. And Battle Creek Catholics aren’t going to let some guy in another city tell them who will baptize their children, marry them, and assume moral authority over their community.

But that’s just part of it …

The other interesting part of this story is how utterly tone deaf both Nienstedt and Kalamazoo Bishop Paul Bradley are when it comes to sex abuse and cover-up.

We live in an internet age, where a simple Google search will tell Catholics far more about their incoming priests than their bishops do. Did Bishop Paul Bradley honestly think that parents were just going to take whatever trash was sent their way? Did he think that they wouldn’t care that Nienstedt was part of the largest sex abuse and cover-up scandal to hit Minnesota?

Does he really think that the faithful are that stupid? Apparently, he does. He also made sure to make it look like they were overcome with hurt and fear.

Actually, they were overcome with intelligence, child safety, and a healthy dose of risk management.

I hope the faithful continue to push back. Over and over and over again.

January 21, 2016
Hawaii Civil Window update
60 sex abuse cases

29 settlements

1 stingy insurance company

Hawaii Bishop Silva – years of experience make him an obfuscator expert

Things have been pretty quiet in Hawaii. And because of a new lawsuit, we now know why.

The Diocese of Honolulu today sued one of its insurers, First Insurance Insurance of Hawaii, for refusing “to honor commitments made in liability policies it sold the church over the course of several decades.”

The lawsuit isn’t the meat of the story. These kinds of suits happen all of the time. Insurance companies don’t like to pay big claims. It’s bad for business.

It’s what’s IN the text of the Diocese’s complaint that is newsworthy.
- Sixty child sex abuse cases have been filed against the Diocese of Honolulu as a result of the civil window
- There have been three rounds of mediation
- Approximately 29 child sex abuse cases against the diocese have already been settled
Since this information didn’t come from the victims’ attorneys, we can only guess that this intel was a part of the mediation privilege … until now. In other words, they aren’t allowed to talk about it (yet—hence the Hawaii radio silence for the past few months). The only party who could talk about it was the Diocese. And they were mad enough at First Insurance to blow their cover.

There are still three more months until the Hawaii civil window closes. Hopefully, this development will encourage more victims (who may have believed that the window was closed) to come forward.

The money quote from the complaint is highlighted in the City Beat story:

[First Insurance has] delayed, obfuscated, and misled its policyholders, consistently putting its interests ahead of the interests [of the church and the claimants.]

Well, if anyone would know delays, obfuscation, and misleading practices, it’d be the Diocese of Honolulu.

Remember, he was the guy who said it “hurt victims” to expose predators.
January 20, 2016
St. John’s, document dumps, and child victims

or … The proof is in the paper, but only if you can find it.

And the monks at St. John’s want to make sure you never find it.

St. John’s: a predators’ paradise

Today, Minnesota Public Radio announced that St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville (MN) is releasing the secret sex abuse files of 18 predatory monks in a large document dump. The monks were forced to release the files to victims as a result of a 2015 lawsuit brought by a victim from the St. John’s Prep School. In theory, it was supposed to be up to the victim when the documents were made public.

Some of the 18 predators whose files are slated to be released live in the St. John’s Monastic Residence (location C above – right smack between the Prep School dorm and cafeteria, in case you were wondering if the offending monks had access to students on campus.). The prep school has students from the 6th to 12th grades. High schoolers can live on campus.

The victim and his attorneys in this case have been releasing the files one or two at a time. The right way …

They carefully examined the files, first making sure that victims and witnesses’ names were redacted.

Then, they put the files in order, made them searchable online, highlighted important information, called out people who covered up abuse, and worked closely with advocates across the country who could use the information in these files to help other victims. (Documents such as this one that showed that diocese lay review boards are usually denied access to a priest’s secret personnel file when making determinations about a priest’s potentially abusive past)

The slow release also ensures that documents receive the attention they deserve (as in my own case.)

Anyone familiar with politics knows that this kind of careful, thoughtful, and victim-centered document release is a disaster for organizations like St. John’s, who has a decades-long history of covering up abuse. It’s called the “drip, drip, drip …” and can be devastating to politicians and political causes, as well as organizations that enable and abet child sex abuse.

Hence today’s announcement of the document dump. It works in politics, so it’s no surprise that the monks are giving it a shot.

There is nothing “transparent” or victim-friendly about the large-scale dumping of these kinds of documents. The monks want everyone in a panic—victims, advocates, journalists—so that information is missed, cover-up remains undetected, and wrongdoers are “forgotten” so that they can continue to live happily on the St. John’s campus.

Which only makes one wonder: what else do the monks have to hide?

January 19, 2016
How do you solve a problem like Nienstedt?

Former St. Paul and Minneapolis Bishop John Nienstedt

What do you do with a disgraced bishop, whose involvement in the cover-up of child sexual abuse led to his being forced out (as well as a bankruptcy for his Archdiocese and criminal charges against the organization)?

Put him in a parish, apparently.

Yesterday, former St. Paul and Minneapolis Chancellor (and whistleblower) Jennifer Haselberger published the parish bulletin from St. Philip Catholic Church in Battle Creek, Michigan.

John Nienstedt is going to be their new fill-in parish priest.

What does this say to the faithful at that parish? We hope you don’t notice, but we are passing our trash to you. We know you go to church for spiritual growth and healing, but we hope you can just “forgive” the fact that we stuck you with a guy who covered-up sex abuse, has been accused himself, and who led his archdiocese down a criminal path of disaster.

In fact, I bet that Kalamazoo Bishop Paul Bradley and Twin Cities Archbishop Bernard Hebda are going to use the rhetorical device of “forgiveness” to shame Battle Creek Catholics into accepting Nienstedt.

Nienstedt shouldn’t be a priest anymore. He blew it. If Archbishop Hebda wants to throw Nienstedt a bone and let him keep the collar (and the pension), Nienstedt should live a life of quiet prayer and penance.

And Nienstedt has no right or standing to act as a spiritual leader of anyone.

I hope Kalamazoo Catholics punch back twice as hard … by closing their wallets.

*** “The definitive child safety manual” – The Well-Armored Child ebook (Nook and Kindle) is on sale for $.99 – until January 18, 2016 ***

January 13, 2016