Handle Justice Like A Supermarket Sweep

It fits so well with the Commercialization of Everything that is happening in the 21st Century, and with the dominance of reality TV in our culture.  We could broadcast Vatican Victim Sweep! as a new reality TV show and one ceiling like the one pictured above could support 50 survivors and their families alone.  

Vatican Victim Sweep, Great Reality TV!

Let adult victims of pedophile priests take grocery carts and be turned loose in the Vatican, a few victims at a time, for each week’s show.  Each of the 70 to 150 thousand or so persons in the U.S. who are living with the residual effects of being on the receiving end of a Catholic priest’s “pretend sex while celibate” would have a chance to run through the Vatican with a grocery cart and take anything they want. 

Including documents hidden in Vatican secret vaults that describe these crimes!

The thousands of boys sodomized while learning to serve on the altar at Mass, the girls masturbated in the Confessional when they were too young to even know what was happening and who then were  promiscuous for the rest of their lives and never understood why (now we know why there used to be so many dirty jokes about Catholic school girls), the priest who is  attracted to young boys who are beginning studies for the priesthood like he did as a boy, the incarcerated sexual predator who raped dozens of children, using the same MO Father Bob used on him when he was a kid.

ALL OF US, not with attorneys, but with Grocery Carts, get to have five minutes, just five minutes is all we need, to run through the Vatican and take whatever gold and jewels and art we can stuff into our grocery carts. 

Then after all the victims from the U.S. are finished, the reality TV show can stay in production, as there will still be plenty more loot.  These guys have been hording wealth for centuries, and what humans beings deserve more to be the first to take their choice of gold and silver from the Vatican as it closes (soon hopefully) than the adult victims of pedohpile priests?  After us, all the other people whose lives were destroyed in other ways by the Church can help themselves to the rest of the wealth.

The reality TV show could stay in production for decades.

They would never run out of victims or wealth for them to pillage.

Since no one really has jurisdiction to prosecute the Pope, letting the victims do a Vatican Sweep with grocery carts might be the only way in these peculiar cases to balance Justice.

In the L.A. Clergy Cases as they ground through Superior Court in 2007, often the judge and lawyers would admit that these crimes have no real precedent, there is no other crime to compare with the crimes of pervert Catholic priests using their unique roll as being “above human” to prey on children.  So it will take innovation, new ideas, creativity, perhaps reality TV inspired new venues (!) to find a way to get true justice for the adult crime victims of these extremely unique and awful crimes. 

The priests helped themselves to children as if the bishops told them Catechism class is theirs for the taking.

Yes.  These priests were serial pedophile rapists.

Not just men who lost control for a few minutes and touched a child inappropriately.  I have been researching and writing about Pedophile Catholic Priest Sex Crimes since I started City of Angels Blog three and a half years ago.

Back then, I thought Chicago was the worst archdiocese, then New Orleans, then Boston, no it’s got to be New Mexico where the Servants had a treatment center and the perverts went out on free passes, but wait, then the cases from the 2003 California window came up and we all thought Roger Mahony and the L.A. Archdiocese were the worst, especially since Mahony used to be Bishop of Fresno, and during the February 2009 trial, Santillan Brothers versus Bishop of Fresno, people emailed me convinced that Fresno is the festering source of all the pedophilia in the Church.

Truth is these crimes took place in high numbers in every archdiocese in the United States, and now we are finding pedophile priests were likely allowed to help themselves to parish and school children all over the world as well.  Obviously there is something inherently wrong here with the institution itself.

Pedophilia is Systemic in a Church that has to keep its mandatorily celibate employees satisfied.  Children were disposable to them, so they used children to satisfy the priests.  That’s the Dark Ages mentality the Catholic Church brought to modern America, and the result is tens of thousands of permanently damaged adult children, and many never even live to be adults, as the suicide rate among the crime victims is SO HIGH.

You don’t produce six thousand (6000!) pedophiles, cover up their crimes for decades, and still have a functioning corporation thriving all over the world, unless you are the Roman Catholic Church. No other entity in the world would have been allowed to turn its perverted problem employees loose on a parish population of children where all the priests had to do was not tell too many people what they were doing and they could pillage and rape freely.

You doubt I’m telling the truth?  

Look into the carnivals they used to have at Mary Star of the Sea Church in San Pedro, California. 

Talk to the boys and girls, now adults, who used to be picked out of the crowd of kids at the Saturday carnivals Mary Star of the Sea parish used to have for San Pedro area children, Catholic and non-Catholic. 

A group of pedophile priests, including George Neville Rucker, Henry Vetter, and Michael Baker 

Would pick their choice from the kids at the carnival

Take them off to an empty building on the church property, and rape the children, including penetration, including sodomy, over and over again.  Some San Pedro kids could count on getting raped every Saturday, after their parents dropped them off with these oh-so trusted men of God.

The San Pedro crimes are just 5 from the 510 cases that settled in L.A. July 2007 and remained mostly secret as a result. The L.A. Archdiocese paid out $660 million to 510 people and thousands of documents describing the crimes are now in L.A. Superior Court Archives, available for anyone to read, contact me if you want help finding them.  They don’t make it easy.  There is one computer terminal for everyone in line, you are allowed to look ten minutes, then you have to get in the back of the line and wait again, AND it takes almost your entire ten minutes to find the doc you want. 

Or you can buy printed copies.  Any docs filed after January 2008 you have to buy, you can’t really see the new docs at all in L.A. Superior Court  unless you  buy copies, at fifty cents a page, and the documents are hundreds of pages long. 

That’s freedom of information in the USA today, it costs fifty cents a page and will end up running into thousands of dollars, for a journalist or anyone else to read the whole truth about these crimes.  Meanwhile Catholic schools and churches around the country are going out of business, but the dons at the Vatican are clutching onto their gold ceilings telling local bishops to figure out a way to solve the financial problems resulting  from the pedophile priest scandal themselves. 

WE HAVE ALL BEEN DUPED  and CONNED

Both by and to the bishops all the way up to the Vatican.

People should be asking:

What was the motivation to keep these crimes secret and let kids continue to be raped.  Now that we all know the crimes happened, why was the Church so lax?  Why did they let the priests continue to rape rather than be investigated?  The motive for the lack of investigation needs to be investigated next. 

Meanwhile I’m in training for my day to do the Vatican Sweep, and I still have my grocery cart from when we were homeless.  I’m ready when they are.

(maybe next lifetime…)

I’ve watched several friends get small to large settlements from the Catholic Church, and they hardly ever seem joyful after years of litigation and niggling with teams of Catholic Church Attorneys who do things like accusing them of lying and being only in it for the money during depositions.  So civil settlements to the fraction of victims who can fight the Church in Court isn’t really the final answer.

What we need is a Vatican Sweep, a genuine Law Enforcement Vatican Sweep. 

Pope Benedict XVI says the Church has resolved this crisis, but all they’ve done for years is damage control. 

Well some of us are just too damn damaged to be controlled. 

Read about perp priests Vetter, Rucker, and Baker at BishopAccountability Dot Org in the database of Six Thousand Credibly Accused Pedophile Priests in the USA, under V, R, and B

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels is Everywhere

What we might find as we pillage:

Jeff Anderson Describes Vatican Secret Vaults in Al Jazeera Interview

‘Scandal hidden in secret vaults’
Aljazeera.net -
Kathleen McCaul
Jeff Anderson is one of two lawyers representing five men in the US who have brought lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for failing to take action over cases of alleged child abuse in the church. The case involves a number …

Homeless Mother water color by Carol Gauldin

“Lizzie, I don’t like this spot anymore.”

“I don’t either,” she shivered, “there’s an old man who’s been walking by and looking at us every hour on the hour.”

I started the car and pulled out.  Here, I’d thought the Hollywood Rec Center and park at Cahuenga and Santa Monica Boulevard would be a safe place for us to park, since we’d be sleeping in our car that night.  I don’t know, maybe some part of me was still stuck in the last century thinking public parks and rec centers are safe places.

We pull out and Lizzie cries out, “Go mom, there’s two guys, go!  They’re just a few feet away from the car. Go!”  My tires screech.  A block away I realize a car is following us and I become Steve McQueen in Bullitt on the flat side streets of Hollywood. We go left on Lexington, right on Cole, then floor it up to Fountain, criss-cross a few blocks until we are at Selma near Highland.  The car was still right behind us.  So now I became Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element.  Halfway into an intersection in front of First Baptist Church of Hollywood, I squealed into a U turn, the dudes in their car so close behind us there was no way that car could U-Turn too and follow us.  We drove away, watching them sink into the dark going the other direction. 

Phew.

Hollywood Highland Mall Has Great Rest Rooms for Homeless Middle Class People, Clean, Open Until 3 AM

Now we were close to Hollywood Highland Mall which for homeless middle class moms like me, provided a last chance at a public restroom before everything else closed, a clean one. The Ladies Room at Hollywood Highland Mall is open until about three AM.  My daughter and I became nightly regulars. 

The trick was to park as close to Hollywood and Highland as possible, ride the mammoth escalator past the shop that sells hundred dollar jars of cold cream, then acting like I belong there, walk along the mall second floor to the hall that leads to the Kodak Theater where the late night ladies room is located. 

It was the last grasp I had of any class.

Funny. I could not have gone there every night without that coat

I had this black wool full length coat, and the winter months of 2004 it still got cold enough in L.A. to need a full length coat, especially in the wee hours of the morning sleeping outside, believe me.  My daughter bought me this coat in better days when we lived in San Francisco.  She had saved up from doing chores I paid her to do, and was able to go to the Macy’s on Geary  Street, and buy it for me Christmas 1995 or 96.  It was an elegant cut coat of fine fabric. 

So even though in that long black coat I’d been sleeping and walking and meeting and digging in the backseat and standing in line for food and sometimes practically bathing in that rest room outside the Kodak Theater, I could still feign a sense of entitlement as we walked through Hollywood Highland Mall, as the clock struck close to three AM before the rest rooms closed. 

This homeless lady had style. 

After freshening up in the ladies room, smiling through lipstick at the girls who dropped in from nearby night clubs almost naked, Lizzie and I walked back to the 1995 Ford we now called home and drove up the hill to the spot where I should have parked to begin with. 

My parking space. 

It was beginning to feel like home.

Across the street from a clean new house with a pickup truck in the driveway, I’d been parking almost every night.  Somehow that particular spot a half block south of Franklin, less than a half mile from the apartment where we’d lived for five years until falling through the cracks and becoming homeless November 2003, that parking space on that side street had come to feel like home.   

Police helicopters overhead droned us to sleep

Delivery of Hollywood trade papers woke us in the AM

On that particular street, a lot of working actors and writers and people moving up in show biz live, the street I’d begun to call home when we were homeless.  So during the night and early in the morning as we were invisible sleeping with our eyes half open in the dark parked under a tree, I’d hear drivers pull up, pull on the brakes, and run up to front doors around us, delivering the rewrites, blue pages, yellow pages, dailies, revised contracts, at least that is what I surmised, having been living alongside show business since about 1966.  They’d pull up right beside us all night long and double park, spitting distance of where we were sleeping, me behind the steering wheel, Lizzie shotgun.  Our 10 year old Taurus had reclining seats, but by this time we’d accumulated such a mess of stuff in the back of the car that neither front seat would go back more than 45 degrees. 

The sound of delivery drivers coming and going was soothing, began to have a homey feel to me, like wind in the trees, birds chirping in the early morning, police helicopters going overhead every night around 3 AM, these all became homey comfortable  sounds for us as we lived in our car in winter 2004 on the streets of Los Angeles.

I had a portable radio, a cracked plastic thing from the 1980s, but it worked. Listening to AM radio all night the batteries lasted weeks.  I became a fan of Coast To Coast, the overnight radio program with stories of the paranormal, obtuse religions, visitors from other planets. 

As we’d doze and awake through the night there in the Hollywood hills, I’d know when it was getting close to sunrise.  That’s when the delivery guys brought the trade papers.  I’d hear the familiar motor pull up close, the car door open and close, familiar footsteps.  Several houses on this block got front door delivery of The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety every morning, in this block where I felt I was so at home.

Somehow hearing that daily delivery of the Show Biz Trade Papers reminded me that life can be rebuilt, sometimes even from the bottom up, even from below the bottom, which is where Lizzie and I were just then.

END OF PART TWO, watch for part three coming soon

Picture above is “Homeless Mother” Image was found at My Goop

Part One of this story is here

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels is Everywhere

Accused of abuse of 2 from 1978-1979 at St. Anthony Seminary and another location per archdiocesan report. 1 civil suit filed 2003. Settled 8/06. Three new civil suits (see attached) filed fall 2009 allege that Johnson and Philip Wolfe abused three other plaintiffs when they were students at St. Anthony’s beginning in 1979

Now who can prosecute the Pope? 

There were Six Thousand Pedophiles Priests in the U.S. alone, found so far. Turned loose on parishes, they blatantly raped so many children, it’s impossible for the men in charge not to have known.  Bishops’ claims to innocence are “Mental Reservation,” a Roman Catholic official policy that says it is okay to lie, even under oath, in order to protect the greater good of the Church, and Mental Reservation is practiced in every diocese from the Vatican on down.

The 6000 pedophile priests in the US alone raped children in three-figure numbers, there are tens of thousands of adult victims, seriously damaged people some of us, walking around the USA today trying to recover.  Sometimes the New York Times is the best therapy.

Give him the respect all Presidents deserve

When George Bush first got elected in 2000, I swallowed my wrath, agreed he was a personable guy, probably would get along well with our nation’s adversaries.  A lot of progressive and patriotic people gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt at least up to 9/11.  Why haven’t Republicans and extreme left Democrats given President Barack Obama that same respect?   Have we all forgotten how horrible it was to have a President who could not construct a sentence, much less a thought?

Even in the 2004 election, I’d respectfully admit, Bush will make a great ex-President, real personable guy… but when he got elected anyway, I didn’t holler too much more than to say, I know we won Ohio, something is wrong there, we won Ohio.

This first step in health care reform, where people with pre-existing conditions have to have access to health care PLUS the oversight that will be created over the health insurance industry by this 2010 act, will likely result in so much positive change in American health care, it will be much easier to get a U.S. House and Senate to agree to a public option in two or three years. 

He’s the President.  He won.  Basic junior high school Civics says, Give him respect.   

Barack Obama is probably going to be one of the greatest presidents in American history, primarily because of his stamina and integrity, refusal to lower himself into the lowest of the fray.  He deserves a lot more respect than he is getting.  Maybe too many people really HAVE never taken an American Civics course.

Well it’s time to study Civics, as Civility is sorely missing in the USA today.

President Obama has  amazing ability to cut through all the crap and stabilize chaos as we’ve seen in his handling of this health care bill.  I think we were all taken aback by how far Republicans have fought him, but Obama is springing back.  I’m looking forward to the next seven years of Obama, and am so glad to be alive to watch America begin to recover again.

Civility is so long gone, the blatant racist attacks on the president, the Christian Right saying Jesus would want us to abandon poor sick people.   Like standing up whenever the Star Spangled Banner plays, basic old fashioned respect for our country and the people who we elect to run it is disappearing. 

Have civics courses been cut from public schools as well as arts and sports?

Posted by Kay Ebeling, producer of City of Angels blog

(The City of Angels is Everywhere)

A new lawsuit in Santa Barbara shows the crimes of two pedophile priests, like tens of thousands of crimes reported to Cardinal Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict, when he ran the office in charge of investigating criminal priests before becoming Pope.  The lawsuit quoted in depth below was filed Dec. 2009 against the Franciscans of Santa Barbara, who by themselves produced 27 Pedophile Priests in their decades of proselytizing in this one Southern California town.

Crime victims like the plaintiff in lawsuit below continue to come forward with claims from St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, even though the 2003 one-year window to file decades old claims in California is long closed.  Attorneys for plaintiffs and for the Church’s various archdiocese corporations sole are today awaiting a decision by the state Supreme Court as to whether more cases can be filed, a decision that could change the statute of limitations on civil suits regarding institutions that allow child sex crimes in this state, so look for a story here in the near future about the Quarry decision.

Today, City of Angels has a document from Case #1338630 filed December 1, 2009, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Santa Barbara, Anacapa Division.  For the sake of public record, we are copying parts of the “First Amended Complaint for Damages and injunctive Relief” here for everyone to read. 

Keep in mind that the Pope had judicial review of all these crimes at the Vatican, when he ran the CDF before becoming Pope.  As Cardinal Ratzinger, he likely read reports of thousands of crimes by pedophile priests like the ones described below.  That’s why it’s so astounding to see him look into the news media’s face and claim surprise and dismay and the other milk toast words he uses when confronted with these charges in Europe in 2010.   The Vatican and the Pope were very much involved in the coverup of Catholic priest sex crimes and keeping down the scandal since the 1960s.   

The plaintiff complaint quoted below is the kind of case that came across the desk of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for decades, when he was in charge of the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Inquisition).  He had “judicial review” of criminal activity by priests all over the world for 23 years before becoming Pope.   Hundreds of cases of child sex crime activity crossed the desk of Cardinal Ratzinger, most of it then translated into Latin and placed in very secret files somewhere in the Vatican, as it has been explained to me, but no one really knows what the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy do behind the Swiss guards and the Vatican walls, do they? 

Complaint filed for relief for damages and injunctive relief for:

Public Nuisance
Negligence
Negligent Supervision/Failure to Warn
Negligent Hiring/Retention
Fraud
Fiduciary/Confidential Relationship Fraud and Conspiracy
Breach of Fiduciary Duty
Negligent Failure to Warn, Train, or educate plaintiffs
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
Violation of business and professional code 17200
Fraud and Deceit
Premises Violation

DEFENDANTS:
Defendant Doe 1: Franciscan Friars of California, Inc.
Defendant Doe 2: Old Mission Santa Barbara

Perpetrators are Franciscan Fathers

Dave Johnson and Philip Wolfe

The Origin of the Explosion
of Franciscan Sex Crimes
in Santa Barbara in the 1960s

6. Franciscan perpetrators have been sexually assaulting children in Santa Barbara since at least 1936. During this time at least forty-four (44) pedophilic and/or ephebophilic Roman Catholic priests or religious brothers have been assigned to work at and were living at and/or visiting various locations around Santa Barbara County, including but not limited to St. Raphael’s Church in Goleta, San Roque, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Montecito, and the adjoining properties of St. Anthony’s and the Mission. Twenty-seven (27) of those priests or religious brothers were or are Franciscans.

Although Franciscan priests and Religious brothers abused Santa Barbara children much earlier in the 20th Century, there was an explosion of Franciscan sex crimes against at least sixty-two (62) local children beginning in the early 1960s. That explosion was triggered by events involving the Franciscans in the Diocese of San Diego in the early 1950s.

Prior to Santa Barbara the Franciscans used parishes in communities that at the time were on the outskirts of the Diocese, such as Banning and Beaumont, as havens to send their problem priests and Religious Brothers. Eventually the Diocese ended the Franciscans’ conduct.

According to a letter written by the Bishop of San Diego on April 26, 1950:
“During the thirteen years since this Diocese was erected, to my own personal knowledge, the Saint Barbara Province of the Franciscan Fathers has used this Diocese as a dumping ground for their moral, mental and physical problems. It became necessary for me some time ago to demand the withdrawal of one misfit after another.” See Exhibit “A.”

The Bishop was so frustrated with the Franciscans that he commenced the process of applying to the necessary religious bodies in Rome to evict the Franciscans from the parishes in the Diocese of San Diego. It would appear the Bishop eventually succeeded, and sometime in the 1950s the Franciscans made Santa Barbara their new dumping ground for Franciscan perpetrators. Beginning in the late 1950s the Franciscans began sending the first of at least twenty-six (26) Franciscan perpetrators to Santa Barbara following their expulsion from the Diocese. Those perpetrators are identified below in the decades they first appeared and continued to reside in or visit Santa Barbara based on information known to date:

1 – Fr. Owen Da Silva (1930s)
2 – Brother Berard Connolly (1940s, 1980s – 1990s)
3 – Fr. Martin McKeon (1950s – 1960s)
4 – Fr. Edward Henriques (1960s)
5 – Fr. Mario Cimmarrusti (1960s – 1970s)
6 – Fr. Mel Bucher (1960s)
7 – Fr. Forrest McDonald (1960s – 1970s)
8 – Br. Kevin Dunne (1960s – 1970s)
9 – Br. Sam Cabot (1960s-1980s)
10 – Fr. Edmund Austin (1970s)
11 – Fr. Gus Krumm (1970s – 1980s)
12 – Fr. Paul Conn (1970s – 1980s)
13 – Fr. Dave Johnson (1970s – 1980s)
14 – Fr. Joseph Prochnow (1970s – 1980s)
15 – Br. Matteo Guerrero (1970s, 1990s – 2000s)
16 – Fr. Robert Van Handel (1970s -1990s)
17 – Fr. David Carriere (1970s – 2000s)
18 – Fr. Steve Kain (1980s)
19 – Fr. Philip Wolfe (1980s)
20 – Pre-novitiate candidate Ed Byrom (1980s)
21 – Pre-novitiate candidate Tom Thing (1980s)
22 – Fr. Chris Berbena (1980s)
23 – Fr. Remy Rudin (1980s – 1990s)
24 – Br. Gerald Chumik (2000s)
25 – Pedro Vasquez (2000s)
26 – Fr. Claude Riffel (1941-44, 1975-76)
27 – Fr. Fr. Alexander Manville (1960-73).

By the 1960s if not sooner these corrupt seeds planted by the Franciscans began bearing poisonous fruit as Franciscan perpetrators abused Santa Barbara children at a horrifying rate. At least eighty-five (85) children have been sexually abused in Santa Barbara by Roman Catholic priests or religious brothers since 1936. Sixty-two (62) of those children were abused by Franciscan priests or religious brothers since 1960. The confirmed number of victims and Franciscan perpetrators grows each year.

The consequences of the Franciscans’ continuing corporate practices with regards to Franciscan perpetrators have been disastrous both for local children, and for a society that continues to bear the financial burden of the psychological fallout for abuse survivors. Abuse survivors often engage in addictive, self-destructive, and, unfortunately, sometimes criminal behavior as they deal with the psychological scars caused by childhood sexual abuse. These behaviors in turn result in things such as divorce proceedings on court calendars, substance abuse, arrests, and incarcerations, all of which are paid for by the common taxpayer rather than by the truly culpable but tax-exempt organizations that protected the perpetrators. The evidence of the Franciscans’ culpability in this regard is overwhelming.

This story continues in depth at City of Angels including new allegations since 2000.  Here:

Crimes of 2 Pedophile Priests in New Santa Barbara Lawsuit Like Thousands Reviewed by Pope When He was Cardinal

THIS IS ONLY PART ONE:  Posted by Kay Ebeling

The City of Angels is Everywhere

(Lawsuit quoted above filed by Attorney Tim Hale, Santa Barbara)

Comedians couldn’t write this better.   The Church in America trying to dictate marriage and health care policy as the Pope’s involvement for 23 years in the coverup of priest sex crimes is breaking in news media all over the world. At the Vatican as of this morning, the Pope is still telling the media the large number of pedophiles in Germany and Ireland is a “shocking surprise,” yesterday he said it was the Irish bishops who are at fault then retracted that today.  His spokesmen in the Vatican still argue that the Pope only helped transfer one pedophile priest when he was a bishop in Munich.

Meanwhile the truth that in 2001 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote a letter to all bishops dictating coverup of these crimes to continue is dribbling out.  Ratzinger had jurisdiction over all criminal activity in the Catholic Church in his role as prelate for Office for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF, formerly Office of the Inquisition) which he held since 1983 (?), (still having trouble finding exact date Pope Paul appointed Ratzinger to head the CDF).

Still in Sunday’s news Catholic apologists dragged out some dusty old sound bites: that news media are all just anti-catholic and that’s why there are so many articles about pedophile priests coming out, and don’t forget, it was only a small minority of Catholic clergy who were pedophiles.

Six Thousand Pedophile Priests Have Been Identified in the U.S. So Far

In the U.S. there have been at least six thousand priests identified as pedophiles since bishopaccountability started counting in 2003, likely ten thousand will be the total number, since 1950, when research is done.  That is no small number of child sex predators put into communities specifically to conduct pastoral duties, where they get involved personally with children and families. 

No other organization in the country would still be in operation after letting six thousand pedophiles have continued access to children. 

Still the Catholic Church has enough influence to effect lawmaking nationally and locally, and mainstream media still give local bishops and archdiocese spokesman credibility.  When it comes to topics such as gay marriage and abortion access, two issues the Church sits smug tight against on its pile of lawsuit documents, it’s astounding that anyone even listens to Catholic hierarchy declare their moral superiority.

Obviously from the bishops on up these guys are CLUELESS. 

What could they know about the dynamics of sexuality and family when they let tens of thousands of children get graphically and often ritually molested on Catholic properties for decades?

No, the Catholic Church no longer has any moral authority on issues relating to marriage, sex, child raising, nothing.  They’ve lost it for good.  Now I just wonder what other criminal activity they were hiding, by not letting anyone investigate their pedophile priests.

Meanwhile some reporters and lots of bloggers are smart enough to see what is really going on:

From AUSTRALIA The Age  Church has lost moral authority  By MADELEINE BUNTING March 22, 2010 – There is only one conceivable reaction to the fast-spreading crisis in the Catholic Church: horror. After decades of obfuscation, the church has to be called to account for what has happened…

From LezGetReal Blog: The Pope and papal nuncio ignored reports of abuse for a very long time   “In Austria, a poll last week indicated that almost 1m Catholics were considering leaving the church because of its handling of the allegations. The crisis is also spreading to Italy, where the Vatican’s influence has until now stifled any revelations. Cases have come to light in Rome and Florence.”

This blogger gets it better than CNN:

From  Rump Roast Blog : ”Bill Donohue of Catholic League Not Just One Dude with a Computer”  With Princess and the Pea-like sensitivity, Donohue pores over news articles, opinion pieces, movie scripts, comedy routines, art exhibitions, etc., in search of perceived insults against Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. He generally produces comic results, as in his semi-famous kerfluffle with comedian Kathy Griffin.  But Donohue’s latest effort to blunt criticism of the Catholic Church as its pedophilia scandal spirals out of control worldwide isn’t funny at all. In fact, it’s the most despicable thing I’ve read in years—and Jesus, Mary and Joseph, people, I occasionally read Free Republic and transcripts from Rush Limbaugh’s show.

Here’s the lead of a Donohue opinion piece currently (and inexcusably) front-paged at CNN:

The rash of stories about priestly sexual abuse in Europe, especially in Ireland and Germany, has put many Catholics on the defensive. They should not be. While sexual molestation of any kind is always indefensible, the politics surrounding this story is also indefensible.

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Though this is starting to change, any discussion of employee sexual abuse that took place 30 and 40 years ago must acknowledge this reality. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.

Got that? Donohue is equating child rape to incidents of workplace sexual abuse. And he’s lying about the legality of it, since child rape was certainly illegal and those who covered it up were subject to prosecution even back in the 70s

From: Maureen Dowd in the Sunday March 21, 2010, NY Times:  “For decades, the nuns did the bidding of the priests, cleaned up their messes, and watched as their male superiors let a perverted stain spread over the entire church, a stain that has now even reached the Holy See. It seemed that the nuns were strangely silent, either because they suspected but had no proof — the “Doubt” syndrome — or because they had no one to tell but male bosses protecting one another in that repugnant and hypocritical old-boys’ network.  Their goodness was rewarded with a stunning slap from the über-conservative Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican is conducting two inquisitions into the ‘quality of life’ of American nuns, trying to knock any independence or modernity out of them.”

***’

Handlers can’t stop spinning the story sideways and in loops to distract the news from the truth, even though they have stopped getting away with it: )

FROM NEW YORK TIMES: Pope Offers Apology, Not Penalty, for Sex Abuse Scandal By RACHEL DONADIO and ALAN COWELL VATICAN CITY — Confronting a sex abuse scandal spreading across Europe, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologized directly … Last week, a psychiatrist who treated a priest decades ago in a German archdiocese run by the future pope said he had repeatedly warned that the priest, who was accused of sexually abusing boys, should never work with children again. The priest was re-assigned to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, and one of Benedict’s deputies at the time has taken responsibility for that decision. Less than five years later, the priest was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 was convicted of sexual abuse.

***

The Great Lie may finally be coming to an end.  How anyone can continue to believe anything that comes out of the mouth of the Pope and most high level Catholic Church hierarchy baffles me.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels

The City of Angels is Everywhere

While the Pope apologizes today and promises us “tribunals” will seek justice in the pedophile priest epidemic that is now proved to be global not just “a result of American promiscuity,” adult victims who have been trying to get justice out of the Roman Catholic Church for decades are astonished at the difference between the truth and press statements.  For example, releases from Rome never mention that the Pope ran the office in the Vatican that investigated pedophile priest crimes for two decades, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Two of the adult victims of pedophile priests sent City of Angels letters last week that document their efforts to get the Pope, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, to do something about the crimes in the U.S. Joey Piscitelli in San Francisco sent us a copy of a letter he wrote directly to Ratzinger at the CDF in 2005, which we have published in full below. Bill Nash in Massachusetts sent a copy of a letter he wrote recently to the New York Times asking them to report on the CDF and outlining his efforts to get the Pope as its Cardinal Director to step up and take action years ago.

The Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Ratzinger was prelate, took in reports of priest sex crimes (written in Latin, from what I understand). CDF has “judicial review” of all criminal activity in the Catholic Church, much of which is clergy sex crimes.

Still today the Pope can say with a straight face that he ‘apologizes’ and is shocked and dismayed at hearing about the crimes that emerged in Ireland last year and Germany last week, and that he will take action immediately (see stories linked below).

“I can tell you from my experiences, the CDF never even acknowledged the elaborate case I presented to them,” writes Nash. “I filed my case to two congregations (in the Vatican), the CDF and the Congregation for Religious (Orders).  I sent four follow ups to each over a several month period.

“Meanwhile I exposed to both the American media and the Italian media explicit details of the case: a criminal record from the state of Wisconsin on the priest; my financial settlement with the order; and an explicit letter from a high ranking official from the order that specifically described Father Tully as an ephobophile.”

Bill Writes CDF, Gets Run Around, Finally Told to Write CDF

“Eventually, I heard from Cardinal Rode, who told me he knew nothing about the case and I should refer this to the CDF (which I already had done).  The CDF never acknowledged my case.  It was only because of the media attention the story got, that the order was so embarrassed, they quietly moved him again from his post in Vicenza, Italy, back to New York.”

(Today James Tully is a former priest living somewhere in New Jersey. He is not on any sex offender registry, no one is monitoring him, he could be anywhere.)

“Ratzinger led that congregation for the longest time. Currently it is led by (former San Francisco Archbishop William) Levada with Sicluna in charge of the disciplinary section,” writes Nash, from Massachusetts.

Joey in San Francisco wrote the CDF begging for action in 2005
Here is his letter:

Mr. Ratzinger,

As you already know, from my prior complaints and active lawsuit, I am a victim of child sexual abuse by one of your disturbed Priests, Fr. Steven Whelan, whom you placed in ministry as a Pastor with access to children in San Francisco.

Have you no shame, or sense of decency?

Do you not care about the safety of children? The safety of children in San Francisco and elsewhere should be the most important issue on your agenda. I suspect that you care more about the welfare and security of your abuser priests than that of innocent children, which is a disgrace. To harbor and promote an accused molester to the position of pastor is completely irresponsible.

(THIS PART GETS EERIE:)
Joey’s 2005 letter to Ratzinger continued:

If this is your policy in California, I am sure that you have probably done the same thing in Italy and Germany, and elsewhere that you have been located. It’s probably just a matter of time that you will get caught yourself, and Karma will catch up to you.   If, and when that happens, I hope you will remember me, and all of the others that have demanded that you protect children instead of sexually abusive priests.

Your ignoring of my demands to remove the predator that abused me is completely irresponsible, but you already know that. If there is a God, I am sure that he is ashamed of your behavior, and that of all the abusive clergy who are in the Catholic Church.

Joey Piscitelli, Martinez, California

(Joey finally got a settlement in 2008 after the Salesians Religious Order appealed the Jury Verdict in his case for two years)

(Recently one of the pedophile priest ”victim advocacy groups” sent out a notice for survivors to send stories of our attempts to contact the CDF in the past, so they could help a reporter with an article some time in the future.   NOTE: As soon as City of Angels finds out a new fact about Catholic Church handling of its pedophiles that needs to be known, that fact gets published at City of Angels within hours, no filtering.)

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Missing from most news stories and press releases the past few weeks, both from the Vatican AND from crime victim advocacy groups, is this critical information about the Pope’s involvement in these crimes from the start as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly Office of the Inquisition).   CNN was one news organization that noticed it and seems to have tacked it onto this one news story.  CNN STORY

Fatuous spinmeistering from the Vatican today is even more astounding in that news media around the world are repeating the Roman Catholic Press Releases as if they were true.   Here is what I picked up this morning from Abuse Tracker (what a way to wake up).

Pope blasts Irish bishops, orders Vatican probe
VATICAN CITY Net News (Israel)
Pope Benedict XVI has rebuked Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgment” in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered a Vatican investigation into the Irish church to wipe out the scourge.
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 7:56 AM

Pope Apologizes to Irish Catholics for Sexual Abuse Cases
VATICAN CITY Business Week
March 20, 2010, 7:22 AM EDTBy Sara Gay Forden and Jeffrey Donovan
March 20 (Bloomberg) — Pope Benedict XVI apologized to victims of child sex abuse in Ireland and said “grave errors” of leadership were committed by Catholic authorities in the country after scandals involving priests emerged over decades.
“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” the pope said today in a letter to Irish Catholics, his first apology to them over the abuse cases. The letter was distributed to reports at the Vatican today.
The pontiff has struggled to contain the damage to the church and its reputation from the Irish scandals, which have been followed by similar cases in his native Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Benedict has been accused by Irish victims of being slow to respond to investigations that documented “endemic” abuse of children by priests since the 1930s.
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 7:54 AM

Pope ‘truly sorry’ for Irish sexual abuse – Update
VATICAN CITY Earth Times
Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologised to victims of sexual abuse by priests in Ireland, saying he is “truly sorry” for what they have endured.   “You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” the pontiff said in a letter to be read out in churches and parishes throughout Ireland.
The pastoral letter is the first public statement by the Vatican on the long-brewing scandal.
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 7:51 AM

Pope voices ’shame, remorse’ for Irish child abuse
VATICAN CITY Sydney Morning Herald
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday expressed in a letter “shame and remorse” for episodes of child sex abuse, saying “serious mistakes” were made by Irish bishops in responding to allegations.
“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry,” said the pope in a letter to Irish Catholics signed on Friday and published on Saturday.   The pope said priests and religious workers guilty of child abuse “must answer” for their crimes “before properly constituted tribunals.”
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 7:48 AM

Why criticize the pope?
HOUMA (LA) Houma Today
Johann Christoph ArnoldPastor, Church Communities
The attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the scandal surrounding pedophile priests in Germany should stop.
As head of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope naturally bears some responsibility for the actions of the authorities under him. But this campaign by the media and anti-Christian liberals is hardly a righteous one.
Its real aim is to drive God out of the public sphere and to undermine an institution that, despite its many problems, is one of the few remaining pillars of reverence and respect in society.
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 7:46 AM

Pope ’sorry’ over abuse scandal
VATICAN CITY Belfast News Letter
THE Pope has personally apologised to the victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.In a pastoral letter and posted on the Vatican website, the leader of the Catholic Church said he was “truly sorry” for their suffering.
In a direct message to the priests who abused children, Pope Benedict said those involved “betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals”.

(Abuse Tracker is an ongoing news feed of stories about the clergy abuse crisis from all over the world, which are then fed into the database at bishopaccountability.)

Transfering pedophile priests and covering up their crime sprees was international policy that came directly from the Vatican, through Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

ONE MORE VICTIM, the man in England who wrote one of the first books about pedophile priests, at that time thinking his case was isolated, writes in the media this morning about the difference between the truth and press releases from the Vatican:

‘I was a victim of abuse. This is what the Pope must do to stop it’
IRELAND The Independent (United Kingdom)
By Colm O’Gorman
Saturday, 20 March 2010
It was not being raped by a priest at the age of 14 that shattered my faith; it was the horrifying realisation that the Catholic Church had wilfully, knowingly abandoned me to it, the knowledge that they had ordained the priest who abused me despite knowing he was a paedophile and set him free to abuse with near impunity, ignoring all complaints.   And so it is difficult not to be cynical about the likely merit of the pastoral letter that Pope Benedict XVI will publish today.

(Amen to that, bro. But now that we know protecting pedophiles and feeding them parish children was pretty much Roman Catholic Church Sex Crime Policy in every archdiocese around the world, who has jursidiction to prosecute the Pope?)

Posted by Kay Ebeling, producer of City of Angels where this story also is running this morning March 20, 2010.

(The City of Angels is Everywhere)

Not just YouTube, downloading in general does not hurt media industry profits, it builds them, by creating new buyers.  People see portions or even the entire movie on a computer screen and if it’s a good film, they then want to pay to go see it. 

Still Viacom and YouTube are in court in San Francisco trying to prove that the YouTube founders knew they were breaking copyright law way back before 2006.   Google now owns YouTube, and documents from both sides will start being released next Tuesday, in the cases, according to The Hollywood Reporter today.

Since 2006, every other media outlet that shows videos has worked out a profit sharing agreement with Google, based in San Francisco, except Viacom, based in New York.

Online videos end up being marketing for films. 

Viacom should wake up and look at how the internet is affecting the world instead of trying to hold onto Twentieth Century copyright concepts.  For example:

My 21 year old emerged from her room the other day with three friends all of them excited running to see Alice in Wonderland at a pricey theater on the Boulevard.  I said, but Lizzie, you will be spending about twenty dollars, as that’s what single mothers say.

“Oh man,” she gushed, ”we just downloaded it, and it’s so beautful, we gotta go see it on a big screen,” and she and her friends ran out the door.

In L.A. most film executives are figuring it out, based on other stories I’ve read in the industry press.

Movies are making record high profits last few years, just as downloading has expanded.  When people share pirated versions of movies, it actually drums up more interest in seeing the films in theaters.  So, as those of us who have been around since VCRs threatened the TV industry know, opening up new venues, even if some of them are free of charge, ends up increasing business.

In other words, the more you give away, the more you get. 

A lot of people don’t want to throw away twelve dollars on a movie and then ten minutes into the film realize it’s not a good film.  So a lot of working class people had just stopped going to films in theaters altogether.  Now, they can download a part or even all of a film.  It’s not going to hurt film industry profits, as these individuals would not be buying tickets anyway.  Take a walk around an inner city park.   The guys buying and selling piles of pirates movie disks are not first run theater ticket buyers.  But now some will see that a film is really good, and it’s worth the twelve dollars or whatever to go see it.  Or a buck fifty to buy the ring tone, or wherever in between pirate video watchers fall as consumers.

In life and in business, the more you give away, the more you get.  It was the original spirit behind Google, and it should still be able to re-emerge, even after eight years of Bush’s corporatizing America.   Viacom should drop its lawsuit and find more ways to get its product out on the Internet.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer of City of Angels

March 19, 2010

Those who see need for change in America but want to fix Government, not tear it down, can join the Coffee Party Movement, which began last month on Facebook and is growing in size exponentially, without having to take corporate money, as was used to start the “tea party movement.”

Bill Press had Coffee Party co-founder Annabel Park on the radio this morning, and he added this important point:

Tea parties get corporate money, coffee parties are really erupting up from people.

“Most of this is taking place on line.  So there’s not a large overhead,” Annabel said this morning on the show.  ”Things are ‘virtually free’ using the internet.”

Two volunteers using Facebook put together more than 350 coffee meetings across the country last weekend in almost every state including in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin’s home town.  More parties are forming for the weekend of March 27-28. 

Coffee Parties organizers see “media consolidation as a corrosive social force that robs people of their voice in public affairs,” it says at their Facebook home fan page.  Coffee Parties are a lot like the Tea Party Movement, except a “Civility Pledge” starts you off on its home page.  This morning, Anabelle said the group started on Facebook and just grew. 

I just became a fan of Coffee Party Movement on Facebook and then invited all my friends to join.  When thousands of people do that, the coffee party movement will grow exponentially to number in millions, with almost no overhead, so no requirement to make deals with corporations in order to get donations. 

Not corporate money, just people participating

“No lobbyists here.  No pundits.  And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement,” reads the website.

 First batch of meetings March 13th weekend included libertarians and republicans as well as Democrats and greens.

That works for me, as I identify myself as a progressive libertarian.  Then when people ask my religion i tell them, Zen Christian.  So the coffee party movement is ideal for me. 

Annabel said this AM:  “In order to have a government we deserve we have to participate in the political process, you can’t just be angry at home.”

Posted by Kay Ebeling, producer, City of Angels  Related Links:

THE BILL PRESS SHOW  

Coffee Party USA Home Page

March 18, 2010, from Hollywood, California