It seems to be an advantage for one’s career as a bishop to be obtuse in matters of priestly sexual abuse patterns.
Consider the rector of Mundelein seminary in the 90s, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who had three reports of “sexual improprieties” by then-seminarian Daniel McCormack, in prison since July for molesting five boys while assigned to St. Agatha parish on Chicago’s West Side.
“There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” Kicanas said. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”
Counseling for drinking, yes. None for his homosexuality gone rampant? Or — dare we say it? — for his homosexuality, period? These were boys McCormack went after — in a black parish, by the way, where the fatherless boy is common.
Do Kicanas, newly elected as vice president of the bishops’ conference with virtual right of succession to the presidency in three years, and other bishops represent the norm with a willingness to look the other way about sexual “impropriety,” in the vast majority of cases homosexual?
He got elected, didn’t he?
Comments
Let us pray to God that no homosexual acts are allowed, condoned, or ignored by these priests’ superiors. Homosexual activities are against the Catholic religion and these priests and bishops know it. Priests and bishops are supposed to be our leaders, and our teachers. They cannot be allowed to remain in service. If convicted of sexually abusing any minor, they should be in jail. Better that a stone be tied around their neck and be thrown into the waters, than to harm one of these little ones. Let us pray.
Well said, Isabelle.
See also Tom Roeser excoriation of “The Lavendar Priesthood” on his blog at http://tomroeser.com/blogview.asp?blogID=24283.
He said:
Any doubt that the Catholic bishops really don’t get it…and are as a group almost to a man (with notable exceptions) wanton in their disregard for abused children while at the same time protecting their predatory clerical fellows…vanished yesterday when Bishop Gerald Kicanas spoke to the “Sun-Times’” religion writer, Susan Hogan-Albach.