Cardinal Bernard Law is an Opus Dei member. Law met Opus Dei while a student at Harvard in the 1950s….... Archbishop William Levada's Hidden Record
Cardinal Bernard Law is originally from Mexico just like the serial pedophile rapist-priest Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, whom the Opus Dei protected during the 27 years papacy of John Paul II. It was also the Opus Dei who made their puppet John Paul II elevate Cardinal Law to Rome after he resigned in disgrace as Cardinal of Boston after admitting that he transferred aided and abetted more than 80 rapists-priests in Boston. Way to go Opus Dei, Octopus Dei of the Devil!!!
http://www.mgr.org/Law.html
ROME HAS LOST THE FAITH
AND
WILL SOON BECOME THE SEAT OF THE FALSE CHRIST (John Paul II)
This is what we announced on March 19, 2002...
...and of course it did.
INTRODUCTION
As most of those who are willing to look at reality eye-to-eye and not deny it, the scandal of having appointed the tainted Cardinal Law to the be the titular Cardinal of St. Mary Major in Rome - the most important Basilica of The Immaculate One (1) - should be more than enough to confirm that what may appear as a fog in Rome from time to time is the smoke of satan seeping out of the Vatican and polluting Rome as well as the rest of the world.
Before reviewing the pressure Law had to endure before he finally cave in, giving up his humble abode just to assume the the command of the Flagship Basilica of the Immaculate One, it may be wise to review who (2) seem to be Law's "godparents".
In a very pro Opus Dei book written by John Allen to counter the alleged harm caused by The Da Vinci Code (3) we read (4):
"Another cardinal with historic ties to Opus Dei is the former archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, currently archpriest of Saint Mary Major in Rome.
Law met Opus Dei while a student at Harvard in the 1950s, when an early group of members came to the campus from Spain. Law, born in Mexico, spoke Spanish fluently and befriended them. When he left Harvard in 1953, he asked a friend, William Stetson, to keep an eye on the Spaniards. Statson went on to become a priest of Opus Dei, living at Villa Tevere in Rome, then serving as vicar in Chicago. Today he runs the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC.
Stetson and Law have remained friends, and when Law was designated by the Vatican to handle cases of Episcopalian clergy who wish to be received into the Catholic Church, Stetson served as his aide.
In 1985, when Law was made a cardinal, he invited the prelate of Opus Dei, Alvaro del Portillo, to his honorary dinner in Rome. According to Stetson, Portillo later said that he'd never been treated as generously by another cardinal. Law's reputation, however, was badly damaged by his resignation from Boston amid a sex abuse scandal, facing accusations that he had ignored evidence that several of his clergy were abusing children."
As we have said many times, even satan must serve God... and, through the Grace of God, here we have a touted as independent, but pro Opus Dei, book giving the world the details how come Law never fell off from the Vatican's Grace and why he was so generously rewarded in his exile of shame. Of course, "the frosting" in such perverse cake was the appointing of San Francisco's Archbishop Levada as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - that is - the Guardian of the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith. (5)
DETAILS of Cardinal Law's Shame
Monday March 18 10:49 PM ET
Cardinal Law Faces Calls to Resign
By JUSTIN POPE, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON (AP) - With the Boston Archdiocese engulfed in a sex scandal, Cardinal Bernard Law is resisting growing demands for his resignation, reflecting what some experts say is his sense of duty as well as the church's desire to preserve its hierarchy.
Law has acknowledged moving now-defrocked priest John Geoghan from parish to parish despite years of evidence Geoghan was a threat to children. Geoghan has been accused of molesting more than 130 children over 30 years.
The latest call for Law to resign came in Monday's Wall Street Journal, where former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues,'' echoed a demand made previously by fellow Catholic conservative William F. Buckley and by the Boston Herald.
"Priests - including Cardinal Law - who have been involved in these cover-ups must be removed from positions of authority,'' Bennett wrote.
Geoghan is serving a nine-to-10-year prison sentence for fondling a boy in a swimming pool. Because of the scandal, Law has apologized and turned over to prosecutors the names of more than 80 current and former priests suspected of child abuse over the past 50 years.
But Law, 70, has shown no intention of stepping down as leader of the fourth-largest U.S. archdiocese, with 2 million Catholics. He has been archbishop since 1984, and up until this crisis, was regarded as perhaps the most powerful American prelate in the Roman Catholic Church.
"Archbishop is not a corporate executive,'' Law said at a Mass last month. "He's not a politician. It's a role of pastor. It's a role of teacher. It's a role of a father. When there are problems in the family, you don't walk away. You work them out together with God's help.''
Those who have followed Law's career say they are not surprised. Boston College historian Thomas Wangler recalled how Law risked his life working for civil rights in Mississippi during the 1960s, traveling in car trunks for protection from segregationists.
"He's a tough, hardened engager of events and issues, the kind that comes only from having your life threatened for what you believe,'' Wangler said.
But perhaps more important, theologians and church historians said, is the church's belief that being part of the hierarchy is a lifetime commitment to an institution.
For a bishop to resign is an "immensely damaging mark against the church,'' said University of Notre Dame historian R. Scott Appleby. "These people, cardinals, archbishops, are the very pinnacle of the hierarchy in the church, so it suggests a flaw in the church itself rather a few bad apples in the bunch.''
"I believe he feels that it is his duty to remain,'' said Eugene Kennedy, a Loyola University of Chicago professor and author of "The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality.'' "I believe he feels committed by becoming a cardinal to maintaining the integrity of the institution. To give up his position, from his point of view, would do more damage to the institution than it would help it.''
Some have suggested that once the headlines go away Law may step aside, or perhaps be moved to a position in Rome.
Those calling for his resignation have argued that only someone new can solve the problem, and that Law's failure to appreciate the scope of the problem is serious enough to warrant his resignation.
Buckley wrote in National Review last month: "The critical concern should have been to get children out of harm's way. He didn't do that. ... One can feel with great sorrow and understanding the derangement of the arsonist, but one does not send him back into the forest.''
Many Catholics agree. A Boston Herald poll conducted last month found that 61 percent of Catholics in the archdiocese said Law should resign.
Still, even some of the alleged victims do not think resignation is the answer.
Ralph DelVecchio, who claims Geoghan molested him, recently said Law should resign. Now, he is not so sure.
"He's certainly responsible for those decisions he made back then, where he put Geoghan back in when he got the reports,'' DelVecchio, 45, said last week. "But I really do think the guy is sincere. When I watched him on TV, I thought he was really sincere when he apologized.''
Raymond Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and one-time mayor of Boston, said he speaks to Law often and encourages him to stay, reminding him of "all the good that he has done.'' Flynn said that Law still enjoys the support of Rome.
"This is not a political organization where majority rule wins,'' Flynn said. "The pope believes in you, he has respect and confidence in you, that's what you need.''
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
NOTES
(1) What She has to say....
(2) Sects within the Roman Catholic Church - Their Agenda
(3) The real purpose of The Da Vinci Code
(4) John L. Allen Jr., Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church,
Doubleday, 2005, pp. 251-252.
(5) The Track Record of Archbishop Levada -- http://www.mgr.org/LevadaTrajectory-Details.html
=======
San Francisco Archbishop William Levada's Hidden Record
The Details
Archbishop Levada Travels to Rome with Scandal Baggage by Lee Penn
Archbishop William J. Levada is getting a big promotion, courtesy of Benedict XVI. Levada is moving from the Archdiocese of San Francisco to become the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) - Benedict's former position. Levada will be in charge of the Vatican bureaucracy that defends the Catholic faith against heresy, and deals with priests accused of abuse. As such, he will hold the second-most powerful post in the Vatican, and is the first American to hold such high rank and great influence within the Catholic Church.(1)
At his $150-a-plate farewell dinner in a San Francisco hotel on August 13 (a banquet attended by 2,300 well-wishers), Levada said that abuse by clergy is a "crisis in the United States. By and large the people in our parishes they think that the steps that our bishops of this country have taken have done a great job and are meeting the crisis and doing an outreach program trying to prevent any kind of abuse by clergy or anyone else."(2) At a news conference before the dinner, Levada said, "We have done our best to reach out" to the victims of abuse, and "I leave San Francisco with a good conscience."(3)
Levada's publicists laud his handling of the Scandal. An account in the Archdiocesan newspaper runs thus: "Though the vast majority of incidents took place before he became archbishop, Archbishop Levada has devoted much time and energy in forthrightly and compassionately attempting to heal this problem. And if he did not have enough problems in his own archdiocese, in 1999 he was appointed administrator of the Diocese of Santa Rosa to clean up the financial and sexual scandal debilitating that diocese. Again, his forthrightness and integrity moved that diocese toward healing."(4)
The Archbishop also has gathered praise from William Swing, the Episcopal Bishop of California. (Swing is the founder of the United Religions Initiative(4a), a New Age(4b) interfaith movement that includes everyone from Wiccans and Scientologists to Moonies(4c), Theosophists, and Catholics). Swing says, "I truly admire him: his heart toward God; outstanding scholar; devotion to the Church; a rich capacity for friendship; candor, strength, integrity, and grace."(5)
Levada's Vatican career began in 1976, when "then-Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops," recommended Levada's appointment to serve "as an Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."(6) It was during this Vatican posting, which lasted until 1982, that Ratzinger met Levada.
Levada moves upward with the approval of his own conscience and his publicists, and with applause from his counterpart in the Episcopal Church. Are these laurels well-earned, considering how Levada has handled the clergy abuse scandal during his career?
The Archbishop's administrative record indicates otherwise. No one has ever accused Levada of abuse, but he has employed the same damage control tactics that most other American bishops have used to limit the costs and bad publicity resulting from the scandal. If Levada's track record predicts his future performance, it's likely that the Catholic Church hierarchy will continue to respond to the corruption of the priesthood and the episcopacy with half-measures, spin, and clever legal maneuvers. And now that Levada has been promoted, courtesy of the Roman Pontiff, we can justly trace the ongoing scandal and coverup to the Papal throne.
Here's the evidence:
From 1986 to 1995, Levada was the Archbishop of Portland, Oregon. This Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2004 - the first American diocese to do so, as a response to lawsuits by abuse survivors who were seeking $155 million in damages.(7) Within the last year, three of the Portland-area plaintiffs have committed suicide.(8) Catholic World Report states, "Several of the devastating lawsuits against the archdiocese involved priests who were restored to parish work by Archbishop Levada after having been accused of molesting children, or protected from criminal prosecution when their misdeed came to the archbishop's attention."(9) The bankruptcy came nine years after Levada left Portland, but the fallout from his stewardship continues:
1. Would an honorable man try to dodge a subpoena, and then call the process server a "disgrace to the Church"?
On August 7, minutes before he processed to the altar to begin his final Sunday Mass in San Francisco, Levada was subpoenaed to require him to testify at a deposition requested by attorneys for 250 victims in clergy abuse lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Portland.(10) Levada balked at the subpoena, accepting the document only when he was told that he would otherwise be given the papers during the liturgy while he was at the altar.(11)
As CBS News reported, "Cookie Gambucci, whose brother is one of the plaintiffs in the Portland case, served the court papers on Levada. She told KCBS reporter Tim Ryan the archbishop called her 'a disgrace to the Catholic church.' 'That's what he said. Now I'm thinking about all the priests that have abused all those little kids, including my brother,' said Gambucci, 'and I'm thinking, let's define disgrace to the church.' 'It was pretty sickening to hear that from a bishop who is hiding all of these people that are doing all of this abuse,' she said. She had tried unsuccessfully on several other occasions to serve Levada with papers.
'This is our last chance and [we] got him today,' Gambucci said."(12) (A lay minister who was in the sacristy at the time that the process server confronted the Archbishop confirms that the prelate called her "a disgrace to the Church."(13)) "Portland attorney Erin Olson, who represents 15 of the Oregon plaintiffs, said Levada had been avoiding the subpoena since May."(14) On August 11, Levada agreed to waive the diplomatic immunity that he will enjoy as a Vatican official, and will return to the US for a one-day deposition in January.(15)
2. As part of the bankruptcy litigation, all parishes in the Portland Archdiocese are listed as defendants - and so are all registered members of Portland's 124 parishes. The individual parishioners will all get legal notices in writing in the next few weeks, and "lawyers for the archdiocese say that the cost of notifying the 389,000 defendants will be about $80,000."(16) Lawyers for both sides agree that individual parishioners will not be liable to pay damages, but "parishes and schools could be closed if the court finds that they belong to the archdiocese." (17)
Having all laymen as defendants in a suit against the Church gives a new meaning to the Vatican II call for "fully conscious, and active"(18) lay participation in the life and liturgy of the Church.
3. In a July 16, 2004 article in Catholic San Francisco, Levada disavowed responsibility for the Portland bankruptcy, and blamed the victims' attorneys.
As San Francisco Faith summarized: "Archbishop Levada said that when he left Portland, the archdiocese 'was in excellent financial condition.' Even today, the archdiocese suffers no 'financial collapse;' rather, Portland's problems have 'arisen because of new allegations made in the past few years about abuse that was unknown until recently brought forward by victims.'
The 'greed of plaintiffs' attorneys,' said Levada, has exacerbated the situation. Attorneys like Anderson, he said, 'see the sex-abuse crisis as a way to push for excessive judgments for victims from which these lawyers will benefit handsomely.' Attorneys for alleged victims, said Levada, have used the claims 'of terrible sexual abuse by priests, many of whom are dead,' to get 'victims to step forward decades after the fact to push claims for huge monetary damages from bishops today who had no responsibility or oversight for those priests - claims that can be satisfied only by the threat of divesting today's parishioners of their churches, today's children of their schools, today' s poor of the Church's charitable outreach.' 'This is not justice,' said the archbishop."(19)
4. In 1994, Levada's diocesan attorneys fended off a liability suit by a woman who had been impregnated by a religious order seminarian, Mr. Uribe. One of the claims made in defense of the Church was that the mother was negligent because she had engaged in "unprotected intercourse,"(20) even though the Church teaches that use of "protection" - artificial birth control - is "intrinsically evil."(21)
The details show that Levada need not have made such a hypocritical defense. The mother had met the Redemptorist seminarian (who was then working in a Portland church) in 1991, and they soon began a consensual affair. The relationship ended seven months later, when the mother informed the seminarian that she was pregnant. The child was born in February 1993, and a paternity test proved that the seminarian was the father. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "As the birth of the baby approached," the mother sought a court order for child support from the seminarian; "she also sued the Archdiocese of Portland and the Redemptorists for $200,000. She alleged that the seminarian, by having sex with a parishioner, had breached his fiduciary duty as someone who 'performed pastoral duties for the archdiocese.'"(22)
The archdiocese replied (correctly) in 1994 that "it had never directly employed Uribe." (23) Additionally, however, "the archdiocese said the 'birth of the plaintiff's child and the resultant expenses" are the result of the plaintiff's own negligence,'" (24) because she engaged "in unprotected intercourse . . . when (she) should have known that could result in pregnancy."(25) Meanwhile, the seminarian was ordained to the priesthood in 1995 by his order - even though they knew he had a child.(26)
What do the Archbishop's defenders say? The PR man for the Archdiocese of Portland acknowledged that "Levada was well aware of the Uribe case," but denied responsibility for the tactics used by the church's attorneys: "Archbishop Levada did not see the legal defense, see it or approve it. I don't think it's realistic to expect that an archbishop can track every single legal case." (27) The attorney who devised the defense considers it routine.
Richard J. Kuhn "said he wrote Levada's answer to the complaint strictly from a 'common sense' legal perspective, without regard to Catholic teachings. However, Kuhn, an outside attorney who was hired by the archdiocese to handle the case, questions whether Levada ever saw the document. 'I doubt that the archbishop would have gotten a copy of the pleading,' he said. He said his best recollection about the proceeding was that he worked exclusively with the risk management department for the Archdiocese of Portland."(28)
Liberal and conservative Catholics alike rejected this disavowal of responsibility by the Archbishop; on this matter, Fr. Richard McBrien (a liberal theologian at Notre Dame), William Donoghue (the head of the conservative Catholic League), and J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, agree that Levada should have known what the attorneys were saying in defense of the Archdiocese. (29)
Read the rest of the article here http://www.mgr.org/LevadaTrajectory-Details.html
http://www.mgr.org/Law.html
ROME HAS LOST THE FAITH
AND
WILL SOON BECOME THE SEAT OF THE FALSE CHRIST (John Paul II)
This is what we announced on March 19, 2002...
...and of course it did.
INTRODUCTION
As most of those who are willing to look at reality eye-to-eye and not deny it, the scandal of having appointed the tainted Cardinal Law to the be the titular Cardinal of St. Mary Major in Rome - the most important Basilica of The Immaculate One (1) - should be more than enough to confirm that what may appear as a fog in Rome from time to time is the smoke of satan seeping out of the Vatican and polluting Rome as well as the rest of the world.
Before reviewing the pressure Law had to endure before he finally cave in, giving up his humble abode just to assume the the command of the Flagship Basilica of the Immaculate One, it may be wise to review who (2) seem to be Law's "godparents".
In a very pro Opus Dei book written by John Allen to counter the alleged harm caused by The Da Vinci Code (3) we read (4):
"Another cardinal with historic ties to Opus Dei is the former archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, currently archpriest of Saint Mary Major in Rome.
Law met Opus Dei while a student at Harvard in the 1950s, when an early group of members came to the campus from Spain. Law, born in Mexico, spoke Spanish fluently and befriended them. When he left Harvard in 1953, he asked a friend, William Stetson, to keep an eye on the Spaniards. Statson went on to become a priest of Opus Dei, living at Villa Tevere in Rome, then serving as vicar in Chicago. Today he runs the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC.
Stetson and Law have remained friends, and when Law was designated by the Vatican to handle cases of Episcopalian clergy who wish to be received into the Catholic Church, Stetson served as his aide.
In 1985, when Law was made a cardinal, he invited the prelate of Opus Dei, Alvaro del Portillo, to his honorary dinner in Rome. According to Stetson, Portillo later said that he'd never been treated as generously by another cardinal. Law's reputation, however, was badly damaged by his resignation from Boston amid a sex abuse scandal, facing accusations that he had ignored evidence that several of his clergy were abusing children."
As we have said many times, even satan must serve God... and, through the Grace of God, here we have a touted as independent, but pro Opus Dei, book giving the world the details how come Law never fell off from the Vatican's Grace and why he was so generously rewarded in his exile of shame. Of course, "the frosting" in such perverse cake was the appointing of San Francisco's Archbishop Levada as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - that is - the Guardian of the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith. (5)
DETAILS of Cardinal Law's Shame
Monday March 18 10:49 PM ET
Cardinal Law Faces Calls to Resign
By JUSTIN POPE, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON (AP) - With the Boston Archdiocese engulfed in a sex scandal, Cardinal Bernard Law is resisting growing demands for his resignation, reflecting what some experts say is his sense of duty as well as the church's desire to preserve its hierarchy.
Law has acknowledged moving now-defrocked priest John Geoghan from parish to parish despite years of evidence Geoghan was a threat to children. Geoghan has been accused of molesting more than 130 children over 30 years.
The latest call for Law to resign came in Monday's Wall Street Journal, where former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues,'' echoed a demand made previously by fellow Catholic conservative William F. Buckley and by the Boston Herald.
"Priests - including Cardinal Law - who have been involved in these cover-ups must be removed from positions of authority,'' Bennett wrote.
Geoghan is serving a nine-to-10-year prison sentence for fondling a boy in a swimming pool. Because of the scandal, Law has apologized and turned over to prosecutors the names of more than 80 current and former priests suspected of child abuse over the past 50 years.
But Law, 70, has shown no intention of stepping down as leader of the fourth-largest U.S. archdiocese, with 2 million Catholics. He has been archbishop since 1984, and up until this crisis, was regarded as perhaps the most powerful American prelate in the Roman Catholic Church.
"Archbishop is not a corporate executive,'' Law said at a Mass last month. "He's not a politician. It's a role of pastor. It's a role of teacher. It's a role of a father. When there are problems in the family, you don't walk away. You work them out together with God's help.''
Those who have followed Law's career say they are not surprised. Boston College historian Thomas Wangler recalled how Law risked his life working for civil rights in Mississippi during the 1960s, traveling in car trunks for protection from segregationists.
"He's a tough, hardened engager of events and issues, the kind that comes only from having your life threatened for what you believe,'' Wangler said.
But perhaps more important, theologians and church historians said, is the church's belief that being part of the hierarchy is a lifetime commitment to an institution.
For a bishop to resign is an "immensely damaging mark against the church,'' said University of Notre Dame historian R. Scott Appleby. "These people, cardinals, archbishops, are the very pinnacle of the hierarchy in the church, so it suggests a flaw in the church itself rather a few bad apples in the bunch.''
"I believe he feels that it is his duty to remain,'' said Eugene Kennedy, a Loyola University of Chicago professor and author of "The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality.'' "I believe he feels committed by becoming a cardinal to maintaining the integrity of the institution. To give up his position, from his point of view, would do more damage to the institution than it would help it.''
Some have suggested that once the headlines go away Law may step aside, or perhaps be moved to a position in Rome.
Those calling for his resignation have argued that only someone new can solve the problem, and that Law's failure to appreciate the scope of the problem is serious enough to warrant his resignation.
Buckley wrote in National Review last month: "The critical concern should have been to get children out of harm's way. He didn't do that. ... One can feel with great sorrow and understanding the derangement of the arsonist, but one does not send him back into the forest.''
Many Catholics agree. A Boston Herald poll conducted last month found that 61 percent of Catholics in the archdiocese said Law should resign.
Still, even some of the alleged victims do not think resignation is the answer.
Ralph DelVecchio, who claims Geoghan molested him, recently said Law should resign. Now, he is not so sure.
"He's certainly responsible for those decisions he made back then, where he put Geoghan back in when he got the reports,'' DelVecchio, 45, said last week. "But I really do think the guy is sincere. When I watched him on TV, I thought he was really sincere when he apologized.''
Raymond Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and one-time mayor of Boston, said he speaks to Law often and encourages him to stay, reminding him of "all the good that he has done.'' Flynn said that Law still enjoys the support of Rome.
"This is not a political organization where majority rule wins,'' Flynn said. "The pope believes in you, he has respect and confidence in you, that's what you need.''
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
NOTES
(1) What She has to say....
(2) Sects within the Roman Catholic Church - Their Agenda
(3) The real purpose of The Da Vinci Code
(4) John L. Allen Jr., Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church,
Doubleday, 2005, pp. 251-252.
(5) The Track Record of Archbishop Levada -- http://www.mgr.org/LevadaTrajectory-Details.html
=======
San Francisco Archbishop William Levada's Hidden Record
The Details
Archbishop Levada Travels to Rome with Scandal Baggage by Lee Penn
Archbishop William J. Levada is getting a big promotion, courtesy of Benedict XVI. Levada is moving from the Archdiocese of San Francisco to become the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) - Benedict's former position. Levada will be in charge of the Vatican bureaucracy that defends the Catholic faith against heresy, and deals with priests accused of abuse. As such, he will hold the second-most powerful post in the Vatican, and is the first American to hold such high rank and great influence within the Catholic Church.(1)
At his $150-a-plate farewell dinner in a San Francisco hotel on August 13 (a banquet attended by 2,300 well-wishers), Levada said that abuse by clergy is a "crisis in the United States. By and large the people in our parishes they think that the steps that our bishops of this country have taken have done a great job and are meeting the crisis and doing an outreach program trying to prevent any kind of abuse by clergy or anyone else."(2) At a news conference before the dinner, Levada said, "We have done our best to reach out" to the victims of abuse, and "I leave San Francisco with a good conscience."(3)
Levada's publicists laud his handling of the Scandal. An account in the Archdiocesan newspaper runs thus: "Though the vast majority of incidents took place before he became archbishop, Archbishop Levada has devoted much time and energy in forthrightly and compassionately attempting to heal this problem. And if he did not have enough problems in his own archdiocese, in 1999 he was appointed administrator of the Diocese of Santa Rosa to clean up the financial and sexual scandal debilitating that diocese. Again, his forthrightness and integrity moved that diocese toward healing."(4)
The Archbishop also has gathered praise from William Swing, the Episcopal Bishop of California. (Swing is the founder of the United Religions Initiative(4a), a New Age(4b) interfaith movement that includes everyone from Wiccans and Scientologists to Moonies(4c), Theosophists, and Catholics). Swing says, "I truly admire him: his heart toward God; outstanding scholar; devotion to the Church; a rich capacity for friendship; candor, strength, integrity, and grace."(5)
Levada's Vatican career began in 1976, when "then-Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops," recommended Levada's appointment to serve "as an Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."(6) It was during this Vatican posting, which lasted until 1982, that Ratzinger met Levada.
Levada moves upward with the approval of his own conscience and his publicists, and with applause from his counterpart in the Episcopal Church. Are these laurels well-earned, considering how Levada has handled the clergy abuse scandal during his career?
The Archbishop's administrative record indicates otherwise. No one has ever accused Levada of abuse, but he has employed the same damage control tactics that most other American bishops have used to limit the costs and bad publicity resulting from the scandal. If Levada's track record predicts his future performance, it's likely that the Catholic Church hierarchy will continue to respond to the corruption of the priesthood and the episcopacy with half-measures, spin, and clever legal maneuvers. And now that Levada has been promoted, courtesy of the Roman Pontiff, we can justly trace the ongoing scandal and coverup to the Papal throne.
Here's the evidence:
From 1986 to 1995, Levada was the Archbishop of Portland, Oregon. This Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2004 - the first American diocese to do so, as a response to lawsuits by abuse survivors who were seeking $155 million in damages.(7) Within the last year, three of the Portland-area plaintiffs have committed suicide.(8) Catholic World Report states, "Several of the devastating lawsuits against the archdiocese involved priests who were restored to parish work by Archbishop Levada after having been accused of molesting children, or protected from criminal prosecution when their misdeed came to the archbishop's attention."(9) The bankruptcy came nine years after Levada left Portland, but the fallout from his stewardship continues:
1. Would an honorable man try to dodge a subpoena, and then call the process server a "disgrace to the Church"?
On August 7, minutes before he processed to the altar to begin his final Sunday Mass in San Francisco, Levada was subpoenaed to require him to testify at a deposition requested by attorneys for 250 victims in clergy abuse lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Portland.(10) Levada balked at the subpoena, accepting the document only when he was told that he would otherwise be given the papers during the liturgy while he was at the altar.(11)
As CBS News reported, "Cookie Gambucci, whose brother is one of the plaintiffs in the Portland case, served the court papers on Levada. She told KCBS reporter Tim Ryan the archbishop called her 'a disgrace to the Catholic church.' 'That's what he said. Now I'm thinking about all the priests that have abused all those little kids, including my brother,' said Gambucci, 'and I'm thinking, let's define disgrace to the church.' 'It was pretty sickening to hear that from a bishop who is hiding all of these people that are doing all of this abuse,' she said. She had tried unsuccessfully on several other occasions to serve Levada with papers.
'This is our last chance and [we] got him today,' Gambucci said."(12) (A lay minister who was in the sacristy at the time that the process server confronted the Archbishop confirms that the prelate called her "a disgrace to the Church."(13)) "Portland attorney Erin Olson, who represents 15 of the Oregon plaintiffs, said Levada had been avoiding the subpoena since May."(14) On August 11, Levada agreed to waive the diplomatic immunity that he will enjoy as a Vatican official, and will return to the US for a one-day deposition in January.(15)
2. As part of the bankruptcy litigation, all parishes in the Portland Archdiocese are listed as defendants - and so are all registered members of Portland's 124 parishes. The individual parishioners will all get legal notices in writing in the next few weeks, and "lawyers for the archdiocese say that the cost of notifying the 389,000 defendants will be about $80,000."(16) Lawyers for both sides agree that individual parishioners will not be liable to pay damages, but "parishes and schools could be closed if the court finds that they belong to the archdiocese." (17)
Having all laymen as defendants in a suit against the Church gives a new meaning to the Vatican II call for "fully conscious, and active"(18) lay participation in the life and liturgy of the Church.
3. In a July 16, 2004 article in Catholic San Francisco, Levada disavowed responsibility for the Portland bankruptcy, and blamed the victims' attorneys.
As San Francisco Faith summarized: "Archbishop Levada said that when he left Portland, the archdiocese 'was in excellent financial condition.' Even today, the archdiocese suffers no 'financial collapse;' rather, Portland's problems have 'arisen because of new allegations made in the past few years about abuse that was unknown until recently brought forward by victims.'
The 'greed of plaintiffs' attorneys,' said Levada, has exacerbated the situation. Attorneys like Anderson, he said, 'see the sex-abuse crisis as a way to push for excessive judgments for victims from which these lawyers will benefit handsomely.' Attorneys for alleged victims, said Levada, have used the claims 'of terrible sexual abuse by priests, many of whom are dead,' to get 'victims to step forward decades after the fact to push claims for huge monetary damages from bishops today who had no responsibility or oversight for those priests - claims that can be satisfied only by the threat of divesting today's parishioners of their churches, today's children of their schools, today' s poor of the Church's charitable outreach.' 'This is not justice,' said the archbishop."(19)
4. In 1994, Levada's diocesan attorneys fended off a liability suit by a woman who had been impregnated by a religious order seminarian, Mr. Uribe. One of the claims made in defense of the Church was that the mother was negligent because she had engaged in "unprotected intercourse,"(20) even though the Church teaches that use of "protection" - artificial birth control - is "intrinsically evil."(21)
The details show that Levada need not have made such a hypocritical defense. The mother had met the Redemptorist seminarian (who was then working in a Portland church) in 1991, and they soon began a consensual affair. The relationship ended seven months later, when the mother informed the seminarian that she was pregnant. The child was born in February 1993, and a paternity test proved that the seminarian was the father. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "As the birth of the baby approached," the mother sought a court order for child support from the seminarian; "she also sued the Archdiocese of Portland and the Redemptorists for $200,000. She alleged that the seminarian, by having sex with a parishioner, had breached his fiduciary duty as someone who 'performed pastoral duties for the archdiocese.'"(22)
The archdiocese replied (correctly) in 1994 that "it had never directly employed Uribe." (23) Additionally, however, "the archdiocese said the 'birth of the plaintiff's child and the resultant expenses" are the result of the plaintiff's own negligence,'" (24) because she engaged "in unprotected intercourse . . . when (she) should have known that could result in pregnancy."(25) Meanwhile, the seminarian was ordained to the priesthood in 1995 by his order - even though they knew he had a child.(26)
What do the Archbishop's defenders say? The PR man for the Archdiocese of Portland acknowledged that "Levada was well aware of the Uribe case," but denied responsibility for the tactics used by the church's attorneys: "Archbishop Levada did not see the legal defense, see it or approve it. I don't think it's realistic to expect that an archbishop can track every single legal case." (27) The attorney who devised the defense considers it routine.
Richard J. Kuhn "said he wrote Levada's answer to the complaint strictly from a 'common sense' legal perspective, without regard to Catholic teachings. However, Kuhn, an outside attorney who was hired by the archdiocese to handle the case, questions whether Levada ever saw the document. 'I doubt that the archbishop would have gotten a copy of the pleading,' he said. He said his best recollection about the proceeding was that he worked exclusively with the risk management department for the Archdiocese of Portland."(28)
Liberal and conservative Catholics alike rejected this disavowal of responsibility by the Archbishop; on this matter, Fr. Richard McBrien (a liberal theologian at Notre Dame), William Donoghue (the head of the conservative Catholic League), and J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, agree that Levada should have known what the attorneys were saying in defense of the Archdiocese. (29)
Read the rest of the article here http://www.mgr.org/LevadaTrajectory-Details.html
posted by Paris Arrow | Friday, April 08, 2011
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