Just Doing What The Old Guard Always Did

by Thomas A. Droleskey

A longtime powerhouse in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Anthony "Cardinal" Bevilacqua, ordained as a priest for the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, on June 11, 1949, has died at the age of eighty-eight. Considered a "conservative" in conciliar circles, Bevilacqua was, of course, a thorough supporter and participant in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service and served as an active agent in undermining the innocence and purity of children in Catholic schools in conciliar custody by means of explicit classroom instructions in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments during his time as the conciliar "bishop" of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from December 12, 1983, to December 8, 1987, and during his time as the "archbishop" of Philadelphia from February 11, 1988, to July 15, 2003. He also believed, as every good "conciliar" Catholic does, in false ecumenism and religious liberty and "separation of Church and State."

Sadly, though, "Cardinal" Bevilacqua, who received his seminary training at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York, and was a civil lawyer as well as a canon lawyer, was trained in the worst of preconciliar clericalism. That is, the problems of covering up crimes of abusive clergymen did not begin with the ecclesiogenesis, if you will, of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. No, those problems existed for decades, as has been discussed in many other articles on this site. What made the problem worse in the ape of the Catholic Church that is the conciliar church was the fact that men inclined to commit perverse acts against nature were recruited, promoted and protected by many "bishops," especially those appointed by Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II,. and superiors of religious communities. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself, both as the conciliar "archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1980, and as the conciliar "pope," has enabled and/or sought to dismiss the seriousness of clerical abuse while giving lip service mea culpas now and again as hardly any conciliar "bishop" has been punished for his actions and for his rank intimidation of those who have come with their stories of personal horror.

"Cardinal" Bevilacqua, who had been the chancellor of the Diocese of Brooklyn before he became the conciliar "ordinary" in Pittsburgh, was used to solving problems of abusive clergymen on an "in house" basis, letting his underlings handle the details so that he could concentrate on other matters. His delegation of authority and his refusal to take seriously the complaints brought to him by victims and their parents while the abusers were reassigned to different parishes without the faithful there being notified of the risk came in for scathing criticism in a Philadelphia Country grand jury report in 2005:

In 2002, a state court grand jury began an investigation into allegations of clergy sex abuse in the diocese amid rising allegations of priest abuse around the country.

The investigation resulted in a 2005 report outlining numerous cases of abuse allegations against Philadelphia area priests dating back several decades. The report said Cardinal Bevilacqua was aware that some priests in the diocese were engaged in "massive amounts of child molestations and sexual assaults" over many years. The report accused him of hiding the allegations from parishioners and police, and of taking steps to avoid any legal liability for him and the diocese.

At that time, however, prosecutors said they were powerless to bring any new criminal charges because the statutes of limitation had expired. Before the 2005 report came out, the grand jury did bring abuse charges against one priest, who pleaded guilty.

In 2011, Philadelphia prosecutors charged three priests and a lay teacher with rape, indecent assault and related charges, in connection with allegations they abused boys in the 1990s. The statutes of limitation for the cases brought last year hadn't yet expired. (Cardinal Bevilacqua Dies.)

 

We have seen the conciliar "bishops" and their chancery factotums engage in all manner of self-exculpatory "spinning" to deny the scope and extent of the clerical abuse that they had suborned for decades. This has been the standard modus operandi of the conciliar "bishops" and their factotums when caught up in the vast web of the clerical abuse scandals:

(1) Denials that anything occurred
(2) Attempts to claim that they were “framed” or “set-up.”
(3) Accusations that the victims have been lying.
(4) Efforts to intimidate the victims and their family members/friends/supporters with threats of lawsuits, sometimes threatened by chancery officials or attorneys for insurance companies in the employ of a diocese or religious community.
(5) Numerous threats to publicly humiliate the accusers with a recitation of their own sins and faults a standard practice of bullies and thugs who, lacking facts, believe that their bare-knuckles, "win, baby, win" tactics will scare the timid into backing off so that those guilty of egregious behavior can continue with their misdeeds as the attempt to "preserve" reputations that are undeserved.

As we have seen, this policy of denial and intimidation and browbeating backfired ten years ago when problems that had been reported for a long time before that in The Wanderer, among other publications, began to see the light of day in the secular media (and I wrote a few of those articles in The Wanderer). The conciliar church has had to pay out over $2 billion in compensatory and punitive damages to victims as a result of the systematic protection and promotion of the predators while the victims were intimidated, stonewalled and browbeaten.

 

"Cardinal" Bevilacqua lived long enough to be humiliated by the fact that a trusted aide of his, Monsignor James Lynn, who had headed the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's clergy office, was indicted by a Philaelphia County grand jury on February 10, 2011, on charges of failing to report clerical abusers to police. Philadelphia County District Attorney Seth Williams also considered indicting Bevilacqua::

Msgr. William Lynn, a Philadelphia pastor who headed the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s office of clergy from 1992 to 2004, has been indicted on two counts on endangering the welfare of a child.

In a report released along with the indictments, a grand jury indicated that they had also considered charges against retired Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

District Attorney Seth Williams said at a press conference that Msgr. Lynn “supervised two of the abusers . . . knew they were dangerous, and chose to expose them to new victims.” The indictment marks the first time that an American chancery official has faced criminal charges for covering up evidence of clerical abuse.

The indictments came as the result of a grand-jury investigation that produced a stinging indictment of the Philadelphia archdiocese and its response to sexual abuse. The grand jury's report charged that archdiocesan programs allegedly designed to assist victims of abuse have in fact been used to protect accused clerics and Church officials, and expresses suspicions that priests who have been credibly charged with abuse are still in active ministry, despite the US bishops' clear policy guidelines requiring their suspension.

The grand jury report was the 2nd such inquiry into possible criminal behavior in the Philadelphia archdiocese. And earlier report, issued in 2005, had contained a blistering denunciation of the archdiocese. But at that time, the grand jury stopped short of recommending criminal charges, explaining that there was not adequate evidence to support successful prosecution of acts that had taken place within the statue of limitations. The new grand jury found such evidence, thanks to the emergence of new witnesses.

Indicted and arrested along with Msgr. Lynn were four priests accused of abusing boys. Three priests are accused of raping one boy between 1998 and 2000; the fourth is accused of raping a 14-year-old boy in 1996. The grand jury report recounts the priests' offenses in lurid detail, and underlines evidence that Msgr. Lynn was fully informed about the priests' misconduct.

The grand jury report indicates that the panel seriously considered criminal charges against Cardinal Bevilacqua. In a section that clearly indicates the depth of suspicion focused on the archdiocese, the report explains:

 

The Cardinal’s top lawyer appeared before the grand jury and testified that the Cardinal, at 87, suffers from dementia and cancer. We are not entirely sure what to believe on that point. We do know, however, that over the years Cardinal Bevilacqua was kept closely advised of Monsignor Lynn’s activities, and personally authorized many of them. On the other hand, we do not have good evidence about the Cardinal’s actions specifically as to Father Avery and Father Brennan, the two priests whose treatment forms the basis for the endangering charge against Lynn. The documents clearly show what Lynn knew in these two cases and what he did or didn’t do about it. But that direct link is lacking as to Cardinal Bevilacqua. On balance, we cannot conclude that a successful prosecution can be brought against the Cardinal – at least for the moment. New reports of abuse continue to come in.

 

In announcing the indictments, district attorney Williams identified himself as a Catholic. He said:

 

The criminal acts that occurred here are not representative of my religion. They are the bad acts of individual men. I recognize all the good that the Roman Catholic Church has done and continues to do in the world. But I am sworn to uphold the law, and I will do what is necessary to protect children. There must be more separation between the things the church does in the name of helping victims and the things the church does in an effort to protect itself from financial liability and ill repute…..I love my church but I detest the criminal behavior of priests who abuse or allow the abuse of children. (Grand jury indicts Philadelphia chancery official.)

 

District Attorney Seth Williams put the matter very well, and it is a little late for those claiming that it is within the competency of the Catholic Church to punish clerical malefactors for their crimes. Why is late to claim to such a thing? Let me be brief as the hour on the clock indicates that it is very late.

First, what prosecutors think is the Catholic Church is but her counterfeit ape, admitting that some of the clerical abuse that has come to light in the past twenty years did indeed occur under the watch of true bishops. Although the covering up for the moral crimes of priests and consecrated religious is really nothing new, what is new is the spread of these crimes because many of the conciliar "bishops" and their chancery factotums have systematically recruited men with effeminate qualities and/or men who were known to be--or at least susceptible of being formed into--practitioners of perversity. A related difference is that there has been a fostering of an atmosphere sympathetic to the agenda of what Mrs. Randy Engel calls "the homosexualist collective" in one diocese and one parish after another in the past forty years (see Peeking into the Old Conciliar Fowler's Lair, part one and Peeking into the Old Conciliar Fowler's Lair, part two).

Second, no one who adheres to the ethos of conciliarism can speak of letting what they think is the Catholic Church "handle" crimes of clerical abuse. The "popes" of conciliarism have rejected the necessity of the confessional Catholic civil state, thereby surrendering unto the civil state was belonged formerly to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages of Christendom. Yes, indeed. Live By Separation of Church and State? Die By Separation of Church and State (see also Not So "Deplorable" After All).

Third, the conciliar authorities have made one promise after another voting to approve their so-called Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that was adopted by the conciliar "bishops" at their semi-annual meeting, held in Dallas, Texas, in June of 2002 (and revised in 2005 and again last year, 2011; nothing in the counterfeit church of conciliarism is stable, you see). The "Dallas Charter" was supposedly based in a "zero tolerance" policy for clerical abuse. "Zero tolerance" has been honored in the breach in a number of instances in the past nine years, and that is why prosecutors in some locales have become impatient with apologies and promises of "reform." It has been nearly a decade since the wretched reign of Bernard "Cardinal" Law was ended in Boston. Some prosecutors have had quite enough.

"Cardinal" Bevilacqua died as a tragic symbol of a system of institutional self-protection that had fostered his rise in the clerical ranks. He was just doing what the old guard always did. Souls were lost to the Faith as a result. People left what they thought was the Catholic Church, becoming embittered by the lack of concern about their plight and/or the manner in which their own veracity had put been into question after they came forth with their complaints. While we pray for the repose of the soul of the late priest, who was not a true bishop, his death once again should remind Catholics all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide that it wrong to defy reason and logic to conclude that a collection of witnesses has "manufactured" evidence and made up stories that they could have learned only from those who had abused them.  May God have mercy on his immortal soul. May He have mercy on us all.

Truth wins out in the end. If not now in this life, of course, truth wins at the Particular Judgment for all to see at the General Judgment of the living and the dead. There will be no place to hide there. The truth about every situation and circumstance and the interior dispositions of souls will be made manifest for all to see. Those who protect, excuse or deny logic and reason to protect their friends in this life when objective evidence points to their being guilty of either inappropriate or outright immoral behavior that is offensive to God, objectively speaking, and harmful to souls, starting with their own, will find out on the Last Day, if not before, that their efforts to defend moral reprobates while seeking to victimize their victims are not pleasing in the sight of God no matter how vehemently they protest and how much vitriol they use to seek to discredit those victims. Truth wins out in the end. 

There is thus no need to belabor these points, which have been made in numerous articles on this site, among them being Of Worldwide Scope, Always Evading Root Causes, Swinging Clubs To Protect The Club, Surely He Jests, "Canonizing" A Man Who Protected Moral Derelicts, More Than A Matter of Legality, Audio Presentation: Scandal In a Church of Apostasy.WMA, "Fall Guys" Aren't Usually "Stand-Up Guys", Apologizing to Everyone Save For God Himself, Not Going Down With the Conciliar Ship, Touchy, Touchy, Chastisements Under Which We Must Save Our Souls, part two, Not So "Deplorable" After All, and Future Home of the "Reform of the Reform.

Let us remember these words of Saint Teresa of Avila, the great reformer of the Carmelites whose feast we celebrate today, that teach us to reject breaches of regularity and abuses as "exaggerations:"

"Know this: it is by very little breaches of regularity that the devil succeeds in introducing the greatest abuses. May you never end up saying: 'This is nothing, this is an exaggeration.'" (Saint Teresa of Avila, Foundations, Chapter Twenty-nine)

 

For it is that when people seek to minimize serious abuses as "nothing important" that the adversary is able to desensitize people into accepting higher and higher doses of questionable or immoral behavior as "nothing important," leading to a spiritual blindness in face of grave and imminent threats to souls that can only result in the proliferation of of evil under the guise of "nothing important," and this is how the "old guard" in the conciliar structures made possible a rise in clerical abuse just as they gave offense to God by means of the "nothing important" the liturgical blasphemies and sacrileges and the doctrinal apostasies and novelties of concilairism.

Obviously, we must, as always, spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, especially on this First Friday, if at all possible, and pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, using the shield of Our Lady's Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and the weapon of her Rosary to protect us from the contagion of apostasy and betrayal that is all around us. We must also, of course, make reparation for our own many sins by offering up all of our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and humiliations and penances and mortifications and fastings to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

This will all pass. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest, and it will be a triumph beyond all telling.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us, on this your feast day!

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Blaise, pray for us. .

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?