fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

RICO Vs. The Lavender Mafia

Feds subpoena PA Catholic bishops in apparent organized crime sex probe
Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 5.56.01 PM

This is massive:  

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy across the state of Pennsylvania — a major escalation of government scrutiny of the church long sought by victims of pedophile priests.

The decision to launch such a probe, even one limited to a single state, is noteworthy because the federal government has long shied away from tackling allegations that the church spent decades hiding the extent of the sexual abuse problem among its priests, and allowing pedophiles to continue to work and live undetected in communities.

“This is just a breathtaking, stunning and very welcome development,” said Michael Dolce, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia began issuing subpoenas recently, according to one person familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney, William McSwain, declined to comment, though church officials around the state confirmed having received subpoenas.

The subpoenas seek years of internal church records, including any evidence of church personnel taking children across state lines for purposes of sexual abuse, any evidence of personnel sending sexual material about children electronically and any evidence church officials reassigned suspected predators or used church resources to try to further or conceal such conduct, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Philly-based Catholic chronicler Rocco Palmo says the forbidden word: RICO:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Do you know what this means? The feds may be using a law designed to fight organized crime to go after the lavender mafia.

The US Catholic bishops have known since at least 1985, when the Doyle-Mouton Report was given to each of them, that they had a terrible systemic problem on their hands. And they tried to wish it away, for the most part. Now the US Department of Justice appears to be going after them as if they were the mafia. Which, in the lavender sense, a lot of them are.

News from Buffalo, NY:

“There’s a whole subculture that is not recognized by the lay person or is known,” Lougen said, “because they’re in our world, but we’re not necessarily in theirs.”

It’s a subculture that James Faluszczak knows well.

A graduate of Christ the King Seminary, he served as a Catholic priest for 18 years in the Diocese of Erie, Pa. He has protested and called for bishop accountability as sexual abuse scandals have exploded in New York and Pennsylvania, where he last served in 2014.

In the mid-1990s, [alleged sexually abusive gay Buffalo priest Joseph] Gatto was Faluszczak’s formation director at Christ the King, where men from the Diocese of Erie and the Diocese of Buffalo would study to become priests. Much of the following account is based on sworn testimony Faluszczak gave under oath during the recent grand jury investigation of clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania. He provided a copy of his testimony to 7 Eyewitness News.

“My experience among the Catholic clergy, both in Buffalo and in Erie, is that they are over-sexualized, highly sexualized,” Faluszczak said. “When Father Gatto became the rector of Christ the King Seminary, the hypocrisy of that was part of the motivation for me to leave active priestly ministry.”

This item from Chicago does not involve abuse, but it’s still telling. You’ll recall that recently, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago came down like a ton of bricks on a Catholic priest who burned a rainbow flag. Well, guess who’s still in ministry:

A Chicago priest who advertises on the internet as a “gay” masseur who does “man to man bodywork” says he has permission to host an openly homosexual group at his Catholic priory.

Openly homosexual Fr. Michael Guimon is a member of the Friars Servants of Mary — or Servites — and head of the priory at Our Lady of Sorrows National Basilica. He’s also the Servites’ formation director and senior care minister, with specialties of “spiritual companion and massage therapist.”

Fr. Guimon hosts the homosexual monthly meetup Rainbow Warriors in Our Lady of Sorrows monastery, evidently with his order’s blessing.

And he appears to be thriving on Chicago’s online homosexual meetup scene.

Fr. Guimon is listed on the “Gay Body Workers” website as a professional masseur who does “Man to Man Body Work, and is signed up as both member and organizer “Michael G.” on the Mankind Pride of Chicago Meetup website for “Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer and Questioning Men.”

That’s not a crime, nor is it abuse. But it tells us a lot about what is tolerated and what is not in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Meanwhile, note well:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now