Postcards from the Abuse Scandal Frontlines

By Rod Dreher
American Conservative
October 9, 2013

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/abuse-catholic-scandal-frontlines/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=abuse-catholic-scandal-frontlines

Two stories, sent by readers from the Catholic frontlines. The first from St.Paul/Minneapolis:

Thank you for covering this story in my Archdiocese. It’s like finding if Bill Clinton had been found sexting Monica in 2008, on stage, while stumping for his wife. People never learn.

Archbishop Nienstadt and his priests spent the last two years warning us the sky was going to fall on the issue of gay marriage. And while I am a cultural conservative and supported the marriage amendment, I thought a lot of the arguments for it were poor and the pro-SSM side had a better marketing strategy, and a better Constitutional argument. And I’m counting the days until we are subjected to the merited impossibility.

Anyways, my point is the Archbishop made this his big mission, passing the marriage amendment, and it failed. But, while this was going on, he dithered on, “Gee, is that handsome naked boy younger than 14? Let’s debate this some more and keep that priest in ministry. But secular society affirming a monogamous relationship between two men? This means war!”

I’m embarrassed. I don’t dare let my children serve at altar, for their own protection.

The second sent from I don’t know where, by someone anonymous. It sounds real:

UPDATE: I took that anonymous letter down at the sender’s request. Though he didn’t identify himself, or offer any identifying details, he still felt uncomfortable with it posted here. I’m honoring his request to remove it. If you didn’t see it, it came from a reader who says he works as a canon lawyer for his diocese, and he has seen his bishop struggle mightily to do the right thing with accusations against priests. He spoke of a case where a priest of the diocese had served decades, but was brought down by an accusation that he had briefly groped a young man as a seminarian. That was painful, said the reader. They asked for anyone else to come forward who might have been harmed by this priest, but no one did. Not a single one.