It's not over...

Friday November 10, 2006

Before introducing the guest editorial by Tom Roberts of the NCR, the news of the sudden death of Ed Bradley of CBS News demands the acknowlegement of a true role model. The tribune can be found in ‘Sidebar Commentary’ on my website directory on the homepage.

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I wish I could state it as clearly as Tom Roberts in his most recent editorial. Tom and I have communicated on frequent occasions and I can tell you most assuredly, that he is aware of the ‘local scene’ in the Diocese of Paterson. His observations are on target.

Editorial by Tom Roberts, Editor,
National Catholic Reporter
November 10, 2006

More than the Iraq war is going wrong

If the polls are anywhere near correct, Americans are finally fed up with the war in Iraq and are looking for change.

Whether the midterm election will significantly alter the political landscape in Washington is unknown at the time of this writing, but that kind of change would merely confirm what seems palpable nearly everywhere going into the election—voters are dissatisfied with lots of things, and Iraq heads the list.

The more important question for the country is, Why the voter dissatisfaction? Is it simply because the fight has become a futile one? Or is it because in our failure in Iraq we can begin to see the deeper truth of what we’ve become during the past six years?

Whatever the election results, it is unlikely that the public will quickly or substantially change opinions that, across a variety of polls, show an overwhelming majority disapprove of the way President Bush is conducting the war, believe he has no plan to end the war and that a Republican-controlled Congress will stay the course and draw more U.S. troops into the battle.

The steady and increasing flow of bad news from the war zone certainly has something to do with the pendulum shift of public opinion about the president and the war during its three-year course.

Iraq, however, has come to represent more than failed military policies. It has become the neon sign advertising the growing gap between what the Bush administration proclaims to be reality and what actually is occurring on the ground.

In the run-up to the election, President Bush, confining his campaigning to select audiences of enthusiasts in places such as Statesboro, Ga., and Billings, Mont., resorted repeatedly to familiar and ridiculous dualisms: Republicans will fight terrorism; Democrats will concede; and repeating that he likes “the progress we’re making.”

At the same time, the U.S. Central Command in Iraq was depicting a country sliding steadily toward chaos. According to materials obtained by The New York Times, commanders in Iraq devised an index showing a sharp increase in sectarian violence with “violence at an all-time high, spreading geographically.”

The calculus devised by the commanders, of course, backs up what anyone would conclude from the range of reporting coming out of Iraq. It is impossible to disguise the incessant killing—the growing number of U.S. casualties and the increasing numbers of Iraqi dead—as anything but chaos tipping toward all-out civil war. Impossible, that is, anywhere but the political stump.

It takes a fair dose of denial to see progress in the current context.

Iraq is not alone among the significant disconnects between what we are told and what is actually happening. It is only, perhaps, the most dramatic and public, the easiest to grab hold of.

Perhaps we’re all beginning to get the sense that more than the war is going wrong. Perhaps a realization is surfacing that there is a wide gap between our self-identification as freedom-loving democrats (with a small d) and hidden prisons or rendition flights, or the attorney general’s memos justifying torture or the suspension of habeas corpus or detention without end and without legal representation.

Just maybe the electorate is becoming increasingly uneasy with laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which essentially confers on the president the powers of a monarch, allowing him to determine who might be an enemy combatant, to order harsh interrogation methods or to order a suspect confined indefinitely.

We must keep reminding ourselves what is occurring in our midst in these times. We need to connect the dots between the discrete news items of a given week or over a period of months. Our civil liberties, as well as our identity as people who embrace both the promise and the difficulties of democracy, seem not to be in danger of disappearing all at once in an avalanche. Instead, they seem to be wearing away slowly under steady erosion and at the service of an amorphous, open-ended war on terror.

Whatever the new Congress looks like, its members will have to deal with the growing discontent reflected in the polls. That is a matter of political survival. More important, they will have to deal with the growing unease that voters feel when ideals and reality become dangerously out of sync.

National Catholic Reporter, November 10, 2006
Copyright © The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company, 115 E. Amour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111 All rights reserved. TEL: 816-531-0538 FAX: 1-816-968-2280

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For several years, our diocesan spokesperson has deflected discussion and dialogue about accountability through diversionary tactics focusing on prevention. But there will be no healing without justice; no justice without the truth; no truth without full accountability. Accountability has not been forthcoming in the Diocese of Paterson. Prevarication and obfuscation as well as clerical indifference continue to be the rule of the day and many folks in the pew are waiting for the wind to change direction forgetting that they ultimately they control the windmills.

_In an acknowledgment of his excellent editorial not for publication as a LTE I reminded Tom Roberts that the next wave has to do with the clergy sexual abuse of ‘adult’ men and women. Our bishop has told at least one victim of clergy abuse that he considered the young man’s unwanted, unprovoked and unprotected sexual encounter with one of our diocesan priests was consensual. The young man had just turned 18, was intoxicated. Let’s suppose your parish priest took your 18 year old daughter out to dinner, gave her alcohol, attempted to have sex unwanted and unprovoked by her, would you consider that consensual? I suspect that you would not take kindly to that encounter and I doubt that you welcome a letter from the bishop telling you that since she was 18 at the time, it was consensual.

The priest who abused the young man continues to hold a significant diocesan position. The only way that the full truth will be uncovered is by a full grand jury investigation.

In the Roman Catholic discipline, the guilty priest can just go to confession and all is forgiven. Did you know that abortion is a reserved sin? Catholics who even attempt an abortion are excommunicated and so are those who cooperate. A reserved sin means that it can’t be absolved without special faculties from the bishop. How about that? Moreover, a person who solicits sex from a priest during confession is excommunicated. A priest who solicits sex from a layperson during a confession is not excommunicated. He just needs to go to confession_,

As I told ‘Harvey’ during our interviews, there is a double standard of morality in the Roman Catholic Church, one for laypersons and one for the clergy.

Do you need any further explanation why American voters are ignoring Roman Catholic Church leaders when they go to the polls? They have lost all moral credibility and have turned their attention to liturgical rubrics.

“Hey, Father Lasch, it’s me, ‘Harvey!’ I just read Tom Roberts editorial. He writes well and very respectfully. Shall I say ‘fair and balanced?’”?

Fr Lasch: Harvey, where have you been?

Harvey: In Italy. I stopped at the Vatican. Wow—the security over there is unbelievable. Are they trying to keep terrorists out or just the prophets (critics)?

Fr. Lasch: Hmm. I think it’s both.

Harvey: By the way, did you tell Tom Roberts that you were invited by ‘Vicky,’ one of the victims who told her story to the Philadelphia priests, to accompany her as a support?

Fr. Lasch: Yes. I mentioned that in my email message to him.

Harvey: Did you tell him that Vicky was told that she could invite lay supporters to accompany her but not priest advocates?

Fr. Lasch: Yes, I mentioned that to Tom. Actually, Vicky had invited both and Fr. Bob Hoatson and me. They specifically mentioned that Fr. Hoatson would not be permitted because he has a civil case pending against the Archdiocese of Newark. In as much as they didn’t exclude me by name, Vicky suggested that I attend incognito, However, I told her that several Philadelphia priests would recognize me. It was also possible that Cardinal Rigali would recognize me since we studied together in Rome many years ago. He may look older, but I don’t! Seriously, I told Vicky I do not appear anywhere ‘incognito’ on this issue, so I declined her invitation.

Harvey: Did you tell Tom Roberts that while victims were telling their story to the Philadelphia priests, the Cardinal’s attorneys were in Harrisburg fighting any change in the statute of limitations in cases of sexual abuse?

Fr. Lasch: Yes, I did.

Harvey: By the way, did you ever have your meeting with the bishop?

Fr. Lasch: No. The bishop was turned off by a guest editorial comment on the Pope’s remarks about Mohammed which appeared on my website as a guest commentary last month. He told me he would have met with me except that he found the remarks insulting to the Pope.

Harvey: What do you think?

Fr. Lasch: I reread the remarks and while I agree they were over the top, they were written by the author as satire. Probably too sophisticated for most. In any event, in as much as they were not typical of my style, I did remove them and apologized to the bishop.

Harvey: Did he respond?

Fr. Lasch: No.

Harvey: What do you really think is going on?

Fr. Lasch: The bishop does not want to meet with me because he cannot face the truth, Of course he already knows the truth but he is in culpable denial. His statement that he would have met with me had it not been for my website is what is called stonewalling and smoke-blowing.

Harvey: Did you ever receive an acknowledgment of your letters to Rome?

Fr. Lasch: No.

Harvey: How about your two letters and three phone calls to the Office of the Apostolic Nuncio?

Fr. Lasch: I just received the following response today [Nov 10, 2006}:

[Official Insignia]
Apostolic Nunciature
United States of America

3339 Massachusetts Avenue N.W.
Washington DC 20008-3687

No …… 878
This No. Should Be Prefixed to the Answer

November 8, 2006

Reverend and dear Monsignor Lasch:

I write to thank you for your letter of September 20, 2006. Your observations have been noted. However, I must advise you that a meeting would not be opportune.

May the Lord guide and bless you in your priestly ministry during your retired years.

With cordial regards and best wishes, I am

Sincerely yours in Christ,

/s/ Pietro Sambi
Apostolic Nuncio

Harvey: Hmm. What does it mean that “a meeting is not opportune?”

Fr. Lasch: Your guess is as good as mine. It could mean anything from disinterest to “we’re taking care of this matter…” to whatever. Then perhaps it was meant to be an allusion to Scripture and Jesus’ response when he was asked when he was going to Jerusalem—“It is not opportune that I go now. My time has not yet come.”

Harvey: Doesn’t sound like closure. Interesting.

Fr. Lasch: Perhaps the Nuncio is already dealing with too many reports that he simply can’t handle one more. I suspect that he has been receiving a lot of phone calls and letters. In fact, I know he has received more than one letter from folks in the Diocese of Paterson.

Harvey: You may be right.

Fr. Lasch: No further comment.

Speaking of justice and money, this letter from a Florida victim of sexual abuse is very insightful:

I find it disturbing that it is faster for the Catholic hierarchy to remove a priest for the crime of embezzlement than it is to remove one for the sexual abuse of a child. It’s all too clear that money still motivates the church to act. Monsignor John Skehan and Reverend Francis Guinan shafted the faithful of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Florida for forty years in the amount of about 8.6 million dollars.

The Catholic Church has no compunction about punishing its own when the greedy hands of priests have emptied the tithing bowl. When the greedy hands of priests empty the innocence of children, all you get are denials, cover-ups, delay tactics, and hollow apologies.

Society at large is more willing to accept jail for a priest accused of stealing because the entire community gets robbed. What a priest puts into his pocket is more important than what he pulls out of his pants. No one wants to hear about the abuse of a child; especially when that child has grown up, and speaks up.

At a previous job, Reverend Guinan had an intimate relationship with a former bookkeeper at St. Patrick’s Church. He is accused of paying her bills with funds from St. Vincent’s. He is currently on the run as the Monsignor sits in prison.

Obviously, if there is money to steal, then there should be money to heal. There are victims in this town that could use that help. Ask Archbishop Gomez the next time you see him at any function what he has done for those like me that have grown up, and are unafraid to speak up.

The faithful should question the legitimacy to the claim that the church needs financial support to survive. The roof at St. Ann’s is in much need of repair while the Archdiocese of San Antonio is breaking new ground at the seminary adjacent to the chancery. The “Good Shepard” needs to find those of the flock that are lost, just as Jesus taught. Here lies the Hypocrisy of Catholicism around the world, and in your backyard.

Arthur Cavazos
Florida

Harvey: Money talks.

And here is another powerful witness storry

Thanks to Steve Holenstain for sending this article:

NY Times – November 10, 2006
Coles Emerges From His Shell, Shedding Pain Layer by Layer
By KAREN CROUSE

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y., Nov. 9 — Rounding a corner, Jets receiver Laveranues Coles surveyed the gaggle of people waiting for him. Coles used to be able to complete the curl pattern from the training room to his locker without drawing a double team of reporters.

During his first six years in the National Football League, he ran from the public as if the outside world were the most savage secondary of all, with everybody angling to bring him down.

This season, though, Coles, the Jets’ leading receiver with 46 catches for 606 yards, has become the team’s go-to guy off the field. His puckish personality has emerged for all to see as he carries himself with a lightness of being that can be attributed to two life-transforming events: his public acknowledgment last year that he was molested as a child, and a phone call that he received soon after.

The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Tyler Perry, a playwright and actor. From that initial conversation sprouted a friendship that represents the 28-year-old Coles’s first true
male-bonding experience outside of football.

“Just to have another guy that’s in the position that Tyler’s in, that’s more popular than I am, who has dealt with some of the same issues I had to deal with, makes the greatest difference in the world,” Coles said recently. He was dressing for practice as he spoke, adding layer after layer of clothing and equipment while baring what had been hidden inside.

“It definitely has helped quite a bit,” Coles said. “Because to be honest, after that experience, I always thought everybody was out to hurt me. Now what I do is give everyone a fair chance. It basically helped me by just watching Tyler and seeing how he deals with people.”

Perry, a 37-year-old New Orleans native who created the character of Mabel (Madea) Simmons, said he was abused by his father as a child. He happened to catch a repeat of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” episode that originally aired last fall in which Coles, who is from Jacksonville, Fla., talked of being sexually abused at gunpoint by his stepfather between the ages of 10 and 13.

Perry acquired Coles’s cellphone number from Winfrey, who is a friend, because he was moved by Coles’s story and sensed that he might be able to help him.

“I knew the pain he was in,” Perry said in a telephone interview. “I understood it.”

He was the same age that Coles is now when he released his unresolved anger and guilt onto the pages of a journal. The entries formed the basis of Perry’s first play, “I Know I’ve Been Changed,” which consumed six years of his life and all of his savings before it was staged.

After that, his career branched out and bloomed. Perry’s stage and film successes include “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” “Madea’s Family Reunion” and “Madea’s Class Reunion.” He has produced a TV show, “House of Payne,” and written a book, “Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings,” which reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and was voted book of the year and best humor book at the 2006 Quill Awards.

Perry’s outward signs of success — acclaim and considerable wealth — came after he had reconciled with his father and achieved an inner peace. He could appreciate how much harder it would be for Coles to clean up the emotional detritus from his childhood trauma in the public glare, against the backdrop of the testosterone-charged N.F.L.

“That had to be stressful,” Perry said. “The courage that it took for Laveranues to come forward and talk publicly about what was done to him is something that I really admire.”

For Coles, football has always been his means of releasing some of the anger bottled up inside. Between the lines, he could prove his toughness and connect with his teammates in a way that was hard for him in his personal relationships.

After being drafted by the Jets in the third round in 2000, Coles quickly developed a rapport with quarterback Chad Pennington, a first-round pick in the same draft. Coles was Pennington’s favorite target on the scout team, and he remained so after Pennington joined Coles in the starting lineup in 2002.

They stayed in touch after Coles left for the Washington Redskins as a restricted free agent in 2003, the richness of their relationship perhaps best demonstrated by Pennington’s offer to take a $2 million pay cut to facilitate the trade last year that brought Coles back to the Jets in exchange for receiver Santana Moss.

Pennington and Coles have spent hours in each other’s company talking about football and family, but Pennington did not know Coles had been molested as a child until he read about it last year in The Times. “You have all these insecurities about yourself,” Coles said. “You think that other people, if they know, may look at you differently.”

Coles knew of Perry only vaguely before that first phone call. By the time they hung up after an hourlong conversation, Coles saw in Perry someone he could trust with his feelings. “I think it makes a difference that here’s somebody that doesn’t want anything from me,” Coles said. “Most of the time when I have a conversation with people outside of football, it isn’t like that.”

He added: “Tyler understood that I still had certain boundaries and walls in my life as far as relationships with women. He understood why I would shut people out if I felt I was getting too close to them, and stuff like that. It just started registering that maybe he could help me out.”

Perry donned a flowery housedress, a wig and sensible shoes and transformed himself into Madea, the mother of all caregivers, in part because he did not want his dual messages of love and forgiveness to be filtered through any gender-based stereotypes. “In our society,” he wrote in the foreword of his book, “women are given much more latitude than men to have emotions and express them.”

Coles donned a football helmet and cleats to find his emotional
outlet. Their friendship has been liberating for both because they do not have to wear disguises to address their deepest, darkest feelings.

To get beyond the pain and guilt of being abused, Perry encouraged Coles to repeat, out loud, “This is not my fault.”

Coles balked at the idea at first. He said he thought talking to
himself would make him feel crazy, not better.

“In a way, you still have an arrogant side about you that says I’m dealing with this my own way,” Coles said. “As football players, we all have our pride and ego. Once I got past that and started really thinking about the advice he gave me, I thought maybe I should start telling myself that and see if it will help me.”

Coles was alone in his car, driving to the Jets’ practice facility
during the preseason, when he finally said aloud, “This is not my fault.”

That wrecking ball of a sentence is slowly but surely tearing down Coles’s walls. More people are getting a glimpse of his playful side — witness his needling of the Jets’ first-year coach, Eric Mangini, whom he has called “the Penguin” and “ornery,” among other things. Mangini takes no offense; in fact, he said he would like to see Coles’s personality and playing ability gain him a few endorsements and a higher national profile.

Coles is speaking up. Last week he said that the chemistry between Pennington and his receivers was being overemphasized to the point of being counterproductive.

And he is stepping out. Whereas in previous years Coles spent the bye week holed up in his house, he spent part of last weekend, when the Jets were off, in Las Vegas with Perry, attending the welterweight championship bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Carlos Baldomir.

“I absolutely see the change in him,” Perry said. “He’s so much lighter. I think he’s all-around a happier person.”

Perry has suggested that Coles keep a journal, and Coles has gone so far as to buy one. But so far, the pages remain blank. Who needs a journal when people surround his locker every day, waiting to record his thoughts? “It’s exciting,” Coles said. “It’s like a whole other world when I walk in here now.”

Thanks, Steve. It’s a healing story.
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A must read... A Story that has no ending… Spokane and bankruptcy… a must read. Click ‘Pastor’s Study’ on the website director to the right.

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